FIELD FOOTPATHS.
pro THE EDITOR OF 7E2 " SPECTATOR." J
Sta,—The recent correspondence in your columns respecting the threatened footpath in Lakeland (happily now, thanks to the public spirit of a lady-landowner of the neighbourhood and also to the Press, no longer threatened) seems to justify a lawyer in calling attention to the apparently widespread ignorance as to the quarter on which the duty of safeguarding our public footpaths really rests.
In conversation on the subject the writer has frequently found, even amongst his professional brethren, a want of knowledge of the undoubted fact that every public foot-path, although across private enclosed land, is as certainly a public highway as the main road, and, therefore, is properly under the care and guardianship of the Highway Board of the district, or, in the case of an urban district, under the Local Government Board of Health.
It may be mentioned that in the urban district in the outskirts of Liverpool; to which the writer is officially attached, and in others also which adjoin it, this duty has been practically recognised by these Sanitary Boards erecting finger-posts at each end of every public field-footpath, lettered, "Public Footpath to. such a place." Perhaps the best service which the Footpath Defence Associations of London and the Country could render, would be to press upon the Sanitary Authorities of the districts to which they extend their labours this duty of guarding the public footpaths. Another most important function is that of taking steps to perpetuate testimony respecting such paths ; therights of the public never really expiring (time in their case, as in that of the Crown, not running against them), but being often lost through neglect to preserve the evidence of old inhabitants as to their existence.—I am, Sir, Sic., LAW CLERK.
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