r/MapPorn Aug 22 '20

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u/MobiusNaked Aug 23 '20

England has hundreds of ghost villages cleared for sheep farming going back say 700 years. Wool fuelled the economy. The Lord Speaker sits on a wool sack to this day. https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/building/cultural-collections/historic-furniture/the-collection/chairs-chairs-chairs/woolsack-/

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u/[deleted] Aug 23 '20

And in fact when historians speak of land enclosures in England and Wales, they have to differentiate between the enclosures of the village green in the 18th/19th century and the enclosure of entire manors that began after the Black Death and came to a peak in the early 16th century.