Third edition first published in Great Britain 2000 by Cavendish Publishing Limited, The Glass House, Wharton Street, London WC1X 9PX, United Kingdom

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Perrins, Bryn

Understanding land law – 3rd ed

1 Real property – England 2 Real property – Wales

I Title

346.4'2'043

ISBN 1 85941 538 5

Printed and bound in Great Britain

Preface

Albert Einstein claimed that his complex theory of relativity, reducing universal chaos to the elegant simplicity of E=mc2, was in fact constructed from a series of elementary concepts, each of which was completely familiar to him before he reached the age of five. Believe it if you will, but, according to Lord Macnaghten, not even Albert Einstein could understand an English mortgage of real estate without a little help from his friends (Samuel v Jarrah Timber and Wood Paving Corporation Ltd [1904] AC 323, p 326).

Most students seem to find property law more difficult than other subjects. They find its concepts not only unfamiliar, but also abstruse and even arcane. They are, understandably, disconcerted to discover that the first principle of land law is that the landowner does not, in fact, own the land. The explanation of this apparent paradox leaves confusion worse confounded: the landowner actually owns a bundle of rights called a fee simple estate … and a fee simple estate is apparently an inheritable estate which can never be inherited! No wonder they find difficulty in relating realty to reality.

A closely associated problem is that of language. Property lawyers, like all specialists, have their own jargon, designed to define and explain their ideas with absolute precision. It is struggle enough for the novice to try to cope with the curious concepts of property, without having them explained in a seemingly foreign language. Privity of estate has nothing to do with hedging; and socage, even less to do with football hooligans or lager louts. There is really nothing for it, except to learn the lingo. But property jargon is doubly deceitful, in that some expressions have ordinary, everyday meanings which differ significantly from their technical, property law meanings. Sometimes, the word has visibly grown from property roots; sometimes, it is simply an insidious homonym. So, the estate owner himself probably owns but one house on the estate, and if he allows his neighbour a right of eavesdrop, it may mean that he is wet behind the ears, but it does not necessarily follow that his neighbour is a ‘nosy parker’. Moreover, even the most fervently evangelical preacher is

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unlikely to find real joy in perpetuity – although he may indeed experience cesser on redemption.

But perhaps the biggest problem of all is the relentless complexity of property law. Especially at the beginning, it seems that one needs to know everything before one can know anything, and yet the nature of the subject is such that it is necessary to proceed painfully, little by little; hence this book.

It is not, and does not pretend to be, yet another property textbook, not even a simplified text. It does not cover, and does not attempt to cover, everything. My intention is merely to take the main elements of property (or at least those elements most likely to be encountered by the novice student), to explain each in a general, but systematic way, and to sketch the whole scene, showing how the elements combine and interrelate. My main purpose is to provide something useful for the student to read at the very beginning of a property course, and preferably before it begins – a framework upon which the student can then begin to build. Some will, I hope, also find it a helpful refreshment during their course, when the terrain gets difficult and there is a danger of losing one’s bearings. And for those unfortunates faced with examinations at the end of their course, the book may serve to provide a systematic set of revision headlines. The ultimate objective is to show that property is not as difficult as students sometimes think, to take some of the labour out of learning, and to give more space for thought, reflection and, yes, enjoyment of the subject!

This third edition brings the text up to date to 1 December 1999; several passages have been rewritten with the aim of making the exposition clearer, and the opportunity has been taken of introducing a glossary of technical and other words.

Bryn Perrins

University of Birmingham

December 1999

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