Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 12.pdf/480

 Curious Old Road Laws.

445

CURIOUS OLD ROAD LAWS. Д VERY wealthy American who some time li. ago purchased a fine estate in Eng land had his eyes opened recently to certain peculiarities of British law. It appears that traversing his estate is a road which has been in use by the common people for many years. This road he decided to close, but he presently found that he had undertaken no easy task. At the end of the road was a ferry, and as the Government could not be persuaded to disestablish this ferry, the path to it must be kept open. The only thing the disgruntled owner of the estate; could do he promptly did, and .that was to prohibit the passing of all vehicles; not so much as a wheelbarrow would he allow to go by, and the unfortunate ferryman is now compelled to convey his heavy supplies by the main road, a roundabout distance of two or three miles. Some of the old English laws against the closing of roads are very singular, and are certainly fit matters for repeal. For exam ple, if the following of a footpath will enable the traveler to avoid a crossroad where a footpad, a highway robber or a suicide has been buried, the footpath must be kept open. Again, if a dead body has ever been car ried along a public highway, semi-public road or private footpath, that highway, road or footpath must never be closed. Just how or why this law originated it is not easy to discover, but as most of the footpaths have been used as a short cut for a funeral, this keeps open a goodly number of paths forever, or until the law is repealed. If a bride has been led over a footpath to her new home, it has acquired the right of perpetual existence in many parts of England. If a road or short cut has been in constant use for ten years, nothing short of an act of

Parliament or the making of a new lav will allow it to be closed. If the abandonment or closing of a foot path makes it necessary to cross a plowed field, a meadow or a field of grain, in passing from one highroad to another, the law for bids its being closed. And this reminds me of a curious law concerning fields and meadows. A meadow that has been sown with hay for twenty years, must not after that period be sown with anything else. This law was en forced only last year. A farmer living on a farm which had been in his family for manygenerations, thought to enrich his Jand by rotation of crops. He started to plant wheat in his meadow, but he was promptly stopped. The twenty year period had elapsed, and a meadow the land had to remain. If a footpath, road, or roadway leads di rectly to, across, or through a church or churchyard, it may never be closed. If a path leads down to a river, brook, or other running water, the law, in some parts of England, at least, says it must not be closed. If watercress, pungent grasses, mushrooms, or other edible products grow at the end of or along the course of a footpath, or if edible acorns be found there, certain old-fashioned laws, probably dating back to a time when food was neither cheap nor plentiful in Eng land, declare that it must be kept open. On the other hand, we find that there are many roads and even streets in large cities which can be closed to the public completely at the command of a single man—the man who owns the estate they traverse. There are streets even in London which are closed daily during certain hours of the morning and evening, and which must be closed one entire day each year if the title to them is to