Before the enclosures in England, a portion of the land was categorized as "common" or "waste". "Common" land was under the control of the lord of the manor, but certain rights on the land such as
pasture,
pannage, or
estovers were held variously by certain nearby properties, or (occasionally)
in gross by all manorial tenants. "Waste" was land without value as a farm strip – often very narrow areas (typically less than a yard wide) in awkward locations (such as cliff edges, or inconveniently shaped manorial borders), but also bare rock, and similar. "Waste" was not officially used by anyone, and so was often farmed by landless peasants. The remaining land was organised into a large number of narrow strips, each tenant possessing a number of disparate strips throughout the manor, as would the
manorial lord. Called the
open-field system, it was administered by
manorial courts, which exercised some collective control. The system facilitated common grazing and
crop rotation. The tenants displaced by the process often left the countryside to work in the towns. This contributed to the
Industrial Revolution – at the very moment new technological advances required large numbers of workers, a concentration of large numbers of people in need of work had emerged; the former country tenants and their descendants became workers in industrial factories within cities. The
Inclosure (Consolidation) Act 1801 (
41 Geo. 3. (U.K.) c. 109) was passed to tidy up previous acts. The
Inclosure Act 1845 (
8 & 9 Vict. c. 118) instituted the appointment of Inclosure Commissioners, who could enclose land without submitting a request to Parliament. ==List of acts==