Monoscapes - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 29

they keep their place' . They are also obliged to feign a 'cheerfulness in adversity' .
Of course, there are clearly different interpretations. Some would say
people are depicted as one with nature, while others point out that the
people depicted do nothing but work, and would be disciplined if they
stopped to gaze upon the view. The problem is that the pastoral and
Romantic notions of landscape comprise a 'vision of rural life whereby the fruits
of nature are easily come by more or less without effort' , and this is clearly untrue.
According to Barrell, great artists such as Gainsborough, whether by
accident or design, 'naturalize the extreme poverty of the poor - he presents it as a
fixture in a changeless world which is the best of all worlds' . Nonetheless, there is
another important truth in these landscapes. Artists only worked with
diversity, such as the big house, ruined abbey, or church framed with trees;
the landowner and shadowed worker; the woodlands, meadows, cornfields
and ploughed lands, pastures and meadows. Landscape art is nothing
without diversity. It is the loss of natural diversity in the landscape that
is one of the tragedies of modern industrialized agriculture. 4
Exclusions from the English Commons
The landscape itself is a type of common property. It can be enjoyed and
appreciated if, of course, you are allowed to see it. The idea of commons
implies connection, something people can enjoy either collectively or
individually and from which they derive value. Over the centuries, two
types of common management emerged in Europe. These were the
common or open-field systems of cropland, which persisted for 1000
years, and the common management of wild resources, woodlands,
pastures, wastes, rivers and coasts. In these systems, local people held rights
for grazing, cutting peat for fuel (turbaries), cutting timber for housing
(estovers), grazing acorns and beech mast (pannage), and fishing (piscary).
Over the years, however, both types of common came to be steadily
enclosed and privatized, mostly as a result of the actions of landowners
and the state, who were feverishly driven by the prevailing view that the
commons were inefficient. The result was an extraordinary transformation
of the landscape, particularly during the 18th and early 19th centuries.
Local enclosure had occurred in the 17th century and earlier; but the process
accelerated with the introduction of the parliamentary enclosure
acts, dating from the early 18th century, which witnessed 2750 acts
until 1845 - the date of the last general enclosure act. At the same time,
'wastes', heaths, moors and commons were enclosed through 1800 acts
between 1760 and the 1840s. 5 Commissioners with extensive powers were
appointed to redesign the landscape in more than 3000 parishes. As a