“Where do we stand? We might usefully take this question not as a metaphor but as a direct plea to think about the story of the ground on which we stand (and live, and play, and work, and be). Cassidy’s wonderful book forces us to do just that: to think critically about how rural England came to be closed off from the vast majority of the population. This, then, is no ordinary, dry history of enclosure, lost in debates to which there is no answer, but a creative, often profoundly personal, yet also deeply read and archivally rich, telling of a set of ongoing stories about the making private of our land. At turns profoundly disturbing yet always attuned to how we might live better, The Ground Beneath Our Feet is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how our green(ish) and (often deeply un)pleasant land came to be—and how we challenge enclosures past and present.”

Carl Griffin, author of “Protest, Politics and Work in Rural England, 1700–1850”