BLACK MILL – Beverley Westwood exists because it was never enclosed. While common land elsewhere was fenced, sold or built on, this stretch of ground remained open, grazed and shared. That history still shapes how it feels to be there.
For centuries, the Westwood was working land. Grazing rights mattered because they were useful. They gave ordinary townspeople a degree of independence. Across England, those rights were steadily removed through enclosure. Shared land became private. Access narrowed. The relationship between people and place changed.
Beverley resisted that shift. Not by accident, and not without conflict.
In the eighteenth century, proposals were brought forward to enclose parts of the Westwood, as happened elsewhere. They promised order and improvement. What they threatened, however, was the loss of long-established grazing rights held by the town’s freemen. Those rights were challenged, defended and ultimately preserved. The land remained open not because it was picturesque, but because people insisted it was theirs to use.
That decision still shows.
Walk across the Westwood and there is no sense of instruction. No preferred route. No clear centre. People spread out. Dogs roam further. Children run in directions that would be discouraged elsewhere. Nobody appears to be managing the space, and that changes how people behave.
The cattle underline the point. They are not decorative. They are there because grazing rights still exist. You adjust your movement around them. You pay attention. The land does not arrange itself for convenience.
This is what separates the Westwood from a park. Parks are designed spaces. They guide behaviour through paths, benches and boundaries. The Westwood does not. It assumes negotiation rather than compliance.
Its edges reinforce that character. Houses press close. The racecourse cuts across it. The Minster rises beyond the grass. No single use dominates. The space never resolves into one purpose. It remains slightly awkward, and that awkwardness is essential.
Today, the Westwood is used more for leisure than work. But the habits formed by centuries of shared use remain. It still feels closer to a right than a service. You do not enter it as a customer.
That is why it continues to matter. In a time when public space is increasingly managed and conditional, the Westwood quietly insists on something older and more demanding: shared ground, mutual tolerance, and freedom exercised in common rather than granted from above.
Image credit: https://www.visiteastyorkshire.co.uk/