Pwllbach Colliery Co Ltd v Woodman

Last updated
Pwllbach Colliery Co Ltd v Woodman
Court Court of Appeal
Citation(s) [1915] AC 624
Keywords
Easements; landlord and tenant; tenant subject to those "existing" at time of grant; possible easement to create coal dust (a nuisance); whether common intention of landlord and tenant; whether coal screener generating dust necessary for mining to continue; whether implied easements for use in general and specific manner or for any conceivable manner

Pwllbach Colliery Co Ltd v Woodman [1915] AC 624 is an English land law case, concerning easements.

English land law Law of real property in England and Wales

English land law is the law of real property in England and Wales. Because of its heavy historical and social significance, land is usually seen as the most important part of English property law. Ownership of land has its roots in the Anglo-Saxon system of Bookland and in the Anglo-Saxon multiple estate, a feudal system transformed by William the Conqueror and his influx of many new chief landlords after 1066. The modern law's sources derive from the old courts of common law and equity which includes legislation such as the Law of Property Act 1925, the Settled Land Act 1925, the Land Charges Act 1972, the Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996 and the Land Registration Act 2002, and the European Convention on Human Rights. At its core, English land law involves the acquisition, content and priority of rights and obligations among people with interests in land. Having a property right in land, as opposed to a contractual or some other personal right, matters because it creates privileges over other people's claims, particularly if the land is sold on, the possessor goes insolvent, or when claiming various remedies, like specific performance, in court. Capital taxation, the industrial revolution and reform of the established church has resulted in a shift from predominant ownership by the church and landed gentry to largely agricultural, minority aristocratic ownership. This means today sites for development belong to a complex web of owners able meet market demand-side forces for development, tempered by supply-side forces including the values enshrined in public planning policy to protect green spaces and promote sustainable, locally diverse and socially useful development of land.

Contents

Facts

Pwllbach Colliery sublet land in Glamorganshire from a tinplate company, whose memorandum authorised mining to be carried on. A neighbouring butcher, Mr Woodman, had a later lease from the tinplate company too, but ‘subject to all rights and easements belonging to any adjoining and neighbouring property’. He built a slaughter house and a sausage factory. Then the colliery erected a screening apparatus which threw up coal dust. Mr Woodman brought an action for nuisance.

Tinplate consists of sheets of steel, coated with a thin layer of tin. Before the advent of cheap mild steel the backing metal was iron. While once more widely used, the primary use of tinplate now is the manufacture of tin cans.

The jury found there was a nuisance but the screening was reasonable and usual for the district, without negligence.

Judgment

House of Lords held the memorandum allowing carrying on the trade of mining did not authorise the nuisance, unless it could be proven that the trade could not otherwise be continued. There was no easement for making coal dust.

Earl Loreburn said it was unnecessary to answer whether creating coal dust could be an easement because the company was never authorised to do a nuisance.

Lord Parker said that the coal dust emission could be classified as an easement, but there was no common intention on which such an easement could be based. The first class consisted of easements of necessity. As to the second, he said this:

See also

English property law refers to the law of acquisition, sharing and protection of valuable assets in England and Wales. While part of the United Kingdom, many elements of Scots property law are different. In England, property law encompasses four main topics:

Notes

    Related Research Articles

    Glanamman mining village in the valley of the River Amman in Carmarthenshire, Wales

    Glanamman is a Welsh mining village in the valley of the River Amman in Carmarthenshire. Glanamman has long been a stronghold of the Welsh language; village life is largely conducted in Welsh. Like the neighbouring village of Garnant it experienced a coal-mining boom in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but the last big colliery closed in 1947 and coal has been extracted fitfully since then.

    Haswell, County Durham village and civil parish in County Durham, England

    Haswell is a village in County Durham, in England. It is situated 9.8 kilometers east of the city of Durham, 14.46 kilometers (8.98 miles) south of the city of Sunderland and 5.02 kilometers north-west of the town of Peterlee.

    Campbeltown and Machrihanish Light Railway

    The Campbeltown and Machrihanish Light Railway was a 2 ft 3 in narrow gauge railway in Kintyre, Scotland, between Campbeltown and the coalmining village of Machrihanish. Only three other passenger-carrying lines in the UK operated on the same gauge, all of them in Wales - the Corris Railway, the short-lived Plynlimon and Hafan Tramway and the Talyllyn Railway.

    The Dukeries

    The Dukeries is an area of the county of Nottinghamshire so called because it contained four ducal seats. It is south of Worksop, which has been called its "gateway". The ducal seats were:

    <i>Rylands v Fletcher</i>

    Rylands v Fletcher [1868] UKHL 1 was a decision by the House of Lords which established a new area of English tort law. Rylands employed contractors to build a reservoir, playing no active role in its construction. When the contractors discovered a series of old coal shafts improperly filled with debris, they chose to continue work rather than properly blocking them up. The result was that on 11 December 1860, shortly after being filled for the first time, Rylands' reservoir burst and flooded a neighbouring mine, run by Fletcher, causing £937 worth of damage. Fletcher brought a claim under negligence against Rylands, through which the case eventually went to the Exchequer of Pleas. The majority ruled in favour of Rylands. Bramwell B, however, dissenting, argued that the claimant had the right to enjoy his land free of interference from water, and that as a result the defendant was guilty of trespass and the commissioning of a nuisance. Bramwell's argument was affirmed, both by the Court of Exchequer Chamber and the House of Lords, leading to the development of the "Rule in Rylands v Fletcher"; that "the person who for his own purposes brings on his lands and collects and keeps there anything likely to do mischief if it escapes, must keep it in at his peril, and, if he does not do so, is prima facie answerable for all the damage which is the natural consequence of its escape". No right "to enjoy property" exists in UK black letter law, and it is this decision upon which stare decisis is built in the area.

    New Silksworth is a former coal mining village now in Sunderland, located straddling the boundary between the villages of Tunstall, and Silksworth. The former colliery being situated to the north west of the village near to the Gilley Law The population of the Sunderland ward was 10,931 at the 2011 census.

    Note: During most of the period of operation of the BP&GVR the anglicised spellings of Welsh place names were in use, and for consistency are used in this article. The Company's registered name included the incorrect spelling Gwendreath due to an error by parliamentary draftsmen.

    Senghenydd colliery disaster

    The Senghenydd colliery disaster, also known as the Senghenydd explosion, occurred at the Universal Colliery in Senghenydd, near Caerphilly, Glamorgan, Wales, on 14 October 1913. The explosion, which killed 439 miners and a rescuer, is still the worst mining accident in the United Kingdom. Universal Colliery, located on the South Wales Coalfield, produced steam coal which was much in demand. Some of the region's coal seams contained high quantities of firedamp, a highly explosive gas consisting of methane and hydrogen, and were prone to explosions.

    Garnant village in Wales

    Garnant is a Welsh mining village in the valley of the River Amman in Carmarthenshire, north of Swansea. Like the neighbouring village of Glanamman it experienced a coal-mining boom in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but the last big colliery closed in 1936 and coal has been extracted fitfully since then. The village has the only Commissioners' church built in southwest Wales, traditionally a Methodist region.

    Eckley Miners Village historical mining town in Pennsylvania

    Eckley Miners' Village in eastern Pennsylvania is an anthracite coal mining patch town located near Hazleton, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. Since 1970, Eckley has been owned and operated as a museum by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

    Udston mining disaster

    The Udston mining disaster occurred in Hamilton, Scotland on Saturday, 28 May 1887 when 73 miners died in a firedamp explosion at Udston Colliery. Caused, it is thought, by unauthorised shot firing the explosion is said to be Scotland's second worst coal mining disaster.

    Somerset Coalfield coal mining region in south west England

    The Somerset Coalfield in northern Somerset, England is an area where coal was mined from the 15th century until 1973. It is part of a larger coalfield which stretched into southern Gloucestershire. The Somerset coalfield stretched from Cromhall in the north to the Mendip Hills in the south, and from Bath in the east to Nailsea in the west, a total area of about 240 square miles (622 km2). Most of the pits on the coalfield were concentrated in the Cam Brook, Wellow Brook and Nettlebridge Valleys and around Radstock and Farrington Gurney. The pits were grouped geographically, with clusters of pits close together working the same coal seams often under the same ownership. Many pits shared the trackways and tramways which connected them to the Somerset Coal Canal or railways for distribution.

    Nunnery Colliery was a coal mine close to the city centre of Sheffield, South Yorkshire. The mining company, known as The Waverley Coal Company, also worked High Hazels Colliery about 3 miles (5 km) further east.

    Robert Bald Scottish surveyor, civil and mining engineer, and antiquarian.

    Robert Bald FRSE FSA MWS (1776–1861) was a Scottish surveyor, civil and mining engineer, and antiquarian. He was born in Culross, Scotland, the son of Alexander Bald (1753–1823), a colliery agent of Alloa. Robert Bald was one of the earliest and most eminent mining engineers and land surveyors in Scotland, and by the late Nineteenth Century he was referred to as "the acknowledged father of mining engineering in Scotland". His brother was Alexander Bald, poet and friend of James Hogg.

    Ladyshore Colliery

    Ladyshore Colliery, originally named Back o' th Barn, was situated on the Irwell Valley fault on the Manchester Coalfield in Little Lever, then in the historic county of Lancashire, England. Founded by Thomas Fletcher Senior, the colliery opened in the 1830s and mined several types of coal. It became infamous as a result of the owners' stand against the use of safety lamps in the mines. Women and children worked in the mines, under poor conditions.

    Albion Colliery was a coal mine in South Wales Valleys, located in the village of Cilfynydd, one mile north of Pontypridd.

    <i>Wheeler v JJ Saunders Ltd</i>

    Wheeler v JJ Saunders Ltd [1994] EWCA Civ 32 is an English Court of Appeal case on nuisance which amended the precedent set by Gillingham Borough Council v Medway (Chatham) Dock Co Ltd. Wheeler was a veterinary surgeon who owned Kingdown Farm House; the wider farm was owned by J.J. Saunders Ltd, who used it for raising pigs. After Saunders gained planning permission for a pair of pig houses, Wheeler brought an action in nuisance, alleging that the smell of the pigs interfered with his use and enjoyment of the land. When the case went to the Court of Appeal, Saunders argued that the granting of planning permission for the pig houses had changed the nature of the area, as in Gillingham, making the nuisance permissible. The Court of Appeal rejected this argument, holding that a pair of pig houses was not a sufficient development to change the nature of an area; the centre of the Gillingham case had been a commercial dock, which was a sufficient development.

    Wong v Beaumont Property Trust Ltd [1965] 1 QB 173 is an English land law case, concerning easements.

    <i>Green v Lord Somerleyton</i>

    Green v Lord Somerleyton is an English land law and tort law case, concerning easements of surface water/ditch drainage and the tests for nuisance in English law. In this case there was no remedy for the flooding found to be natural and not recently exacerbated by the defendant. The court attached to the properties an old, 1921, easement of drainage passing both land holdings, in this case two common examples of lowland water engineering, dykes controlled against tides by one-way valves, mentioned in the properties' deeds and, duplicatively, established the right by prescription. The dykes lay in the claimant's own land who had failed to maintain them and failed to account for the flows caused by reduction of water extraction from the lake upstream. The claimant had failed to repair the pump and clear ditches on his own land which had been agreed between the previous owners to give channelled drainage from a lake above. It was for the claimant to recognise the danger posed by its waterline being raised in 1954 by the building up of a weir.

    J & A Brown was an privately owned Australian coal family firm founded by James Brown (1816–1894) and Alexander Brown (1827–1877).