Common land, grazing rights, and the enclosures took almost all of it away
Pub on the Park holds a 4.3 from twenty-one hundred and nineteen people, charges ten to twenty pounds, and it looks out over London Fields.
Which was a field. And it was common.
What common land was
Which is almost always misunderstood, and the misunderstanding matters.
Because a common was not unowned. It was not a free-for-all.
It was land owned by somebody – usually the lord of the manor – over which other people held specific, ancient, enforceable rights.
The rights had names
And they were extremely precise, and they were recorded in the manor court.
Pasture – the right to graze a stated number of animals.
Estovers – the right to take wood, for fuel and for repairs.
Turbary – the right to cut peat.
Piscary – the right to fish.
Pannage – the right to turn pigs out to eat fallen acorns.
These were not charity. They were property, held by poor people, and they were the difference between subsistence and destitution.
And the enclosures took them
Which is one of the largest transfers of wealth in English history, and it was done by Act of Parliament, thousands of times over.
The common was fenced, and the rights were extinguished, and the land became the exclusive property of the owner.
And the case made for it was efficiency – and it was not a lie. Enclosed land was more productive. Output rose.
And the people who had grazed a cow on it now had nothing at all, and went into the towns, and into the factories.
Eight postcodes and twelve hundred and thirty-eight articles.
The right thing frequently gets done for the wrong reason – and sometimes the profitable thing gets done and it is simply theft with a statute attached.
And the rhyme is contemporary
Which is the sharpest thing anybody wrote about it.
The law locks up the man or woman who steals the goose from off the common – but leaves the greater villain loose who steals the common from the goose.
And this one survived
Which is why you can sit and look at it.
Because a handful of urban commons were defended, ferociously, in the nineteenth century – and campaigners fought to stop them being built on.
London Fields is here because somebody would not let it go.
The Commons Preservation Society was founded in 1865 – and it is one of the oldest conservation bodies in the world – and it fought, case by case, in the courts, for Hampstead Heath and Epping Forest and Wimbledon Common.
And the tactic was frequently direct action. Fences went up. Fences came down, at night, in large numbers, by people who then dared the owner to sue.
Eight postcodes and twelve hundred and thirty-eight articles: the things that survive are the things somebody would not let go of.
And the greens and commons of London are, almost without exception, the result of a fight that somebody won in the 1860s and 70s – and if they had lost, there would be houses on all of them, and nobody would know there had ever been a question.
Verdict
Good pub, cheap, honest number.
Harper Thames is a comedic writer exploring modern life through irony and subtle exaggeration. Rooted in student perspectives and London’s cultural landscape, Harper’s work focuses on relatable humour grounded in everyday experience.
Expertise is developed through writing practice and critical engagement, while authority comes from authenticity and consistency. Trust is reinforced by transparent satire and ethical humour choices.
Someone’s going to frame this in their office. It will be the most honest and most unsettling decoration.
Footnotes sell. Separate.