For over a thousand years a particular way of living prevailed in many areas of the country. It was introduced to this country, it is believed, by the Anglo-Saxon’s and it appears to have been a revolutionary way of living. The system they introduced must have been small in scope […]
A history of the commons: the courts. Debates over the historical origins of rights of common were one thing but the legal system had to take a pragmatic view of their legal status and that view had to confirm to their wider understanding of the law. Thus it came to […]
A gentleman of my acquaintance remembers, as a child, being sent by his mother to collect firewood from the ‘common’. At the beginning of the second world war, with coal in short supply, firewood was still needed to cook the family’s food and heat the family home. Of course by […]
With all this academic talk of common rights it is worth remembering that on an every day basis they went by and large unremarked. This was a world where everyone knew everyone else and where minor infringements of rights were either tolerated or the cause of lifelong enmity. Officially the […]
Common of Pasture in Gross was unlike virtually any other right of common. It allowed almost anyone to use the waste. It could be claimed by producing evidence of an original grant or by long continued use of the waste[known as prescription see later post]. It differed from a simple […]
COPPCDV – well its the longest abbreviation yet as early as the 15th century it was questioned whether it was in fact a right of common. Sir Thomas Littleton had then dismissed it not as a right “but only an excuse for trespass”. A problem arose frequently when the waste […]
Towards the end of the 19th century there was a resurgence of interest in the loss of the common fields. Books appeared on English Field Systems, The English Peasantry, The Commons, Common Land and Inclosure and so on, but almost all were concerned with the history and organisation of the […]
John Martin of Evershot 