Squires and labourers

Britain was still a country of villages and farms in 1750. Far more people worked on the land than in any other trade. The landowners were the leading men. Some of them were great lords, with big estates and country houses. The squires (or gentry), owned less land than the lords. But the squires were still the top men in their villages.

Tenant farmers rented land from the lords or squires. Most of them employed labourers to work their fields. Some of these workers (the young, unmarried men and women) lived in the farmers' homes and worked full-time. The rest were employed by the farmers only at busy times of the year. They lived with their families in rough cottages, and had a hard life.

In 1750 many villages in England still had three or four open fields, divided into strips. Even more still had some common land. But open fields and common land were disappearing. Enclosures were eating them up, turning them into smaller fields, with hedges or fences round them. By 1830, there were hardly any open fields left.

Enclosures meant more money for landowners and tenant farmers. They were not so good for labourers, though. They lost the right to use the common land. That was where they had kept their cows and sheep. And money from selling butter, cheese, and wool had kept hunger from their doors. On the other hand, enclosures meant work and wages. Landlords and tenants needed labour to make fences, dig ditches, and till the fields.

Walter Robson: Britain 1750 - 1900; Oxford University Press, 1993/2002, page 4