The plaintiff owned land over which were two old streets. He obtained an order from the Magistrates stopping up the stopping up and diversion of parts in return for new streets matching the proposed area layout. The defendants, in whom the land had been vested under the 1855 Act served notices to prevent this.
Held: The vesting of the land with the defendants applied only for so long as the land was used as a roadway, and the plaintiff could go ahead.
James LJ explaining the difficulties arising out of a provision in the Act: ‘It appears to me that the legitimate construction of the enactment that streets being highways shall vest is that streets if and so long as they are highways shall be vested. There are no words of inheritance, there are no words of perpetuity in the Act, there is nothing to say whether the streets are to vest in fee simple or for any limited estate, and it appears to me that they are given to and vested in the public body for the purposes of the Act and during the time for which those purposes require them to be held, and no longer. Words of divesting or defeasance are not required, because to my mind the interest of the vestry is exactly like a limited estate. If an estate is given to a woman during her widowhood words of defeasance are not required to divest it on her marriage, because the estate has ceased when the original limit is arrived at. So in this case it appears to me that when the thing has ceased to be a highway, when it has ceased to be a street, then it ceases to be vested, because the period for which it was to be vested in the board has come to an end. ‘
James LJ
(1880) 14 Ch D 785, (1880) 49 LJ Ch 691, (1880) 43 LT 140, (1880) 44 JP 680, (1880) 28 WR 867
Commonlii
Metropolis Management Act 1855 96
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Tithe Redemption Commission v Runcorn Urban District Council CA 1954
The court considered the effect of a strip of land being designated as a public right of way. Denning LJ said: ‘The statute . . vest[s] in the local authority the top spit, or perhaps, I should say, the top two spits of the road for a legal estate . .
Cited – Smith, Regina (on The Application of) v Land Registry (Peterborough Office) and Another CA 10-Mar-2010
The appellant had lived in a caravan on the verge of a byway and had been here for more than twelve years. He appealed against rejection of his request for possessory title. He said that there was no support in law for the maxim that adverse . .
Cited – London Borough of Southwark and Another v Transport for London SC 5-Dec-2018
Question as to the meaning of the GLA Roads and Side Roads (Transfer of Property etc) Order 2000. When the highway was transferred was only the working surfaces, the road surface and the airspace and subsoil necessary for the operation, maintenance . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Land
Updated: 10 December 2021; Ref: scu.443846
