Definition
An enclosure is a tract of land surrounded by a visible, physical barrier — such as a fence, hedge, ditch, or equivalent obstruction — that demarcates it from surrounding land and signals the owner's intent to exclude others. The term appears primarily in property law and agricultural statutes, where it distinguishes land with actual physical boundaries from land bounded only by imaginary or legal lines.
In statutory contexts, enclosure often carries a narrower meaning than the related term "close." A close may be any legally defined parcel, bounded by survey or deed description alone. An enclosure requires something tangible — a fence, hedge, or equivalent structure that a person or animal must pass through or over to enter. Courts have drawn this line when interpreting trespass and livestock damage statutes, where rights and remedies may depend on whether land was actually enclosed in the physical sense.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Something inserted into a letter or package; the act of inserting or including such an item; an area partially or entirely surrounded by barriers; the act of surrounding an area with a barrier.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Refers to INCLOSURE — the act of enclosing land; land surrounded by a fence or boundary; in English history, the conversion of common or open-field land into privately held, fenced parcels.
The legal meaning overlaps with the ordinary sense of a physically bounded space but diverges sharply from the modern colloquial use of "enclosure" to mean an item inserted in an envelope. Researchers should note that in legal sources — especially older English and American property materials — "enclosure" always refers to land, never correspondence.
Common Confusion
ENCLOSURE vs. CLOSE: These terms are frequently used interchangeably in older sources, but they are not synonymous in statutory interpretation. A close is any legally bounded parcel, even one with no physical fence. An enclosure requires an actual physical barrier. The distinction becomes operative in livestock trespass statutes and in cases where a right to distrain damage-feasant animals depends on whether the land was genuinely enclosed. Rapalje & Lawrence flags this distinction explicitly, noting that "enclosure" is not as broad as "close."
ENCLOSURE vs. INCLOSURE: Purely a spelling variant. Both forms appear in legal dictionaries and case law. Black's (1st and 2nd ed.) treats ENCLOSURE as a cross-reference to INCLOSURE. Researchers should search both spellings in historical databases, as usage was inconsistent across jurisdictions and eras.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research trap here is spelling. Historical American and English legal sources use both "enclosure" and "inclosure" without consistency. Full-text corpus searches should run both variants; indexing in older reporters and digests may file cases under either form.
The second trap is statutory context. When "enclosure" appears in a 19th-century American statute — particularly those governing livestock, trespass, or distress damage-feasant — courts often had to decide whether the word required a physical barrier or merely a legally defined boundary. The answer controlled whether a landowner could distrain a neighbor's straying cattle or maintain a trespass action. The Vermont and Wisconsin cases cited in Bouvier and Rapalje were decided on exactly this question. Researchers working on livestock, open-range, or fencing law should locate the specific statutory definition operative in the jurisdiction and period, rather than relying on a general common-law meaning.
The English enclosure movement — the large-scale fencing of common lands beginning in the Tudor period and accelerating through the 18th and 19th centuries — generates its own body of legal material (enclosure acts, enclosure awards, commissioners' records) that is distinct from ordinary property law uses of the term. American corpus researchers will encounter this material primarily in treatises and historical commentary rather than in case law, but it is important context for understanding why the term carried weight in early Anglo-American property discourse.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are thin on this term precisely because they treat it as derivative. Black's (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence simply redirect to INCLOSURE. Bouvier provides the most compact operational definition — "an artificial fence around one's estate" — and points to CLOSE for the broader conceptual framework. Anderson's is the most substantive, specifying that enclosure imports something more than an imaginary boundary line and must be a visible or tangible obstruction sufficient to protect against encroachment by cattle. Anderson's also captures the practical dimension: the fence or barrier and the land it surrounds together constitute the enclosure as a unit.
The historical sources do not address the English enclosure movement in any depth, which is a notable gap given the term's historical legal significance in English land law. Researchers needing that context should look to Blackstone's Commentaries and secondary historical literature rather than to these dictionary entries.
Jurisdictional Note
American open-range and fencing law varied significantly by state, and the legal significance of "enclosure" in livestock trespass contexts depended heavily on whether a jurisdiction followed a "fence-in" or "fence-out" rule. In open-range states, the burden historically fell on farmers to fence livestock out; in others, owners were responsible for fencing animals in. The operative meaning of enclosure in local statutes followed this division.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See INCLOSURE for the primary entry. See also CLOSE (property law) and DISTRESS DAMAGE-FEASANT.