Help fight takeover of your legal rights

A few days before Christmas we, and I assume others in the immediate area around the Rec, received a letter from well known firm of Bath solicitors acting on behalf of Bath Rugby stating the veiled threat that their clients consider that the 1922 Covenant regarding the land on the recreation ground to be “unenforceable”. As this letter seems to have only come to just a few households near the Rec, I can only think that they wish to be selective regarding all the other “Citizens of Bath”. There is no sense in listing all their reasons and our counter reasons at this stage but unless all people in Bath understand the threatening nature of such a letter and come out fighting for their rights under the 1922 Covenant, and due to the fact that when the City of Bath Corporation purchased the Rec in February 1956, section 13, (then subsequently taken over by BANES) and confirmed in the High Court in 2002, it is also explicit in the 1956 conveyance, that these rights also consist of the following: (the Second schedule “restrictions conditions and stipulations”) The Corporation shall not use the property herby conveyed otherwise than an open space. Shall not show any undue preference to or in favour of any particular game or sport or any particular person, club, body or organisation Not take over approx 60 per cent of the Rec with a tin wall 60 ft odd high, looking like an upturned sardine can, desecrating the centre of Bath and the view from the surrounding hills. If we go back to the original covenant in 1922 it seems to me in certain sections of the conveyance and covenants the clear intentions of Captain Forrester, he simply wanted to benefit the whole area round Bath and the Bathwick estate, certainly not tie up future generations with a legal duty to repeatedly every few years to have to fight a billionaires “PLC business” which was specifically excluded in this Covenant. I would hope that this letter will wake up all Bathonians to this implied threat and join the group called “Friends of the Rec” via email and help fight this takeover of your legal rights. Eric Newbigin Bath