Never any sign at all: Cheyne Road

Before the signs went up in the mid-1980s,  we know that Avon County Council had a policy of ‘tacitly accepting’ informal recreational use of its playing fields. Whether the signs were an indication that the policy had changed, or were intended to do something different, is a live issue (see our earlier post here), but even if you think the signs communicated a clear message prohibiting use (which apparently is not how anyone ever understood them), you have to wrestle with the issue that there were signs at only two out of many access points to Stoke Lodge.

One of those entrances – the main one at the bottom end of the field – is at the end of Cheyne Road, and this features quite prominently in our evidence. The Council’s witnesses in TVG1 gave evidence that groundskeepers had from time to time used cuttings or fallen branches to restrict access at this point, and had been told to clear them away. One blockage seems to have lasted longer – this press cutting is from early January 1990:

The important point here is that Avon County Council went on record with a public statement, reported in the local press, that there were concerns about motorcycles accessing the field at the Cheyne Road entrance so it was planning to install a kissing gate. The gate was never actually installed, but clearly there was no concern about pedestrian access and use of the playing fields via the main entrance at the lower end of the field. And since there is no internal division in the whole 26 acres, access from Cheyne Road is access to the whole field. The signs were already up at the West Dene entrance and in the car park by this time – but from January 1990 if not before, Avon County Council was not sending any clear message that it objected to informal use (so the Winterburn test isn’t met).

There were other incidents, too: in the early 1990s a large branch fell off the veteran oak tree at the Cheyne Road entrance. The TVG1 public inquiry heard evidence that a groundskeeper had used a vehicle to push it so that it blocked the entrance – and was told by his boss to move it back into the field so that the public could still access the land (although it was left in a position that would make access for motorcycles difficult). It’s still there today.

This entrance is by any measure one of the main access points onto Stoke Lodge, and we can even show you how it looked all the way back in May 1992: this video clip shows a well-worn pathway onto the field from the end of Cheyne Road three decades ago. Think how many thousands of people have used this entrance to get onto the Lodge since then, never seeing any sign because there was never any sign to see.