Wooden liars – in defence of trespass
In Britain a Public Right of Way (PROW) is precisely what it says.
Never mind that the land owner needs to pasture a bull here, or that the route passes through the owner’s back kitchen, this is a statutory, inalienable right. (And why did they build their kitchen on the PROW in the first place?)
So what weight of law does a “Private” or “Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted” sign have?
The enthusiastic walker Leslie Stephen, father of the firebrand Stephen sisters (Vanessa – later Bell – and Virginia – later Woolf) actively sought out these ‘Wooden Liar. ‘To me [they were] a reminder of the many delicious bits of walking . . . which await the man who has no superstitions reverence for legal rights,’ (In Praise of Walking 1902).
He and his fellow Sunday Trampers actively sought them out in the knowledge that one of their number, the lawyer Sir Fred Pollock could issue his field defence.
On being challenged he would pronounce that no ‘claim of any right of way or other easement’ was intended. And that, in addition, he was presenting the startled owner with a shilling piece ‘by way of amends.’
As James Bryce, president of the Alpine Club in 1892, put it: ‘Land is not property for our unlimited and unqualified use. There is no natural justice to such a thing as unlimited power of exclusion.’
Bill Laws 