THE JOYS OF EXPLORING

The joysof exploring

The Ridgeway in Wiltshire is one of the oldest rights of way in Britain, having been in continuous use for over 6,000 years

This month, Andew Swift looks back at the history of Bristol’s public footpaths, remembers those who fought to save them and explains why they are always worth fighting for...

Today, walking is more popular than ever, with many people having discovered the joys of exploring public footpaths during the pandemic – proof, perhaps, as John Harris of The Guardian puts it, ‘that when our leisure options are suddenly shut down, a lot of us instinctively seek solace in one of the most primal pastimes there is’.

Footpaths are so ubiquitous, so much a part of what we cherish most about the countryside, it is easy to take them for granted. Yet if they had not been fought for, few of them would have survived, and continued vigilance is needed to ensure we do not lose them.

For centuries, while some land was always off limits, people could wander more or less where they liked, although few of them did it for pleasure. William Wordsworth may be better known for his poetry, but he was also one of the first pioneers of walking for enjoyment, notching up an astonishing 180,000 miles in his lifetime. Jane Austen was also a keen walker – although on a much less ambitious scale –and featured several fairly challenging country walks in her novels.

By their time, however, enclosure was already changing the face of the land, as vast swathes were enclosed, and access to them prohibited. Between 1725 and 1825, parliament passed nearly 4,000 enclosure acts, awarding more than six million acres to wealthy landowners. For countryfolk who had been used to walking through local woods and fields, the loss was devastating, but not only were they powerless to stop it; if they tried to exercise their ancestral rights the penalties were severe.

In 1812, a writer in the Bristol Gazette lamented that ‘they who remember Ashton, Leigh, Westbury, Kingsweston, Clifton, and Stapleton 20 years ago, will need no description to recall to their minds the delightful and healthy walks now untrodden by vulgar feet – then open to the public for exercise or pleasure’. Other enclosures followed as Bristol and the surrounding villages continued to grow. When it came to the appropriation of Clifton and Durdham Downs for building and quarrying, however, the outcry was so fierce that the city council was forced to take action. In 1861, after lengthy negotiations, the council paid £16, 296 to the Merchant Venturers and the Lords of Henbury Manor so that 442 acres of Clifton and Durdham Downs could be kept open and unenclosed ‘for the public resort and recreation of the citizens and inhabitants of Bristol’.

Elsewhere, though, land continued to be enclosed and footpaths that people had used for generations were closed at the whim of landowners. Although an Act as to Closing Footpaths had been passed in 1815, it was largely ineffective. All that was required to legally close a footpath was the consent of two justices of the peace, and, as many justices were landowners, obtaining such consent was rarely difficult.

Enclosure not only stopped people walking in the countryside; it also forced many off the land, giving them little option but to seek employment in rapidly expanding industrial cities. However hard their lives may have been in the country, in the city, crowded into insanitary slums and breathing polluted air, for many it was far worse. Fortunately, there were campaigners ready to take up the cudgels on their behalf, and among them were those anxious they should have access to the countryside for health and recreation.

The battles to save Bristol’s footpaths were as rancorous as those fought elsewhere. In 1887, the owner of St Annes’ Wood in Brislington, where people had wandered freely for generations, padlocked the entrance and erected signs forbidding trespass. After he refused to back down, the Bristol & District Footpath Preservation Society organised a mass trespass, as a result of which he took them to court. The case lasted 18 days, at the end of which the rights of way through the wood were upheld and the owner was ordered to pay costs.

The year 1887 also saw the Merchant Venturers try to close a wellused footpath alongside the River Frome at Stapleton, by building a wall and employing a watchman to keep people out. The problem, as

Around 10,000 people attended the mass rally at Winnats Pass in 1931

Hiking gear has moved on a bit since this party had to negotiate a tricky section near Glastonbury around 1910, but obstacles like this will still be encountered

Access through St Anne’s Woods was only restored after a lengthy court hearing

they saw it, was that people were using the path to get to a popular bathing spot. The Merchant Venturers viewed this as a public nuisance, but intervention by the Footpath Preservation Society persuaded them to restore access.

Over 35 years later, Bristolians were once again faced with the loss of one of their most popular open spaces. When John Ballard bought Trooper’s Hill in 1923, he blocked paths leading to it and put up signs prohibiting trespass. After two local residents took him to court and won their case, however, access to the hill was enshrined in law for perpetuity.

By now, campaigning for greater access to the countryside was gaining momentum. In 1932, parliament decreed that, if a footpath had been used without restriction for 20 years, it could be designated a public footpath. There was another battle to win, however –unrestricted access to wilderness and moorland – and here the initiative was taken not by middle-class campaigners but by workingclass ramblers from northern industrial cities. A rally attended by 10,000 people at Winnats Pass in the Peak District in 1931 was followed a year later by the legendary Kinder Scout trespass. The result of such robust campaigning was the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949. Although this set up ten national parks, it fell far short of demands for open access to uncultivated land. This is still – despite the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 having extended access to some mountains, moors, heaths and downland – very much unfinished business today.

No less controversially, the 2000 legislation also set a cut-off date of 1 January 2026, after which public rights over thousands of paths which had not been recorded as public footpaths would be extinguished for ever. As the deadline approached, the Ramblers Association calculated that around 49,000 miles of paths could be lost in England and Wales in England and Wales, with 76 miles in Bristol alone. Earlier this year, as the backlog of applications mounted, however, the government bowed to pressure and removed the cut-off date from the legislation.

Despite this piece of good news, footpaths are under threat as never before. Lockdown not only saw people walking in the countryside; it also led to landowners closing permissive paths and blocking rights of way, justifying their actions by citing safety concerns and the need to prevent anti-social behaviour. Hundreds of miles of footpaths have also been closed indefinitely because ash-dieback has rendered the trees lining them liable to topple without warning – a perfectly reasonable measure, but whereas some landowners are working to remove the trees, along with the risk, the danger is that others may see it as a way of closing paths for good.

Britain has 91,000 miles of footpaths, together with 20,000 miles of bridleways, 2,300 miles of byways and 3.700 miles of restricted byways, yet it is estimated that around 10% of the network is either blocked off or impassable. The best tribute we can pay to those who fought over the past two centuries to preserve these ancestral rights of way is to go out and walk them, and, when we find them blocked or impassable, report it to the appropriate local authority footpath officer.

In the words of Robert Macfarlane, one of today’s most committed long-distance walkers, ‘footpaths are mundane in the best sense of the word: “wordly”, open to all. As rights of way determined and sustained by use, they constitute a labyrinth of liberty, a slender network of common land that still threads through our aggressively privatised world of barbed wire and gates, CCTV cameras and “No Trespassing” signs.’ They can also lead us to strange, wonderful and occasionally scary places, and are a resource like no other. Above all, they are worth fighting for. n • Andrew Swift is the author of Walks from Bristol’s Severn Beach Line and Country Walks from Bath; akemanpress.com

Further information:

Ramblers: bristolramblers.org.uk Open Spaces Society: oss.org.uk Bristol Walking Festival: bristolwalkfest.com