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The plan shows a village in the south east of
Somerset, an area of open field agriculture, at an intermediate stage before
enclosure. There is no Enclosure Act for this village, nor is it included in
any of the Acts relating to villages in that area. It is clear, therefore,
that enclosure must have taken place by agreement among the freeholders. Signs
of this are apparent in the division of the great fields, probably three in
number originally, into smaller and more compact units. Within the furlongs,
some strips have already been grouped into 'closes' and eventually by
exchanges will become farms. The complicated arrangement of strips, furlongs
and fields emphasises the difficulties which faced those who had to cultivate
and crop these areas. The enclosure seems also to have included all the former
waste or common pasture for none is shown on the map. Enclosure like this
could bring considerable advantages, and in 1791 Collinson described the
parish as 'lying in a rich, flat and inclosed country'. He gives the
number of houses there as 85, and the first census in 1801 records a
population of 439. The area of the parish was 836 acres.
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Plan of Shepton Beauchamp in 1755