Definition
A close or small enclosure of land. The term appears in early English and Anglo-Latin legal writing to describe a bounded or fenced parcel of ground — a physical enclosure distinguished from open or common land. The word is essentially a variant form of the concept underlying "close" (Latin: clausum), referring to land with defined boundaries, typically marked by a fence, hedge, wall, or ditch.
Why It Matters in Research
CLAWA is a rare, archaic Anglo-Latin term unlikely to appear in modern legal writing or statutes. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in early English land records, conveyancing instruments, or historical legal texts that employ Law Latin terminology. Its significance in a research context is primarily interpretive: when the term appears in a historical deed, plea roll, or conveyancing document, it signals a reference to an enclosed parcel of land — a legally distinct category in the older common law of real property, where the distinction between enclosed and open land carried consequences for trespass, common rights, and possession.
Researchers working with early real property materials should be alert to the relationship between CLAWA and the broader cluster of enclosure-related terminology. In historical pleadings, trespass to a "close" (clausum fregit — breaking a close) was a formal cause of action, and the identity and boundaries of the enclosed parcel could be a central contested fact. CLAWA as a synonym or variant deserves recognition when reading Latin-inflected pleading forms or conveyances from the medieval and early modern periods.
The term does not appear to have survived into the modern working vocabulary of property law. Do not expect to find it in post-eighteenth-century materials except in scholarly or antiquarian commentary.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's Law Dictionary, Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.), and Burrill's Law Dictionary — provide essentially identical, minimal definitions: a close or small enclosure. All three cite John Cowell's legal glossary (Cowell, The Interpreter, 1607) as the sole authority, indicating that the term had already passed into purely archaic reference status by the time these dictionaries were compiled. None of the sources elaborate on how the term was used in practice, what size or character of enclosure it denoted, or how it related to adjacent concepts in land law. The uniformity of the entries suggests the compilers were copying from a shared source rather than synthesizing independent usage.
Notably, Burrill's Law Dictionary identifies the term as "L. Lat." (Law Latin), which is the more precise characterization. The second edition of Black's contains a minor typographical error ("A dose" for "A close"), a reminder that older printed dictionaries require careful reading in transcription.
The historical record through these dictionaries is thin. Researchers needing deeper treatment of early enclosure vocabulary should consult Cowell's original Interpreter directly, as well as Spelman's Glossarium Archaiologicum, which covers Anglo-Latin land terminology in greater depth than any of the three source dictionaries here.