“The word “pannage” bears a double meaning, namely, the produce of the trees which is taken or the money paid for that produce” [Halsbury].
Acorns and Beech nuts are produced sporadically with some years producing bumper crops. Nobody knows why this is but those years are referred to as ‘mast’ years and the crop known simply as mast. Pannage or pawnage was the “right of taking acorns and mast of beech trees by the mouths of swine turned out into the woods to feed there”.
As large numbers of trees were needed to provide the mast, pannage was most frequently found in the Royal Forests where the activities of the pigs were regulated by Agistors. For those that lived in the forest the right was deemed to be a species of common of pasture but one which was confined to woodland areas. At one time the density of the forests and the profligacy of nature meant that in mast years there was a sufficient crop to allow the agistors to sell additional rights to non-commoners and the fee charged for this was also known as pannage.
In theory COPR allowed animals other than cattle, horses and sheep to be grazed on the common but in practice pigs and goats were not generally allowed and especially not in the forests “because they were considered unpleasant to the wild animals within the forest, and, as it was said, they caused their exile from the forest”.
Pannage was always subject to there being mast in the first place the rule being no mast no pigs. Williams [1], who did not like pigs, noted that “although no man might put these disagreeable animals into the waste lands of the forest to feed there, there was no objection to his doing so when the mast and acorns were ripe in the woods, provided he paid to the Crown the necessary pawnage”.
As a result the animals were only admitted during the autumn, typically from Holyrood Day on the 14th September until about the 11th November when they had to be taken off.
Williams suggested that at one time pannage was ‘a very usual right’ , but by the early 20th century it was, according to Halsbury almost extinct, the majority of Royal Forests by then being in private hands, the right having been extinguished and the pig farmers having found alternative food for their pigs.
[1] WILLIAMS: Rights of Common and other prescriptive rights. Joshua Williams 1880
Categories: In Depth
John Martin of Evershot 