A revolutionary piece of legislation that secured public access to shared land is being honoured on its 150th anniversary.

The 1876 Commons Act, which effectively halted parliamentary enclosures of common land throughout England and Wales, is being marked by the Open Spaces Society, previously known as the Commons Preservation Society, an organisation involved in seeing the law through parliament.

Kate Ashbrook, the Open Spaces Society’s general secretary, stated that the 1876 Commons Act brought about substantial improvements for commons, which serve as valuable community spaces but had faced persistent pressure from enclosure campaigns.

She observed that this legislation represented a crucial milestone in acknowledging the importance of commons to everyone, and later laws have continued to build on this foundation.

The Act established nationwide oversight of common land for the benefit of the public, enabling the appointment of guardians and the establishment of local regulations.

It also reduced the pace of common land enclosures to a trickle, which ultimately came to an end in the early twentieth century, and classified unauthorised appropriation or fencing off of a town or village green as a public nuisance.