ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the context of parliamentary enclosure in Cumbria in order to establish how and by whom the process of enclosure was initiated, and its effects on different social groups. In particular, it examines how enclosure affected the political sites and spaces which people used and how these were transformed by the process and impact of enclosure. Parliamentary enclosure was one of the most important socio-economic changes to affect English communities in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The process of parliamentary enclosure has been widely viewed as a form of oppression of smaller landowners by larger ones, with small holders and owner-occupiers being forced to sell out due to its high costs. Parliamentary enclosure generated new types of cooperation and conflict: over claims to common rights and over allotment boundaries, roads, ring fencing and land improvement that greatly reduced access to land for formal and informal activities.
