‘They turned me inside out / for sand and stones and grit’: Representations of Quarries and Gravel Pits in the Age of Enclosure by Alan Tate

The acceleration of the enclosure movement in England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century marked the final transformation from feudalism to capitalism in the English countryside. This article compares two early nineteenth-century artistic representations of quarries and gravel pits following enclosure: Kensington Gravel Pits, a painting by landscape and portrait artist John Linnell, and The Lament of Swordy Well, a poem by the labouring-class poet John Clare. The Lament of Swordy Well is one of the most powerful anti-enclosure poems ever written, and while the intended meaning of Linnell’s Kensington Gravel Pits is less clear, I will argue that the painting illustrates ecological despoliation and the proletarianization of rural labourers in a way that is remarkably similar to Clare’s poem.