In the early decades of the 20th century, the majority of rural areas were losing population. This pattern of change in some parts of Britain had been established much earlier on. In Highland Scotland, for example, many clan chiefs who had come to see themselves as landlords forcibly cleared their former clanspeople from their homes seeking general ‘improvement’ through commercial farming and forestry. Gaelic-speaking communities were particularly severely affected with those displaced either emigrating or being moved to townships in areas of poorer quality land. Clearance and enclosure also became a feature of feudal Lowland Scotland. Something similar had happened in Wales, beginning in the 17th century (as part of the broader drive towards enclosure in England and Wales) with areas of ‘Ffridd’ (between upland and lowland habitats, usually rough grazing land) being closed to upland communities, preventing them from grazing sheep on what had previously been common land (Thomas, 1967). In lowland England, the process of enclosure happened in several phases in the centuries leading up to the Industrial Revolution. It began in the late 15th century and was complete by the end of the 19th century, expedited by legislation in the late 18th century (culminating in the Inclosure Consolidation Act 1801). The objective of enclosure – in later periods – had been to increase the overall efficiency of agricultural activity, moving from a system of three-field crop rotation to one of ‘enclosed’ fields, necessary to increase food output and feed the growing population. The process removed traditional ‘common rights’ (restricting such rights to rough pasture) and extended private ownership, establishing exclusive rights to profit from land.

The impact of these processes on rural population levels had been dramatic: consolidation of land ownership in fewer hands together with the transition to more modern farming methods underpinned a fall in the number of people scraping a subsistence living from the land. Clearance and enclosure have been seen as part of the rise of modern capitalism, associated with the loss of individual rights and freedoms. But, in England at least, they have also been viewed as part of the transition away from medieval ignorance towards scientific enlightenment, fundamental to Britain's Industrial Revolution.