Real Estate in UK Law

But, with respect to the judge, I do not agree that the low-level agricultural activities must be regarded as having been inconsistent with use for sports and pastimes for the purposes of section 22 if in practice they were not. Nor do I follow how the fact that, upon registration, the land would become subject to the 1857 and 1876 Acts can be relevant to the question of whether there has been the requisite user by local inhabitants for upwards of 20 years before the date of the application.

It is quite plain from those authorities that if the owner of land requests another, or indeed allows another, to expend miner on the land under an expectation created or encouraged by the landlord that he will be able to remain there, that raises an equity in the licensee such as to entitle him to stay. Mr. Goodhart urged before us that the licensee could not stay indefinitely.

Generally speaking, adverse possession is possession which is inconsistent with and in denial of the title of the true owner. Possession is not normally adverse if it is enjoyed by a lawful title or with the consent of the true owner.

In order to come within the Act the grant has to be for one or more of the three purposes mentioned in section 2 i.e. for the education of poor persons, or for the residence of a schoolmaster or schoolmistress, or otherwise for the purposes of the education of such poor persons in religious and useful knowledge.

It follows that if it becomes necessary to establish the exact boundary, the deeds will almost invariably have to be supplemented by such inferences as may be drawn from topographical features which existed, or may be supposed to have existed, when the conveyances were executed.

It defines it in three parts which I will call (a), (b) and (c). It says that: "Town or Village Green" means land (a) which has been allotted by or under any Act for the exercise or recreation of the inhabitants of any locality, or (b) on which the inhabitants of any locality have a customary right to indulge in lawful sports and past-times or (c) on which the inhabitants of any locality have indulged in such sports and past-times as of right for not less than twenty years.

It is not in doubt that under the 1939 Act as under the previous law, the person claiming by possession must show either (1) discontinuance by the paper owner followed by possession or (2) dispossession (or as it is sometimes called 'ouster') of the paper owner, Clearly, possession concurrent with the paper owner is insufficient.