Evidence of manorial status (i.e. that the land is, or was at some time in the past, ‘of a manor’) may be found amongst the records held by the Registration Authority of the original application. A right of access to these documents is confirmed by s20 of the 2006 Act. Further information and evidence may be discovered in the Local Record Office (including e.g. Inclosure Awards, deposit plans for public works, etc – which, though not of manorial origin, may afford proof of manorial status). The Manorial Documents Register provides a detailed catalogue of manorial records and their place of deposit. The Register is maintained by The National Archives at Kew, but is
available online for some areas of the country, currently: Wales, Hampshire, Isle
of Wight, Surrey, Middlesex, Hertfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Norfolk,
Yorkshire (all three Ridings), Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness & Carmel (formerly
Lancashire, now Cumbria). Outline information on local manors may be provided by
the Victoria County History (VCH). This should be available in the reference section
of local libraries; though many of the volumes can now be accessed online at: www.british-
Current Status as 'Waste Land’
Waste land is defined as land that is ‘open, uncultivated and unoccupied’. Whether an area of land is open and uncultivated is a question of its physical state. Note that the issue of ‘openness’ is not to do with the legal status of the land (e.g. past inclosure by Act or agreement); nor is it a matter of the presence or absence of perimeter fencing. The question of ‘occupation’, however, raises legal issues that may be of particular importance where the land is subject to leased or tenants’ rights of grazing. These issues are inherited from certain decisions made under the 1965 Act, in which land subject to rights of this kind was held to be ‘occupied’. They are left unresolved by the Commons Act 2006; though DEFRA does express ‘the view’, in its Guidance to the Pilot Authorities (9.3.14), that such land should not be seen as ‘occupied’:
9.3.14 In Defra‘s view, land does not cease to be unoccupied (and therefore cease to be waste) merely because it is subject to a tenancy, lease or licence whose sole or principal purpose is to enable the land to be extensively grazed. Occupation requires some physical use of the land to the exclusion of others: such might occur if the land were occupied by a quarry, or were used as a golf course, or were improved by a tenant (e.g. by cultivating and reseeding moorland) for his own exclusive use and benefit. Nor does Defra consider that shared upland grazing of manorial origin will have ceased to be waste land merely because there is provision for grazing the land contained in several tenancy agreements.
Though welcome, this view may at some point be subject to legal challenge. Were this
to happen, the interpretation that prevailed might well determine the amount of land
subject to re-
Re-
This raises the question of the other provisions of Schedule 2, including those involving
the deregistration of land that is currently registered as a common or a green. Individuals
or groups with an active interest in re-