page_title: Hearsall Common
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Hearsall Common / History
caption_attribution_description: Photo of the woooded part of Hearsall Common, Coventry, England.
context_page_description: Hearsall Common is located in Earlsdon, Coventry in the West Midlands, central England.
  The common consists of a large grassy area with a smaller partly tarmacadamed area on one side of Hearsall Common Road, and a wooded nature reserve on the other side. It is free to enter and open to the public as of right, 24 hrs a day; however, after several years of residents complaining about itinerant or nomadic travellers using the common, an embankment was built alongside the roads to prevent vehicles from driving onto the common. The common has for a long time been host to circus and fairs. Previously it hosted the 'crock fair'.
  Hearsall Common has a long history of being common land going back to at least the thirteenth century. It was reassigned as recreation ground by a Coventry Corporation Act of 1927, along with other areas of common land in Coventry.
context_section_description: The first detailed survey of the common land and waste ground in and around Coventry was made in 1423.  These areas have been important for centuries as common land for grazing animals. In the 18th century, when Coventry was much smaller than it is now,  the eastern areas of Hearsall Common fell within Coventry's boundaries, while the western areas extended far beyond them.
  Hearsall Common,together with Coventry's other commons, Sowe, Whitley, Barras Heath and Radford, surrounded the city and constricted its growth. The City was the third or fourth most important city in the country during the medieval period, behind London, York and, arguably, Norwich, but the jealously guarded Freeman's rights to graze animals on the commons prevented the city from expanding into these areas and growing. This tight constraint on growth is thought to be the reason why Birmingham, which was just a village until the 17th century, became the large metropolis that is now with a population three times greater than that of Coventry.
  The Coventry Corporation Act of 1927 reassigned Whitley Common, Hearsall Common, Barras Heath, and Radford Common as recreation grounds, and ended all the remaining traditional commoning rights on waste ground in Coventry, and the "freemen" of the city, who had been allowed to have up to three animals grazing on these areas since 1833, received an annual sum of £100 as compensation.
  Twenty one acres of the common had been developed as sports pitches by 1954.
caption: Wooded area in the nature reserve
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