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The research is set out in four thematic ‘frames’.

Frame 1 explores enclosure in relation to the aristocracy. The aristocracy generally initiated schemes of enclosure in their role as landowners, and our first objective is to ascertain how the great estates were affected by the process - socially as well as economically. This research will be associated with a PhD, funded by the AHRC. The second is to establish parallels between the aristocracy’s appropriation of control in relation to enclosure and wider aspects of elite culture - in architecture, antiquarianism and sport - where similar claims to authority were made. The research is supported by our partners in English Heritage.

Frame 2 examines pictorial and literary representations of the landscape during and after enclosure. While scholars have analysed major paintings of the English landscape in relation to the ideologies of improvement associated with enclosure, few have studied local work for ‘artistic’ evidence of its physical (and by extension, social and cultural) impact. This project will remedy that deficiency by examining the work of regional artists such as George Clarke of Scaldwell (Northamptonshire), William Turner (Oxfordshire), and Peter de Wint (Lincolnshire). The research will also draw on the poetry of John Clare of Helpstone and attempt to trace the means by which the enclosed landscape, so ‘new’ to Clare, had itself become ‘traditional’ a century later to an observer such as H. V. Morton. This research is supported by our partners in the John Clare Trust.

Frame 3 explores the overlooked issue of enclosure’s impact on cultures of local religious association. A recent study of the 1851 Religious Census highlighted a correlation between parishes subject to parliamentary enclosure and Anglican strength, and the project will ask whether this was related to the disappearance of small owners and occupiers who might have formed the backbone of Methodism. This par of the research will also examine the rise of rural anticlericalism, and explore the benefits to the church of enclosure’s selective enrichment of the local agricultural community: were ‘improvements’ in the landscape echoed in improvements to local church fabric?

Frame 4 examines the influence of topography and environment on popular mentalités and customary activity. It draws on a substantial body of French scholarship which, influenced by pioneering scholars like Marc Bloch, relates individual and communal identity to conceptions of the pays and terroir in bocage and open arable landscapes. Enclosure, rational and progressive, rewrote the English landscape: customary sensitivity to ‘liminal places’ (the bridges, crossroads, and gibbet sites where the natural and supernatural worlds met), and the embedded notions of community reflected in ‘beating the parish bounds’ or traditions of communal justice were overwritten by newly named fields, new landmarks, and new regulations. Exploring these, and examining mid-Victorian attempts to re-establish communal connection with the countryside through ‘tamed’ celebrations such as the Harvest Festival, will engage scholars of both British and European society.