The only time we hear about Pippa Middleton these days is when she’s being somewhat shady about her sister or when she’s pissing off her neighbors. In 2022, Pippa’s husband, Terribly Moderately Wealthy James Matthews, bought a 145-acre estate in Berkshire. Pippa and TMW James sold their place in London and they now live full-time in the country. Pippa has been trying to make the estate into a successful money-making business, but it hasn’t worked out at all. In fact, it looks like all of Pippa’s projects have turned the estate into a money pit which TMW James keeps financing. When Pippa isn’t building “glamping pods” on the property, she’s hosting noisy parties which annoy the f–k out of her neighbors. Meanwhile, Pippa and TMW James have been locked into a years-long dispute over a “common use” footpath located on their property. Pippa and James put locked gates on the footpath and they’ve forced hundreds of “ramblers” to use a dangerous walking path instead. Well, here’s an update:
The Princess of Wales’s sister has been accused of putting the public at risk by closing a road across her estate which locals claim has been used by generations of villagers. The entrance to Mill Lane on the Barton Court estate in Berkshire was sealed after it was bought by James Matthews, who is married to Pippa Middleton, 42.
Residents in the rural area say it provides a crucial link to a public footpath which runs across the estate from outlying areas to the village of Kintbury and St Mary’s Church, which dates back to the 12th century. Instead they are forced to use a narrow country lane without pavements. Some locals say the estate’s previous owner, Sir Terence Conran, the designer, never objected to the walkers or closed the gates at the end of the lane, which were covered with ivy at the time of his death aged 88 in 2000.
Matthews, 50, a hedge fund manager, paid £15.5 million for the 32-room Georgian mansion, which is set in 145 acres of countryside on the banks of the River Kennet, in 2022. Within weeks electric gates were installed about 70 meters from the eastern entrance to Mill Lane which prevented walkers reaching the footpath. Signs warned “No Trespassing” and “Private: No Public Access”. The gate at the entrance was then also closed. Matthews submitted a highway declaration notice in 2024, stating that Mill Lane was not accessible to the public.
West Berkshire council designated the lane as a public right of way after the Ramblers’ Association applied for a definitive map modification order, saying it had been freely used for more than 20 years. The estate is challenging the designation at a hearing before the Planning Inspectorate next month.
The Ramblers’ Association says the lane was “used to leave and return to Kintbury village by a safe and scenic route which avoided the need to walk along Station Road which has no footpath or verge to protect pedestrians”.
Eugene Futcher, the chairman of West Berkshire Ramblers, said: “We have accounts of people having unfettered public access in the Sixties and the use probably goes back generations with people from other villages walking to Kintbury. It is a safe way to get to and from the village, so walkers are put at risk if they have to use the road.”
Futcher said it was unclear why Matthews objected to walkers using the lane. “Presumably they wanted to deter walkers from using the public footpath to keep their privacy,” he said. “We have accounts from people who have used the lane for decades, some on hundreds of days a year. Sir Terence did nothing to discourage people from using the lane and kept the gate open. Feelings are running quite high in the village.”
Something I’ve learned over the years is that the UK does not have such hard-and-fast laws about private property as we have here in America. This would be an open-and-shut case in America – the Matthews family owns the property and they can close down the path on their property if they so choose. End of story. But British laws favor pedestrians and ramblers’ rights, especially for historical footpaths on what used to be common-use or semi-public land. I think the ramblers make a good case, actually – it’s not just about using a path which had historically been open to the public, it’s also a safety issue.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.
