Commonlands, mineral rights and industry: changing evaluations in an industrializing society

Abstract

This paper is concerned with a society experiencing significant change, an industrializing society. Throughout the South Wales coalfield in the second half of the eighteenth century, rural structures were being supplanted by urban-industrial structures, traditional modes of landuse were being dislocated by new enterprises and the former pastoral landscape was being invaded by the paraphernalia of mining and manufacturing. The old cultural region, “Blaenau Morgannwg” was being transmuted into the new cultural region, “The Valleys”. More particularly, this industrializing society experienced a significant change in the attitudes of landowners to their estates and also a change in both the mechanisms and intensity of control. With the recognition of the opportunities for industrial development, many lords evinced an increased concern for the integrity of their manorial perquisites, particularly those related to minerals and their access to them. The assertion of neglected rights, the institution of rigorous estate management and the prosecution of previously neglected abuses constituted a dislocation of local landuse practices and traditional ways of life. To some extent, the experience was similar to that of other areas experiencing increased industrial activities at this time, although the effect of certain local cultural influences may be recognized in the particulars of the response. The specific focus of this study is on the important roles which manorial wastes were to play in these new industrial enterprises. Whereas in the past the wastes had been but peripheral elements of the total estate economy, the industrial demand for minerals, fuel and land occasioned a radical reappraisal of their contribution. Many studies have considered encroachments and enclosure in the context of agricultural systems but it is argued here that in certain parts of Britain, industrial considerations were of paramount importance. The primary challenge to the very existence of manorial wastes and commons, the Enclosure Movement, was contemporaneous with the initial stages of the industrialization of this region. But rather than expediting the elimination of these lands, several factors caused manorial wastelands and commons to bulk large in the early industrialization of the South Wales coalfield. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to attempt a better understanding of the impact of industrialization upon the wastelands of the South Wales coalfield and of the society formerly dependent upon them. Particular attention will be focused upon the way in which this process affected the attitudes of the various interested parties towards mineral rights, encroachments and parliamentary enclosure, and which in turn required reappraisals of a way of life by an old social order.