Common Land: Overview In general terms, common land is land
owned by one person over which another person is entitled to
exercise rights of common (such as grazing animals or cutting
bracken for livestock bedding), and these rights are generally
exercisable in common with others. However, in legal terms, the
situation is inevitably more complex. There is no single
definition of the term 'common land', or indeed of 'common' or
'common rights'. Perhaps the most transparent approach today is
to consider common land to be all the land which was registered
under the Commons Registration Act 1965 and which is shown as
such in the registers held by the commons registration
authorities. However, this definition is seldom adopted in any
legislation (an exception is liability for livestock on highways
crossing common land in the Animals Act 1971). Furthermore, some
common land was exempted from registration under the Act, and so
is not registered as such, even though it is widely recognised
as common land today. Last u