DARTMOOR SEALED OFF TO CAMPERS IT WOULD SEEM?

 The landowner trying to overturn the right to wild camp

Not a great deal is known about Alexander Frederick Clifford Darwall, who challenged the right to wild camp on Dartmoor without a landowner's permission. A veteran City fund manager, Darwall owns Devon Equity Management, which has made £8m in profit since 2020. The 59-year-old boasts the purpose of the fund, which has a sub-fund in Luxembourg, is “unashamedly” to make money. The company’s four directors, including Darwall, received a total remuneration package worth £2.4m last year.

Away from the financial world, Darwall and his wife, Diana, own two country estates. Alexander purportedly fulfilled his yearning to return to Dartmoor, where he grew up, when he moved into the 4,000-acre Blachford estate in 2011. The estate offers pheasant shoots and deer stalking. The couple also own the almost 16,000-acre Sutherland estate in Scotland, which had a £5m asking price.

The Darwalls have a history of runs-in with locals. In Scotland, the couple introduced charges for gold panning, while in Dartmoor, hundreds signed a petition when they stopped people parking near an inaccessible part of the moor. The Darwalls said they closed the permissive car park due to the presence of cattle and introduced charges to ensure responsible panning.

Electoral Commission records show Darwall made 10 donations of nearly £90,000 to the UK Independence party, Vote Leave Ltd and the Conservative party between 2014 and 2019. This included £5,000 to Anthony Mangnall, who won nearby Totnes for the Tories in the 2019 general election.

Was this helpful?

Because there was an assumed right under the Dartmoor Commons Act 1985 to wild camp in the whole national park, he argued that he was unable to order individual campers off his land, and sought to get a declaration from the judge that this right did not exist.

Sir Julian Flaux, the chancellor of the high court, ruled that Darwall’s lawyers were correct and that the right did not exist across Dartmoor. The ruling is effective immediately, and means that Darwall can move people off his land from Friday. “In my judgment, on the first issue set out at [14] above, the claimants are entitled to the declaration they seek that, on its true construction, section 10(1) of the 1985 Act does not confer on the public any right to pitch tents or otherwise make camp overnight on Dartmoor Commons. Any such camping requires the consent of the landowner.”