Welsh Journals

THE ENCLOSURE AND DRAINAGE OF CORS FOCHNO (BORTH BOG), 1813—47 With the passing of the General Enclosure Act of 1801, the enthus- iasm for enclosure which had been catalysed by the inflated price of agricultural products during the Napoleonic Wars was given further stimulus and many thousands of acres of waste in both the coastal and hill areas of Wales were subject to the measuring chain of the surveyor and enclosure commissioner. Throughout Britain as a whole it has been estimated that the gross return from investment in waste-land enclosure frequently exceeded twenty per cent while the Funds rarely yielded in excess of six per cent.1 In Wales and other areas where a pastoral agrarian economy predominated, farmers did not benefit from price inflation to the same degree as those in the arable sector, as livestock prices increased to a lesser degree than those of corn crops. This would have tended towards lower rentals for farms in the livestock producing areas and thus reduced incentives for landlord's investment in waste-land enclosure. On the other hand, a potent countervailing factor operated in the form of rural land hunger engendered by a rapidly increasing rate of population growth throughout both rural and urban Wales. Increasing family size created a clamour for new holdings among a rural population for whom farming was the tra- ditional, and often the sole means of making a living. Not only did this situation lead to squatting on the extensive wastes, but also to an increase in farm rents and a growing realisation on the part of landlords that enclosure of wastes would enable the creation of new farms which could be let at economic rents. Although on many of the unenclosed wastes and commons summer grazing rights of adjacent farms were carefully regulated by the Manor Courts according to the winter stock-carrying capacity of those farms, rights of common were frequently abused. In some cases, over-stocking led to a deterioration in the value of the common while in others persons eschewed the exercise of their common rights for fear that their stock would be stolen, maimed, or killed either by other persons holding rights of common or by the much-maligned squatters.3 In general squatting or encroaching was strenuously resisted by farmers and others holding common rights on the unenclosed wastes, on the basis that not only would summer grazing be limited by the presence of encroachments but also that squatting tended to introduce a disorderly and unruly class of person to the area. Some squatters, however, managed to establish the freehold of their encroachment by paying a nominal rent to the Lord of the Manor, while enclosure commissioners often recognised that occupation of a site for a period