Arcane rights of way issue – does logic ever apply?

The question is, in a theoretical sense, how do you demonstrate which of these footpaths is/are unrecorded bridleways? Is it enough to say “well, it must be at least one of them, let’s choose the most obvious line?” or do you have to go through the rigmarole of producing historical and/or user evidence?

I wish I could just say “this route from A – B makes sense for it to be a BW because X, Y and Z so I’m just going to upgrade it”, but it’s the latter unfortunately.

I could guess and say there would have been a legitimate and historical reason for BW’s to link Heugh, Hag House Farm and Low Esh Farm with Esh Hall, maybe the distribution of raw material from Esh Hall to the 3 other properties (old mills / forges / etc ?) for manufacture – or vice versa – transporting finished products to sell at Esh Hall so there could be evidence (in old Parish minutes / inclosure maps / etc) of something similar to / from non BW-linked properties.

It could be all of the routes, it could be none. Until an investigation starts there’s no way to know.

Just to shout up that its not very clear from the Image, but at the extreme left, that footpath that comes in is “Dere Street Roman Road”

You could start there, pretty strong argument for higher rights on a roman road.

Thanks schnor and ninfan, yes the Roman Road is a fair bet, but there’s also no reason at the eastern end of the track to suppose a change of status. Old OS maps attribute no status at all to that bit, though tHe paths joining from north and south are marked as FPs. I would argue that OS had marked the path west of ESh Hall as bridleway, and intended that status to apply along the whole length. Come te Creation of the Definitive Map somebody argued successfully that the eastern end was a footpath.