#common land

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

Picnicking on Dartmoor is trespassing, landowner’s lawyers tell court | Access to green space | The Guardian

Picnicking on Dartmoor is trespassing, landowner’s lawyers tell court

Alexander Darwall, owner of Blachford estate in national park, is challenging the right to wild camping

Buys common land and then gets annoyed that people can access it.

Sorry us proles go and picnic in a national park.

Fuck off Darwall.

[sxyx]

[kvetch19]

[knightofleo]

James Holden | Common Land

[thisisengland]

Brickett Wood Common, Hertfordshire.

[strawberryjayne]

Clapham Common, Yorkshire Dales

[londiniumlundene]

Lost London: St George’s Fields

Once upon a time, the south side of the Thames was mostly marshland, and as such, it took longer to become as built-up as the city north of the river. For centuries, a great expanse of open land lay between the areas we now know as Waterloo and Elephant and Castle. This land gained the name of St George’s Fields from the church in whose parish it was located – though that church was all the way up on Borough High Street, and no parishioners lived out that far. Though not strictly common land, Londoners would graze their animals and grow their crops there.

A less gentle event occurred in 1768, when demonstrators gathered on St George’s Fields to protest the imprisonment of radical MP John Wilkes in the nearby King’s Bench Prison – he had been found guilty of obscene libel and seditious libel, based on an article he had published in 1763 which severely attacked George III. Grenadier Guards were sent to read the Riot Act and tell the protestors to disperse; stones were thrown at the soldiers, who opened fire, killing six or seven people, and wounding at least 15. The incident gave the English language the (still commonly used) idiom of "reading the Riot Act to someone", meaning "to reprimand severely".

After the construction of Westminster and Blackfriars Bridges in the mid-18th Century, roads began making their way across St George’s Fields. The most notable of these, modern-day Blackfriars Road, terminated at St George’s Circus, where new roads were built, radiating out in all directions. The intention was to create a neighbourhood of Georgian terraces to replace the marshland; though this idea was not entirely carried out to high standards, it did lead to the area being quickly built up. The only major building previously found in the area, the Dog and Duck tavern, was replaced by the relocated Bethlem Hospital - now the home of the Imperial War Museum.

[pototocakes]

English Nursery Rhyme They hang the man and flog the woman That steal the goose from off the common, But let the greater villain loose That steals the common from the goose The law demands that we atone When we take things we do not own, But leaves thee lords and ladies fine Who take things that are yours and mine. -circa 1764