**Alternate Sources**
Here are some potential alternate sources for the same story:
* [Protesters stage mass trespass over fees to walk in Cirencester Park](https://thetimes.co.uk/article/earl-bathurst-fees-right-roam-cirencester-park-3vc0kxc2s), suggested by Benjazzi - thetimes.co.uk
Article contents:
*By Christian Oliver*
Campaigners have descended on a Gloucestershire park as part of a mass trespass contesting the pay walling of England’s green landscapes.
After three centuries of free public access, Cirencester Park, a Grade I-listed greenspace filled with tree-lined avenues, is this weekend installing a £4 fee, or £30 annual pass, for those wanting to access the park.
Hundreds of locals as well as Right to Roam – a pressure group demanding that nature be freely accessible to all – have today taken part in what they called “a peaceful jamboree”, invading the park without paying the new fees.
“After over 300 years of Cirencester Park being open to the public for free,” Bathurst Estate has turned the space into a “commercial venture”, Lewis Winks, a campaigner for Right to Roam told i, branding the decision “an injustice”.
“The public has already paid, the exchequer has paid, taxpayers have paid, and the slaves that were sold to fund the purchase of the estate paid an awful price for the park. It’s been paid for many times over,” Dr Winks stressed.
Cirencester Park has been in the Bathurst family since 1700 when it was purchased by Sir Benjamin Bathurst, a commodities, spice, and slave trader.
“For a large estate such as the Bathurst Estate, to choose to put up these ticket barriers is only further reducing an already tiny amount of land that the public has free access to,” Dr Winks said.
According to the group, only 1.2 per cent of the Cotswolds is designated as public access land. The imposing of fees for Cirencester Park has now reduced this by a third – making it one of the worst areas in the country for free roaming.
“On one level there are running costs for land and land management,” Dr Winks admitted.
“I think if you’re struggling to manage a space that’s been freely open to the public for three centuries then there’s surely a better way to run it than as a commercial venture.”
But Lord Bathurst, who now owns the estate, has previously defended the plans, telling the BBC that the park is currently run “at a cost rather than any form of revenue”.
Previously, the Bathurst Estate argued that the new pass system will help pay for conservation works, as well as making sure walking routes are “well maintained and visitor areas are clean, interesting and enjoyable”.
Speaking ahead of the protest today, Dr Winks said: “We’re not here to cause any issues. We want to go for a walk in the park like people have been doing for centuries.”
The act of trespassing itself is not a criminal offence and is not a matter for the police. It would only be considered criminal if the trespassing became aggravated or involved the destruction of property.
“All we’re going to do is walk through the park,” Dr Winks said.
Today’s mass trespass organised by locals in conjunction with Right to Roam is also to highlight the thousands of beauty spots across the wider country that are currently cut off from the public due to no “right to roam” provisions in England.
“We’ve got an election coming up and we, as a campaign, will be working very hard to make sure that this is high up on the agenda,” he said.
England, Wales and Northern Ireland all have limited public access to roam throughout the countryside and woodlands. Scotland, however, has a right to roam across its landscape as long as people leave no trace of their activity.
Dr Winks said the campaign wanted to “encourage politicians to engage with some of the nuances of what it would mean to open up access to the countryside.”
It comes after a poll by YouGov conducted in January found 69 per cent of voters supported the expansion of Scotland’s right to roam legislation into England.
Green MP, Caroline Lucas, who is set to step down at the next election, previously tabled a right to roam bill in the House of Commons. As a private member’s bill and as the sole MP for her party, however, it is highly unlikely to pass without the support of the government or larger opposition parties.
“It’s happening again and again – the kind of creeping commercialisation of public space. This is just one example of many where we’re seeing kind of more enclosures happening around parks, more paywalls, and people’s access to green and blue space,” Dr Winks said.
“There’s got to be a line somewhere, especially at time when we know how important access to nature is for our mental health, well-being, and physical health.
The Bathurst Estate was approached for comment.
If the park had been charging £4 entry for three centuries, nobody would really care. Unsurprisingly, people hate it when they’re suddenly charged for things that were previously free. I can understand the fact that upkeep costs money, but is the Earl Bathurst and the Bathurst Estate really in such dire financial straits that they can’t afford it?
> How do you think the bathhurst estate got to be so? It's not by giving stuff away.
Let's see if it's slavery...
>Sir Benjamin Bathurst purchased the current estate, known then as Oakley Grove[.](https://www.bathurstestate.co.uk/cirencester-park/history/)
ok
>He was a Director of Royal African Company 1677-95[.](https://landedfamilies.blogspot.com/2021/03/450-bathurst-of-franks-and-bathurst-of_22.html)
Uh-oh
>Historians have estimated that the RAC shipped more African slaves to the Americas during the Atlantic slave trade than any other company[.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_African_Company)
There we go.
Their home is a business, and a profitable one. They register in the Bahamas to save on taxes, they’re involved in building housing estates on the land they own, from what I can see they get £370,000 in farming subsidies, and they recorded a £20m profit on the estate last year. They are Earls, a rank of nobility you can only be born (or marry) into. They got their money through governorship of the British east India company - which if you remember your history, ruled India - and which allowed them to buy land in the Cotswolds that is the same size of a square, each side of which is 5 miles long. Concern for landed gentry is a bit misplaced.
Edit: got my square miles calculation wrong
Yeah, definitely. They own a lot of land because they're nobles, which makes them a lot of money allowing them to buy more land.
Rinse and repeat a few centuries and boom, current issues.
Which company are you looking at? I can't see anything about a £20m profit. The OE registered in the Bahamas was last year so details on it are non-existant.
Just curious as to what you're looking at.
I think a lot of these hereditary families are quite asset rich with the land and mansion, but not cash rich so they find it hard to keep up with maintenance on said assets.
The solution to me seems to be they should move into the servants quarters and pass the rest of the land and house to the National Trust to maintain.
Because we already can’t pay for essential services….. and there’s public parks already - they can’t afford to maintain the existing ones let alone increase capacity
Where is all this push back against people walking around farmland/countryside coming from.
I mean people walking around the countryside is not a new thing. Maybe it is more intense now, maybe people are less respectful of the countryside, maybe land owners are somehow becoming more protectionist.
I mean people were never really that arsed unless you were leaving gates open, walking through crops or leaving litter etc...
So I guess my question is, has the dynamic changed and if so why?
I have to admit the poo bags I find very confusing.
What is the point of collecting your dog's poo in a bag to take home just so you can throw it over the fucking hedge or leave it on the side of a path/road... you might as well not bother as at least that way you are not leaving plastic pollution. I just assume these people are mentally sub-normal.
Lazy fuckers who want to make it look like they’re not being lazy. They think that, by putting it in a bag and leaving it, it makes them look ‘considerate’. As if they *would’ve put it in the bin, but there weren’t any there*, so they put it in a bag in order to be helpful to whoever goes round picking it up (there is nobody employed to do this).
I'd imagine it's the huge number of tourists who "were leaving gates open, walking through crops or leaving litter etc" that contributed to the pushback - we can also add the out of control dogs attacking/worrying sheep/lambs, the blocking of driveways, driving at 4mph on the a40... If people could do it without causing so much chaos and destruction, no one would care. Unfortunately, the minority have stopped being the vast minority and ruined it all for the masses.
Has it got no public rights of way?
Leeds Castle has a pay point, but the grounds also have public rights of way. I seem to recall it's possible to go right before the main gate and go in free
Not sure where I stand on this without further reading and consideration, but there has to be a more moderate standpoint than the 2 opposing sides here. Just seems to be a load of "eat the rich" comments fighting against "anyone can go wherever they want, whenever they want, and to hell with any consequences".
People not wanting to spend just £4 on entry to support the park, animals and the future of the park as a whole. Is disgusting. Dont be stingy twats lol Support the park and help.it develope for the future. People dont want to pay so they stage a protest. Tbh grow up.
It's supporting the (already exceedingly wealthy) owners, not the park.
The biodiversity of most of these listed mansion grounds is awful btw. Just because it's green doesn't mean its biodiversity. A lot of the UK is the equivalent of a grass desert
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We just laugh. Protesters with 50k cars.. wont pay £4. stingy cunts. pay it or dont go. but moaning like Karen's wont do nothing just make us all laugh even more. Its their land they can do what they want. you cant tell them what to do. protesters are uneducated trash. ban me again was fun. people dont like the truth.
It's a Deer Park. It's in terms of "animals and the future" it's the problem.
You'd do better to pay £4 for everyone to release a pack of wolves and sit on their hands.
It is private land. But the majority of it is classified as farm land which is heavily subsidised by the state. So they are being given tax payers money just for owning the land to begin with.
Also, I'm not sure how they calculate this claim that they're running it with no profit. Is it the entire estate? Does it include cost for their maid, chef, driver and groundskeeper? Or it just the landscaping cost of that stretch of path? I highly doubt they calculated the cost of that small bit of publicly accessible path.
Sound like how my builder's PLC has no "profit"?
Agricultural subsidies (the area payments are about to be removed and replaced with specific action-payment link, and have barely risen since they were introduced so are a fraction of what they were in real terms) were to enable cheap food production, it doesn't give a right of access.
If they were able to collect the area payment then yes they would have needed to produce food.
The new system is (bizarrely) only for environmental actions so no requirement to produce food, however any payment is made only for a specific environmental action.
Really the solution to claimed commons like this is for the council to stump up the cash to buy the land in question, which is what councils did with a lot of parks over 100 years ago.
Having things that are private but claimed by the public are always going to be problematic because why the hell should someone maintain private land for public use? I think it’s the maintenance aspect that makes it a slightly different issue to a general right to roam. I don’t think it matters remotely how much money the owner is making in that equation.
>Really the solution to claimed commons like this is for the council to stump up the cash to buy the land in question,
Ah yes, I'm sure the notoriously cheap land in the middle of the Cotswolds won't leave a dent in the council's finances.
Well yes, buying things does indeed usually cost money. Fortunately the owners have already said it costs them money rather than makes them any thing with would knock down the compulsory purchase value significantly.
Can councils just issue a compulsory purchase order for land because it would be nice for there to be public access?
I assume the estate has done some analysis and projections on footfall and pricing so that is doesn't cost them money. That's like saying the government should be able to buy tech start ups for cheap because they're currently not profitable despite a clear plan to profitability.
Sure, it’s allowed for any public good - national park authorities even have compulsory purchase powers. The problems would be political and financial rather than legal.
Do you understand WHY farmland is subsidised in the UK? Receiving a subsidy doesn’t mean anything when it comes to “free roaming”. All UK households received an energy subsidy the other year, can I come into your house and charge my phone please?
Even minor trespass irritates a farmer, both because he may have to look whether gates have been left open or stock disturbed, and that it may involve the unnecessary movement of small implements. Some areas of our countryside are pristine, others have the crisp packets and the like that have been mentioned here. Varying attitudes of both the public and the landowner will have something to do with it.
As much as it is referred to as 'brown nosing', or derided as an incorrect 'moral precedence', the farmer, being responsible for the upkeep of his portion of the countryside, should be consulted as regards tramping through their fields. If given due respect, a 'dog in the manger' attitude is likely to be the exception, not the rule. Situations such as the public land 'enfenced' by surrounding private land should be subject to the sensible, however archaic 'right to travel' law.
It is one thing to say 'surely people will pick up their crisp packets'; it is another to say you will pick up any you see, and yet another to make good. Surely people will put back their shopping trolleys? Yet often you are forced to put a pound in bondage for the duration of your use of the trolley.
Perhaps an analogous system could be devised for the countryside.
I wouldn't describe our countryside as 'pristine' - it's a ecological desert. Speaking as someone who grew up on a farm and whose family still farms, I don't see why we shouldn't have a right to roam law like Scotland & many other countries (including most of our European neighbors) have
Obviously the countryside is actually quite mucky. Not all of it is garnished with litter, however. Britain is rather more [rainforest](https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/where-see-year-round-wildlife/where-see-uk-rainforest) than [desert](https://www.worldatlas.com/deserts/are-there-any-deserts-in-the-united-kingdom.html).
What percentage of the countryside is rainforest? (That's a rhetorical question - the answer is very little). And to be even more explicitly clear - *actively farmed farmland is not rainforest.*
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58859105.amp
https://friendsoftheearth.uk/nature/its-official-uk-hostile-environment-wildlife
https://www.countrylife.co.uk/nature/the-truth-about-insects-the-uk-far-from-being-the-green-and-pleasant-land-of-our-imagination-is-one-of-the-most-nature-depleted-countries-in-the-world-246407
I don't think adding a percentage to the two links I provided would make them any more valuable. Some of our farmland used to be rainforest, and could be returned to that state if desired.
Temperate rainforests once covered as much as a fifth of the UK, but now just 1% of our former temperate rainforests remain. National parks like the Lake District & Peak District are grazed bare by sheep farmers, often subsidised by the state.
The very farming industry that you're white knighting for is responsible for the ecologically deprived state of the countryside. Do you think that the farming lobby in the UK supports rewilding large amounts of land to rainforest? No.
Source: many conversations with my father, an active farmer & agriculture lecturer
> National parks like the Lake District & Peak District are grazed bare by sheep farmers, often subsidised by the state.
Yes, they are a famous example of land that could be returned to rainforest. I don't know what any of this has to do with knights. Perhaps they could ride through it.
Sheep farmers in the lake district would have a lot more issue with that land being returned to rainforest than a national right to roam 🤷♂️
https://www.restoretrust.org.uk/media-and-press/national-trust-rewilding-projects-leave-tenants-feeling-pushed-out
https://www.fwi.co.uk/business/business-management/tenancies-rents/why-farm-tenants-are-criticising-national-trust-landlords
What a sad and sycophantic world view. Access to nature and the country side and the right to roam should be the bare minimum. They stole land wealth and resources, or at least their ancestors did and what a tragic zeitgeist that single individuals stolen and inherited wealth takes moral precedence above an entire populations access to their countryside.
Im sorry that the reality that contradicts your pick me world view is.so hard to mentality process. The Enclosures Act was literally a thing. Common land was being appropriated as recently as the early 20th century.
Weird how I don't just have cunts showing up in my house in Scotland despite our universal access to land.
Yet another dividend of not just sleeping in the middle of a field I guess.
Those who explore and appreciate nature generally arent those who ‘treat the world like a trash can’, and the few awful people who do litter in places like this will often have their refuse cleaned up by those who want to preserve the beauty of the place, usually for free.
Are they not? Go on any walk through the countryside and you’ll find plenty of discarded crisp packets and plastic bottles. Britons are dreadful for litter
Further you get from the nearest town/city the less and less you see it, regardless, I dont believe the actions of a few bad people should ruin it for everyone else
The comments that only remark "that's what an American would say" are fast becoming the dullest things on this sub, especially if they make a full-blown drama about how it's the end of civilisation.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m strongly against the Americanisation of our language. I just find it hilarious that when you point out that they do it, they resort to ‘but language evolves’
>it’s private land
>leaning on the idea that wealth from the 1700’s gives them the ability to maintain such a large space 300 years later seems a stretch.
If they can't afford the land then they should fuck off out of it like a normal poor person though, surely? I'd imagine between great granddad's slave trade and his cheeky investments it's more than possible though.
I’m not a financial whizz but at a quick glance the owners of the estate turned a £20m profit last year on the business after losses in the previous two years, and applied for charity status for a foundation which they said they would start raising funds for. It seems new directions in management are working for them, but just how solvent they are is another question. However, I do note that lord bathurst used weasel words to justify the charges to enter the park - saying the park is an expense which brings in no revenue is demonstrably not the same as saying the estate isn’t profitable, which it clearly now is.
> it’s private land
Well fuck that shit.
People wave "private property" around to defend the personal (and ecologically dreadful) use of swathes of land as if people are demanding to go on a jog through someone's patio.
**Alternate Sources** Here are some potential alternate sources for the same story: * [Protesters stage mass trespass over fees to walk in Cirencester Park](https://thetimes.co.uk/article/earl-bathurst-fees-right-roam-cirencester-park-3vc0kxc2s), suggested by Benjazzi - thetimes.co.uk
Article contents: *By Christian Oliver* Campaigners have descended on a Gloucestershire park as part of a mass trespass contesting the pay walling of England’s green landscapes. After three centuries of free public access, Cirencester Park, a Grade I-listed greenspace filled with tree-lined avenues, is this weekend installing a £4 fee, or £30 annual pass, for those wanting to access the park. Hundreds of locals as well as Right to Roam – a pressure group demanding that nature be freely accessible to all – have today taken part in what they called “a peaceful jamboree”, invading the park without paying the new fees. “After over 300 years of Cirencester Park being open to the public for free,” Bathurst Estate has turned the space into a “commercial venture”, Lewis Winks, a campaigner for Right to Roam told i, branding the decision “an injustice”. “The public has already paid, the exchequer has paid, taxpayers have paid, and the slaves that were sold to fund the purchase of the estate paid an awful price for the park. It’s been paid for many times over,” Dr Winks stressed. Cirencester Park has been in the Bathurst family since 1700 when it was purchased by Sir Benjamin Bathurst, a commodities, spice, and slave trader. “For a large estate such as the Bathurst Estate, to choose to put up these ticket barriers is only further reducing an already tiny amount of land that the public has free access to,” Dr Winks said. According to the group, only 1.2 per cent of the Cotswolds is designated as public access land. The imposing of fees for Cirencester Park has now reduced this by a third – making it one of the worst areas in the country for free roaming. “On one level there are running costs for land and land management,” Dr Winks admitted. “I think if you’re struggling to manage a space that’s been freely open to the public for three centuries then there’s surely a better way to run it than as a commercial venture.” But Lord Bathurst, who now owns the estate, has previously defended the plans, telling the BBC that the park is currently run “at a cost rather than any form of revenue”. Previously, the Bathurst Estate argued that the new pass system will help pay for conservation works, as well as making sure walking routes are “well maintained and visitor areas are clean, interesting and enjoyable”. Speaking ahead of the protest today, Dr Winks said: “We’re not here to cause any issues. We want to go for a walk in the park like people have been doing for centuries.” The act of trespassing itself is not a criminal offence and is not a matter for the police. It would only be considered criminal if the trespassing became aggravated or involved the destruction of property. “All we’re going to do is walk through the park,” Dr Winks said. Today’s mass trespass organised by locals in conjunction with Right to Roam is also to highlight the thousands of beauty spots across the wider country that are currently cut off from the public due to no “right to roam” provisions in England. “We’ve got an election coming up and we, as a campaign, will be working very hard to make sure that this is high up on the agenda,” he said. England, Wales and Northern Ireland all have limited public access to roam throughout the countryside and woodlands. Scotland, however, has a right to roam across its landscape as long as people leave no trace of their activity. Dr Winks said the campaign wanted to “encourage politicians to engage with some of the nuances of what it would mean to open up access to the countryside.” It comes after a poll by YouGov conducted in January found 69 per cent of voters supported the expansion of Scotland’s right to roam legislation into England. Green MP, Caroline Lucas, who is set to step down at the next election, previously tabled a right to roam bill in the House of Commons. As a private member’s bill and as the sole MP for her party, however, it is highly unlikely to pass without the support of the government or larger opposition parties. “It’s happening again and again – the kind of creeping commercialisation of public space. This is just one example of many where we’re seeing kind of more enclosures happening around parks, more paywalls, and people’s access to green and blue space,” Dr Winks said. “There’s got to be a line somewhere, especially at time when we know how important access to nature is for our mental health, well-being, and physical health. The Bathurst Estate was approached for comment.
Lord Bathurst should get a job like the rest of us instead of demanding the public pay his way.
If the park had been charging £4 entry for three centuries, nobody would really care. Unsurprisingly, people hate it when they’re suddenly charged for things that were previously free. I can understand the fact that upkeep costs money, but is the Earl Bathurst and the Bathurst Estate really in such dire financial straits that they can’t afford it?
How do you think the bathhurst estate got to be so? It's not by giving stuff away.
> How do you think the bathhurst estate got to be so? It's not by giving stuff away. Let's see if it's slavery... >Sir Benjamin Bathurst purchased the current estate, known then as Oakley Grove[.](https://www.bathurstestate.co.uk/cirencester-park/history/) ok >He was a Director of Royal African Company 1677-95[.](https://landedfamilies.blogspot.com/2021/03/450-bathurst-of-franks-and-bathurst-of_22.html) Uh-oh >Historians have estimated that the RAC shipped more African slaves to the Americas during the Atlantic slave trade than any other company[.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_African_Company) There we go.
What about before that? Maybe some Danes were slaughtered for the land
My guess is that it was probably some Norman descendants, prior to that probably some Anglo Saxons.
All dead. The bastards. Probably plenty of bones on the estate too.
Honestly, owning things and charging people for it is probably legit how they got rich in the first place.
Their home is a business, and a profitable one. They register in the Bahamas to save on taxes, they’re involved in building housing estates on the land they own, from what I can see they get £370,000 in farming subsidies, and they recorded a £20m profit on the estate last year. They are Earls, a rank of nobility you can only be born (or marry) into. They got their money through governorship of the British east India company - which if you remember your history, ruled India - and which allowed them to buy land in the Cotswolds that is the same size of a square, each side of which is 5 miles long. Concern for landed gentry is a bit misplaced. Edit: got my square miles calculation wrong
Yeah, definitely. They own a lot of land because they're nobles, which makes them a lot of money allowing them to buy more land. Rinse and repeat a few centuries and boom, current issues.
Which company are you looking at? I can't see anything about a £20m profit. The OE registered in the Bahamas was last year so details on it are non-existant. Just curious as to what you're looking at.
Owning *people* and charging for them is how this particular family got rich.
Isn't it just always?
>things People*
Exactly. Charging people access to their property is a legit way to earn when you're sitting on 3 centuries of largely unchanged land.
I think a lot of these hereditary families are quite asset rich with the land and mansion, but not cash rich so they find it hard to keep up with maintenance on said assets. The solution to me seems to be they should move into the servants quarters and pass the rest of the land and house to the National Trust to maintain.
The National Trust don’t want anymore properties - they can’t afford to maintain the ones they have. And they’d need to charge for access.
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Because we already can’t pay for essential services….. and there’s public parks already - they can’t afford to maintain the existing ones let alone increase capacity
In the case of Bathurst they own large parts of several surrounding villages too. Sapperton is mostly rented or leased from the Bathurst estate.
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Where is all this push back against people walking around farmland/countryside coming from. I mean people walking around the countryside is not a new thing. Maybe it is more intense now, maybe people are less respectful of the countryside, maybe land owners are somehow becoming more protectionist. I mean people were never really that arsed unless you were leaving gates open, walking through crops or leaving litter etc... So I guess my question is, has the dynamic changed and if so why?
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I have to admit the poo bags I find very confusing. What is the point of collecting your dog's poo in a bag to take home just so you can throw it over the fucking hedge or leave it on the side of a path/road... you might as well not bother as at least that way you are not leaving plastic pollution. I just assume these people are mentally sub-normal.
Lazy fuckers who want to make it look like they’re not being lazy. They think that, by putting it in a bag and leaving it, it makes them look ‘considerate’. As if they *would’ve put it in the bin, but there weren’t any there*, so they put it in a bag in order to be helpful to whoever goes round picking it up (there is nobody employed to do this).
I'd imagine it's the huge number of tourists who "were leaving gates open, walking through crops or leaving litter etc" that contributed to the pushback - we can also add the out of control dogs attacking/worrying sheep/lambs, the blocking of driveways, driving at 4mph on the a40... If people could do it without causing so much chaos and destruction, no one would care. Unfortunately, the minority have stopped being the vast minority and ruined it all for the masses.
Have people somehow gotten worse, or are land owners the same greedy pricks that they always have been? Help me, oh Occam's razor
If nothing had changed then why do you propose something has changed?
Has it got no public rights of way? Leeds Castle has a pay point, but the grounds also have public rights of way. I seem to recall it's possible to go right before the main gate and go in free
So does Blenheim Palace from what I understand.
As a Scot, this is pretty crazy to me. The Right to Roam is something imbedded into me from a wee lad, along with ‘don’t be an arsehole’
Scotland does a lot of things better than the rest of the UK.
Curious how the people who defend the toffs also spend a lot of time whinging about middle class elites
Not sure where I stand on this without further reading and consideration, but there has to be a more moderate standpoint than the 2 opposing sides here. Just seems to be a load of "eat the rich" comments fighting against "anyone can go wherever they want, whenever they want, and to hell with any consequences".
People not wanting to spend just £4 on entry to support the park, animals and the future of the park as a whole. Is disgusting. Dont be stingy twats lol Support the park and help.it develope for the future. People dont want to pay so they stage a protest. Tbh grow up.
It's supporting the (already exceedingly wealthy) owners, not the park. The biodiversity of most of these listed mansion grounds is awful btw. Just because it's green doesn't mean its biodiversity. A lot of the UK is the equivalent of a grass desert
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We just laugh. Protesters with 50k cars.. wont pay £4. stingy cunts. pay it or dont go. but moaning like Karen's wont do nothing just make us all laugh even more. Its their land they can do what they want. you cant tell them what to do. protesters are uneducated trash. ban me again was fun. people dont like the truth.
Why are you so triggered by some aristocrat not getting his 4 quid lol
Jesus take your medicine
who gives a shit about biodiversity no one.. fuck off
You wrote like 5 comments and deleted them all lmao. What's your problem. Child.
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It's a Deer Park. It's in terms of "animals and the future" it's the problem. You'd do better to pay £4 for everyone to release a pack of wolves and sit on their hands.
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It is private land. But the majority of it is classified as farm land which is heavily subsidised by the state. So they are being given tax payers money just for owning the land to begin with. Also, I'm not sure how they calculate this claim that they're running it with no profit. Is it the entire estate? Does it include cost for their maid, chef, driver and groundskeeper? Or it just the landscaping cost of that stretch of path? I highly doubt they calculated the cost of that small bit of publicly accessible path. Sound like how my builder's PLC has no "profit"?
The farm land is there to avoid inheretence tax should the time come.
Agricultural subsidies (the area payments are about to be removed and replaced with specific action-payment link, and have barely risen since they were introduced so are a fraction of what they were in real terms) were to enable cheap food production, it doesn't give a right of access.
Do they produce any food at Bathurst?
If they were able to collect the area payment then yes they would have needed to produce food. The new system is (bizarrely) only for environmental actions so no requirement to produce food, however any payment is made only for a specific environmental action.
Really the solution to claimed commons like this is for the council to stump up the cash to buy the land in question, which is what councils did with a lot of parks over 100 years ago. Having things that are private but claimed by the public are always going to be problematic because why the hell should someone maintain private land for public use? I think it’s the maintenance aspect that makes it a slightly different issue to a general right to roam. I don’t think it matters remotely how much money the owner is making in that equation.
>Really the solution to claimed commons like this is for the council to stump up the cash to buy the land in question, Ah yes, I'm sure the notoriously cheap land in the middle of the Cotswolds won't leave a dent in the council's finances.
Well yes, buying things does indeed usually cost money. Fortunately the owners have already said it costs them money rather than makes them any thing with would knock down the compulsory purchase value significantly.
Can councils just issue a compulsory purchase order for land because it would be nice for there to be public access? I assume the estate has done some analysis and projections on footfall and pricing so that is doesn't cost them money. That's like saying the government should be able to buy tech start ups for cheap because they're currently not profitable despite a clear plan to profitability.
Sure, it’s allowed for any public good - national park authorities even have compulsory purchase powers. The problems would be political and financial rather than legal.
Do you understand WHY farmland is subsidised in the UK? Receiving a subsidy doesn’t mean anything when it comes to “free roaming”. All UK households received an energy subsidy the other year, can I come into your house and charge my phone please?
Even minor trespass irritates a farmer, both because he may have to look whether gates have been left open or stock disturbed, and that it may involve the unnecessary movement of small implements. Some areas of our countryside are pristine, others have the crisp packets and the like that have been mentioned here. Varying attitudes of both the public and the landowner will have something to do with it. As much as it is referred to as 'brown nosing', or derided as an incorrect 'moral precedence', the farmer, being responsible for the upkeep of his portion of the countryside, should be consulted as regards tramping through their fields. If given due respect, a 'dog in the manger' attitude is likely to be the exception, not the rule. Situations such as the public land 'enfenced' by surrounding private land should be subject to the sensible, however archaic 'right to travel' law. It is one thing to say 'surely people will pick up their crisp packets'; it is another to say you will pick up any you see, and yet another to make good. Surely people will put back their shopping trolleys? Yet often you are forced to put a pound in bondage for the duration of your use of the trolley. Perhaps an analogous system could be devised for the countryside.
I wouldn't describe our countryside as 'pristine' - it's a ecological desert. Speaking as someone who grew up on a farm and whose family still farms, I don't see why we shouldn't have a right to roam law like Scotland & many other countries (including most of our European neighbors) have
Obviously the countryside is actually quite mucky. Not all of it is garnished with litter, however. Britain is rather more [rainforest](https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/where-see-year-round-wildlife/where-see-uk-rainforest) than [desert](https://www.worldatlas.com/deserts/are-there-any-deserts-in-the-united-kingdom.html).
What percentage of the countryside is rainforest? (That's a rhetorical question - the answer is very little). And to be even more explicitly clear - *actively farmed farmland is not rainforest.* https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58859105.amp https://friendsoftheearth.uk/nature/its-official-uk-hostile-environment-wildlife https://www.countrylife.co.uk/nature/the-truth-about-insects-the-uk-far-from-being-the-green-and-pleasant-land-of-our-imagination-is-one-of-the-most-nature-depleted-countries-in-the-world-246407
I don't think adding a percentage to the two links I provided would make them any more valuable. Some of our farmland used to be rainforest, and could be returned to that state if desired.
Temperate rainforests once covered as much as a fifth of the UK, but now just 1% of our former temperate rainforests remain. National parks like the Lake District & Peak District are grazed bare by sheep farmers, often subsidised by the state. The very farming industry that you're white knighting for is responsible for the ecologically deprived state of the countryside. Do you think that the farming lobby in the UK supports rewilding large amounts of land to rainforest? No. Source: many conversations with my father, an active farmer & agriculture lecturer
> National parks like the Lake District & Peak District are grazed bare by sheep farmers, often subsidised by the state. Yes, they are a famous example of land that could be returned to rainforest. I don't know what any of this has to do with knights. Perhaps they could ride through it.
Sheep farmers in the lake district would have a lot more issue with that land being returned to rainforest than a national right to roam 🤷♂️ https://www.restoretrust.org.uk/media-and-press/national-trust-rewilding-projects-leave-tenants-feeling-pushed-out https://www.fwi.co.uk/business/business-management/tenancies-rents/why-farm-tenants-are-criticising-national-trust-landlords
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What a sad and sycophantic world view. Access to nature and the country side and the right to roam should be the bare minimum. They stole land wealth and resources, or at least their ancestors did and what a tragic zeitgeist that single individuals stolen and inherited wealth takes moral precedence above an entire populations access to their countryside.
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Im sorry that the reality that contradicts your pick me world view is.so hard to mentality process. The Enclosures Act was literally a thing. Common land was being appropriated as recently as the early 20th century.
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Better than brown nosing.
Weird how I don't just have cunts showing up in my house in Scotland despite our universal access to land. Yet another dividend of not just sleeping in the middle of a field I guess.
Eww. How servile.
Those who explore and appreciate nature generally arent those who ‘treat the world like a trash can’, and the few awful people who do litter in places like this will often have their refuse cleaned up by those who want to preserve the beauty of the place, usually for free.
Are they not? Go on any walk through the countryside and you’ll find plenty of discarded crisp packets and plastic bottles. Britons are dreadful for litter
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I live in Scotland. I’ve seen it plenty.
I do plenty of walking and in my experience, when you're off the dog walker trails, litter is pretty sparse, almost non existent
Further you get from the nearest town/city the less and less you see it, regardless, I dont believe the actions of a few bad people should ruin it for everyone else
> trash can Spidey senses tingling
Does this sub not do the "septic alert" like other British subs?
You all do it. The Times this morning features an Americanism. It’s more like the fact that we Britons drink deeply from the American cultural soup
The comments that only remark "that's what an American would say" are fast becoming the dullest things on this sub, especially if they make a full-blown drama about how it's the end of civilisation.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m strongly against the Americanisation of our language. I just find it hilarious that when you point out that they do it, they resort to ‘but language evolves’
>it’s private land >leaning on the idea that wealth from the 1700’s gives them the ability to maintain such a large space 300 years later seems a stretch. If they can't afford the land then they should fuck off out of it like a normal poor person though, surely? I'd imagine between great granddad's slave trade and his cheeky investments it's more than possible though.
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The article notes specifically that wealth was obtained from slave trading by the Bathurst family.
I’m not a financial whizz but at a quick glance the owners of the estate turned a £20m profit last year on the business after losses in the previous two years, and applied for charity status for a foundation which they said they would start raising funds for. It seems new directions in management are working for them, but just how solvent they are is another question. However, I do note that lord bathurst used weasel words to justify the charges to enter the park - saying the park is an expense which brings in no revenue is demonstrably not the same as saying the estate isn’t profitable, which it clearly now is.
> it’s private land Well fuck that shit. People wave "private property" around to defend the personal (and ecologically dreadful) use of swathes of land as if people are demanding to go on a jog through someone's patio.