A ROPLEY author has delved into the archives to highlight infamous land grabs that changed the face of the area.

Chris Heal has written a local history of the land enclosures in the area in the 18th and 19th centuries which saw thousands of acres of common land ‘enclosed’ by major landowners. That left hundreds of people, smallholders, unable to make a living and forced to become landless labourers.

Ropley’s Legacy focuses on the enclosures in Chawton, Farringdon, Medstead, Newton Valence and Ropley. It also highlights the birth of Four Marks in the late 19th century.

Published this month the book has been supported by Hampshire Archives Trust, the Ropley History Network and Archive and Hampshire Record Office.

The book is more than 450 pages and includes 25 appendices from the archives.

Mr Heal, who lives in Four Marks, is also overseeing the reprinting of The Four Marks Murders which has sold more than 1,000 local sales.

The very first private parliamentary enclosure in England was in 1709 in Ropley.

Mr Heal writes that it was driven by the Bishop of Winchester and was a highly contested land grab seeking to make money by taking control of the common fields.

Over 150 years, the government-sanctioned theft spread to all the neighbouring ridge villages along the Four Marks ridge (Soldridge, Medstead, Farringdon, Chawton, Newton Valence). Driven by greed and by debts from the ‘South Sea Bubble’, the county’s richest and most powerful men used wage and rent control, repressive game laws and rigged courts to get their way.

The response was unexpected and threatened the core of society: venison raids by armed, black faced men against Church, gentry and the Crown, Hampshire smugglers to the fore, food riots and local men paid to form regiments to back the invasion of the Stuart pretenders. The establishment responded with England’s most vicious piece of legislation, the Black Act, stationed troops in Farnham and used forced labour, evictions, transportation and hangings.

Mr Heal said: “Ropley’s Legacy is a history of small battles all won by unscrupulous and determined landowners and lost by voiceless labouring families.”

He said he was prompted to research and write the book because it was very good but mostly untold story. Most local people are unaware of how their villages had evolved and he hopes the appendices will spark others to take up the research baton.

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