Abstract

The plan ofWhatborough: a study of the sixteenth-century n1ap of enclosure Naomi Hutchings In 1495 the arable fields of Whatborough in manor with three ploughlands, and half a Leicestershire were enclosed for sheep farming and ploughland in the hands of the Crown. The the village allowed to fall into n::n. In 1586, the population is recorded as fifteen households: rhree Warden of All Souls College, Oxford, commissioned villagers, one freeman and eleven smallholders who a map to be drawn, illustrating the history of the between them had four ploughs (Smith 1955). A enclosure of the parish as evidence in a dispute plough consisted of a team of usually eight oxen, between the College, as owners of the land, and the contributed by the smallholders who were then owner of neighbouring lands. This map shows both allocated furlongs accordingly. The meadowland the enclosed pasture-land and the earlier furlongs of was one furlong long and one wide; the woodland arable farming, and is therefore particularly was five furlongs long and three furlongs wide. The important as a historical document in that it is the manor was valued at forty shillings. Land belonging earliest known map record of enclosure and the to