June 30th, 1845: the Queen signed the Act to enclose Nottingham’s fields, and then… and then? It was another twenty years before everything was worked out. How much was herbage worth? What about encroachment? And toftsteads… what even is a toftstead? What about the existing estates such as the Bridge Estate?

June Perry is known from the group Friends of the Forest, and her annual Inclosure Walks. Now she has published over 600 pages of minutes and description taken from twenty years of debate and decision which affected the shape of the city.

If you are a local historian, find out why the Inclosures matter to you, and if you know nothing, what they are…

And if you walk on the Forest, go to the Arboretum, Queen’s Walk… or walk between these places, those 120 acres were created for you, by the inclosures, and serious attempts were made thourgh them to deal with the worst of slums in the city too.

This is an account taken from the extensive minutes, 24 big books remaining of the original 32, of Nottingham’s inclosure. Of the day-to-day work of the three commissioners dealing with the maps, the land sales to provide the money for the work, the current use of the land, burgess parts, tithes, claims, objections, roads, sewers, recreation grounds, the final allotments, with their work occasionally praised but more often tetchily criticised by the council who had laid down the parameters for the commissioners to work to in the act they had themselves made.