Landscape & Enclosure :
field trips

Members of the Project Team spent a very instructive field day in Northamptonshire on Monday 1 October.  The day began in West Haddon, a parish famous for the violent opposition manifested by the football-playing locals to the enclosure of their commons in 1765.  We then moved on through the Althorp estate, and the model cottages at Little Brington, to Stoke Bruerne and Shutlanger, the last enclosures to take place in Northamptonshire. 

Model cottage at Little Brington and the Church at Passenham (1626)

Next, we drove  to Passenham, which was enclosed in the 1620s, but were disappointed to find that the old hedges had been largely replaced by post and rail fences and that its fascinating 17th century Church was well and truly locked.

The day ended in Deanshanger and Wicken, both enclosed in the later 18th century, but in very different circumstances.

Primitive Methodist chapel
& school at Deanshanger

Deanshanger was an ‘open’ village without a resident landlord, where the fields were enclosed under a 1772 act and nonconformity subsequently thrived. 

By contrast, Wicken was a ‘closed’ village where the resident lord rebuilt the church, extended the manor house, reorganised the estate and enclosing the open fields in 1757.

Two views of Wicken's bucolic charms, featuring the Church