Wild places & wild people: a short history of common land
HistoryExtra podcast
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The Common Land That Survives
When people talk about commons and common land, they're thinking of the open field system that was widespread in England well before the 19th century. I'm talking about the other type of common land which is basically the wild uncultivated land around the edges of settlements. So it's everything from mountain, moorland, heathland, marshland, fenland. Land which hasn't been fully appropriated into the farming system in terms of being privately owned and intensively used or improved. And there's also a sense that it's in some way wild land so it's uncultivated.
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