Gateway at back of All Saints' Churchyard to be blocked?

[admin]

Arthur Procter has taken the time to go and take a look at the gateway and it would appear that someone has created a little shelter/hidy-hole next to it. See photos. Thanks Arthur!

[tonyjones]

I have spoken to the administrator at All Saints' who has confirmed that it is a public right of way and that they think it is youths, vandals or such like who have been messing about with the bricks.

They are looking into it.

[Basementlife]

Health warning :Complete novice at the law.
 
However at the back of my mind I think I heard once that the long use of a footpath etc., can be used to establish a right of Way.

A quick web search produced the term 'easement'

quoting from http://www.boundary-problems.co.uk/maineasements.htm
"An easement is a right benefiting one piece of land (known as the dominant tenement) that permits the rightful users of that land to perform specified actions over an adjacent piece of land (known as the servient tenement). Probably the most commonly used easement is one that allows the underground services (water, drainage, gas, electricity, telephone and TV cables, etc) of one property to pass beneath the land of one or more neighbouring properties. Perhaps the most widely known easement is the private right of way. There are others, such as the right to light, right of support."
and
"An easement may also be created "by prescription". This happens when someone carries out an act (that is capable of being an easement) repeatedly, openly and without the (potentially servient) landowner's permission for a period of least twenty years. "

more information at
http://www.landreg.gov.uk/assets/library/documents/lrpg052.pdf

[admin]

I have received an enquiry from someone that suggests the gateway at the back of All Saints' Churchyard has been bricked up, subsequently removed (possibly by an enfuriated user of the gateway) but that the bricks are still stacked there and look like they are going to be put back again!

As the person suggests, this route has been a footpath since Oldknow's apprentices came up from Bottoms Mill in the 1790s and surely it can't be closed, loads of people use it every day.

Does anyone know anything about this?