Appurtenant rights covered a wider range of produce than appendant rights and these will be discussed in later posts; our main concern in this post being common of pasture appurtenant. The right to graze animals on the waste and commonable grasslands of the manor. This was probably the oldest of […]
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 […]
“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 […]
A moment’s thought will reveal the importance of timber in the agrarian economy. Second only to the right to graze their oxen, the right of access to wood was the most important of all the common rights. Oxen were kept in pastures that were fenced with wood, they ploughed with […]
Common of piscary A common of piscary allowed its owner to fish in another man’s water. It may be appurtenant to the possession of an ancient house in the manor or a new house that had been built on the site of an old house. It could also have been […]
Many, many posts ago I defined a right of common as “a right which one or more persons may have to take or use some portion of that which another man’s soil naturally produces” and as we have also seen this usually involved commoners holding rights over the waste land owned by […]
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 […]
“In the open field village the entirely landless labourer was scarcely to be found. The division of holdings into numerous scattered pieces, many of which were of minute size, made it easy for a labourer to obtain what were in effect allotments in the common fields”. [1] So said Gilbert Slater […]
John Martin of Evershot 