The peasants of Exmoor were revolting, and so were the Dartmoor commoners. It’s 1217 and people trying to scratch a living in the Royal Hunting Forests were destitute, and couldn’t pay their taxes to the new Norman barons. In a huge legal change they finally got our rights recognised in the Charter of the Forest. Magna Carta just protected the Norman barons from being taxed and imprisoned, but this extra 800 year old law recognised that people living on Exmoor needed to feed and shelter themselves, their families, and their livestock. And today it may just make your electricity bill illegal. You might think of this law as a sort of Universal Basic Income, or a pension for life. By knowing more about our lost rights we can protect our common assets such as ancient woodlands, and make sure that young people can explore more sustainable ways of living. The rural skills we have lost are also interesting in their own right, as pannage, estovers, agistment and other archaic practices from the days before plastic. Join science & environment journalist Myc Riggulsford for a mixture of performance, Exmoor history, smallholding skills, and some fun sedition.
Myc Riggulsford is a science & environment journalist, specialising in climate change, renewable energy, biodiversity, soils, GM crops, ancient woodland and other issues, and has become increasingly concerned about land rights, the loss of our Commons, and the new field of Natural Capital (formerly called Ecosystem Services) which are the resources we get, apparently for free and forever from the world around us such as clean air, clean water and soils to grow our food. He is also a smallholder who has kept Exmoor Horn sheep and farmed organically in North Devon for 26 years, with an interest and practice in traditional rural crafts such as coppicing and hedgelaying. For the last 12 years he was the Independent Person for the Standards Committee of Exmoor National Park.
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