Grove, Richard. 2000. "Some Documents relating to the Presentation of 'Fighting for the Fakenham Commons: The Commons Preservation Society and the Last Rural Rebellion in England 1868-1870'." Presented at "Constituting the Commons: Crafting Sustainable Commons in the New Millenium", the Eighth Conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property, Bloomington, Indiana, USA, May 31-June 4.

Abstract

"The fight for the Fakenham Commons in Norfolk England started as a local violent series of actions by townspeople and commoners to prevent their ancient rights being obliterated by the Inclosure Commission. Over a period of weeks in the summer of 1869 the commoners broke down fences set fire to barns and burnt the houses and crops of inclosing landlords. Stanley Flaxman, an early socialist schoolteacher managed to interest the newly founded Common Preservation Society (which had fought to protect the London Commons) in the case. This marked their first extra urban interests and was followed by their succesful fight to save the commons of the Malvern Hills from quarrying. Hundreds of the Fakenham Commoners were arrested and the army was brought in. The CPS fought the legal cases of the accused and legally re-established the Fakenham Common rights. To this day the remarkable Fakenham Commons survive. The paper surveys the story and its consequences. To date little research has been done on this case or indeed on the history of the CPS, the first environmental pressure group in England founded in 1865 and whose committee included Octavia Hill, John Stuart Mill and Thomas Henry Huxley."