The Enclosures in England: An Economic Reconstruction — Reading Companion

A Thesis Grounded in Soil and Statistics

Fitt's central claim is that the enclosure movement was not primarily a response to market prices but to the physical exhaustion of the land. She marshals evidence from manorial accounts showing that yields had fallen, that villains were abandoning holdings, and that lords found it unprofitable to cultivate demesnes. The book's first chapter systematically compares the prices of wool and wheat, finding that wool was relatively low during the key enclosure period, undercutting the standard narrative. Instead, Fitt points to the condition of the soil: insufficient manure, compulsory land-holding, and the poverty of tenants. She writes that 'the most important of the many causes which were at work to undermine the manorial system in the fourteenth century is, therefore, plain'—the productivity of the soil had declined to a point where cultivation was no longer worthwhile.

The Voice of the Manorial Record

Fitt's prose is direct and argumentative, often using the phrase 'we have here the reason' to tie evidence to conclusion. She quotes extensively from primary sources, such as the complaint that 'the work is not worth the breakfast' from the Winchester Pipe Rolls. Her tone is that of a scholar dismantling a received theory: she notes that previous historians had 'forgotten' that lords could demand money equivalents for services, and she insists on a more material explanation. The book's structure is cumulative, with each chapter building on the last: from price analysis to soil fertility, to the disintegration of open fields, to enclosure for sheep pasture. Fitt's voice is confident but not strident, and she frequently uses rhetorical questions to guide the reader, as when she asks, 'How could the villain support his whole family on the produce of worse land?'

Pace and the Accumulation of Evidence

The book's pace is deliberate, reflecting its origins as a doctoral dissertation. Early chapters move slowly through statistical tables and manorial records, establishing the foundation for later arguments. The middle chapters accelerate as Fitt synthesizes evidence from multiple manors, showing patterns of consolidation and desertion. The final chapter, on enclosure for sheep pasture, is the most dynamic, as Fitt argues that the poverty of tenants in unenclosed areas and the exhaustion of open fields forced a transformation. The pace mirrors her method: careful accumulation of data, then a shift to broader interpretation. Readers should expect a dense, evidence-heavy text that rewards close attention to the footnotes and primary sources, which are woven into the narrative rather than relegated to appendices.

Fitt's work is best approached as a sustained argument rather than a neutral survey. Readers may wish to track her use of the Winchester Pipe Rolls and other manorial documents, which she treats as direct evidence of economic conditions. The book's value lies in its insistence on material causes—soil exhaustion, low yields, and the poverty of tenants—over market-driven explanations. For those interested in the mechanics of historical argument, Fitt's method of reconstructing economic reality from fragmentary records offers a model of careful inference.

Whenever I shelve The Enclosures in England, I think of how Fitt’s careful tables and manorial records whisper one quiet truth—that change begins in the soil, not in the counting house. It feels oddly akin to The Story of Milk — Story, Setting & Ideas, where the pastures, too ghostly empty of sheep, taught us that even milk has its own stubborn history. Two books, one long breath between them.