Victory in 58-year right of way battle comes too late for family
A ROW over a footpath that began 58 years ago has finally ended – six years after the deaths of the brother and sister who started it.
Archie and Ivy Peppard, who had insisted that a muddy track outside their house in High Ham, Somerset, was not a public footpath, were right all along, a government inspector has ruled.
The Peppard family first built a property on the site in 1840, but the row began in 1959 when the track that passed their farm was classified as a public footpath under a law brought in a decade earlier.
The pair had earlier put up signs making clear that the path was private property but were unaware of the decision until 1973 when the first ramblers started appearing outside their home, prompting Mr Peppard to challenge anyone who walked along the track.
But a legal loophole in the 1949 law meant there was no way to challenge the path’s classification until the law was changed again in 1981.
The brother and sister then launched three appeals between 1987 and 2009, all of which were rejected by the council.
Marlene Masters, now 80, a local campaigner, began helping them with their case in 1994, and put together the second two appeals. She described Mr Peppard as “a true British bulldog”.
“He would not accept something that was not right,” she said.
The siblings died in 2011 – but Mrs Masters fought on, now representing Ivy’s son Rodney, 56. She appealed to the Secretary of State, who also refused the appeal, leading to a judicial review – which was won in 2012.
Two objections were logged, delaying the process, but now Alan Beckett, a Defra inspector, has finally ruled that there is “no public right of way” along the path.
Mrs Masters won the case with the help of a 200-year-old map that showed there was no road on the site of the track in 1799 – suggesting it had later been created by the Peppards when they built their property there.
Another map dating from 1885, which she found in the National Archives, recorded the route as an accommodation road, which is not a public highway. Mrs Masters said she had been “swamped with congratulations” following the end of her 23-year fight.
Somerset County Council said: “The order to delete the public footpath from the definitive map and statement has now been confirmed by the Secretary of State, and we will be publishing formal notice of this in the local press shortly. We will be updating our records to show the route is no longer a right of way. Ordnance Survey will also be informed of the change.”