Enclosure

The Enclosure Acts  were  Parliamentary Acts, from around 1750 to1860.

Large areas where villagers had certain rights of inherited access and which were divided into narrow strips for cultivation were consolidated and henceforth farmed by a single landowner.Poor villagers had depended upon the rural open areas to grow food for the family and so many had to find work elsewhere and this tended to be mostly in urban areas.

Enclosure was intended to make the land more productive, which no doubt did, but the human cost was high.