Clifton Inclosure

 

[Ref.MA59]

Most Bedfordshire parishes were inclosed in the late 18th or early 19th century. Until then parishes had a few large fields and people owned strips of land in one or more of these fields. Inclosure was a rationalisation of these landholdings. The large fields were subdivided into smaller fields and anyone owning strips became entitled to a proportional allotment of land in the new field layout - usually between one and five of these smaller fields. This, of course, gave us our modern rural landscape of small fields divided by hedges, fences or walls. This map shows the same part of the village as the Ordnance Survey Map of 1883| and described the ownership of the new fields as inclosed in 1834, note the buildings also shown.