Property News · February 10, 2016

What the battle for Freeman's Wood says about the future of our common land


For years, Lancaster locals treated Freeman’s Wood as common space – until its Bermuda-registered owner submitted a development plan, and erected fencing to keep them out. Now the commoners are fighting backFreeman’s Wood is an 11-hectare parcel of land on the south-west edge of Lancaster, the county town of Lancashire. Over the years this verdant plot has been a dump site for a local linoleum factory, a cricket ground, a football pitch, an all-night party venue, a site for BMX tailwhips launched off dirt quarter-pipes, a paintball combat zone, and a place for dog walking, drone buzzing, bird watching, berry foraging and jogging.Precisely who owned the land has been, for as long as most locals can remember, ambiguous and irrelevant. The only policing of this territory was between visitors. In other words, they treated it as a common – a place formally defined as “pertaining or belonging equally to an entire community, nation or culture”. Continue reading…

Source : theguardian.com
Read more…What the battle for Freeman’s Wood says about the future of our common land

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