Trinity exercises grazing rights

30 June 2010

Trinity staff and students, as well as children from the Trinity College Day Nursery, gathered on the Bristol Downs yesterday for an unusual but important local event: exercising grazing rights on common land.

Stoke House (1669), now occupied by Trinity, is one of the 19 large houses near the Downs which were given the right, by an 1861 Act of Parliament, to be Commoners of Durdham Downs. This includes the right to graze sheep on the Downs; Trinity has the right to graze 600 of the 1,000 permitted sheep.

In order to maintain this right, and to ensure that the Downs stay as common land, unavailable for development, sheep must be grazed there at least once every 10 years. Eight sheep in a pen were provided for the occasion by the School of Veterinary Science of the University of Bristol; the University is one of the Commoners.

We at Trinity exercised our rights by erecting a gazebo on Durdham Downs next to the sheep (in the photo above) and enjoying a picnic provided by our catering manager Henry Bromberg and the kitchen team, who came to share in the event. Several local schools which also have grazing rights brought along gropups of children dressed as shepherds and sheep.