ABSTRACT

English Heritage has recently completed a project which investigated the archaeological content of English town commons. Commons in urban areas are under pressure and because their historic element is not understood it is unprotected. This paper examines the results of the project and argues that town commons should be recognised as a valid historical entity and a valued part of the modern urban environment. This is an essential first step towards successful informed conservation. It also promotes the view that landscape archaeology is about the fabric of the land as created and modified over a long period, in which our own activities are part of that continuum. This reflects the changing nature of archaeology as a discipline that is increasingly concerned with public understanding, along with land management and conservation.

KEYWORDS

urban, town, archaeology, earthwork, common

INTRODUCTION

A common is an area of land, in private or public ownership, over which rights of common exist. Right of common has been defined as ‘a right, which one or more persons may have, to take or use some portion of that which another man's soil naturally produces’ (from Halsbury's Laws of England [1991], quoted by Clayden 2003, 10). There are six main rights of common: pasture (the right to graze animals); pannage (the right to feed pigs on fallen acorns and beech mast); estovers (the right to collect small wood, furze and bracken); turbary (the right to cut turf or peat); piscary (the right to fish) and common in the soil (the right to take sand, gravel, stone or minerals). Rights of common were usually held either by all householders of a town, just burgage holders (holders of freehold property), or freemen (possessing citizenship of the town). Over time, they tended to become restricted to senior members of the town corporation or to wealthier townsfolk.

English town commons have been largely disregarded by historians and archaeologists, even though their wildlife and recreational value has been recognised. Typically, they have no Conservation Plans and their historic environment content is unknown, and therefore delivers no conservation benefits. Those that have survived, despite urban expansion and other threats to their existence, are regarded locally as important places, ‘green lungs’ in cities and havens for wildlife. Although it is rarely recognised, they are also a reservoir of archaeological remains.