Smallholder Sid Part 2
Ditching Sid - continuing our peep into the small world of Smallholder Sid from the pages of the Harrowing Times.
Some weeks after his close encounter of the hen kind, Smallholder Sid was back in the snug at the Cowpat & Fly. He had recovered his composure and was in full fighting form again. Farmer Fred and Allotment Holder Alice had arrived first. They were having an altogether peaceful discussion about which types of radish were best. They had just narrowed the choice down to Cherry Belle or Early Scarlet Gold when the door to the snug flew open and in stumbled Smallholder Sid. They exchanged glances, realising that all talk of radishes was now at an end. Judging from the expression on Sid’s face they were in for another long evening.
His problem this time was that he was in the midst of a boundary dispute with his neighbour – all over a ditch. To Sid it was an important ditch. He had read that the crop that could make a lot of money is water cress. He had ambitions to become a leading water cress producer - and the ditch with its flowing Norfolk water would be ideal for that.
“You see its like this,” he said. The others peered into their glasses of Old Fart and tried to think of radishes and other congenial things but Smallholder Sid was not having any of it.
It was a long time in the telling but Sid has a ditch running between him and his neighbour which Sid claims to own.
But the neighbour disagreed.
Fred and Alice were then treated to a rich and fruity description of the shortcomings of the neighbour and then a lesson from Sid on the law relating to boundaries, hedges and ditches. Three pints later he concluded: “so you see, the ditch is mine and I can do what I like with it. If he doesn’t back down I will take him to the highest court in the land.”
Farmer Fred had been asleep for many minutes by the time Sid had reached this point. Nudged by Allotment Holder Alice he sleepily murmured his agreement, whereupon Alice had a sudden urge to water her non-existent geraniums again and, helping Fred to his feet, they both left Sid staring into his glass and dreaming dreams of becoming a water cress millionaire.
A few days later Sid sat waiting impatiently in the shabby waiting room at his solicitors office. Beside him he had his carrier bag full of “evidence.”
After the inevitable wait he was shown up to the room of Sue Grabbit (of Fleecem Fleecem and Screwem, solicitors of the Supreme Court). She listened patiently to Sid’s tale and reluctantly accepted Sid’s carrier bag full of papers.
It was some days before Sid heard anything. Then a long letter arrived in the post from Ms Grabbit giving her advice. Reluctantly she told him that he did not have a leg (or a hedge) to stand on. She pointed out what is known to lawyers as the “hedge and ditch rule” - that where you have a hedge alongside a ditch on a boundary the person who owns the hedge also owns the ditch. It is a starting point rather than a hard and fast rule, but in Sid’s case there was no further evidence one way or the other. The hedge was on the neighbour’s side of the ditch, so the neighbour owned the ditch. She thanked him for his instructions and presented him with a bill that took his breath away.
Sid reluctantly had to accept the position. With gritted teeth he apologised for the poison pen letters he had shoved through his neighbour’s letterbox at the dead of night.
But there is more to the story. Sid secretly had the water in the ditch tested. It was found to be polluted and no good for growing water cress. Could it be that Sid for once had become reasonable because he realised that the ditch would be a liability not an asset?
Serious legal note.
Sorting out boundary problems is a headache. The deeds are often unhelpful. Here is what Lord Hoffman said in a House of Lords judgment in the 1999 case of Wibberley v Insley:
The first resort in the event of a boundary dispute is to look at the deeds. Under the old system of unregistered conveyancing, this means the chain of conveyances [a “conveyance” = the document that transfers the ownership of land from one person to another] and other instruments, going back beyond the period of limitation, which demonstrates that the owner's title [= in effect proof of ownership] is in practical terms secure against adverse claims. These conveyances will each identify the subject matter in a clause known as the parcels which contains the description of the land. Sometimes it is no more than a reference to the land conveyed by an earlier conveyance, which will then have to be consulted. Older conveyances of farm property often describe the property as being the house and land in the occupation of the vendor [=seller] or his tenant. The parcels may refer to a plan attached to the conveyance, but this is usually said to be for the purposes of identification only. It cannot therefore be relied upon as delineating the precise boundaries and in any case the scale is often so small and the lines marking the boundaries so thick as to be useless for any purpose except general identification. 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 [i.e. signed].
Summary: you cannot rely on your deeds! Comments in [square brackets] added by me
Most property ownership in England is now recorded in the Land Registry and is shown on plans prepared by the Ordnance Survey. You might think that would have sorted out problems relating to boundaries but sadly, not a bit of it. The exact boundaries will only be confirmed by the Land Registry after a complicated and very expensive procedure that involves detailed plans and the agreement of all adjoining owners.
The rule about hedges and ditches has been in existence for hundreds of years. Here is how a judge described it in a court case decided more than 200 years ago in the case of Vowles v Miller 1810:
"The rule about ditching is this: No man, making a ditch, can cut into his neighbour's soil, but usually he cuts it to the very extremity of his own land: he is of course bound to throw the soil which he digs out, upon his own land; and often, if he likes it, he plants a hedge on top of it . . . ."
In other words: you dig your ditch on the boundary of your land, throw the earth from the ditch onto your land, then grow a hedge on it, so the hedge and ditch both belong to you.
That is only a presumption and other evidence can mean that the boundary is in a different place.
If you have a query about your boundaries the last thing you should do is race off to law. Disputes between neighbours are often more bitter than divorces and it is far better to meet your neighbour over a pint of Old Fart first and sort out the problem amicably. They did not do it in the case of Wibberley and the cost of taking it to “the highest court in the land” ran to tens of thousands of pounds.
If you are buying a property, any property, remember that prevention is better than cure. Do your own detective work over and above what your solicitor does. Talk to your would-be neighbours. Check out boundaries, shared driveways, overhanging trees, anything that might cause tensions after you have moved in. If there is the slightest whiff of a problem, get it resolved before you buy – or walk away. Far better to lose the dream house than endure years of disputes with your neighbours.
Notes: you can read the whole Wibberley case here: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199899/ldjudgmt/jd990429/alan.htm
If you are interested in joining the Norfolk Smallholders Training Group (who are a whole lot more competent than Sid) here is their link:
https://www.nstg.org.uk
“throw the earth from the ditch onto your land, then grow a hedge on it, so the hedge and ditch both belong to you”. - rinse and repeat until you own Norfolk?