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Lingfield:-Swing Riots
Wednesday 22 February 2023, 02:30pm
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Lingfield:-Swing Riots

Sue Quelch

JD

The Enclosures Acts of the late 1700s enabled large land owners to acquire common land. The agricultural workers lost this important source of income, forcing them to sell their labour to these very same landowners.

In 1830 the agricultural workers confronted land owners with demands, often signed by “Captain Swing”, and used arson and sabotage to reinforce their case. This invented character, regarded as the figurehead of the movement, may have been inspired by landowners’ threats that protestors would ‘swing’ (be hanged) for their actions.  The first destruction of a threshing machine by farm labourers began on 28 August 1830 at Lower Hardres, near Canterbury in Kent. In October of the same year, a hundred threshers had been vandalised and burnt in the eastern part of Kent County. The uprising quickly spread westward to Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Middlesex Counties.

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Location Lingfield & Dormansland Community Centre

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