The apple trees of Whitchurch common …and the ‘generosity’ of the Lords Bute

Ken Moon

Unlike many places that we still think of as ‘commons’, Whitchurch common is still a registered common. But there are no common rights of access, and there is no commoner’s association to manage it.

Whitchurch Common is managed in trust by the local authority, for public benefit, for the purposes of leisure and recreation. I can sit on it and read a book, or I can stand and admire the apple blossoms. My Dad disputes that these are apple trees, but we can freely dispute this between us without committing an act of aggravated trespass.

But I cannot legally access resources from the common as our ancestors once could.

And the reasons for this are history that we are rarely taught. A history which is available to us if only we know where to look. The history of land access & land ownership.

Gwaun Treoda

According to the Cardiff Parks page Whitchurch common was acquired by Lord Bute as part of the Lordship of Caerdydd and ‘was originally known as Gwaun Treoda (Treoda Common)’. Hence local place names such as Treoda Road, where I used to deliver newspapers in my younger, more innocent, days.

But how did the Lord Bute come to acquire exclusive rights over this common land?

Gwaun Treoda was part of what was once a much more extensive area of common land. It extended from today’s Whitchurch library, up and through the village, along the Philog, across the A470, into Birchgrove and on up to the lesser & greater Heaths.

Today’s Heath Park is another remnant of this common that was later generously ‘gifted’ by the Lord Bute to the people of Cardiff.

Whilst Gwaun Treoda itself was never physically ‘enclosed’ one of the Lords Bute, I forget which, evicted those commoners who were living upon the lesser & greater Heaths as illegal squatters’.

A term reminiscent today of ‘illegal immigrants’. These commoners had claimed squatters’ rights through the ancient Welsh custom of Tŷ unnos.

But this custom was not recognised under English law, and ever since the Acts of Union, English laws prevailed across the whole of Cymru.

Enforced privatisation

The Butes, and their estate managers and lawyers’, then set about parcelling up and selling off this land for commercial purposes, an enforced privatisation of the commons which separated people from the land they depended on for their subsistence and livelihoods, for their sustainability.

Capitalist appropriation then underscores how much of today’s Cardiff came to be built, and the Bute family is often credited as having ‘built Cardiff’.

But the Butes, as the Lords of Glamorgan, didn’t ‘build’ Cardiff. They acquired lordship over it, and they gradually set about claiming exclusive ownership rights over as much of it as they could.

In short, the Butes stole Cardiff from the commoners. And they weren’t the only ones.

They simply finished doing what the Normans, and those who followed them had started.

And then, having extracted all the wealth that they could from it, they generously ‘gifted’ all the bits they didn’t need any more to the city corporation to look after.

Green spaces

They’re the parks and green spaces we’ve been left to enjoy today, so I hope that you are suitably grateful. The trouble is, as food prices start to rise, and more and more of us start looking to the land in and around the places where we live to meet the needs of our communities, we’re slowly starting to appreciate just what we’ve had taken from us.

As far as I know Coed Cardiff planted the apple trees.

And it is good to see what remains of the common gradually being reclaimed by the common folk who will soon be able to access at least one resource from Gwuan Treoda once again.

This gradual reclamation of common land is part of a wider blossoming of communities reclaiming access to the commons across Cymru. This is our Spring.