For country landowners, the right to roam has become a duty to moan. Just when hunting pink is to be outlawed, cagoule red is being given the green light today, with armies of walkers now allowed to wander across “private” property.
Sartorial dangers aside, country-house dwellers fear that hikers will send property values plummeting: well, imagine you have just bought a stonking great pile, making you king of all you survey, then you peer up from your porridge to see Janet Street- Porter, rambler-in-chief, enjoying a good squiz through your kitchen window. How would you like it? About 4,000 square miles in England are eventually to be opened to the public, with no obligation to stick to footpaths. It is in the southeast — where, along with the northwest, right to roam comes into effect today — that there is the greatest consternation. Here, where estates are smaller and more intensively worked, landowners claim the Countryside and Rights of Way Act will turn them into unpaid theme park managers.
A prime example is around the Ashdown forest in East Sussex, which attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors a year.
“This is not the Peak District,” says Richard Morriss, 38, whose family owns the 500-acre Pippingford estate, bordering the forest, near Uckfield. “It would only need 20,000 people to walk round our lakes and it would be unmanageable.”
With the decline of agriculture, the Morriss family has concentrated on fishing and renting land to film companies. As well as petticoat dramas, the estate played host to Steven Spielberg’s 2001 television series Band of Brothers. “It’s a wonderful backdrop,” says Morriss. “But hundreds of coloured Gore-Tex-clad walkers could rather ruin it.”
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He points to a lake: “We had Suede filming a pop video with a naked girl there, and a shoot for a garage calendar with lots of models walking about without many clothes. Oh, and Rolls-Royce filming a new car in great secret. How can we do that with ramblers wandering through?” The family — which was last week appealing against right to roam by the lakes on its land — fears its fishing business will go down the Swanee. “The path carrying walkers will be feet from the fishermen,” says Morriss’s father, Alan. “They come here to get away from it all.”
Pippingford boasts 25 varieties of dragonflies and is a haven for wildlife, as hunting with dogs was banned in 1919 by Alan’s father. “It’s been my life’s work to keep it wild,” says Alan. Richard points to a herd of deer: “They come here as sanctuary. With dogs running off leads, where will they hide?” The family is particularly scathing of one letter from the Countryside Agency, the body in charge of designating the areas to be made open access. The agency admits that ramblers could harm fishing, but suggests that the Morrisses “educate” the public to tiptoe past. “So I asked if I could have a grant from the education authority,” Richard says with a grin.
“There was dead silence.”
Across the border in West Sussex, Robin Loder faced ruin when Leonardslee, his famous garden of rhododendrons, was to be forced open to the public. As charging entry to the gardens was his livelihood, he challenged the agency and won — although who should pay the “substantial” legal costs is still being disputed.
Philip Eddell, a rural consultant with Knight Frank, who advised Madonna when she won a partial victory following her appeal against the designation as open country of part of her estate on the Wiltshire-Dorset border, also warns of the effect on property prices.
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“I’m doing about 40 appeals on this,” he says. “It could reduce values by up to 35%. Right-to-roam land tends to be isolated and that’s its appeal.” Eddell claims that if a space is near a popular attraction, landowners “will have people all over the show, flying kites, playing football, picnics. The public can be on the land day or night”.
There is an element of protecting class privilege in all this. Yet it is hard to argue with Alan Morriss when he asks, “Wouldn’t it have been better to spend the fortune this has cost nationally on re-opening and renovating forgotten pathways?” Pippingford has just played host to a reality television show in which contestants tested their survival instincts by running blindfolded through woods. Judging by the squeals of the squirearchy, soon it might be the toffs who scream: “I’m a countryman, get me out of here.”
www.pippingford.co.uk
Additional reporting: Helen Davies