306 VILLAGE GREENS. 
body ever interfered, and there is no pretence of anybody inter- 
fering with the right of recreation, if it may be called a right, 
or amusing themselves in any way they chose, by anybody 
who went on this piece of land, without the slightest regard to 
the fact whether he was or was not an inhabitant of the vill 
or hamlet of Stockwell. If that be so, the case is at an end.’’* 
The effect of these decisions seems to be that as a 
great town extends, and absorbs the smaller villages 
surrounding it, and the village greens become places of 
enjoyment for games and recreation to a wider class of 
persons than the inhabitants of the village, and, there- 
fore, are more valuable, the right to play games and to 
prevent inclosure is lost, because it can no longer be 
averred or proved that the custom of playing games 
thereon is confined to the inhabitants of the village. 
The same very technical distinction between the inhabi- 
tants of a village or parish, and those of a wider district 
or great town, or the public generally, has operated 
to prevent the judges drawing a legal analogy between 
the village and its green, and London and its much- 
frequented Commons, such as Hampstead, Hackney, 
Blackheath, and others, however close the analogy may 
be in fact. It has resulted that, no matter how much 
the people of London have in the past used and enjoyed 
any one of these Commons for games, the law does 
not recognise that any right has grown up. 
On the other hand, so long as those Commons 
remained open and uninclosed, there was no means 
known to the law, by which persons roaming over them 
* Hammerton v. Honey.—6, W.R., 603. 
