The Pocklington Enclosure Act was enacted in 1756 and an indexed copy of the 1757 Award was made by James Powell (a Pocklington solicitor who died in 1848), the copy being held by the firm of Powell & Young (now Harrowells Solicitors). 1757 was some years before enclosure awards were generally accompanied by maps and there was no map with the Pocklington award. Nevertheless, Roger Bellingham has had access to the copy of the award and, from first principles and much diligence, has been able to deduce where most of the 'closes' (fields) in the enclosure award were physically located within the Pocklington parish. John Nottingham has taken Roger's findings and transposed them onto contemporary satellite imagery. Most pages in the copy award describe 2 or more enclosure closes, so the identifying captions on the map - e.g. '66/3 (17.1)' - cross-refer (in this example) to page 66 in the copy award, the 3rd close detailed on that page, and that the close was 17.1 acres in size. 'OE' refers to Old Enclosure lands, pre-dating 1757.
To view the full-scale map, please click on the 'View fullscreen' link. The large size of the Pocklington parish will most likely require zooming into the map and scrolling as required to read the data.
The 4 panels suprimposed on the map list the identifying close numbers, the landowners allotted each close and its size in acres, roods and perches (40 perches per rood; 4 roods per acre). The solid yellow line denotes the Pocklington parish boundary post-1901 (see the note on the map); the white, dashed lines show the boundaries of each close in the enclosure award; the yellow dashed lined show where an enclosure close was later sub-divided. It is interesting to note that, although many of the 1757 enclosure close boundary hedges have since been grubbed out and fences removed - e.g. within close '20/2 (82.4)' alongside The Mile - in many places crop rotation still follows the late-1700s sub-field layout, even today. A map of the Pocklington Parish Open Fields has also been produced.
Grateful thanks to John Nottingham for creating this detailed map helped by Roger Bellingham, who has studied the Enclosure Award for many years and to East Riding of Yorkshire Council Archives.
|