A question of stile (part two): stiles and accessibility
In my last blog-post, I explored the idea of stiles as heritage features. Here, I want to focus on stiles and access to public rights of way, particularly in relation to physical access for disabled path users.
Symbols of access, sites of exclusion
A leaflet produced by the Chiltern Society in 1970 (below), indicates how stiles have been perceived as symbolic of hard-won rights: “Today, the country stile is more than a section of a field fence with a step in it. It is a symbol of a right of way for public access to the countryside”. However, stiles are not universally accessible structures.
The ‘Instant’ Stile leaflet produced by The Chiltern Society. Image used with kind permission from the The Museum of English Rural Life, University of Reading/Open Spaces Society (SR OSS ET3/45)
The main purpose of stiles is to allow people to pass through, whilst restricting the movement of livestock, but they also restrict the movement of some people. Stiles require physical effort and flexibility to negotiate, and can be confined spaces. This means many people may have problems using them, including disabled people, families with buggies or pushchairs, and, as I’ve experienced myself, path users carrying large rucksacks or bags.
In the previous blog, I described three broad categories of stile types (‘over’, ‘through’ and ‘moving’) and it’s clear that stile design influences accessibility. The ‘Instant’ stile in the Chiltern Society leaflet has no protruding step on either side, just narrow rails to step on and a hand-post which the author suggests “helps in doing away with a separate step”. For some people, this kind of simple step-over stile may be much harder to negotiate than a squeeze stile (where one passes through a narrow gap).
In this leaflet, and in much general discourse about footpaths (e.g. popular walking guides) stiles are often framed as unproblematic access structures. However, as Alison Kafer highlights, this assumes a pedestrian and ableist view of the bodies that are expected to use these structures and enjoy the landscapes they sit within. In this way, how material structures of paths and access are designed determines who is able to use them.
“Ableist assumptions about the body certainly influence the concrete realities of access, thereby affecting disabled and nondisabled people alike. ”
Miles without stiles
In response to these access challenges, groups such as the Disabled Ramblers have been campaigning since the 1990s for the removal of barriers to access for those with limited mobility; such as narrow gates and stiles. That stiles can be particularly challenging for disabled people (and other path users) is reflected in the adoption in 2016 of the ‘Miles without Stiles’ grading system by the UK’s national parks to badge accessible routes. This system grades routes as suitable for ‘all’, ‘many’ or ‘some’ based on physical characteristics such as path gradients and surfaces and, crucially, the absence of restrictive access structures such as stiles.
Image: Miles Without Stiles by Andrew (CC BY 2.0)
In recent years guidance in England has shifted to a principle of ‘least restrictive’ access practical and possible. For example, the Open Space Society’s (OSS) information sheet on Removing and Improving Path Paraphernalia, published in 2014, aimed to assist “those who share our goal of reducing unnecessary and undesirable structures from our public paths.” Recent advice for land managers on the Countryside Code from Natural England encourages the replacement of stiles with gaps or accessible (self-closing) gates where possible, and to align to the British Standard (BS5709) for gaps, gates and stiles, to open up more of the rights of way network for everyone to enjoy. Collectively, the guidance offers a hierarchy of accessible structures from open gaps, through two-way opening gates, to less accessible gates and, only in exceptional circumstances, stiles.
Stiles as sites of tension
The Chiltern Society leaflet (above) indicates that stiles – and rights of way generally – are sites of compromise and potential tension between the needs of land managers and members of the public exercising their rights to use footpaths and bridleways. Installing and maintaining stiles is described as a “headache” for land-owners and “costly in man-hours”, suggesting stile design has not just been about enabling public access but ease of construction.
As we saw in the previous blog, stiles can also be (sometimes overlooked) heritage features, so what happens when heritage value and access needs intersect? Andrew McCloy highlights this tension in a blog for Cicerone “Just as we try and keep our balance as we cross a stile, so we must make sure that we don't lose too many historic or noteworthy stiles in our laudable aim of improving access for all.” A slightly stronger reaction to this tension is reflected in two pieces published in The Times this year. One article (7 June 2022) describes stiles as “quaint relics of our rural heritage” at risk of extinction from “the stile police”. In another, the language is combative, describing the “battle” to save stiles, and pitting heritage and access against one another: “centuries-old pieces of rural heritage have been removed and destroyed by landowners in favour of wooden and metal gates to make access to footpaths easier for disabled people.” (The Times, 2 May 2022).
Moving on from tensions
Away from the hyperbole of these articles, discussions are more balanced. The OSS information sheet includes heritage value as one of the factors to be considered when making decisions about removing or improving access structures. They also provide a flow-chart to aid decision-making which balances the needs of different users and values. Where there is conflict between heritage and other needs, they advise taking the least restrictive option that meets both e.g., adding accessible gaps/gates that bypass the heritage structure completely and leave it as is.
This image of a preserved stone stile and an accessible gate from the Thames Path illustrates that heritage and access value are not mutually exclusive.
More
As this short blog suggests, the accessibility of path structures has tended to focus on physical mobility, rather less attention has been paid to enabling access to rights of way for people with intellectual or sensory disabilities, and there has been considerably less focus on other path paraphernalia such as signage.
Conceptually, positioning paths and their structures as heritage – as culturally (and physically) constructed landscape features – may open up opportunities for rethinking how we construct access to rights of way. In a practical sense, and following Kafer (2017, 222), recognising that paths and access structures like stiles are built interventions in landscapes we acknowledge the possibility for re-design and re-imagining, allowing us to “make room for a fuller range of bodies, including but not limited to disabled people.”
Keep an eye on our publications page for a forthcoming journal article from the In All Our Footsteps team that picks up on some of these issues around how policy has shaped the accessibility and material aspects of public rights of way in England.