Town and Village Greens
Apart from the general use of the term, Village Green has a specific legal meaning in England and Wales, and also includes the less common term Town Greens. Town and village greens were defined in the Commons Registration Act 1965, as amended by the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, as land:
- which has been allotted by or under any Act for the exercise or recreation of the inhabitants of any locality
- or on which the inhabitants of any locality have a customary right to indulge in lawful sports and pastimes
- or if it is land on which for not less than twenty years a significant number of the inhabitants of any locality, or of any neighbourhood within a locality, have indulged in lawful sports and pastimes as of right.
These Acts have now been repealed and replaced by the Commons Act 2006, but the fundamental test of whether land is a town and village green remains the same. Thus land can become a village green if it has been used for 20 years without force, secrecy or request (nec vi, nec clam, nec precario). Village green legislation is often used to try to frustrate development. Recent case law (Oxfordshire County Council vs Oxford City Council and Robinson) makes it clear that registration as a green would render any development which prevented continuing use of the green as a criminal activity under the 1857 Inclosure Act and/or the 1867 Commons Act. This leads to some most curious areas being claimed as village greens, sometimes with success. Recent examples include a bandstand, two lakes and (ultimately unsuccessfully) a beach.
The Open Spaces Society states that in 2005 there were about 3650 registered greens in England covering 8,150 acres (3,298 ha) and about 220 in Wales covering about 620 acres (251 ha).
Read more about this topic: Village Green
Famous quotes containing the words town and, town, village and/or greens:
“There is a great deal of self-denial and manliness in poor and middle-class houses, in town and country, that has not got into literature, and never will, but that keeps the earth sweet; that saves on superfluities, and spends on essentials; that goes rusty, and educates the boy; that sells the horse, but builds the school; works early and late, takes two looms in the factory, three looms, six looms, but pays off the mortgage on the paternal farm, and then goes back cheerfully to work again.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by;
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The Everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.”
—Phillips Brooks (1835–1893)
“Where village statesmen talked with looks profound,
And news much older than their ale went round.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774)
“Our democracy, our culture, our whole way of life is a spectacular triumph of the blah. Why not have a political convention without politics to nominate a leader who’s out in front of nobody?... Maybe our national mindlessness is the very thing that keeps us from turning into one of those smelly European countries full of pseudo-reds and crypto-fascists and greens who dress like forest elves.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)