ngram of word usage in Hansard parliamentary debates, from Hansard at Huddersfield: https://hansard.hud.ac.uk/site/site.php
Legislation relating to commons (also go to the timeline page)
Notes from Survey of Commons report, 24 March 1943 (TNA, MAF 48/351, Commons Village Greens and Recreation Grounds post-war policy documents)
Inclosure Act 1845 – rarely used, last case finished in 1918
Metropolitan Commons Act 1866 – last case 1935
Commons Act 1876 – necessity for enclosure rather than regulation must be proved – rarely used because of expense and complicated procedure – last case 1936
Commons Act 1899 – approval of schemes made by local authorities for control and improvement – frequent cases in ‘normal times’
Commons Act 1893 – lords of the manor consent – cases infrequent
Commons Act 1906 – approval of regulation schemes
Law of Property Act 1925 – sec.193 – right of access for air and exercise to all urban commons
‘The Right of Recreation’ by Humphrey Baker, in the annual report of the Commons and Footpath Preservation Society, vol V, 1937, pp. 176-77:
Town and Country Planning Act 1990, c336:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/8/section/336
‘open space’ = any land laid out as a public garden, or used for the purposes of public recreation, or land which is a disused burial ground.