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In 1066 when William the Conqueror won the Battle of Hastings he took control of all the land in England, sharing it out amongst his Barons who appointed Lords to control the land. Ordinary people had to work for the Lord of the Manor (their land-Lord), usually by farming his land. The land was farmed in a patchwork of open fields without fences or hedges, that were divided into individual long but narrow strips. These long strips of land originated so that teams of oxen pulling the ploughs didn’t have to turn around too often, making farming more efficient.
As well as farming these strips of land for their land-Lord, farmers had the ancient custom of common rights which allowed them to graze animals or collect wood for fuel on certain parts of the Lord of the Manor’s land at certain times of the year. This right to common land was crucial if harvests had been poor because foraging provided a source of free food and fuel in the form of wood or peat. People who had the right to use this land in common with others were called commoners and the land itself was called a common. In Birmingham, the echoes of these places are carried in names such as Perry Common, Victoria Common or Billesley Common, or Common Lane in Washwood Heath or Sheldon.
From the 1750s onwards, Parliament granted permission for landowners to enclose the parts of their land held in common, removing commoners’ rights of access to almost 7 million acres of land across England. Furthermore, in some places these Acts of Parliament were used to enclose the open fields used by many farmers into single fields controlled by the landowner. Many people who were displaced moved to the cities that were expanding in the Industrial Revolution of the time. Source: Who Owns England? By Guy Shrubsole. Available to borrow from the Library of Birmingham.
This copy of the Yardley Inclosure* Act from 1833 sets out that more than 600 acres of land in the parish of Yardley belonging to John Taylor, Lord of the Manor of Yadley should be enclosed and taken out of common usage. It also provides for the rent raised from this land to be used to pay the salary of the vicar at Yardley Parish church. *Inclosure is the legal term for the process of the act of enclosing (fencing off and making private) the land.