village in 1912. However, one of the most lasting improvements to the village from the legacy of the brewery was the instalment of mains water during the 1930s and then sewage and waste water disposal systems in the mid 1950s. Prior to this the village was supplied by a series of shallow wells (many of which still remain, although bricked up under the village's more modern housing estates), although there were three springs which fed public ponds at the Queen's Head, on Lexden Road, and near the White Hart, and there was a deep well at the brewery. An additional public well at the top of Newbridge Hill was closed in 1896 because its water was unfit for drinking. The brewery suffered losses in 1958 and was forced to sell to Truman, Hanbury, Buxton and Co Ltd, who took over the brewery and its 150 tied houses, including the Treble Tile and Queen's Head in West Bergholt. Trumans used the Brewery as a bottling plant and later as transport depot until it was converted into flats in 1989. Enclosure and fire raising Moving back to the 1840s, the village was being dramatically changed by the agricultural revolution. The two largest impacts on the village were enclosure and the introduction of machines into the farming process. In the early 16th century overgrazing affected areas of both Bergholt and Cooks Hall Common, upon which the tenants of both manors shared. In 1575-6 neither unmarried tenants nor under-tenants of Cooks Hall manor were allowed to feed more than four sheep or any cattle on that manor's common. In 1587 and 1619 Bergholt Hall manor court forbade any tenant without a house and family to graze cattle on that manor's common. Overseers, rangers or drivers, of that common, first recorded in 1632, were in 1651 instructed to drive the heath at least three times a year and to impound illegally grazed cattle. Encroachment on the heath apparently began in the earlier 17th century when cottages began to be illegally erected on both the Bergholt Hall manor and Cooks Hall manor wastes. By the mid 18th century many encroachments were sanctioned as long as they were registered in the manor courts. Although a few 18th-century intakes were large additions to existing freeholds or copyholds, many were occupied by small cottages or shops; other encroachments included one for a barn, another for a brick kiln, and