George Sanderson's Map of Laxton, 1835

George Sanderson's 1835 map of Twenty Miles Round Mansfield provides a fantastic introduction to historic mapping.  Published by subscription just before the first Ordnance Survey map of Nottinghamshire, but at a larger scale of about two and a quarter inches to the mile, Sanderson, who worked variously as a surveyor and Enclosure commissioner, based his map on his own surveys of the countryside.  Beautifully drawn, the map captures an early 19th century landscape in transition.  The open fields are largely gone, but Nottingham still sits among fields, the Park is still a deer park, and the railways just a threatened line across the landscape (often wrongly placed as the routes were changed after Sanderson published his map).

The whole map has been republished several times, most recently in 2001 as a two book reprint by Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Library Services, which is sometimes to be found in bookshops and is well worth having if spotted.  Below is a zoomable extract for the parish of Laxton, compare with the modern Ordnance Survey mapping to try and discern just what has changed in Laxton over the past 180 years.

Class 8: An Unexpected Corner

The slides for Class 8: An Unexpected Corner, Hoskins on Towns are now available from here.

Laxton Manuscripts at the University of Nottingham

The Manuscripts and Special Collections section of the University of Nottingham Library hosts a dedicated website presenting part of their extensive collection of documents relating to Laxton. The website explores aspects of life in Laxton between 1635 and 1908. Despite the fact that Laxton was never fully enclosed, it was a typical example of a Midlands open field village and its history can therefore shed light on life in hundreds of similar places.

• Theme 1: Landholding and enclosure
• Theme 2: The open field system and the manorial court
• Theme 3: The Village Population

The resources include images and transcripts of original archive materials including maps, surveys, manorial and ecclesiastical court records, correspondence and reports. 

Class 7: A Desirable Spot to Build

The slides for Class 7: A Desirable Spot to Build, are available for download from here.

A Short History of Enclosure in Britain

In an excellent article in The Land Simon Fairlie describes how the progressive enclosure of commons over several centuries has deprived most of the British people of access to agricultural land. The historical process bears little relationship to the “Tragedy of the Commons”, the theory which ideologues in the neoliberal era adopted as part of a smear campaign against common property institutions.

Over the course of a few hundred years, much of Britain's land has been privatized — that is to say taken out of some form of collective ownership and management and handed over to individuals. Currently, in our "property-owning democracy", nearly half the country is owned by 40,000 land millionaires, or 0.06 per cent of the population,1 while most of the rest of us spend half our working lives paying off the debt on a patch of land barely large enough to accommodate a dwelling and a washing line. Read More.