Agricultural History Review, Volume 45 Part 2 (1997), pp. 149–164

Through the study of a single parish this article seeks to contribute to the continuing debate surrounding the survival of the small owner/occupier in the nineteenth-century countryside. Within the context of a livestock-dominated economy, open-field tenants of Great Oakley had access to a number of enclosed grazing pastures, together with extensive common grazing in the forest of Kockingham, and the relative importance of the latter is discussed in some detail. Following enclosure in 1784 and 1829 there was some dislocation among the cottager population, yet there remained available numerous parcels of land for the smaller occupiers. Whereas there was a tendency for smaller freeholds to be purchased by large landowners before enclosure, this was by no means a prelude to dispossession, since many of those selling held rented land in adjacent parishes and may have viewed s,'des as a means of releasing capital for reinvestment. If the smaller occupier, usually employing family labour only, contributed only modestly to the national economy, his significance at the local level was of some importance both from a commercM and social standpoint. 

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