Enclosure of Open Fields

1700s

During the eighteenth century, the remaining open fields in the Hedge End area were enclosed, consolidating the land into the hedged fields that would define the landscape for the next two centuries. Enclosure was part of a national process that transformed English agriculture, replacing the medieval open-field system with individually owned and managed plots bounded by hedges, fences and ditches. The hedgerow landscape that resulted was the one the Victorians found when the railway arrived, and remnants of it survived into the twentieth century before being replaced by housing estates.