Posted by Peter H on December 06, 2004 at 18:08:28 from 213.122.13.254 user Peter_H.
In Reply to: Re: owner gave permission to camp here? posted by Jon on December 06, 2004 at 15:25:40:
the Tysons controlled their woods up to the edge of the Fells
It is quite possible that the Tysons owned the wood, but the question of Mrs Tyson not allowing the children to use the top camp surely centres around the fact that Mrs T is in ‘loco parentis’ to them. She has promised Mrs B to keep an eye on them. That is why she would not let them move camp until Mrs B had given the OK – ‘Of course, Mrs Blackett, it’s for you to say’.
‘Staking the Claim’ was, of course, a bit of children’s make-believe. No such system has ever operated in Britain, but as John Wilson says, they had probably been reading about the gold mining fever when America was being opened up. Even there, you had to make your claim in writing in the proper way fairly soon – the notices only operated on a temporary basis.
I’d like to make a plea that we should not get too hung up on the position at law of all the various parties. AR did not mention any legal details because we are following a children’s adventure. What prevented the children doing things was fear of adult censure (or Susan’s), not court proceedings. And I do find these theories about Mrs Blackett being a major landowner utterly unsupportable. It is far more likely that they were all tenants, perhaps, who knows, of Beatrix Potter, who went round buying up farms galore in the Lakes and then passed them on to the National Trust. Many Lake farmers today are tenants of the Trust. (If we have to go into Mrs B’s income, then she could well have received a widow’s pension, or had modest income from a trust fund.)
Which brings me to the view expressed by Mike Dennis. It may have been a bit 'political' for this board, but Mike’s posting does show that there are strong feelings today about public access to open country. There are three ‘groupings’ in much of the central Lake District – the National Trust, the tenant farmers, and the public. These three have to work together, and to accept that they cannot all do exactly what they want to do. Farmers get angry when the Trust tells them they can’t build a corrugated iron barn but must build a stone one, and the public get angry when a grass path has to be closed off because it is over-used and needs time to recover. The Trust get angry when someone chops a few trees down without telling them or parks three yellow caravans right in the middle of Borrowdale.
The Swallows etc were fortunate to be in a Lake District yet to be affected by mass tourism. Much of the inter-relationship between the locals was traditional rather than legal. Did the charcoal-burners solemnly apply for permission to enter someone’s woodland? Of course not – they would either have had old common law rights to do so, or used pitsteads by ancient tradition.