Villagers' Lords fight for common

Villagers have had to pay £200,000 to keep driving over the common

Villagers angry at having had to pay thousands of pounds to drive across a common to their homes have taken their fight to the House of Lords.

They want Law Lords to overturn a Court of Appeal ruling that they have been illegally driving cars on tracks over the common without consent.

Forty-three residents of 26 houses in Newtown Common, Hampshire, say they have no other way of getting home.

The ruling was won a year ago by the common's owners, Bakewell Management.

Earl of Carnarvon

In November the residents were forced to pay Bakewell Management over £200,000 - or 2% of the market value of their homes - to continue using the common.

The plight of the residents, many of whom are in their 80s, dates back to 1927, when the then Lord of the Manor of Newtown, the sixth Earl of Carnarvon, invoked a law that makes it an offence for anyone to drive on common land without authority.

The Court of Appeal said this meant the residents and their visitors had been breaking the law ever since by driving across it.

In the House of Lords on Wednesday, Paul Morgan QC told Lords Bingham, Hope, Scott and Walker and Lady Hale: "Every morning, the appellants drive from their homes over the common. Do they commit a criminal offence, which their predecessors also committed?"

He argued they had acquired a right of way by continued use over a long period and that "they do not commit a criminal offence and never have".

Judgment on the hearing, which continues tomorrow, will be reserved to a later date.