It can be hard to get a group of people interested in this work because it is not for everyone. It is tempting to limit yourself to people who are already working on rights of way in your organisation, and you should certainly approach them, but you will often find that they are already too busy with their current work. You need to look further.
Here are some notes from Sussex. There are lots of other ways of doing things, but this is how we did it.
We started in mid-2015. This document summarises what we have learnt up to the beginning of October 2020
- If at all possible join an existing group in your area. This will usually be known to either the British Horse Society (access.mailbox@bhs.org.uk) or the Ramblers (DLYW@ramblers.zendesk.com). You can find areas where BHS contacts are active here
- Failing this you will need to start your own group. It is unlikely that you will find enough people from your own organisation. Obviously start there and target anyone who has applied for a DMMO before or who has attended a public enquiry. But also contact equestrian groups (who have a lot to gain), Ramblers local areas, other footpath groups, the Open Spaces Society, parish councils, historical societies, off road cycling groups, industrial archaeology societies, civic societies, in fact any group or individual who may have an interest in the outdoors, history or old records.
- 97% of the people you contact will have no interest at all. This does not matter. You are looking for a small group of people who are keen, rather than a lot of people who are indifferent. We started off with about 18 people and are now probably down to 10/12, including members of Sussex Ramblers, the Open Spaces Society, Mid Sussex Bridleways Group, The South Downs Society and The Trail Riders Federation. Try contacting your local branches of all of these sorts of organisations.
- Also try contacting local cycling groups, local history societies, civic societies and parish councils. Facebook groups around local history can also be good contacts
- There are three sets of skills required- organising a group, doing historical research and applying for a DMMO. It is unlikely that many people will have all of these, so you need to get people with varying skills.
- Get hold of Restoring the Record by Bucks and Wadey and if at all possible, attend one of their training courses (as many of you as possible) See training courses on the Restoring the Record web site. If there are none that suit consider asking any national organisation you are a member of to put one on and invite people.
- Try to learn from other groups who are carrying out work locally on the ground. There is a national forum for researchers at https://groups.io/g/2026 I suggest your join . Ask the group for any material that they have that may be useful to you, but be aware that it will have been developed for their needs and they are learning too.
- At the beginning the whole thing can feel completely impossible, especially if you have never done any historical research before. This is normal. Just make a start anywhere and it will become clearer, just as a jigsaw puzzle becomes clearer with each piece that is added. Below you will find some ideas for getting you up and running.
- Don’t forget that urban routes are at risk as well as rural ones and that routes at risk include many that are in daily use as well as those that have fallen out of use.
- You will need to make choices between two possible approaches. One approach starts by identifying potential routes (for example by using local knowledge) and then goes looking for documents that will support those routes. This is the approach traditionally used for individual DMMOs. A second approach looks at a particular area or areas and then tries to assemble as much evidence as possible covering that area in a library. This evidence is then examined to discover possible routes. The second approach has the advantage that you can save lots of time through division of labour. For example 3 people could photograph enough Inland Revenue maps at the national archive in a day to cover a good size area. This means that other team members do not have to make visits. Area sizes must be manageable. Do not commit to doing the whole county at once. You can always go back to other areas later. In reality you will need to combine your approaches. The interests and geographical location of your members will probably decide you. We started by deciding to come up with 50 possible routes by hook or by crook and then get research documents for these but quickly found that this led to a fragmented approach. Some members are therefore focussing on one or more areas and trying to accumulate documents covering these areas. These documents are used to discover possible routes which are then added to our list. But we still try to research documents covering the individual routes we have identified at the same time.
- In deciding which documents to start collecting first prioritise those documents that earn a lot of points in “Restoring the Record” and/or are fairly easy to get (for example because they are in an archive near you. These may include inland revenue valuation records, tithe maps, enclosure records and old maps.
- Getting to the National Archive in London for Inland Revenue and other records can be a real pain. Chase any national organisation involved with an office in London for help, or twist the arms of friends or relatives.
- It is a lot easier to work in areas that you know quite well.
- You will need to decide how to share the information you get and you will need to store your library on line. You would think that there would be a lot of support from national organisations to do this but there is not. There are a number of free services, such as google documents, One Drive and Dropbox, but they all have disadvantages. In time you will need a lot of storage (up to 150gb) so the ability to expand may be important. We started off with dropbox, which is user friendly, but once the free storage runs out the charges are horrendous. There is also the problem that, by default, dropbox downloads all documents to each user’s PC. This potentially breaches copyright and also will take up unacceptable amounts of space on the hard disk. We have no settled on pCloud.
- Your core group (or at least some of them) will need to make a longish term commitment. But once you are up and running you may be able to offer bite-size bits of work that people who are not prepared for this kind of commitment can undertake. We are just starting to try to define such jobs. Ideas are given below.
- Don’t waste time on old routes that would be of little use if they were opened up.
IDEAS TO GET YOU UP AND RUNNING
Getting started can be really intimidating. Here are some ideas of fairly easy ways to start.
- Pick an area you are interested in and know quite well. Look at the on-line version of the definitive map, which you should find on your highway authority’s web site. It is helpful to print the bit(s) you want off if you can. Now look at the on-line map of streets maintained by the same authority (sometimes called the list of streets even when it is a map). This map is likely to highlight the streets that are maintained or maintainable, whilst not highlighting those that are not. It is also helpful to print this out if you can. Compare the two. Make a list of any routes that are regularly used but are not highlighted on either the definitive map or the list of streets. Then delete any routes that you are SURE only came into being after 1949. You now have a potential list of at-risk routes to research.
- Get hold of a copy of the first edition of the Ordnance Survey 1” maps for an area that you are interested in. You can view these on line at the National Library of Scotland. Paper versions were, until recently, produced by Cassini. If you search the internet you may still be able to buy them. Compare these with a modern ordnance survey map. Note any routes that appear either as roads or as anything else on the older but are not shown as rights of way or roads on the modern map (if in doubt if something is a road, check with the list of streets. (You can use other old maps instead of, or as well as the 1” OS first edition) These routes can be investigated further.
- Visit an archive. Any one will do if it has at least some records that will be useful to you and is fairly convenient. If they have open or training sessions this will do but if not just go along with the idea of making photographs of particular records, or recording information in some other way. Have a look at the web site before you go to see if you need to register or if there is other useful information. You may find that you can’t do what you want the way you thought you would do it, or you may take photos and they don’t come out properly. Don’t worry about any of this. By the end of your visit you will begin to feel more confident and may start to enjoy the prospect of the detective work ahead.- and on examining any information that you have managed to get you may find that you already have some clues!
BITE SIZE BITS OF WORK
These are bits of work that you may be able to interest people outside the group in. There are some bite sized bits of work listed on page 14 onwards of Restoring the Record. Some of them are quite big bites. Here are some others.
- Jobs (A) and (B) are useful bite sized bits of work if you make the area small enough.
- Got a friend who likes to talk to people? Ask them to talk to older people in your area about routes they used to use that are no longer available. Make a note of these, with maps and grid references if possible
- Got a railway enthusiast acquaintance? They may be excited at the idea of poring over the deposited plans of their favourite line to discover railway crossings by paths, bridleways and roads. Railway modellers are always basing models on imaginary railways, so they may enjoy researching lines that were never built.
- Make a note of all the rights of way that stop for no apparent reason at a parish boundary or elsewhere, in any area that you chose.
Chris Smith
Sussex Don’t Lose Your Way Group
October 2020