Commoners' Corner No.4

First published in the Yateley Society Newsletter in September 1996

Why does Yateley have so few commoners?

By now many regular readers of this column must be wondering why, if all properties historically had common rights, there are now so few Yateley Commoners. I have mentioned some illustrious names such as Air Chief Marshall Sir William MacDonald, General Llewellyn Brown, Daphne Kirkpatrick and Commander Mike Chappell. None of these appear to need the ”subsidence level• grazing guaranteed by the Statute of Merton in 1236. I have also mentioned some real farmers, such as Tom Dodd and Gordon Dickinson, who might seem obvious choices to have common rights. Jack Gregory was from an old Yateley family, who lived in a relatively new house (built in 1912), whereas Elizabeth and I are a relatively new Yateley family living in an old Yateley house (before 1600). So who qualifies?

In fact pretty well all properties which existed in Yateley on the 1st January 1926 still had common rights. Up to that date Yateley had not emerged from its feudal past. There were still Lords of the Manor who controlled the bulk of property transactions for ordinary folk. The Lord still effectively owned the freehold of the village. The tenants, successors in title to the serfs and villeins, were called copyholders. Each property transaction was recorded in the Manorial Court Books. By 1926 some of the owners of the larger houses had already bought out their freehold from the Lord of the Manor. The document recording this transaction in the Manorial Court Books, which still exist, was called a Deed of Enfranchisement.

In 1915 Henrietta Mary Ward, wife of the Vicar of Marlow, and a daughter of the former owner of Robins Grove, wanted to sell Monteagle House to a Boer War holder of the Victoria Cross, Col Alexis Doxat. The Deed of Enfranchisement was duly recorded in the Manorial Court Books and when Elizabeth and I bought Monteagle House, this document was the first in the large stack of freehold deeds. It is the irrefutable proof that Monteagle House had common rights. In addition to that I have full documentary proof back to 1617.

Forty years after the end of the feudal system it was becoming difficult to establish who had common rights, so the Commons Registration Act 1965 was enacted by Parliament. With categorical evidence from the deeds it was easy for Col and Mrs Tuck, the owners in the 1960s, to register the common rights of Monteagle House.

After 1926 the smaller properties which had not been enfranchised became freeholdings by means of a Deed of Compensation. The Manorial Court Book records a Deed of Compensation dated 19 December 1935 when Frederick Thomas Cobbett, Farmer, was "admitted" to Heatherside. This again provided evidence that the property had common rights. A summary of some of these Deeds which converted copyholdings into freeholdings can be found in the Yateley history computer programme compiled by Richard Johnston.

Both the documents mentioned above were provided as documentary evidence to the Commons Commissioner, Mr A. A. Baden Fuller who gave his decision confirming common rights for 23 persons on 26th March 1975. All these applicants for registration gave adequate supporting documentary evidence. Almost an hundred applications were originally made to register common rights, but many had been scared off by the threat of legal costs against them. Registration was strongly contested by three of the four owners of the Common. The County Council, being the exception, had strongly supported the registration of rights from the start. At the hearing 49 applications for registration still stood. Some of these were withdrawn during the hearing and some were found "to be not properly made" ie the applicants did not provide adequate supporting documentary evidence. Applications were made for 10 houses in Mistletoe Road but ,along with 16 other applications, were made void by the decision of the Commons Commissioner. Thriftswood lost its application since the deeds were not produced. Only one other property was struck off: Silver Fox Farm was deemed by the Commissioner not to warrant registration since it had previously been the Parish Poor House, and the ”paupers• would not have had any animals. The Commissioner‘s decision was then challenged in the High Court. That was when Elizabeth and I came on the scene! We won that too in a case which is still quoted by lawyers.

So the answer to the question in the heading is that Yateley has so few Commoners since they are only the survivors of the registration process under the 1965 Act. On the other hand the answer to the question ”Who should qualify to have common rights?• is, I suppose, anyone in Yateley who has a working fireplace. Certainly in the last century all householders and owners of land qualified as commoners. Those who are now left are those survivors of the process of those who registered in the first place and had the fortitude to withstand the 15 year legal process. They are not just those with deep pockets who could cover legal fees, that is another story, but people of principle, many of whom were brought up to care about traditions and the environment. We have to thank them, and the small dedicated band who supported their registration, that most of the registered common land is now a proposed Special Protection Area for Wild Birds under European legislation. If the common had not been registered it is highly likely that much of it would now be covered by development of some sort, and therefore would not now exist ”for the benefit of the neighbourhood•, who, as enshrined in earlier laws, are the true successors of our commoner ancestors. The few remaining commoners are effectively therefore the legal custodians of the heritage of the town, since without them there is still a risk that the common could be deregistered.

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