{"id":6589,"date":"2016-02-23T05:19:14","date_gmt":"2016-02-23T05:19:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6589"},"modified":"2016-02-23T05:19:14","modified_gmt":"2016-02-23T05:19:14","slug":"the-inclosure-acts-and-environmental-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2016\/02\/23\/the-inclosure-acts-and-environmental-education\/","title":{"rendered":"The inclosure acts and environmental education"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The NAEE blog recently carried a guest <a href=\"http:\/\/naee.org.uk\/open-access-land-and-new-horizons-for-environmental-education\/\">posting<\/a> from\u00a0Geoffrey Guy who lectures at Reaseheath College, and is the Director of Education for Bushcraft Education Ltd, and founder of the Bushcraft Education <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bushcrafteducation.co.uk\">blog<\/a>. \u00a0It was about the enclosure of land and its recent liberation by legislation granting open-access \u2013 well, up to a point \u2013 and the benefit this has had for environmental education, and outdoor education more generally.<\/p>\n<p>I take much of my understanding about enclosures from \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kirkusreviews.com\/book-reviews\/henry-hobhouse\/forces-of-change-an-unorthodox-history\/\">Forces of Change<\/a>\u2019 by Henry Hobhouse. \u00a0Hobhouse says that the first enclosures took place after the Black Death when empty villages were just swallowed up by adjacent\u00a0estates and the land was used to rear sheep. \u00a0He says that it was in later periods that open field systems of common usage were enclosed and that this took place at a variety of speeds which seem to be linked to the price of wheat. \u00a0That is: higher wheat prices = a call for more efficient agricultural land = enclosures. \u00a0It was only after 1800, Hobhouse says, that the fens, moorland and hills became systematically enclosed. \u00a0With the final repeal of the Corn laws in 1845, the pressure on agricultural land became less, and most of the enclosures took place around town and cities. Hobhouse\u00a0says that they came to an abrupt end in 1869 following attempts to enclose Wimbledon and Clapham Commons, and the Epsom Downs, but there do seem to have been acts of parliament after that time.<\/p>\n<p>NAEE also mentioned\u00a0<em>A Short History of Enclosure in Britain<\/em> recently. \u00a0This is by\u00a0Simon Fairlie, and is published in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thelandmagazine.org.uk\/articles\/short-history-enclosure-britain\">Land magazine<\/a>. \u00a0It describes in a lively fashion how enclosure of common land over the\u00a0centuries deprived most of the British people of access to agricultural land. \u00a0This added considerable richness to my knowledge, and I recommend all three readings about this complex and\u00a0compelling subject which remains alive today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The NAEE blog recently carried a guest posting from\u00a0Geoffrey Guy who lectures at Reaseheath College, and is the Director of Education for Bushcraft Education Ltd, and founder of the Bushcraft Education blog. \u00a0It was about the enclosure of land and...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-new-publications"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}