Note 125 — Chapter V · THE VILLAGE AFTER ENCLOSURE

Cost of Enclosure.—The expenses of particular Acts varied very much. Billingsley in his Report on Somerset (p. 57) gives £3 an acre as the cost of enclosing a lowland parish, £2, 10s. for an upland parish. The enclosure of the 12,000 acre King’s Sedgmoor (Ibid., p. 196) came (with the subdivisions) to no less than £59,624, 4s. 8d., or nearly £5 an acre. Stanwell Enclosure, on the other hand, came to about 23s. an acre, and various instances given in the Report for Bedfordshire work out at about the same figure. When the allotments to the tithe-owners and the lord of the manor were exempted, the sum per acre would of course fall more heavily on the other allottees, e.g. of Louth, where more than a third of the 1701 acres enclosed were exempt. In many cases, of course, land was sold to cover expenses. The cost of fencing allotments would also vary in different localities. In Somerset, from 7s. 7d. to 8s. 7d. for 20 feet of quickset hedge was calculated, in Bedfordshire, 10s. 6d. per pole. See also for expense Hasbach, pp. 64, 65, and General Report on Enclosures, Appendix xvii. Main Items:—

1. Country solicitor’s fees for drawing up Bill and attending in town;

2. Attendance of witnesses at House of Commons and House of Lords to prove that Standing Orders had been complied with;

3. Expenses of persons to get signatures of consents and afterwards to attend at House of Commons to swear to them (it once cost from £70 to £80 to get consent of principal proprietor);

4. Expense of Parliamentary solicitor, 20 gs., but more if opposition;

5. Expense of counsel if there was opposition;

6. Parliamentary fees, see p. 76.