MAPPING BAMPTON: A JOURNEY IN SPACE AND TIME To these people, common farming was an imperfect form of capitalism, but one that could be made to work in the interests of the poor’s basic subsistence- with some tweaks. In a survey of his holdings dated 1789 the Earl of Shrewsbury’s agent made very clear his view on enclosure writing: “There is but very little enclosed ground here. The land lies in very small parcels and farms are very dispersed the inconvenience which nothing, but a general exchange or enclosure can remedy but an enclosure is not likely to take place as the Tithe owners oppose on the supposition it will lessen the values of their Tithes”. Bampton vicar Rev Giles later in the century also made his views on the matter of enclosure very clear. When describing the farming system in what he called the “primaeval” villages of Aston and Cote (which retained an open-field system into the 1860s) he lamented that the inhabitants there “are hardly a hundred acres of enclosures, the system of farming in common prevails and forms a fatal obstacle to the improvement which the land is capable of receiving”. Although not objecting to common farming on strictly moral grounds (as many religious men of the time did),
his tone is certainly judgemental, implying the existence of a certain crude ignorance within the commoners of Aston compared to the modernity and enlightenment of those who had the foresight to abandon this ancient system of farming in Bampton itself. In Bampton the commons were used for a myriad of other purposes, including residential and recreational. Shrewsbury’s survey of 1789 makes a small note of “several cottages on the waste which pay acknowledgements amounting in the whole to 20 shiilings“ equivalent to £1. This is the only direct evidence I can find of the practice of squatters setting up cottages on roadside wastes, on the sides of greens, and on larger tracts of commonly held land, which was a common practice in south east England from the 16th Century onwards. If a cottage built on wastes or common was allowed for 20 years, the cottager gained rights in law. Many land owners, Shrewsbury apparently included, therefore circumvented this by creating what we would understand in modern times as a licensing agreement, probably backed by a fine in the Manor Court that could be collected if the cottager defaulted. Once these de facto leases were granted, rent would be paid in perpetuity. It is possible a number of these cottages are 39
depicted on the 1789 map, sitting interspatially without their own marked enclosures on the edge of the triangular open space that reads rather like Weald’s village green (the junction of modern Weald Street and Primrose Lane). It is likely that some of these cottages still exist today, having subsequently gained boundaries (and more importantly, title deeds).
Cottages on waste