‘These new people aren’t going to common and most wouldn’t even understand how to look after the land’

had a big passion for it as a child. You never know with the kids these days. With social media, the world has changed so much, but it’s still in the blood and from an early age, she’s wanted to be on a pony and help.”

THE THREAT TO COMMONING Commoners’ rights are tied to houses and land, but that is what is putting their lifestyle at risk. Wealthier people are now moving to the area and buying the land and property. In doing so, they take it away from commoners but have no intention of commoning themselves.

The average house price in the New Forest is more than £600,000, higher than in any other National Park. According to Rightmove, the average rent is over £1,600 a month. Many commoners see this as an existential threat.

Andrew Parry-Norton, chairman of the Commoners Defence Association (CDA) and a commoner himself, is one of them. “We’re facing money coming down from London, paying £42,000 to £45,000 an acre. That means properties of over a million pounds. These new people aren’t going to common and most wouldn’t even understand how to look after the land.

“For younger generations of commoners [ who inherit land and property], the temptation is there to take the money. Unless we can offer them a financially viable future, with properties they can afford, they’re not going to stay and do this.”

This isn’t a new problem: the CDA itself was set up in 1909 in response to people coming to the area wanting to buy land. “All the commoners got together as it was a collective problem,” he adds. “There’s nothing like a collective enemy to bring people together. It’s like a trade union to preserve commoning and their rights.

“It’s a constant battle, but it’s our livelihood and it creates what we see in the landscape of the forest right now.”

AN ACCIDENTAL COMMONER Dr Gale Pettifer is also a commoner, albeit inadvertently. When she bought her property in 2012, she didn’t realise it had common rights until she saw the deeds. She’s enjoyed it so much since that she’s completed a PhD on the politics of “inclosure” in the New Forest.

“This is a completely different way of interacting with livestock,” she says. “You can’t pet them, so I know my ponies, they don’t necessarily know me.

“Lots of my friends ask what’s the point, but it’s about the conservation of the New Forest and carrying on the tradition. I absolutely love it. It’s taken over my life.”

She agrees that commoning is facing challenges and it’s part of the reason she’s joined in. “It is hugely under threat from the encroachment of leisure and recreation. It was primarily a working landscape; now there’s more and more pressure to become profitable with more and more leisure activities. Housebuilding brings pressures, more cars, more speeding, more pony deaths.

“I realised there must be other properties like mine, and people buy them and don’t exercise these rights. If I don’t, that’s how these things get lost, the rights and the knowledge.”

Inevitably, house prices are part of the conversation. “If you’re on an average income, you’ve got no chance of buying anything in the Forest.” That is vital to the preservation of commoning, because the rights are linked to property and land: once you sell up or leave, you relinquish your rights.

“There are programmes such as the Commoners Dwelling Scheme, which allows genuine commoners the right to apply to build a home outside the New Forest and carry on commoning.

She adds: “If you want to save the forest, you have to save the commoners. If the commoners are under threat, so is the forest.”

As part of the next generation, it’s a very real fear for Gemma. She wants to set up on her own one day, but worries she won’t be able to. “That’s the goal, but it’s really impossible. The prices have gone up because of Covid and people having second homes.

“Younger generations are more involved as they’ve grown up, but the price of land and housing has become extortionate. It’s always been part of my life, it would be like a big chunk of me missing.”

Sally says the family could only afford their current property because of the Government’s Right to Buy scheme. “It’s growing increasingly frustrating for us. The bugbear is people from London and Cheshire buying these second homes which they barely use and using paddocks as glorified gardens.

“Bit by bit the forest has been eaten away. None of it would be here without the commoners.

“I haven’t got the money to buy these places and we can’t compete. Commoners are becoming a rare breed,

Chairman of the Commoners Defence Association like the ponies, because we’re being forced out of it.”

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The idea of a local tradition under threat from rising house prices isn’t unique to the New Forest. Young people in Cornish towns like Newlyn, St Mawes and Padstow are being priced out of their hometowns, putting older industries like fishing at serious risk.

It’s a familiar story: an influx of tourists leads to the purchase of seaside boltholes and money-spinning holiday lets, pricing the locals out and leaving age-old traditions on life support.

Tim Bonner, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, says rising property prices is one of the countryside’s biggest drivers in social change. “Incomers can have a positive impact on the local economy, but increased demand for rural housing has created an affordability crisis in some areas. This is not just about the increased cost of housing, but also rural wages, which remain stubbornly low. The result is that young people in particular cannot afford to live in the communities they were born and brought up in.”

Back in the New Forest, rising house prices may be both a past and present danger, but another ominously clouds the horizon of postBrexit Britain. In the EU, commoners were paid annually for every animal under the Basic Payment Scheme. It was around £200, but it has already been halved, and will keep falling until 2026 when it stops completely.

There are options for future funding, but not until 2028 – and it will still depend on a consensus between various groups with a stake in the forest. Even if a solution is found, there’s a two-year funding gap to survive.

Can commoning survive? Andrew is convinced it can and that it will. “Commoners are resilient and we will get through this. We turn a negative into a positive, like when they built the A31 through the middle of the forest. Now, if disease breaks out among the animals, you have a barrier between the two sides and we can contain it.”