Pat Wilson was a stalwart campaigner for people’s rights to use our network of public footpaths and rights of way. She was for many years the Ramblers’ Association representative in North-West Kent. As Local Correspondent, and later Vice President, of the Open Spaces Society (the oldest conservation society in the country), she also campaigned for the preservation of public open spaces. She founded local walking groups which merged to become the Meopham and District Footpaths Group; she later became their President for life.
Her interest in public footpaths began back in the 1950s, when she took her young children, and visiting friends, for walks in the local countryside. Her campaigning spirit was sparked when a landowner near her home in Priestwood, Harvel blocked a local footpath with a barricade which included barbed wire, chains, and sheets of corrugated iron. She spent a year tracking down witnesses who had used the path over decades and lifetimes, and discovered that the path was shown on the 1952 definitive map. Armed with this evidence, she confronted Kent County Council with the help of a local MP. Their case was successful and the obstruction had to be removed. It took a year for the farmer to comply, but finally the footpath was open again for walkers.
Wilson discovered that around half of the registered public footpaths (about 40 of 80) in the Meopham area were impassable and needed to be cleared. She believed that the main way to keep public paths open was to walk them, and this led to her forming three local walking groups in 1962, in Harvel, Culverstone and Meopham. In 1964, these groups merged to become the Meopham and District Footpaths Group. From this point she began to expand her efforts. She was at one time a Parish Councillor, campaigning for the opening of obstructed paths, fighting diversions and closures, and attempting to create better access to, and more enjoyment of, the network of paths in the Parish. Early on, under Wilson’s guidance, the Group submitted evidence to the report commissioned by the government’s Gosling Committee, which contributed to the formulation of the Countryside Act which became law in 1968.
She worked relentlessly to ensure that rural footpaths, urban alleyways, and open spaces everywhere were protected and kept open for people to walk freely and enjoy. One of her great achievements was her involvement in the campaign to stop the Ministry of Defence turning more than 600 acres of protected countryside in Luddesdown into a mine-laying, infantry-training and weapons-firing area. She was a leading light of the Luddesdown Action Group in their endeavours to save this beautiful valley. After hearings and appeals, the application by the military was finally rejected – another battle successfully won.
Wilson was well known in and beyond Kent for her tireless work for the preservation of footpaths and open spaces; indeed her name is closely linked to legal cases which have clarified path law in the public interest. These concerned path changes considered by the magistrates’ court. As a result, magistrates were and are required to apply certain tests relating to the public interest when determining path closures or diversions.
Wilson was courageous in confronting landowners who broke the law on public rights of way and open spaces, and in holding authorities to account. She appeared, and supported others to appear, at countless public enquiries in the struggle to defend and protect the rights we all have to walk our footpaths and access our open spaces. Protecting our Green Belt from undesirable development has been part of her legacy.
Memorials to Wilson have been placed in Luddesdown, overlooking the valley she helped to save; a kissing gate has been inscribed in her memory on a Meopham footpath, and a plaque has been erected at “Scratch Arse Corner”, the site of her original battle for footpath 38 (now NS 232).
Pat Wilson was a force to be reckoned with when it came to public footpaths, rights of way, urban alleyways and open spaces. After her death, Alan Smith, a member of Meopham and District Footpaths Group, was inspired to write the following poem:
Pat Wilson (1917 – 2014)
“The law doth punish man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common,
But sets the greater rascal loose,
Who steals the common from the goose”
(Anon c. 1820)
But there are those who rise and say,
”Such rascals shall not win the day,
No barbed wire strand shall e’er enthral
The public path, that’s there for all.
None shall the village green enclose.
None shall on common land impose
Some lawless fence or parking site
And if they try, they’ve got a fight”
Nor are these merely words in vain
For actions, follow in their train.
With secateurs they clear the track,
And wire and brambles they cut back.
When hope seemed lost in darkest night
Pat shone our like a beacon light.
And even now life’s course is run
She still inspires us, everyone.
Alan Smith 2.6.2014
By Gillian Willsher, a U3A Shared Learning Project researcher for the Citizens Project
