Introduction

Over 500,000ha of common land survive in England and Wales, ¹ the vast majority consisting of marginal land beyond the limits of cultivation, characteristically clothed in semi-natural vegetation. Commons include large tracts of the mountains, hills and moorlands of upland England and Wales, the sandy heaths and wetlands of lowland England, and open spaces on the margins of settlements, from the large metropolitan commons around London to small patches of rough ground on the edges of villages (Hoskins and Stamp, 1963, pp104–110, 134–136; Everitt, 2000). Today, they fulfil a range of roles: many continue to serve a function in the agricultural economy as grazing grounds; most are important as open spaces for recreation; in ecological terms, many are deemed to be fragile environments with a high conservation value; some serve particular purposes – for example, as grouse moor or for military training. Historically, these ‘wastes’, as they were termed, formed an integral part of the traditional rural economy, not only as grazing for livestock, but also as sources of fuel (in the forms of firewood, peat or vegetation such as gorse) and a wide range of other resources, as diverse as fish, berries, nuts, sand, clay, gravel, stones, bracken, heather, rushes and reeds (Neeson, 1993, pp158–184; Woodward, 1998; Winchester, 2000, pp123–142).