Catalogue description Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Departments, and related bodies: Royal Commission on Common Land

A Royal Commission on Common Land was appointed on 1 December 1955 'to recommend what changes, if any, are desirable in the law relating to common land in order to promote the benefit of those holding manorial and common rights, the enjoyment of the public or, where at present little or no use is made of such land, its use for some other desirable purpose'. The commission, under the chairmanship of Sir Ivor Jennings, Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, met for the first time on 7th December 1955 and its report was presented in July 1958. The commission was eventually abolished at the end of 1963, and management of former commission lands was transferred to the Ministry's Land Tenure Divisions and to the Agriculture Land Service, being run by an Estate Management Committee.