ABSTRACT
In the central Lindsey clays, the story was much the samean absence of planning, and fruitless expense. Both the western clay vales of the two divisions shared in the benefits resulting from operations on the river Trent and its tributaries, and by the widening and cleaning of the Fossdyke, the artificial cut joining the Witham to the Trent. Enclosure by Parliamentary act was virtually completed in the claylands in the period 1780-1815. The general remarks concerning development in the clays apply most fittingly to the true clay soils. Much more enclosure by Parliamentary act took place in the western than in the central clay vales of Lincolnshire. Documents of the sixteenth and seventeenth century disclosed a sharp contrast between the large farms of the wolds and the small freeholds of the fens and marshes, and suggested that the claylands occupied a position somewhere in between the two extremes.
