Glossary

Jon Maynard Boundaries Ltd, Boundary Demarcation and Disputes, Rights of Way, Expert Witness, Chartered Land Surveyor

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Glossary

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Accretion and Diluvion
Adjudication
Adjudicator to Land Registry
Administrative Boundary
ADR
Adverse Possession
Agreed Boundary
Alternative Disputes Resolution
Boundary
Boundary Agreement
Boundary Wall
Case Law
Caveat Emptor
Charge
Common Boundary
Conveyance Deed
County Court
Deed
Deed of Extinguishment
Deed of Grant
Deed of Variation
Deed Plan
Design Plan
Determined Boundary
Dimensions found in deeds
Dominant Tenement
Duty of Care
Easement
Estoppel
Exact Line of Boundary
Expert Witness
Extrinsic Evidence
Fixed Boundary
Field Number
Foundation
General Boundary
Generalisation of map detail
H-mark
High Court
Imperial Measurements
Indenture of Conveyance
Land Registry
Legal Boundary
Legal Expenses Insurance
Legal Precedent
Legal Presumption
Measured Land Survey
Mediation
Mereing, admin've boundaries
Metes and bounds
Official Copy
Ordnance Survey
Paper Title Boundary
Parcel Number
Parcels Clause
Party Fence Wall
Party Wall
Photogrammetry
Physical Boundary
Possessory Title
Predecessor in Title
Pre-registration title deeds
Professional Opinion
Public Boundary
Register and Plan
Register Entry
Retaining Wall
Riparian
Sellers Property Info Form
Servient Tenement
Site Survey
Statutory Declaration
Successor in Title
T-mark
Tithe maps
Title
Title Deed
Title Plan
Transfer Deed
Transfer Plan
Witness Statement

 

According to Wikipedia:

Accretion and Diluvion

According to Mozley & Whiteley's Law Dictionary [Penner J E, 'Mozley & Whiteley's Law Dictionary', 12th Edition, Butterworths, London, 2001] :

Accretion is "... an accession to an owner of land on the sea shore, or of fresh land recovered from the sea by alluvion ..."

Alluvion is "Land which is gained from the sea by the washing up of sand and earth, so as in time to make terra firma."

Dereliction is "Where the sea shrinks back below low water-mark, so that land is gained from the sea. If this gain is gradual, it goes to the owner of the land adjoining; but if it is sudden, the land gained belongs to the Crown."

 

Adjudication

According to Wikipedia:

Adjudication is the legal process by which an arbiter or judge reviews evidence and argumentation including legal reasoning set forth by opposing parties or litigants to come to a decision which determines rights and obligations between the parties involved.

See also ADR - Adjudication and arbitration

 

Adjudicator to Land Registry

The Adjudicator to Land Registry is a court within the Tribunals Service of the Ministry of Justice. In spite of its name, it is completely independent of Land Registry: but Land Registry describes itself as a non-ministerial government department reporting to the Lord Chancellor, and the Lord Chancellor is also the Secretary of State for Justice, which raises questions as to the independence of the Adjudicator to Land Registry from its near namesake, Her Majesty's Land Registry.

According to the website of Adjudicator to HM Land Registry:

Where disputed applications arise at the Land Registry, they are referred to the Adjudicator to HM Land Registry to resolve. The Adjudicator is an independent judge appointed for this purpose. He also has the power to rectify documents.

 

Administrative Boundary

There appears to be no official definition of the term Administrative Boundary. The Local Government Boundary Commission for England has a Glossary on its web site that fails to include an entry for Administrative Boundaries.

Wikipedia tells us

"The Boundary Committee for England was a statutory committee of the Electoral Commission, an independent body set up by the UK Parliament. The Committee's aim was to conduct thorough, consultative and robust reviews of local government areas in England, and for its recommendations to be evidence-based, accurate and accepted. The Boundary Committee was abolished in 2010, with its functions assumed by a new Local Government Boundary Commission for England.

The Committee's responsibilities related solely to local government boundaries: responsibility for parliamentary boundaries lies with the Boundary Commission, a non-departmental public body of the Ministry of Justice."

J B Harley (in his book "Ordnance Survey Maps: a descriptive manual", Ordnance Survey, Southampton, 1975) explains:

"It is Ordnance Survey policy to show administrative boundaries, but not private or property boundaries, on its maps. This is a statutory requirement ... dating back to the Ordnance Survey Act of 1841, which provided for the survey and mapping of contemporary boundaries, ranging from counties down to extra-parochial districts ... Subsequent legislation has resulted in changes ... in the range of boundaries depicted ... Parliamentary Constituencies are normally defined by local government areas and are also required to be published.

Administrative boundaries are sometimes referred to as 'public boundaries' in order to differentiate them from property (ie. private) boundaries.

See also Administrative Boundaries and Property Boundaries

 

Adverse Possession

According to Wikipedia:

Adverse possession (also known as "squatter's rights") is a process by which premises can change ownership. It is a common law concept concerning the title to real property (land and the fixed structures built upon it). By adverse possession, title to another's real property can be acquired without compensation, by holding the property in a manner that conflicts with the true owner's rights for a specified period.

Wikipedia briefly explains the operation of adverse possession in England and Wales.

See also the Boundary-Problems explanation.

 

Agreed Boundary

An agreed boundary is a boundary whose position has been agreed by the owners of the land to either side of their common boundary in an agreement whose purpose is to clarify the ambiguous description of the boundary as it was written or as it was mapped in the original conveyance or transfer deed.

 

Alternative Disputes Resolution

According to the law firm Herbert Smith LLP:

ADR is not susceptible of a precise definition and, in the UK, encompasses any dispute resolution process outside traditional litigation and arbitration. It should be noted that in the US arbitration is typically considered to be an ADR process.

 

Boundary

The word boundary has no special meaning in law. Thus we must accept a standard dictionary definition, such as:

  • boundary, n. Limit-line [The Concise Oxford Dictionary, 3rd edition, 1934, Oxford University Press, London]
  • boundary, n. line dividing a country, estate, sphere of action or thought &c., from another, sea or river or hedge or the like doing this [The Pocket Oxford Dictionary, 4th edition revised 1946, Oxford University Press, London]
  • boundary, n a limit; a border; termination, final limit [The Chambers Dictionary, 3rd edition, 1998, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh]
  • Boundary (real estate). A unit of real estate or immovable property is limited by a legal boundary. The boundary (in Latin: limes) may appear as a discontinuation in the terrain: a ditch, a bank, a hedge, a wall, or similar, but essentially, a legal boundary is a conceptual entity, a social construct, adjunct to the likewise abstract entity of property rights. [Wikipedia]

See also: Agreed Boundary,    Common Boundary,    Determined Boundary,    General Boundary,    Legal Boundary by Paper Title,    Physical Boundary.

 

Boundary Agreement

A boundary agreement is a contract made between adjoining landowners for the purpose of clarifying a boundary whose description in the original conveyance or transfer deed lacks clarity. Such a boundary agreement is capable, in the case of registered land, of being noted by Land Registry on the register for either or both of the titles affected by it.

 

Case Law

Case Law is also known as Legal Precedent. According to the HM Courts Service web site, Precedent is:

The decision of a case which established principles of law that act as an authority for future cases of a similar nature.

 

Caveat Emptor

According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, 3rd edition, Oxford University Press, London, 1934

caveat emptor, L sent. (= let the buyer see to it) disclaiminig responsiblity for buyer's disappointment.

More recent texts tend to translate this latin sentence as "Let the buyer beware." The latin sentence, often seen in textbooks on property law but not actually used in conveyances, describes the ethos of buying and selling and is used to imply that the vendor makes no warranty as to the condition of what he is selling or of its suitability to the purchaser's needs: it was left to the purchaser to decide whether such things as the condition or the extent of the land offered for sale was sufficient to meet his needs. The term is becoming of less significance as more and more consumer protection measures are introduced.

One significance of caveat emptor in boundary disputes relates to the accuracy of any dimensions or acreages that were used to describe the extent of the land that was offered for sale. Because, at least prior to the Property Misdescriptions Act 1991, caveat emptor absolved the vendor from the need to accurately describe his boundaries or the size of his land, it would today be very unwise to pursue a boundary dispute solely on the basis of a dimension stated in an old conveyance.

 

Charge

In law, the word 'Charge' has several meanings. In the context of the present web site, a Charge on land is described by one authority [Penner J E, 'Mozley & Whiteley's Law Dictionary', 12th Edition, Butterworths, London, 2001] in the following terms:

4. A charge on land is a SECURITY INTEREST in land. Charges on land are typically called INCUMBRANCES, for they 'incumber' the title to land. Charges on land are mortgages ..., or charging orders, made by a court to secure the payment of a JUDGMENT DEBT. As the the only charges on land which are capable of subsisting at law, see the Law of Property Act 1925, s1(2), and as to mortgages, see Law of Property Act 1925, Part III, and Sch 1, Parts VII and VIII.

Note: terms written in CAPITALS in the above quotation are defined elsewhere in Penner's "Whiteley's Law Dictionary".

The Law of Property Act 1925, s1(2) states:

(2) The only interests or charges in or over land which are capable of subsisting or of being conveyed or created at law are-
(a) An easement, right, or privilege in or over land for an interest equivalent to an estate in -fee simple absolute in possession or a term of years absolute;
(b) A rentcharge in possession issuing out of or charged on land being either perpetual or for a term of years absolute;
(c) A charge by way of legal mortgage;
(d) Land tax, tithe rentcharge, and any other similar charge on land which is not created by an instrument;
(e) Rights of entry exercisable over or in respect of a legal term of years absolute, or annexed, for any purpose, to a legal rentcharge.

Note: According to the Rentcharges Act 1977, s2(1) no rentcharges may be created after 22 August 1977.

In the case of registered land, the title register contains a section known as the Charges Register in which are recorded the lesser interests in the land in the particular title. Lesser interests are interests in land less than ownership. They include:
mortgages;
security interests;
easements;
profts a prendre;
restrictive covenants.

 

Common Boundary

The common boundary between your land and the land belonging to one of your neighbours is simply that section of your own boundary which also serves as a section of the boundary of your neighbour's land. There is no special meaning in law attaching to the term common boundary.

 

Conveyance Deed

A written instrument that transfers the ownership of unregistered land from one person to another. The deed to the conveyance that created a new parcel of land by division of a larger parcel of land would traditionally contain a plan to show the extent of the land being conveyed; conveyances enacting later sales of the same piece of land would normally refer to the plan on the first conveyance deed for that parcel of land.

The advent of registered title to land has resulted in the conveyance deed being replaced by the transfer deed.

 

County Court

Refer to the offical description of the County Court.

 

Deed

A formal written instrument which acts at law to alter the rights and duties of the parties to it.

 
Deed of Extinguishment

A written instrument that records the removal of a right that had been formerly granted. In the context of the present web site, a deed of extinguishment is used to terminate the rights of a dominant tenement to pass and repass along a designated private right of way.

 

Deed of Grant

A written instrument that records the granting by one individual of a right that benefits another individual. In the context of the present web site, a deed of grant is used to create a private right of way over the grantor's land along a designated route that may be used by the owners of one or more adjoining or adjacent parcels of land.

Sometimes it is unnecessary to draw up a deed of grant because the right that is the subject of the grant is created at the same time as a new parcel of land is created and the grant may be expressed in the form of a clause to the conveyance deed or the transfer deed. An example is the purchase of a newly constructed house and its land together with the grant of a right of way in favour of that same land along a footpath and/or along a driveway or private road belonging to adjoining or neighbouring land.

 

Deed of Variation

A written instrument that materially changes the terms of an earlier deed.

One use of a deed of variation is to record that a boundary was incorrectly described in an earlier conveyance and that the effect of the present deed of variation is to change the description of the boundary such that the original deed of conveyance should in future be read as if it had described the boundary in the manner in which it is described in the deed of variation.

A second use of a deed of variation arises when the owner of a servient tenement wishes to alter the designated route taken by the private right of way that burdens his land,or to substitute a different designated route for the origianl designated route.

 

Deed Plan

Quite simply, a plan drawn upon or annexed to a deed. Hence, conveyance plan and transfer plan.

There are no laws nor regulations concerning the drawing up of deed plans. In the latter half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century it was common practice to create a conveyance plan by tracing the relevant part of an Ordnance Survey map and to colour in, or edge with colour, the land that was subject to the conveyance. Given the terms of section 12 of the Ordnance Survey Act 1841, this was a dubious practice that has repeatedly been proven to be unreliable.

In the second half of the 20th century it became normal practice to base the conveyance plan or transfer plan upon the architect's layout plan for the housing development. This too has been proven unreliable because of the frequent failures of the builders to exactly follow the design set out in the architect's drawings.

In the case of a deed of grant, it is necessary to draw a plan to show the extent of the private right of way being granted by the deed. I have never heard such a plan being described as a "grant plan", only as a "deed plan".

 

Design Plan

Also known as a developer's plan, or in other contexts as an architects's drawing or a planning drawing, a design plan (or design drawing) is intended as a communication between an architect and a builder to specify what should be built and where.

It follows that a design plan, whilst being a plan of what was intended to be built, is not a plan of what was actually built and of where it was built.

In the second half of the twentieth century it was a very common practice to re-use these design plans as conveyance plans. If everything had been built as specified and, more importantly, where specified by the architect then there was unlikely to be any unforeseen outcome. All too often, and for a wide variety of reasons, not everything was built according to the design plan and the inevitable result is a conveyance plan (or a transfer plan) that is misleading as to the boundaries of the land being conveyed.

If the design plan is re-used as a conveyance plan or transfer plan and is a record of what was intended rather than what was actually built, then it follows that it would be inappropriate to scale from such a plan the position of a disputed boundary. The only value to be had from a design plan that is re-used as a conveyance plan or transfer plan is the light it might throw on the question, "What did the vendor intend when he described the boundaries by reference to this plan?"

 

Determined Boundary

The term determined boundary arises out of Section 60 of the Land Registration Act 2002, which neither uses nor defines the term itself.

Section 60 of LRA 2002 is quoted on the Statute Law for Boundaries page of the present web site. Section 60 (3) says:

"Rules may make provision enabling or requiring the exact line of the boundary of a registered estate to be determined".

Boundaries, and especially determined boundaries, are dealt with under Rules 117 to 123 of The Land Registration Rules 20003, and Rule 119 is amended by Schedule 1 to the The Land Registration (Amendment) Rules 2008.

The Boundary-Problems web site offers its own determined boundary definition on another page.

Further information can be found at paragraph 8 of Land Registry Public Guide 19: Title plans and boundaries and at Section 3 of Land Registry Practice Guide 40: Land Registry plans

A "Form DB" was required to accompany an "application to determine the boundary". As this form of words was misleading - implying that it is Land Registry that will determine the boundary - the wording was changed to "Application to Register the Exact Line of the Boundary" but the required form is still form DB.

 

Dimensions found in deeds

Dimensions are sometimes used in conveyance deeds and transfer deeds to assist in describing the size and shape of a parcel of land. In this context, dimensions may be expressed as distances, as areas, or both. Such dimensions may be expressed in the wording of the parcels clause or as annotations on the face of the conveyance plan or transfer plan.

Immense care should be taken when interpreting the linear dimensions found in a deed or upon a deed plan.

  • Prior to the Property Misdescriptions Act 1991 the sale of land was governed by the ethos of caveat emptor - let the buyer beware - which gave the vendor no reason to accurately describe the boundaries.
  • There is a universal lack of information as to who has measured the dimensions and how. Was it a professionally qualified land surveyor who measured the land, or some other person who scaled it from an Ordnance Survey map? No assumption should be made as to the accuracy of the given dimensions.
  • There is rarely, in fact almost never, a description of the physical feature to which the given dimension applies.
  • The dimensions given for any parcel of land with more than three sides cannot define the shape of the parcel.
  • An elementary knowledge of geometry reveals the errors present in some sets of dimensions.

When the area of a parcel of land is stated in a conveyance or transfer deed then care must again be exercised. It is never stated whether the area has been measured

  • in the field by a professionally qualified land surveyor,
  • in the field by someone with insufficient training, or
  • copied from an Ordnance Survey map (in which case the area was accurately measured but on the face of a 1:2500 scale map and scaled up, making it less accurate than might be supposed).

There is misconception prevalent amongst non-land surveyors that it is possible, given the area of a parcel of land, to work out the lengths of its boundaries. This is mathematically impossible.

  • Given the area of any regular polygon, and the number of sides, it is of course possible to calculate the length of any side. But how many properties occupy a parcel of land that is a perfect equilateral triangle, a perfect square, a perfect regular pentagon, a perfect regular hexagon, etc?
  • Given the area of a triangle and the length of one of its sides, it is possible to calculate the height of the triangle but not its shape, i.e it is not possible to calculate the length of either of the two unknown sides.
  • Given the area and the length of one side, it is possible to calculate the unknown side lengths for a rectangle but not for a parallelogram.
  • For any irregular polygon, regardless of how few or how many sides it has, it is impossible to calculate the side lengths from the area of the polygon.

The above examples all assume that no angles have been measured at any of the corners of the parcel of land (I have never seen any corner angles stated on any conveyance or transfer deed in England and Wales).

Prior to the mid-1970's, any dimensions given in a conveyance or transfer deed would have used imperial units.

 

Dominant Tenement

The dominant tenement is the land that benefits from an easement that burdens neighbouring land.

Sometimes, for convenience and brevity, the term dominant tenement is used to refer to the owner of the land that forms the dominant tenement. As the easement 'runs with the land' and must be passed upon sale of the land from the vendor to his successor in title, such use of the term is potentially misleading

See also Rights over Neighbouring Land

 

Duty of Care

According to Wikipedia:

In tort law, a duty of care is a legal obligation imposed on an individual requiring that they adhere to a standard of reasonable care while performing any acts that could foreseeably harm others.

 

Easement

An easement is a right benefiting one parcel of land (known as the dominant tenement) that permits the rightful users (not necessarily solely the owner) of that land to perform specified actions over a neighbouring parcel of land (known as the servient tenement).

See also Rights over Neighbouring Land

 

Estoppel

According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary:

estoppel, n. (legal). The being precluded from a course of action by previous action of one's own. [f. OF estoupail bung]

 
According to Wikipedia:
 

Although proprietary estoppel was only traditionally available in disputes affecting title to real property, it has now gained limited acceptance in other areas of law.

Proprietary estoppel can be broken into a number of steps. A proprietary estoppel may arise if,
•  one party represents that he or she is transferring an interest in land to another, but what is done has no legal effect, or
•  merely promises at some time in the future to transfer land or an interest in land to another, and
•  knows that the other party will spend money or otherwise act to his or her detriment in reliance on the supposed or promised transfer

In Willmott v Barber (1880) 15 Ch D 96, Fry J considered that five elements had to be established before proprietary estoppel could operate:
•  the claimant must have made a mistake as to his legal rights;
•  the claimant must have done some act of reliance;
•  the defendant, the possessor of a legal right, must know of the existence of his own right which is inconsistent with the right claimed by the claimant;
•  the defendant must know of the claimant's mistaken belief; and
•  the defendant must have encouraged the claimant in his act of reliance.

 

Exact Line of Boundary

Exact Line of Boundary is the new name for what was previously called Determined Boundary.

It is not Land Registry that determines the exact line of the boundary. Land Registry's role is to register an exact line of boundary whose position has been determined to an accuracy of ± 10 mm as a result of:

  • amicable agreement between adjoining landowners; or
  • agreement between adjoining landowners arising from an Alternative Disputes Resolution process; or
  • the decision of a judge.

The positional accuracy requirement for an Exact Line of Boundary makes it necessary for the plan that accompanies the Form DB to have been surveyed and drawn by a professionally qualified surveyor, i.e. by a chartered land surveyor or chartered geomatics surveyor who is familiar with those requirements.

 

Expert Witness

According to HM Courts Service:

An expert is a person who has been instructed to give or prepare expert evidence for the purpose of court proceedings. An expert has a duty to help the court on matters within their area of expertise. Experts exist in diverse fields so there is no single professional or regulatory body for those who act as experts or expert witnesses.

The Civil Procedure Rules, Part 35 (governing the work of expert witnesses) requires that an expert witness' duty to assist the court on matters within his expertise overrides any obligation to the person from whom he has received instructions or by whom he is paid. So be warned that it is not the expert's job to make a better case for you than the evidence supports.

 

Extrinsic Evidence

Extrinsic evidence is evidence that would not of itself be admissible in court but which may be admitted if it provides a context that aids the interpretation of an ambiguous legal document such as a conveyance or transfer deed. Thus a photograph (either aerial or terrestrial) might be taken as extrinsic evidence of what was on the ground at the time an ambiguous boundary description was made (either in the parcels clause on an accompanying plan) in order to establish the intentions of the vendor who divided the land to create the boundary in question. Or the subsequent conduct of one of the parties to the conveyance or transfer may be taken as extrinsic evidence as to the physical position of the boundary.

 

Field Numbers

Also known as parcel numbers, these are the numbers that identify fields shown on Ordnance Survey's 1:2500 scale published maps of both the County Series (1850 - 1948) and National Grid Series (1948 - 1991).

Many people mistakenly believed that there is something authoritatively official about these field numbers, but there is not. Nevertheless, field numbers have proved convenient in conveyancing as an aid to identifying those fields being conveyed from vendor to purchaser. The difficulty is that field numbers changed from one edition of the map to the next, so it was necessary to append to map edition to the field number to avoid ambiguity.

The story behind field numbering is as follows. Much of the revenue of local government arises out of a grant from central government. Central government based its grant to local authorities on the population and on the land area of the individual authority. Population statistics were provided by the census, and Ordnance Survey was tasked with measuring the land area of every parish in England, Wales and Scotland.

Ordnance Survey decided to measure from the map, as it was being prepared for publication, the area of every enclosure shown on tha map. Initially, those areas values were not published upon the map itself but in a separate Areas Book. It was necessary to be able to cross refer between the map and the Areas Book, and this was achieved by placing a number in every enclosure. As the areas were being collated parish by parish, it made sense to number the enclosures sequentially within each parish, and then start the numbering afresh in the next parish.

The size of a field might change from on edition to the next, e.g. by dividing fields, and suffixes of the original field number were used for the divided off parts of the original, e.g. field 169 on one edition of the map might be divided in two to become 169a and 169b on the next edition.

Sometimes, perhaps because of changes to local authority boundaries, the numbering system of the previous edition was dropped and every enclosure was given a completely new number.

With the advent of the National Grid series, the field numbering system was changed entirely. In one sense it became more high-tech, which has confused many map users. The system depended on selecting a point in the centre of the field and establishing a grid reference to that point to a precision of 10 metres. Such a precision would normally require to be expressed as 10 digit grid reference. For example, a 10 digit grid reference for Stonehenge would be SU 1225 4218. Given that Stonehenge appears on map sheet SU1242 (which is, incidentally the 6 digit grid reference to the corner of a 1 km square map sheet), it is possible to infer the the first 6 digits of a field's 10 digit grid reference from the number of the map sheet on which it appears, and this makes it possible to omit the first 6 digits from every field number. Thus we take the last two digits of the Easting (25) and the last two digits of the Northing (18) to create a field number, unique to that field on that map sheet, of 2518.

In 1991 Ordnance Survey ceased printing the published editions of its large scale, i.e. 1:1250 and 1:2500, maps. This deprived themselves of the opportunity for their draughstmen and women in their headquarters to measure areas of the fields, and field numbers have disappeared from their maps.

 

Fixed Boundary

According to Land Registry's Practice Guide 40, "Land Registry plans", dated Oct 2005:

3.4 Fixed boundaries
This procedure was used to fix the precise position of a boundary. It was superseded by the determined boundaries provisions referred to above. Fixing a boundary was a very expensive process and only a handful of titles have ever had boundaries fixed under this procedure. A boundary fixed before the commencement of the LRA 2002 does not offer any special protection against adverse possession.

According to the Land Registration Rules 1925:

276. Fixed boundaries
If it is desired to indicate on the filed plan […], or otherwise to define in the register, the precise position of the boundaries of the land or any parts thereof, notice shall be given to the owners and occupiers of the adjoining lands, in each instance, of the intention to ascertain and fix the boundary, with such plan, or tracing, or extract from the proposed verbal description of the land as may be necessary, to show clearly the fixed boundary proposed to be registered; and any question of doubt or dispute arising therefrom shall be dealt with as provided by these rules.
Words in square brackets revoked by Land Registration (No 2) Rules 1999, r2(1); Sched. 1(9).

277. Note as to fixed boundaries in register
When the position and description of the boundaries of the land have been thus ascertained and determined, the necessary particulars shall be added to the filed plan […], and a note shall be made in the Property Register to the effect that the boundaries have been fixed. The plan […] shall then be deemed to define accurately the fixed boundaries.
Words in square brackets revoked by Land Registration (No 2) Rules 1999, r2(1); Sched. 1(9).

 

Foundation

According to the Party Wall Etc. Act 1996

"foundation", in relation to a wall, means the solid ground or artificially formed support resting on solid ground on which the wall rests;

 

General Boundary

A general boundary might be defined as a boundary whose position has not been ascertained to the nearest inch (see the last paragraph on page 585 of the article Great Oaks from Little Acorns ...).

The definition given at Section 60 of the Land Registration Act 2002 is no more enlightening:

(2) A general boundary does not determine the exact line of the boundary.

See also the page on Understanding General Boundaries.

Essentially, the concept of general boundaries is a classic English "fudge" that allows regsitration of title to happen by ignoring the question, "Where exactly is the boundary of the land that is being registered under this title?" In other words, whilst title registration guarantees an owner's title to his or her or their land, because of general boundaries it cannot guarantee the exact lines of the boundaries to their registered land.

 

Generalisation of map detail

"Generalisation" is a cartographic concept whose purpose is to make a map tidier and easier to read and interpret. It involves two processes:

  • 1. The selection of detail to be included in the map, or to put it another way, the identification of those ground features that are to be omitted as they do not suit either the purpose or the scale of the map.

  • 2. The deliberate displacement of a feature from its true position relative to other ground features for the purpose of avoiding clutter.

An example of deliberate omission may be seen on the 1:50,000 scale maps that show no lines to represent the fences, walls and hedges that surround individual fields, because there simply is insufficient room to show them. such field perimeter lines are seen on maps at the larger scales of 1:25,000, 1:10,560, 1:10,000 and 1:2,500.

An example of deliberate displacement may again be seen on the 1:50,000 scale maps where, for example, a river, canal, railway and road run close beside each other in a narrow valley. At 1:50,000 scale the line symbols for each of these ground features may be wider than the scaled width of the features: to avoid overlapping the line symbols it is necessary to displace some of those lines.

Boundary disputes usually involve maps at scales of 1:1,250 and 1:2,500.
Examples of omission from these maps include:

  • only one bank of a ditch, drain or stream will be shown when the feature is less than 1.0 metre wide on a 1:1,250 scale map (or less than 2.0 metres wide on a 1:2,500 scale map);

  • only the line of the centre of a hedge that is one part of a hedge-and-ditch boundary will be shown, and the hedge centre line is of course offset from the boundary;

  • in the case of two fields separated by a hedge that is flanked by two fences, the whole being less than 2 m wide (1:2500), only the centre line of the hedge will be shown;

  • small juts from buildings, such as chimney breasts and bay windows, will be omitted.

Examples of deliberate diplacement upon these maps include:

  • where a fence passes at less than 1 metre (1:1,250) or 2 metres (1:2,500) from the side of a building or a shed, then the map will show the fence as being collinear with the house or shed, and it may be difficut to ascertain which feature has been moved (and it may have been both features) to achieve collinearity;

  • two detached houses separated on the ground by less than 2 m (1:2500) or 1 m (1:1250) will be separated on the map by a single line so that they may look as if they were semi-detached. In such a case, if the line separating the two houses continues into the front or the rear garden, it cannot be assumed to be aligned to the flank face of one building or the other nor can it be assumed to occupy an alignment central to the gap between the two houses;

The above lists are not exhaustive.

The results of cartographic generalisation may be perceived by inexperienced map users as shortcomings in the map. Ordnance Survey maps have been used as the basis of a great number of boundary descriptions, which descriptions are thus rendered ambiguous due to the fact of the base mapping having been generalised.

Title plans, because they are based upon generalised Ordnance Survey maps, should also be seen as containing ambiguities in their descriptions of the general lines of the boundaries that they show.

 

H-mark

A conveyance plan may use a T-mark as a means of indicating that a boundary-marking feature, such as a wall, a fence, or a hedge, is a party structure, that is to say, it is jointly owned and the owners of the land to either side of it are jointly responsible for for maintaining, repairing and/or replacing that boundary-marking feature.

The H-mark may be conceptualised as a T-mark and its mirror image with the mirror surface being represented by the boundary line: in other words the H-mark straddles the boundary line.

See also T-mark.

 

High Court

Refer to the offical description of the High Court.

 

Imperial Measurements

Prior to the mid-1970's, any dimensions given in a conveyance or transfer deed would have used imperial units. For readers who are unfamiliar with imperial units the following refresher and metric conversions may help.

Imperial linear measures
1 inch was the smallest unit used. Anything smaller was expressed in fractions of an inch.
1 foot = 12 inches.
1 yard = 3 feet    (or 36 inches).
1 chain = 22 yards    (1 chain is the length of a cricket pitch)
1 furlong = 10 chains    (or 220 yards)
1 mile = 8 furlongs    (or 1,760 yards, or 5,280 feet, or 63,360 inches - hence the Ordnance Survey "One Inch" map was at a scale of 1 inch to 1 mile or 1:63,360)

Imperial to Metric conversions
1 inch =     25.4 mm or        0.0254 m  
1 foot =   304.8 mm or        0.3048 m  
1 yard =   914.4 mm or        0.9144 m  
1 chain   =       20.1168 m  
1 furlong   =     201.168   m  
1 mile   =   1609.344   m or   1.609 km
 
Metric to Imperial conversions
1 kilometre =   0.62137 mile =   3280.84 yards  
1 metre =   1.0936 yards =   3.2808 feet =   3 feet 31/3 inches
1 cm   =   0.3937 inch =   2/5 inch

Imperial area measurements

Although Ordnance Survey maps give areas values in acres and decimals, land transactions usually used Acres, Roods and Perches, sometimes abbreviated to A, R, P. For smaller areas square yards were also used, perhaps in combination with roods and perches.

1 acre =   4,840 sq yds or 1 furlong x 1 chain i.e 220 yards x 22 yards
1 rood =   1/4 acre =   1210 sq yds  
1 perch =   1/40 rood =   301/4 sq yds i.e. 51/2 yds x 51/2 yds
 
Imperial to Metric conversions
1 acre = 0.405 Hectare = 4,046.86 sq m  
1 rood = 0.101 Hectare = 1,011.71 sq m  
1 perch   =       25.29 sq m  
 
Metric to Imperial conversions
1 Hectare (or 10,000 sq m) = 2.47105 acres  
1,000 sq m =0.2471 acre = 39 perches 14.04 sq yd
100 sq m =0.0247 acre = 3 perches 28.85 sq yd
10 sq m   = 11.96 sq yd
1 sq m   = 1.20 sq yd

 

Indenture of Conveyance

This term comes from the era when legal documents were hand-written on vellum (a parchment made from the skin of a calf, kid or lamb). It was normal practice to make two copies of a deed of conveyance, an original (to be kept by the purchaser) and a counterpart (to be kept by the vendor). The two copies were written side by side on the same piece of vellum. The copies were separated from each other by cutting the vellum with a knife.

To guard against fraud, the cut was was made as a series of lines at random angles to each other to produce a jagged, or indented, line. If the two parts were later brought together and offered up to each other along the indented line, then if they did not fit to each other they presented evidence of a potential case of fraud.

 

Land Registry

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Legal Boundary

According to the Land Registry Practice Guide 40 – Land Registry plans

The legal boundary – is the line, which is not visible on the ground, that divides one person's land from another's. It is an exact line having no thickness. It is rarely identified with any precision either on the ground or in the deeds.

Practice Guide 40 explains further:

The legal boundary may be intended to follow the physical boundary but this is not always the case. For example, the legal boundary may run somewhere within a feature or, along one particular side or, beyond its near or far side, or include all or any part of an adjoining roadway or stream.

The precise position of the legal boundary is often unclear because of:
  • the difficulty in defining the boundary as mentioned in the preceding paragraph
  • the deeds are often silent on this issue
  • the legal presumptions which may apply to determine ownership.

See also Explaining Boundaries Terminology for a fuller explanation that suggests the term legal boundary should be reserved for only those boundaries whose position has been determined by a court or a tribunal.

If this definition is adhered to then it follows that both Land Registry and the conveyancing industry are dealing not with the legal boundary but with the paper title boundary.

The view of the courts is that the legal boundary and the paper title boundary are one and the same on the date of the conveyance that describes that boundary, and that the legal boundary is capable of being moved away from the position of the paper title boundary under the influence of any of the following: the subsequent actions of a party to the originating conveyance deed; a boundary agreement; adverse possession; or a matter of proprietary estoppel.

 

Legal Expenses Insurance

Legal expenses insurance may be purchased as a stand-alone policy but is frequently included in some other kind of insurance, such as buildings insurance.

The purpose of legal expenses insurance is to protect the policyholder against the usually high cost of legal action, such as may be incurred when the policyholder finds him or herself involved in a boundary dispute. It does not and cannot guarantee that the dipsuted boundary follows the line that the policyholder believes it to follow.

Sometimes the policyholder's opinion will be upheld with the support of the legal expenses insurance, and sometime the legal expenses insurance will be unable to uphold the policyholder's opinion.

Some legal expenses insurance policies will support the policyholder only when the policyholder is defending against a legal action initiated by the neighbouring landowner.

All legal expenses insurance policies will have a limit of cover, expressed as a sum of money. Some of that money will of course be used in trying to avoid the case going to court, and this may result in there being insufficient funds remaining for court hearing, resulting the policyholder to cover the cost of some or all of the court or tribunal hearing.

 

Legal Precedent

See Case Law, above.

 

Legal Presumption

A legal presumption is a device used in the courts as a means of filling any gaps left in the evidence. A legal presumption may be rebutted by contrary evidence in a particular case. Legal presumptions should not therefore be accepted as true in every single case.

For a list of the presumptions that commonly apply in boundary disputes refer to the Legal Presumptions and boundaries page.

 

Measured Land Survey

A measured land survey may be described as both an accurate topographic survey carried out by a qualified land surveyor and the drawing or drawings derived from that survey.

A measured land survey will typically achieve accuracies of the order of ± 10 mm to ± 25 mm. A measured land survey will thus be considerably more accurate than an Ordnance Survey 1:1250 scale map (± 1.0m) or an Ordnance Survey 1:2500 scale map (± 2.0m).

Modern practice dictates that the topographic survey is recorded in the format of a CAD (computer aided drafting) file. A CAD file is essentially a list of sequences of map coordinates.

  • Each sequence consists of a series of measured points, each point represented by its map coordinates, along the course followed by a ground feature.
  • Associated with each sequence is a set of instructions as to what kind of ground feature (a building, a fence, a watercourse, etc) is represented by the sequence of coordinates,
  • together with instructions as to the style, thickness and colour of line that is to be used when plotting onto paper the course of that ground feature
    • .

Because the measured land survey is stored as a CAD file, the accuracy of the original survey remains available for subsequent uses or purposes, even if the later purpose demands a plot at a larger scale than did the original purpose. Thus, there is no need to enlarge the original plot for the subsequent purpose. The problems inherent in such enlargements - for example those 1:1250 scale title plans that were enlarged from 1:2500 scale Ordnance Survey maps and remain to Ordnance Survey's 1:2500 scale accuracies - are avoided.

A measured land survey is a pre-requisite for any investigation into a disputed boundary. It provides an inventory of what is on the ground and a record of where it is located relative to other nearby ground features. It thus forms a base against which any spatially related evidence for the boundary, such as a conveyance plan or a set of dimensions, may be assessed.

A measured land survey will also serve as the basis for an "exact line of boundary plan" that accompanies an application to register the exact line of the boundary. If a comparison is made between the exact line of boundary plan and the corresponding title plan or the corresponding conveyance plan or transfer plan (all three of which are likely to be based on the Ordnance Survey map) a discrepancy will be encountered. It should be recognised, on the basis of what is written in the second paragraph of the present glossary entry, that the exact line of boundary plan is far more accurate than those other maps and plans.

 

Mediation

See the Boundary-Problems explanation.

 

Mereing, administrative boundaries

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Metes and bounds

According to Wikipedia

Metes and bounds is a system or method of describing land, real property (in contrast to personal property) or real estate. The system has been used in England for many centuries, Typically the system uses physical features of the local geography, along with directions and distances, to define and describe the boundaries of a parcel of land. The boundaries are described in a running prose style, working around the parcel in sequence, from a point of beginning, returning to the same point; compare with the oral ritual of beating the bounds. It may include references to other adjoining parcels (and their owners), and it, in turn, could also be referred to in later surveys. At the time the description is compiled, it may have been marked on the ground with permanent monuments placed where there were no suitable natural monuments.

  • Metes. The term "metes" refers to a boundary defined by the measurement of each straight run, specified by a distance between the terminal points, and an orientation or direction. A direction may be a simple compass bearing, or a precise orientation determined by accurate survey methods.
  • Bounds. The term "bounds" refers to a more general boundary description, such as along a certain watercourse, a stone wall, an adjoining public road way, or an existing building.

 

Official Copy

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Ordnance Survey

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Paper Title Boundary

The paper title boundary is the boundary that was described in the parcels clause and/or upon the associated plan of the conveyance or the transfer deed by which the parcels of land located on either side of the boundary were first divided from each other.

 

Parcels Clause

In this context a parcel is a small piece of land. The parcels clause is that part of a conveyance in which the parcel is described with reference to its boundaries and its local extent.

See also Examples of parcels clauses.

See also The parcels clause of a conveyance.

 

Parcel Numbers

See Field Numbers.

 

Party Fence Wall

According to the Party Wall Etc. Act 1996

party fence wall means a wall (not being part of a building) which stands on lands of different owners and is used or constructed to be used for separating such adjoining lands, but does not include a wall constructed on the land of one owner the artificially formed support of which projects into the land of another owner;

 

Party Wall

According to the Party Wall Etc. Act 1996

party wall means–
(a) a wall which forms part of a building and stands on lands of different owners to a greater extent than the projection of any artificially formed support on which the wall rests; and
(b) so much of a wall not being a wall referred to in paragraph (a) above as separates buildings belonging to different owners;

 

Photogrammetry

According to Oxford Dictionaries

Noun The use of photography in surveying and mapping to measure distances between objects.

Derivatives: photogrammetric, adjective; photogrammetrist, noun

 

Physical Boundary

A physical boundary is usually a physical feature that acts as a barrier between two parcels of land in separate ownership, and such a physical barrier may or may not be located along the legal boundary. Examples of such physical barriers include fences, walls, banks, ditches, hedges, the bank of a river, etc.

Sometimes a physical feature that is incapable of providing an effective barrier is put in place on or near a boundary as a marker and may thus be referred to as a physical boundary.

It should never be assumed that a physical boundary actually stands in the same position as the legal boundary that it purports to represent. There are many reasons why a physical boundary might be emplaced at a remove from the legal boundary, and the most obvious example is a hedge grown close to but not upon the legal boundary of a parcel of residential land.

 

Possessory Title

The ownership of land without the usually necessary title deeds to prove ownership.

See also Legal Concepts affecting Boundaries - Possessory Title.

 

Predecessor in Title

A person, group of persons etc., who preceded as owner the person who now has title to the land in question. The term may be used to include persons other than the immediate predecessor.

 

Pre-registration title deeds

See Title Deeds, below.

 

Professional Opinion

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Public Boundary

See Administrative Boundary,

 

Register and Plan

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Register Entry

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Retaining Wall

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Riparian

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Sellers Property Information Form

 Refer to Documentary evidence: Sellers Property Information Form

 

 

Servient Tenement

The land that is burdened with an easement that benefits neighbouring land.

See also Rights over Neighbouring Land

 

Site Survey

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Statutory Declaration

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Successor in Title

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T-mark

A conveyance plan may use a T-mark as a means of indicating responsibility for maintaining, repairing and/or replacing a boundary-marking feature. A capital letter T will be placed with its base against the boundary being identified and with the whole of the T being inside the land whose owner is covenanted by the conveyance to maintain, repair and/or replace the boundary-marking feature.

For an illustration of T-marks, click here.

See also H-mark.

 

Tithe maps

According to Wikipedia

The term Tithe map is usually applied to a map of an English or Welsh parish or township, prepared following the Tithe Commutation Act 1836. …
The series of maps resulting from this legislation provides … coverage, detail and accuracy [that was unprecedented at that time]. … Most of the surveying and mapping was carried out by 1841, and the work was largely completed by 1851.

The maps indicated parcels of land and buildings, assigning each a number.
Each map was accompanied by a schedule listing each map item by number. This showed the owners, occupiers and a description of the land in the parish including individual fields …

The maps … are now held in The National Archives at Kew (classes IR29 and IR30) [and also] at the county records office [England, and] in the National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth.

 

Title

 According to The Concise Oxford Dictionary, [3rd edition, 1934, Oxford University Press, London]

title, n. (Law) right to ownership of property with or without possession

 

Title Deeds

According to Mozley & Whiteley's Law Dictionary [Penner J E, 'Mozley & Whiteley's Law Dictionary', 12th Edition, Butterworths, London, 2001]

Title Deeds. Deeds evidencing a person's right or title to lands. Before Land Registration, whereby title to land is recorded at HM Land Registry, title deeds provided the standard proof of title to land, and the grants of land by deed was the basic transaction in 'unregistered' conveyancing.

The title deeds were generally held by the mortgage lender as security against the money loaned to the property's owner.

Usually, the 'title deeds' comprised a bundle of documents relating to the property, not all of which could strictly be described as title deeds. As well as the conveyance and any other deeds, the bundle would typically contain Abstracts of Title, the results of Land Searches and Land Charges Searches, Sellers Property Information Forms, even planning drawings and guarantees for building works.

In the case of registered land, such old title deeds are often referred to as the 'pre-registration title deeds'. Owners of registered land would be wise to retain these pre-registration title deeds as they may contain useful, sometimes definitive, information about the property that Land Registry has not seen fit to record on the title register.

 

Title Plan

A title plan is a map on which Land Registry indicates the general extent of the land in a particular title, usually by adopting existing lines on the Ordnance Survey map to indicate the general boundaries of the land in the title. Sometimes, if the boundary runs across an area of white space on the Ordnance Survey map then Land Registry will add a dashed line to show the position of the general boundary. Sometimes, in cases where a newly built property is being registered for the first time and the development has not yet appeared on Ordnance Survey maps, Land Registry will base its title plan on a map provided by the developer (see also Design Plan).

The general boundary is the black line on tghe base (usually Ordnance Survey) map alongside which Land Registry has applied its red edging: the red edging does not itself represent the position of the general boundary.

Rather strangely, a search of the Land Registry web site fails to reveal a concise definition of the term title plan. The following references give useful background reading:
Land Registry Knowledge Base: How is ownership of boundaries defined?
Joint Statement by Land Registry and Ordnance Survey
Land Registry Public Guide 19: Title plans and boundaries
Land Registry Practice Guide 40: Land Registry plans

 

Transfer Deed

A written instrument that transfers the ownership of registered land from one person to another.

If the whole of the land in a registered title is being transferred then a transfer deed in the form of a TR1 is used. The TR1 requires no transfer plan, the boundaries of the land being transferred are the general boundaries shown on the title plan of the same title number.

If a part of the land in a registered title is divided off and sold then a transfer deed in the form of a TP1 is used. A TP1 normally equires the use of a transfer plan.

 

Transfer Plan

A type of deed plan used as the plan appended or attached to a TP1 transfer deed.

 

Witness Statement

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