The Offords
Community Website
Feb 2009 Edition
Enclosure Acts 1
I made these notes as a result of reading various documents at Huntingdon Library and the County Record Office, Huntingdon, while researching local history for the village millennium book “The Offords Revisited”
Many of the roads and paths we now have in the village are the result of the Inclosure Acts of 1800 (Offord Cluny) and 1806 (Offord Darcy). In return for the large landowners taking into ownership most of the common land previously shared by the smaller farmers and the community at large, the same landowners had to construct and maintain a number of roads, bridleways, footpaths etc.
In the case of our village, these new routes served two purposes: to improve public access across the enclosed land, in particular leading to adjoining villages, and to provide private access through the newly enclosed land to land previously enclosed.
Previous to the Acts, the only maintained road would have been the Town Street along the line from Great Paxton to Godmanchester, with arms out towards Graveley and Buckden. Branches out to Littleworth End and what is now Asplins Lane had their own streets. Once outside the built up area, the roads would have petered out into tracks across open fields.
The new roads had to be a minimum width, and have ditches and hedges each side. Generally they were directed to follow the edges of the newly allocated fields which in most cases were large and with straight edges. Typical are Graveley Road and the major part of New Road.
In Offord Darcy, the Act directed that the following be constructed:
• A 40 feet wide public carriageway to Great Paxton, starting at a point on Paxton Road close to where the built up area on the left still ends. A nasty couple of bends were included to follow old field patterns and a brook and well, and the bends were only straightened out in the 1970’s.
• Another 40 feet wide public carriageway to Graveley, starting at a point on the existing Graveley Road close to where the built up area on the left still ends. After the bend it followed a straight line to the Parish boundary, as it does today.
• A 20 feet wide public Bridleway from the Graveley Road towards Godmanchester – this remains as a route to Godmanchester along the Roman Way.
• A 4 feet wide public footway leading to Great Paxton not far from the existing railway line – this is still a Public Footpath although little used because it starts and ends at inaccessible points.
• In addition, several 20 feet wide private carriageways were to be built, mainly off the Graveley Road, but also one from the end of Littleworth End.
