OPEN SPACES AND FOOTPATHS. 
23 
both before and after application he must run the gauntlet of 
strenuous opposition both private and corporate. If he attempt 
to inclose without the consent of the Board, his only course 
is to prove that common rights no longer exist. By patient 
and careful investigation it is generally possible to prove that 
some right of common still remains, whether of a free-holder or 
a copy-holder. And it is important to note that disuse of a 
right does not necessarily prove that the right no longer exists, 
unless it can be shown that there was clear intention on the part 
of the commoner to abandon it. Undoubtedly the power that 
still remains to the lord of a manor of buying up the rights of all 
the commoners is for practical purposes a dangerous weapon in 
his hands, all the sharper when he possesses a register of the 
commoners. But this is fortunately now counterbalanced to a 
large extent by Corporations and Urban District Councils being 
permitted to acquire by gift the soil of a common, or purchase 
saleable rights attaching thereto, provided the waste be not more 
than six miles from the centre of the town. Inclosure by way 
of copyhold grant and by Act of Parliament are similarly now 
hedged round by difficulties which at one time did not exist. 
Recent legislation has also limited the once unhindered and 
wanton disfigurement of commons by the lord of the manor, 
highway boards and even by the commoners themselves ; but 
full of interest and importance as this question is, affecting as it 
does the wild beauty of our English heath-clad wastes, we must 
pass on to the consideration of those ancient survivals of primi- 
tive husbandry — about which too little is known — common fields, 
meadows and pastures. These in no case bear comparison with 
an open waste so far as the public are concerned. The latter 
have no absolute right of access thereto, though in some instances 
at the present time the meadows and pastures do provide open 
spaces. During part of the year the common fields and 
meadows are owned in severalty, while the crops are on the 
land, but afterwards they are thrown open for promiscuous use 
by the o^vners, irrespective of boundaries. Common pastures, 
however, are rarely parcelled out. 
“ There is no doubt,” says the author, “ that a large part of England lay in 
common fields. In each vill or township there were usually three large fields 
(or perhaps two or more sets of such fields), in which the three-course system of 
husbandry was followed, one field in each year being under wheat, one field 
under barley, and the third lying fallow. These fields formed the bulk or the 
whole of the arable land of the township. Each field was divided into smalt 
strips, originally apparently an acre or half an acre in extent, separated one from 
another by strips of turf known as balks, linches, laiichards or lanchets. The 
arable strips were owned and tilled in severalty by the owners, but as soon as the 
corn was carried the whole was thrown open to indiscriminate pasturage by all 
the householders of the village.” 
The remnants of this extensive system are meagre indeed. 
Inclosures were first made after the dissolution of monasteries, 
but on a far more extensive scale during the last and present 
centuries down to 1869. Some important examples of common 
