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GCSE History · key term
The fencing off or consolidation of land for private use, which could restrict poorer people's access to common land.
Used by AQA, Edexcel and OCR
Paper 2
The consolidation and fencing of land for private use, which could remove villagers’ customary rights to use common land.
Revise: The PoorEnclosure could therefore have a severe local impact, although it does not explain poverty everywhere in England.
Paper 1, Paper 2
The conversion of open fields and shared agricultural land into privately controlled farms, reducing some poorer people's access to land.
Revise: Context for MigrationEnclosure turned open fields and shared land into privately controlled farms. Although it could make farming more productive, some small farmers lost access to land and had to look elsewhere for work. Movement from the countryside to towns was internal migration, rather than migration into Britain, but it helped create the expanding urban society into which overseas migrants arrived.
The practice of dividing and fencing off land for private use, which could remove villagers’ customary rights to use common land.
The fencing off or consolidation of land, which could restrict people’s access to land previously used in common.
The fencing off of land for exclusive use, which could remove villagers’ rights to use common land.
Paper 1
The organisation of farmland into enclosed holdings rather than open fields or common land.
Revise: Change overviewFarming became more efficient, and enclosure increased. Enclosure reorganised farmland into separate enclosed holdings, including land previously used in common. Economic change could make landowners wealthier, but its benefits were not shared equally.
The fencing off or consolidation of land previously used in open fields or shared by a community; conversion to sheep pasture could reduce employment and access to land.
Keep enclosure in proportion: it could seriously damage particular communities, but it was not the sole explanation for poverty across England.
Explain a cause through its effects: enclosure removed access to common land and reduced employment, leaving some rural families unable to support themselves.
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