Commoners Rights (legal thing) - has anybody got a clue about this?

[bimble]

Geese are good guard-animals, i stayed at a friend of a friend's place once (north wales) where he had a resident goose so violent that you had to have a really big stick in your hand every time you wanted to go in or out of the front door. Could break your shins with one whack of a wing, the pathological bastard.

 

[andysays]

I will not be satisfied until i'm in a dusty corner of some council building somewhere with a giant old ledger that confirms it but i do reckon that its us, the three properties listed in 5t3IIa 's database as having "The right of estovers includes 'heybote, woodbote, furze, gorse, fern and underwood’."
(there's 3 houses here in a sort of clump, with no others around )

Just dug out my copy of Oliver Rackham's The History of the Countryside

Bote is an old English equivalent to the French-derived estover.

For example, firebote means a right to wood for fuel, and hedgebote a right to wood for fencing.

I would guess that the rights you mention in your post relate to hay (heybote), wood for fuel and possibly fencing (woodbote), and to cutting furze aka gorse, fern and underwood for various uses. Traditionally these would have been important, but possibly less so now.

Underwood is different to timber, BTW, so you can't cut down whole trees to use in building. Maybe this is what your neighbour has fallen foul of.

 

[bimble]

andysays Underwood means fallen wood or a specific kind of fallen wood do you know? Could this be one of those words whose original meaning is so lost that its impossible to google because its now so common but nobody can remember what it once meant ?

 

[andysays]

andysays Underwood means fallen wood or a specific kind of fallen wood do you know? Could this be one of those words whose original meaning is so lost that its impossible to google because its now so common but nobody can remember what it once meant ?

Underwood isn't fallen wood, it's wood obtained by cutting, either coppicing or pollarding.

Both of these are traditional ways of cutting part of a living tree to use as eg fuel and allowing it to grow back for a number of years before cutting it again.

There is, I think, a separate commoners' right to gather fallen wood, but I can't remember what that's called.

 

[bimble]

Quite interesting this, I didn’t know that everybody in this country does have the right to collect, for personal use, not wood but : fruit, fungi foliage & flowers, from anywhere that they can legally go.
Is there a legal right to collect firewood? | The Ventilator

 

[bimble]

Ooh! In the New Forest, people who have these commoners rights to collect firewood get logs delivered for free by the forestry, so that they leave the trees alone.

Rights of Common - New Forest National Park Authority

Common rights are attached to properties in and around the New Forest rather than to any individual. Someone who makes use of the common rights attached to their property is known as a practising commoner. Pasture The right to graze livestock, including ponies, cattle and donkeys and also some...

www.newforestnpa.gov.uk

 

[planetgeli]

Ooh! In the New Forest, people who have these commoners rights to collect firewood get logs delivered for free by the forestry, so that they leave the trees alone.

Rights of Common - New Forest National Park Authority

Common rights are attached to properties in and around the New Forest rather than to any individual. Someone who makes use of the common rights attached to their property is known as a practising commoner. Pasture The right to graze livestock, including ponies, cattle and donkeys and also some...

www.newforestnpa.gov.uk

I'd be interested if that works in practice. Brilliant if it does (for you). Free fuel for life? Let us know if you follow this up.

 

[bimble]

It would be completely amazing. I get through a lot of logs (bought not foraged, mostly).

 

[andysays]

Quite interesting this, I didn’t know that everybody in this country does have the right to collect, for personal use, not wood but : fruit, fungi foliage & flowers, from anywhere that they can legally go.
Is there a legal right to collect firewood? | The Ventilator

The Common Law rights mentioned there have been superseded by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.

You can't legally uproot native wild flowers, for example, especially those under threat.

 

[JuanTwoThree]

The ancient among us may remember an episode of Misleading Cases in which Albert Haddock is made a freeman of his borough and discovers that he can do all kinds of things like wear a sword and drive flocks of sheep over bridges. Roy Dotrice was Haddock and Alistair Sim was Justice Swallow.


Our house in Wales had rights to collect bracken and gorse from the mountain
but the grazing rights had been kept by the people who bought most of the fields.

 

[bimble]

What did people use gorse & bracken for?

 

[JuanTwoThree]

Gorse burns well but bracken is poisonous. Compost? I have no idea.

 

[Poot]

I think the New Forest has verderers, if that's where you are. I've got contact details that I can pass on if that's at all helpful.

Did you manage to get hold of the register? That will have a list of those with an interest in the common.

 

[Athos]

The Common Law rights mentioned there have been superseded by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.

You can't legally pick native wild flowers, for example, especially those under threat.

I don't think that's right. Whilst the act forbids the uprooting of any wild plant (without authority), it only forbids the picking of those plants listed in schedule 8 (which are largely rare plants). Subject to local byelaws, you can pick other wild plants if you're legally on the land (as long as its not CROW land, a Royal Park, an SSSI or NNR).

 

[bimble]

Nah, I’m not in the new forest Poot , i don’t think anyone will be delivering me free logs for life but will give it a try.

 

[andysays]

What did people use gorse & bracken for?

Bracken was used as bedding for livestock, similar to straw.

And various materials were used to make or repair roofs, possibly including gorse and even bracken.

 

[andysays]

I don't think that's right. Whilst the act forbids the uprooting of any wild plant (without authority), it only forbids the picking of those plants listed in schedule 8 (which are largely rare plants). Subject to local byelaws, you can pick other wild plants if you're legally on the land (as long as its not CROW land, a Royal Park, an SSSI or NNR).

Yeah, you're right. I should have said uproot rather than pick.

I'll go back and edit...

 

[farmerbarleymow]

farmerbarleymow don't be sad at my "Geese are noisy, vicious bastards". They undeniably are. But that's not to say there isn't a place for noisy, vicious bastards in the world. It's just not as pets. More like if your enemies are a vicious crime gang or some such.

They're not vicious - I've always liked geese, and their 'fuck you' attitude.

 

[Sue]

Bracken was used as bedding for livestock, similar to straw.

And various materials were used to make or repair roofs, possibly including gorse and even bracken.

The Famous Five were always picking bracken to sleep on when camping.

 

[planetgeli]

They're not vicious

A dent in my car door a few years ago from a goose beak suggests otherwise.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

A dent in my car door a few years ago from a goose beak suggests otherwise.

You probably ran the poor thing over so it's your fault.

 

[andysays]

The Famous Five were always picking bracken to sleep on when camping.

I hope they had the appropriate right of estover for that.

 

[Epona]

The Famous Five were always picking bracken to sleep on when camping.

That's probably why there are no books about their exploits as adults, bracken spores are some nasty shit apparently!

 

[JuanTwoThree]

I hope they had the appropriate right of estover for that.

The Famous Five do what they fucking like.

 

[JuanTwoThree]

 

[WouldBe]

View attachment 260389

Don't remember reading that one.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Here you go planetgeli - a nice friendly goose.

 

[bimble]

behold! My rights:

 

[two sheds]

so which are you buying: horse, cow, donkey, pig or sheep?

And gorse burns really well

 

[bimble]

donkey i think.