ENCLOSURES : ESSEX AGRICULTURE, 1500-1900, 11
habited south-east to the more recently settled, fertile north-
west.
By 1340 further evidence is available in a subsidy of that
date. The south-east—the London Clay district—was then
definitely the area wherein the holdings were largest, whilst the
north-west contained the smallest. An intermediate zone may
also be discerned. Furthermore, the average size of the holdings
in certain parts of the north-west was small enough to rule
out the possibility of profitable pastoral farming being carried
on, and we must not forget the high value of this area which
is a persistent feature of all the subsidy assessments.
It therefore seems that, with certain exceptions, large
holdings and fewer people were found throughout the London
Clay area, whilst smaller, more heavily peopled farmsteads 
were situated on the more valuable Boulder Clay and loam 
soil areas. Bearing these facts in mind, it seems highly probable 
that the former area was one of pastoral farming; the latter 
districts being mainly devoted to arable farming. Further-
more, it seems probable that large parts of the latter district'
were early enclosed for arable farming, whilst the London Clay 
region in the east had begun, in spite of the attendant difficulties, 
to enclose large areas suitable for pastoral farming. Grassland
husbandry was undoubtedly more profitable in the London Clay
area than poor arable farming. With these possibilities in mind,
we are in a position to consider the sixteenth century, when 
definite material relating to enclosures and their use is available.
In the Domesday of Enclosures (1517-18), Essex is poorly
represented, since the returns for the preceding dozen or so
years are made for only two of the twenty hundreds. The
Editor of the printed work13 considers that other returns
existed, but have been lost. While not in agreement with this
conclusion, we may consider first the available returns. Men-
tion is made of nine parishes in the Winstree Hundred where
enclosures had recently been made, in all cases with the dere-
liction of a farmstead—"the pulling down of towns"—and the
conversion of arable land to pasture. Where the acreage is
given it is of the order of 150 acres or so. We may regard these
several enclosures occurring within a dozen years, or so, as
symptomatic of the tendency, already deduced, to convert
13 Leadham, I. S. The Domesday of Enclosures,