The background to this story is that when I was young, my parents lived in a small feudal village in south west England, which was effectively owned by the Lady of the Manor.
Not only did she own all the buildings in the village, which were rented by the occupants from the estate office, but exercised veto rights in respect of the incumbents of the church, the school and the pub. When I first went to Sweden to stay with Peder Gowenius (of Odi Weavers fame), I startlingly discovered that a very similar situation existed in Gardsby, outside Växjö, where Peder’s mother also exercised such proprietal rights. The principal difference between the two, as far as I could understand, was that the additional rights at Gardsby pertained to the forest whereas at Axmouth, they pertained to the river. As indicated by the newspaper clipping taken from the national newspaper, the Daily Mail, the Lady of the Manor in the village of Axmouth not only had all the rights in the village but also controlled the riverís fishing rights. In perhaps the later 1950s/early 60s (I am still to pin down the date) four fishermen from the nearby small town of Seaton decided that they were no longer prepared to put up with this feudal nonsense.
