The Return to Breaky Bottom
Action for Access | 15.10.2010 05:50 | South Coast
On Saturday 16th October Action For Access, with many local walkers and other lovers of the South Downs, will be demonstrating for the second time against the exclusion of the public from a piece of ‘freedom to roam’ downland at Breaky Bottom slope, TQ 404 053, on the Rodmell Downs between Brighton and Lewes, East Sussex.
The protestors will meet at Southease station at 10.35 am and walk to the ancient downland slope from which they are excluded. It is a lovely and ancient down pasture site with grand views and lots of the old wildlife you get on what’s left of our traditional flowery chalk grasslands.
The landowner, who owns and lives at a vineyard in the valley bottom, has attempted three different arguments to prevent the public enjoying their walkers’ rights on his land.
He objected to the slope’s new rights of public access:
- because he didn’t want the public enjoying this downland near to his home and business;
- because he wanted to protect his shooting rights over the ground;
- and because there was a tiny disused chalk quarry at one end of the site.
Though his appeal was rejected on the first two grounds, he won a restriction order excluding the public from all this site because the tiny quarry was deemed a hazard.
At present, Natural England[v] is colluding in the landowner’s hostility to access by renewing, in a modified form, a restriction order on the site.
“The most-fenced farm on the South Downs”
This landowner has failed to fence the quarry even though he has just spent £15,000 on re-fencing the entire access land site and fragmenting it into four barbed wire paddocks. Yet all that is needed is a mere 70 metres of fencing for this quarry to be made safe enough to satisfy Natural England’s requirements for the re-opening of the site.
And the local authority, Lewes District Council, has so far failed to take the action they are empowered to take under the Mines and Quarries Acts to fence the small chalk pit and thus enable the site to be re-opened[vi].
Our demonstration seeks to put pressure on the local Council, Natural England, and the landowner to give us back our right to walk this ancient downland site, granted in the CROW Act 2000.
Press articles:
http://www.oss.org.uk/protest-walk-highlights-unfair-bar-to-public-access-on-sussex-downs/
http://www.sussex-ramblers.org.uk/press.php?id=36
http://www.theecologist.org/how_to_make_a_difference/wildlife/542540/keeping_our_outdoor_spaces_open_to_all.html
The landowner, who owns and lives at a vineyard in the valley bottom, has attempted three different arguments to prevent the public enjoying their walkers’ rights on his land.
He objected to the slope’s new rights of public access:
- because he didn’t want the public enjoying this downland near to his home and business;
- because he wanted to protect his shooting rights over the ground;
- and because there was a tiny disused chalk quarry at one end of the site.
Though his appeal was rejected on the first two grounds, he won a restriction order excluding the public from all this site because the tiny quarry was deemed a hazard.
At present, Natural England[v] is colluding in the landowner’s hostility to access by renewing, in a modified form, a restriction order on the site.
“The most-fenced farm on the South Downs”
This landowner has failed to fence the quarry even though he has just spent £15,000 on re-fencing the entire access land site and fragmenting it into four barbed wire paddocks. Yet all that is needed is a mere 70 metres of fencing for this quarry to be made safe enough to satisfy Natural England’s requirements for the re-opening of the site.
And the local authority, Lewes District Council, has so far failed to take the action they are empowered to take under the Mines and Quarries Acts to fence the small chalk pit and thus enable the site to be re-opened[vi].
Our demonstration seeks to put pressure on the local Council, Natural England, and the landowner to give us back our right to walk this ancient downland site, granted in the CROW Act 2000.
Press articles:
http://www.oss.org.uk/protest-walk-highlights-unfair-bar-to-public-access-on-sussex-downs/ http://www.sussex-ramblers.org.uk/press.php?id=36 http://www.theecologist.org/how_to_make_a_difference/wildlife/542540/keeping_our_outdoor_spaces_open_to_all.html
Action for Access
e-mail:
action4access@gmail.com