Odger's English Common Law

14
PUBLIC RIGHTS.
unbaptised or excommunicate. He is entitled to be buried
in consecrated ground, whether he was a member of the
Church of England, a Eoman Catholic, or a Dissenter. And
whether he is a parishioner or not, he is entitled to be buried
in the churchyard of the parish in which he died, if there be
room there. If a parishioner of one parish die in another, he
may be brought back to his own parish, if his relatives wish
it, and buried there in the churchyard of his own parish church.
There are, however, some rights which the public are
popularly supposed to possess, but which are unknown to the
law. The public have no right to walk anywhere they please
over a common. 1
There may be a public right of way across
a common along a denned track ; but if so, the public have
no right to stray out of the way over the common. The
common is the property of the lord of the manor subject to
the rights of the commoners, and may by consent of all these
persons be enclosed, except the track along which runs the
public right of way.
The foreshore of the sea or of a tidal river is that portion
of the sea-beach or bed of the river which lies between high
and low water mark. It is prima facie the property of the
Crown, but it may be the property of a private individual, if
he can prove either a grant from the Crown or an ancient or
modern user from which a grant can be inferred. In either
case the foreshore is not a highway and the public have no
right to walk over it, except in order to get to the sea for the
purpose of navigation or of fishing. No member of the public
has a right to walk over the foreshore for amusement or in
order to get to the sea for the purpose of bathing. If he
does so, he is technically a trespasser. 2 " The sands on the
seashore are not to be regarded as, in the full sense of the
word, a highway. . . . The plaintiffs have, therefore,
prima facie a right to treat every bather, every nursemaid
with a perambulator, every boy riding a donkey and every
1 See the remarks of Farwell, J., in Att.-Gen. v. Antrolus, [1905] 2 Ch. at p. 198.
2 Blundell v. Catterall (1821), 5 B. & Aid. 268 ; Brinkman v. Matley, [1904] 2
Ch, 313.
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