Locals and charities are to urge an inquiry to stop the MoD from reviving the historical practice of enclosing common land

William Patterson should be out with his flock, separating the lambs from the ewes before letting loose the rams for tupping season. The farmer’s family has been rearing sheep “at least since the 1800s”, he says, and feel as much a part of the Cumbrian landscape as the becks that line the fells.

Instead, Patterson is gearing up for a fight against something even older than his family tree: enclosure. The taking of common land into private ownership is a controversial practice that has sparked rebellions and riots from Tudor times onwards and led to the creation of 19th-century conservation movements, including the National Trust.

Enclosures were thought to have been consigned to history books, but now the Ministry of Defence is attempting the first one since 1914. It has applied to “deregister” 4,500 hectares of common land near Warcop Training Area, close to the Patterson farm. A 1965 act of parliament ruled that all commons and village greens be listed on a register, and deregistration would, according to the Open Spaces Society, which opposes the plan, transfer ownership of the land to the MoD.

Quick guide What is enclosure? Show Hide What is enclosure Enclosure is a sort of privatisation, taking common land into private ownership, according to Dr Alan Crosby, a landscape historian. Common land was traditionally owned by the lord of the manor, but tenants could use it for grazing, growing crops, and gathering fuel. Between 1604 and 1914, more than 5,200 enclosure acts saw a fifth of England’s land, nearly three million hectares, taken into private ownership. It was prompted by a need for more intensive farming as the population increased, but many peasant farmers were left destitute and had to move to cities to find work. Some historians say enclosure created a working class of landless people who needed jobs to survive. Photograph: Roger Lombard

The common land comprises three fells, Murton, Hilton and Warcop, near Appleby-in-Westmorland, and amounts to 1% of all extant common land in England. The land lies within the North Pennines area of outstanding natural beauty on the route of the Pennine Way.

Immediately to the south is the 10,000-hectare Warcop Training Area, where about 5,000 soldiers, mostly from Catterick garrison in North Yorkshire, conduct live fire exercises with rifles and mortars.

Patterson said: “I often find old tank shells up there. It’s what they call a ricochet area.”

In 2002, the army decided to expand its training area and took out compulsory purchase orders for the grazing rights of 70 farmers on the three fells. That gave the MoD control of when it could use the land for exercises. Patterson was one of those who lost the right to graze his sheep. “We had about 1,000 head of sheep, out of about 8,000, grazing there. Now there are about 800.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An MoD warning sign, with the disputed fells in the background. Photograph: Alamy

The MoD sells farmers grazing licences at about £2.40 a head for both the three fells and the shell-scarred mock battlefields of its training area. The farmers have to wait for days when the red flags warning of live fire training are not up – now just 32 days a year, including a week at Christmas.

“They want us to graze our sheep there for land management: the grass gets too long otherwise,” Patterson said. “But there’s not enough grass on the fells now. There’s quite a bit of bracken, and a few short shrubby things growing. It’s got very peaty, very wet too.”

On 13 September, MoD barristers will line up against the Open Spaces Society, the Foundation for Common Land, the Cumbria Federation of Commons, the Friends of the Lake District and the Hilton Commoners, of which Patterson is chairman, at a two-day public inquiry in Kendal.

“I personally think it’s a wicked waste of public money. You know how much barristers cost. I just don’t know what they’ve got to gain from it. We all work in harmony with each other. They say they aren’t going to change anything, but if they own it, they can do what they like.”

Villagers in Murton and Hilton, at the foot of the fells, are worried that they might find the gates padlocked. There is also a sense that the MoD has reneged on its promise in 2002 to buy the grazing rights on the understanding that the fells would remain on the common land register.

“A broken promise is a broken promise,” Patterson said. “It stinks.”

It is not clear why the MoD is taking the extraordinary step of reviving enclosure, says Hugh Craddock of the Open Spaces Society. Formerly called the Commons Preservation Society, the group was founded in 1865 by John Stuart Mill and others to protect places such as Epping Forest and Berkhamsted Common.

The MoD appears to fear that the later Commons Act of 2006, could allow the creation of a “commons council” that could restrict the army’s ability to train at Warcop. But, Craddock says, only the national government could create such a body. “It is a pointless exercise, and extremely expensive for the public and hard-pressed charities,” he said. “It angers local people and national organisations, and will achieve nothing.”

An MoD spokesman said: “We are not proposing to restrict public access in any way and have no plans to sell the land. We have applied to deregister land at Warcop Training Area to safeguard the MoD’s ability to train.” The ministry also said that if the land was ever sold, a limited number of common land rights would be created.