The corruption of the definitive map over the years by these same landowning classes denies us many legitimate rights of way. In Suffolk this corruption lead to many villages not having a single right of way recorded on the definitive map when it was set up.
I for one will continue to walk these lost ways and deal with the challenges when they come, as they surely do in Suffolk
Delighted that you use the term
'Corruption of the Definitive Map', the more who use it and understand what it says may help to encourage more in a pre 2026 study of the difference between those OS map editions pre-1940, which gave a snaps shot in time of how our ancestors walked about the countryside. The more, who can draw on the example I posted
here, the better the understanding of the situation Andies is in. It is the most contemptuous distortion of fact, when the then President of the CLA, when they published the policy on access, writes off lostways as being of little importance when his own estate is surrounded by several parishes stripped of old ways, as is the case in Suffolk.
As my
examples have been stripped of the pictorial content by the grasping Photobucket, these posts lose some of the their impact, but as with those, who wanted full size files then, I am happy to pass on the images to any, who might wish understand this problem.
In the example of Church Hill, the indications are that there was once a public place there. A wish to access it is understandable, when I stood there I realised that it was an unusual place, perhaps that is why a church once stood there. But it struck me to be a wonderful place to instruct young map readers the relationship of map to terrain. The nearby main feature hill, might be thought to be the obvious place to go, but this knoll gives more than the dominant view of that higher place.
Just one of the anomalies between Scottish and English access, which I am sad to read is being curbed by landowners. I think the lowland walkers there have been slow to explore and publish walks, which demonstrate the value of the freedom the 2003 act gave them.