How Did Enclosure Awards Change The Ancient Tax System Of Tithes?

In some places, the process of enclosure was used to commute all tithes in kind into monetary payments. Before enclosure payment was usually made in crops or livestock. This ancient practice continued in some places but most chose to convert the payments to money.

Paying tithes was never popular but after the food shortages that followed the Napoleonic Wars and the poor harvests in the late 1820s, those who worked the land became increasingly resentful of the tithe owners taking their annual increase, even though they themselves had to make do with less. People rioted in 1830/31 in many places in the country and vicars were attacked in their own parishes. The clergy realised that reform had to be made and they dropped their long-standing opposition to all tithes being commuted to monetary payments.

The Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 was one of the most successful pieces of legislation in the 19th century and perhaps beyond. It had two methods of commutation ~ voluntary and imposed. The former was preferred; parishes were encouraged to draw together all the landowners to produce a mutually acceptable agreement. Only when none could be reached did the local tithe commissioner step in and even then he often acted as a facilitator, rather than decision maker unless absolutely necessary. The commutation process produced several types of document; tithe maps, tithe awards and tithe files, all of which are very useful for family and local history.

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