The year dot

[piptik]

I'd been given to understand that the year dot referred to some time in the 1100's and referred to law on common land i.e. that if it had been in use as common prior to that date (the year dot) then it was enshrined in law to be common land. Anyone confirm or deny?

[Quizmonster]

The Oxford English Dictionary - the 'bible' in these matters - offers no such legalistic meaning for the phrase. Its earliest appearance was in the 1890s and it simply meant a date so long ago as to be undeterminabe.

[Quizmonster]

You are probably thinking of 'time immemorial' which may well have been used as you suggest.

[kempie]

In English law, time immemorial means "a time before legal history, and beyond legal memory."

In 1276, this time was fixed by statute as the 3rd September 1189, the date of the coronation of King Richard I (Richard the Lionheart). Proof of unbroken possession or use of any right since that date made it unnecessary to establish the original grant.

In 1832, the plan of dating legal memory from a fixed time was abandoned; instead, it was held that rights which had been enjoyed for twenty years (or as against the Crown thirty years) should not be impeached merely by proving that they had not been enjoyed before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_immemorial

[Thicko2006]

It's the year dot.hawkes was born.