LOCATION/TYPE

NEWS HOME



[ exact phrase in "" • results by date ]

[ Google-powered • results by relevance ]

Archive
RSS

Add NWW headlines to your site (click here)

WHAT TO DO
when your community is targeted

Get weekly updates
RSS

RSS feeds and more

Keep Wind Watch online and independent!

Donate via Stripe

Donate via Paypal

Selected Documents

All Documents

Research Links

Alerts

Press Releases

FAQs

Campaign Material

Photos & Graphics

Videos

Allied Groups

Wind Watch is a registered educational charity, founded in 2005.

News Watch Home

Crown Estate wins squatter's rights 

The Queen has won squatter’s rights over a large tract of the Severn Estuary potentially worth many millions as a site for tidal and wind power electricity generation.

Appeal judges ruled that the Crown Estate Commissioners, who own virtually the entire UK seabed out to the 12-mile limit, had acquired “adverse possession” of part of the Severn foreshore and river bed by using it for many years before its ancient Lordship title was bought by historian Mark Roberts in 1997.

The judges rejected Mr Roberts’s argument that there was a centuries-old constitutional principle limiting the right of the Crown to acquire title to land by adverse possession.

Lord Justice Mummery, sitting with Lord Justice Jacob and Mr Justice Mann, said: “The same law that applies between subjects of the Crown also applies as between the Crown and its subjects.”

The ruling, which related to an area known as “the Magor Land”, was given in preliminary court proceedings pending a complex legal battle, to begin in the Spring, over ownership of large tracts of the Severn Estuary.

Last April, after an examination of laws from Magna Carta to the present day, High Court judge Mr Justice Lindsay handed down rulings on “paper title” claims dating back to the 13th century.

Mr Roberts, suing under the name Mark Andrew Tudor, Lord Marcher of Trelleck, is a renowned expert on the ancient laws and history of Lordships or Manors, particularly those on the Welsh Marches, and has acquired more than 60 of them. They include, he says, the Lordships Marcher of Mathern, Caerleon and Magor – many thousands of acres of sand and mudflats in tidal estuary areas on the Welsh side off Portskewett, Redwick and Goldcliff to the south-west of the first Severn Road Bridge.

He acquired the Lordships between 1997 and 2003 and says his title runs back to the conquest of the Principality of Wales by Edward I – “Edward Longshanks” – in 1282. But when he tried to register his title with HM Land Registry, he ran into conflict with three other claimants to title – Swangrove Estates, the estate company of the Dukes of Beaufort (as to Mathern and Caerleon), the Crown Estate Commissioners (as to Magor) and John Hanbury-Tenison (as to a slim area close to the shore which Mr Roberts claims is part of Magor).

Everyone involved claims to have been in possession themselves and through predecessors in title for centuries. This is the subject of the main court action, yet to be heard. But they also claim ownership by adverse possession on the basis that their physical custody and control of the land pre-dates everyone else.

Lord Justice Mummery said today that, at least since 1958, the Crown Estates Commissioners had occupied the Magor land by issuing licences for sand dredging. The Crown had also regulated fishing, borehole prospecting, spoil dumping and archaeological use and, most dramatically of all, military use in World War Two as an RAF bombing range and gunnery practice area.

The Press Association

20 February 2008

This article is the work of the source indicated. Any opinions expressed in it are not necessarily those of National Wind Watch.

The copyright of this article resides with the author or publisher indicated. As part of its noncommercial educational effort to present the environmental, social, scientific, and economic issues of large-scale wind power development to a global audience seeking such information, National Wind Watch endeavors to observe “fair use” as provided for in section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law and similar “fair dealing” provisions of the copyright laws of other nations. Send requests to excerpt, general inquiries, and comments via e-mail.

Wind Watch relies entirely
on User Contributions
   Donate via Stripe
(via Stripe)
Donate via Paypal
(via Paypal)

Share:

e-mail X FB LI M TG TS G Share


News Watch Home

Get the Facts
CONTACT DONATE PRIVACY ABOUT SEARCH
© National Wind Watch, Inc.
Use of copyrighted material adheres to Fair Use.
"Wind Watch" is a registered trademark.

 Follow:

Wind Watch on X Wind Watch on Facebook Wind Watch on Linked In

Wind Watch on Mastodon Wind Watch on Truth Social

Wind Watch on Gab Wind Watch on Bluesky