Pippa Middleton and James Matthews have become the focus of a West Berkshire inquiry over whether part of the drive at Barton Court in Kintbury should be recognised as a public footpath. The dispute reached the public record after the West Berkshire Ramblers group applied in January 2023 to have the route formally acknowledged.
Matthews bought the property in August 2022, installed an electric security gate the following month and moved there with Middleton in autumn 2022. That sequence now matters because the council has already said the route is reasonably alleged to exist as a public right of way, which means the question is no longer whether the claim was casually raised but whether the evidence can support it under the law.
West Berkshire District Council says a public footpath can be deemed to exist if it has been used by the public for 20 uninterrupted years, without force, secrecy or permission. It can also be designated if the evidence shows a landowner dedicated it and the public accepted that dedication by using the route. Those are the tests now hanging over the Barton Court drive, and Matthews is arguing they have not been met.
He objected to the application and told the inquiry the route is rarely used. He also said neighbours raised no objections when the gate was installed and that nothing in the conveyancing process alerted him to any public use of the drive when he purchased the property in August 2022. In his telling, the objections came late, after the family had already moved in and secured the entrance.
Matthews added that there is a need for a higher level of security because of his family’s high public profile. He said: “There are implications for my family, due to their high public profile, which means there is a need for a higher level of security than would otherwise be the case if the circumstances were different.” He also said: “When the gate was put in, no one from the parish council or the village came to speak with us, or contacted us, about the gate to say that there was any problem with it being there.”
The security dispute did not end with that first gate. Matthews said: “In the period after the footpath application, unfortunately there has been a continued need to enhance security and the gates at Station Road have therefore been upgraded in the summer of 2025 and kept closed.” That leaves the present-day standoff intact: the family has tightened access, while campaigners are still pressing for formal recognition of a path over land they say the public has long used.
The council’s case rests in part on the idea that long use can ripen into a right of way if it is open, unforced and unopposed for two decades. But the estate’s former manager, David Hill, offered a different picture of daily life there. Hill, who managed Barton Court between 2016 and 2022, said he probably encountered someone on the drive who should not have been there about one person every two to three months. He also said: “There was no consistent pattern of people coming and going.”
That evidence cuts to the heart of the inquiry. If the drive was truly treated as a public path, campaigners will need to show regular use over time. If it was not, Matthews will argue that the gate, the lack of complaints at the time and the estate’s limited encounters with trespassers all point the other way. The decision will determine whether a private entrance at Barton Court remains just that, or becomes, in law, a route the public can claim as its own.
