Commotion Time
“These enclosures, make us pay dearer for our land that we occupy…
where forty persons had their livings, now one man and his shepherd hath all”
‘Discourse on the Commonwealth of this Realm Of England’, Sir Thomas Smith, 1549
‘The Common Land’
Around 500 years ago, communal lands known as ‘the commons’ were a shared resource. Any commoner had the right to graze their sheep there (pasture), to fish (piscary), take sods of turf or firewood for fuel (turbary and estovers), like a medieval version of winter fuel allowance. Many people relied on that access in order to survive their own Tudor cost of living crisis. With vagrancy recently criminalised (Vagabonds Act 1547) these resources were the thin line between survival and the enforced slavery of a vagrant. When wool became the hot new commodity, many landowners wanting more land to expand their flocks and increase profit began to steal common land by fencing it off, this was known as enclosure.
‘Kett’s Oak’
In 1549, Robert Kett, a Yeoman Tanner of Wymondham, Norfolk, enclosed some common land to graze his sheep. When the locals objected and tore down his fences, he relented and took up their cause, eventually leading them in what became one of the great peasant revolts of British history, known as the ‘Commotion Time’.
Marching ten miles from what is now known as Kett’s Oak to Norwich and establishing a camp on Mousehold Heath just outside the city walls, the movement inspired those who were losing access to common lands and their livelihoods to join and the band grew to number some 20,000 men and women. They set out their 29 demands for fair treatment and honest leadership, many of which we are still fighting for today.
‘Mousehold Heath (After John Crome)’
Mousehold Heath, a vast common just outside the city walls of Norwich, inspired the painting of the same name by John Crome of the Norwich School who, along with any local viewer, would have been aware of the importance of this piece of common land that was the site of not only Kett’s Rebellion in 1549 but also the Peasants Revolt of 1381 many years before.
‘Kett’s Demand #1, #14 & #16’
2024. A4 print-Chlorophyll leaf prints, cyanotype paper print toned with oak gall and oak leaves from Kett’s Oak, Wymondham, Norfolk.
Fast forward 500 years and the same struggles are still playing out, although now corporate neoliberalism is the new big player in the current power structures, mass buying land (including our former public spaces and playing fields) for land banking to artificially keep supply low and prices high for both land and housing. It is no longer only the king and governments we have to appeal to to protect our basic rights, but now also to global corporate forces bigger than individual countries. Unfortunately, as ever, profit rules.
In today’s Britain, with a cost of living crisis, corporate greedflation, stagnation wages and an assault on the rights to peaceful protest and threats to remove all our other fundamental human rights, what can we learn from the past? Could we be tipped over into a “Commotion Time”? Where are our common lands and spaces that we share together? What access do we have left? Who decides where the enclosure fences go? Should anyone really own the land that we all live on?
(Below) Film Stills from Commotion Time
2024. Short film
