What Is Common Land?

The term ‘common land’ is used, but what actually is common land? 

Many of us experience metropolitan commons as open green spaces in urban areas, a place to walk our dogs, or have picnics in the summer. A communal space, available for anyone to come and enjoy. Many of us experience the wilds of upland commons in our National Parks, like Dartmoor and the Lake District, and in these places, commons are usually synonymous with sheep. And then there are the lowland commons, sometimes vast heathland or wooded areas, places like the New Forest.

But commons also have golf courses? And parking? They have rights of way across them, does this mean that rights of way are all common land too? What about parks, are parks common land?

It can be very confusing to understand what common land actually is, especially since they vary so much in size and nature. Clapham Common in London does not look like The Saltings on the Norfolk Coast. Eton Common in Windsor does not look like Embsay Moor in Yorkshire. 

Essentially, common land is any land which has been registered as a common under the 1965 Commons Registration Act. To have been registered as a common, it would have needed to have ‘rights of common’ over it. A right of common is the right to do something or take something from land that you don’t own. So you can have a right to fish, to graze your animals, to collect firewood and more. 

So any land that has been legally registered as land with some of these rights over it, is common land. 

For some reason, there does seem to be quite a connection between common land and golf courses. I’ll go into this more at a later date, but there are some fairly well-known golf courses on common land such as Nuffield Common and Caerphilly Common. As long as the golf course does not interfere with any rights of common (e.g. taking up too much space for someone to be able to graze their animals), then it’s legal. However, the Open Spaces Society does advocate against any new golf courses being created on common land. 

And not all golf courses are on commons - so be considered where you ramble, as not all of them are covered by the CRoW Act.

You are technically not allowed to drive your vehicle onto or park on common land. However, as some commons are a part of national parks, there may be permissive or official parking that has been agreed.

Common land is covered under the CRoW Act, and therefore we have a right to roam over the vast majority of our common land. Many commons also have public footpaths across them from before 2000, that join up to paths leading off the common land area too. They are however, not the same thing. The public footpaths that cut across our country give us the right to walk, and sometimes to ride, but there are usually no rights of common over the land of the paths, and therefore they are not common land.

Parks are generally any green area set aside for public enjoyment. However, these could be owned publicly or privately, and don’t necessarily need to be common land. Again, unless it is a common registered with common rights over it, a park can simply be a green public space.

Commons really are as varied as the country itself, some with specific legislation governing them, that make them slightly different to other commons (e.g. the New Forest and its Verderer’s Court), some have rights to dry fishing nets, some are vast and covered by sheep, some are tiny and forgotten. I would encourage you to explore commons in your area through MAGICmap, the government map that displays all registered common land. You can then cross-reference at common-land.net to find out more about commons near you!