In All Our Footsteps
Tracking, Mapping and Experiencing Rights of Way in Post-War Britain
In All Our Footsteps is a cross-disciplinary project deploying historical, health and policy perspectives to the mapping, development, use and experience of twentieth and twenty-first century rights of way.
Funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, we are exploring the ways in which local government, civil society and the third sector were asked to record and establish the public ways network in England and Wales following the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949.
We are also considering the importance of an accessible and inclusive rights of way network in relation to access to nature and activities integral to human health and wellbeing, both in the past and the present.
In September 2026 our Principal Investigator, Glen O’Hara, gave a Royal Historical Society public lecture on these themes, and you can watch or listen to it here.