I locked my bike by the pond on the village green. It was a quiet morning and nobody was about. Village greens conjure peaceful imag- es of cricket matches, community celebrations and maypole dances. But historically, village greens were about more than recreation. Since the Middle Ages they have been an area of common grassland for the use of everyone, often with a pond where fish were reared, cartwheels soaked to prevent them shrinking, clothes washed, cattle watered, and dishonest traders punished on ducking stools as social humiliation.

Completing today’s bucolic scene was an old flint-and-brick oast house. Buildings like these were once used to dry hops for brewing beer, so the distinctive conical shape is common in hop-growing areas. I set off along a narrow lane beneath an archway of hedges and trees. A notice pinned to a fence said ‘Do not feed horses no carrot or apple.’ Horses’ hooves had chewed the earth to sloppy mud, so I picked my way carefully down the edge.

A red sign declaring ‘PRIVATE GROUNDS’ was nailed to an old

Pigs

beech tree on the edge of a copse. ‘NO THRU ACCESS’ read another. ‘PRIAVATE [sic]. NO PARKING. RESIDENTS ONLY’ warned a third. Even where there were footpaths, it felt as though they’d been allowed only grudgingly, with fences and cautionary signs keeping me strictly on the narrowest strip of land it was possible to walk on. It was a cheerless affair, a mean-spirited granting of minimal space. At one point the path became a claustrophobic tunnel between high fence panels that was barely wide enough for my shoulders.