The British Newspaper archive is a subscription service, but the sub is worth paying out for
The archive has an excellent record of local newspapers right across the country, but unfortunately the search facility uses optical character recognition which is a very hit and miss way of finding material, so the search is by no means complete.
But older papers often carried details of council and highway board meetings (including parish meetings) in surprising depth, as well as quarter sessions orders and inclosures. There were also reports by Rambling Groups.
You can limit your searches to a particular county or parish. For example you can search for “Boxgrove + footpath. You can search a particular publication. It is also possible to search by period.
Productive search items include
the phrase “divert, and turn” will get you all the notices of quarter sessions highway diversions that the system can recognise since this term is used in all such notices.
bridleway
bridle road or bridle-road
footpath dispute
stopping up
diversion
right of way
quarter session
inclosure
enclosure
You can also search by the name of the route if you know it.
If your search has more than one word use advanced search and select “use exact phrase”
Searching for “footpath” is likely to throw up a whole load of reports, including reports about pavements, so this is not a good search unless you are specifying a very small area such as a parish.