Problems of the Past in Marston – Changes in Land Use

 

 

The Marston countryside between the River Cherwell and Headington has changed much over the last three hundred years. But some fields remain with their hedge boundaries, still marking the change in farming methods brought about by enclosures since the post-war Agreement made in 1655 during Cromwell’s Commonwealth, and ratified in 1661 by the Court of Chancery after the Restoration.

 

Here is an extract from the Agreement which describes the sorry conditions the farming community of Marston were suffering. (The English has been slightly modernized):

 

“(And the Complaynants shewed that) the Town of Marston lay low, in a very dirty and waterish heavy soil, upon the River of Charwell very near to the walls of the City of Oxon. and were far more fit and convenient for pasture than tillage; and that in the time of the late wars and by reason of the Garrison of Oxford the said fields and lands did for the most part lie fresh and fallow and could not be manured and husbanded to any profit of the Complainants; and their houses were much ruined, decayed and wasted and their trees cut down and employed for the use of the said Garrison and great part of their meadows were spoiled by digging of turfs for making the bulwarks in and about the said Garrison; and the Complaynants cattle plundered and taken away by the Parliamentary soldiers and forces, so that when the wars ended in 1646 … land could not be reduced to the former condition and goodness without a present greater charge than they were able to bear… .”

 

And so, the enclosure was agreed and done, with surveying and hedging and ditching, and the preservation of “all Public ways and passages which were and had been used and enjoyed through the same for all the king’s people”.

 

Written by Alun Jones.