“Roseberry Common” — the name, so familiar, may scarcely remind us that this is indeed Common land, open for grazing, fuel, and other resources by the Commoners. Though now under the care of the National Trust, Commoners with lingering rights to this land persist like relics, a living exhibit the Trust must tread carefully around, lest it disturb those same rights.
The Trust, in its wisdom, would like to graze the Common with some hardy breed of cattle to trample and control the Bracken. This charming vision of hoofed thuggery, however, threatens to interfere with the said Commoners’ grazing rights — rights left mostly unused, true, but nonetheless enshrined in dusty permanence.
The history of such Commons is as old and layered as Roseberry Common itself. With the Norman Conquest in 1066 came a new order, by which all land was handed out by the King like so many sweets to favoured lords, who then allowed their tenants the courtesy of working it. Most of these tenants, humble serfs, were bound as firmly to the land as any root, their existence at the whim of the lord. A world of sharp hierarchies, in which the common people’s ‘rights’ to land could be measured in teaspoons.
Then came the Black Death in 1348, and, in what one might call a rare moment of fortune, the surviving peasants found their labour in demand. With this newfound leverage, they wrangled for better conditions, and out of the feudal mire emerged the Commons: a collective resource managed by the local community, serving as a last safety net for the many who had little.
Fast forward to the mid-18th century, and the arrival of the Enclosure Acts. These ingenious pieces of legislation transformed the countryside, parceling up Common land in neat, profitable patches. Rural communities, torn from their roots, were herded to the new factories of towns. Efficient, indeed. But in the wake of this “progress,” came all the social and environmental ills one might expect: rural depopulation, industrial grime, and the relentless march of capitalism, staining the once-idyllic countryside. By some quirk of fate, however, somehow Roseberry Common avoided such an inglorious fate, perhaps it was just too steep.
The story of the Commons reads all too aptly as a cautionary tale. As we drain our common resources — air, water, space, fuel, food — with our unflagging demands, we find that unchecked use leads inevitably to depletion. Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons,” often trotted out in environmental circles, warns us that any unregulated resource will be bled dry. And yet, history itself tells another story: well-managed Commons were in fact often sustainable, with communities devising their own systems of conservation. Graze too many cows and your neighbours would be sure to tell you. So now, as yet another COP summit convenes in some far-off locale, one hopes our leaders recall this wisdom of the past: that climate like the Commons require care, not careless trampling.
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