Road boundary vs Land owner boundary

ShowMeTheCash

Just wondering of anyone knows where I can find documentation around where the council road will stop and a farmers land begins.
Long story short.
The road leading to my home is a narrow country lane.
One one side there is essentially a grass verge perhaps 1 meter then a small stone wall.
On the other side maybe 2 feet of over growth and a bit of a hedge.
The tar on the road itself is just about wide enough for a vehicle, not enough for two cars to pass and someone walking would need to essentially stand in on the verge.
The council came out to tidy it up but has had a run in with the land owner who claims to own the land right up to the tar on both sides of the road and for some reason he does not want it tidied up.
My understanding is the council usually take charge of a certain about of the space either side of the road.
Has anyone had any similar dealings with this or know what the law is around this?
Or anyone know any links I can look at?
What I have been told is that the council will usually take charge of this as to ensure the road is safe but it seems to be a gray area.

nuac

Mod
OK, will leave open for general discussion, subject to forum rules prohibiting legal advice

ShowMeTheCash

Hi, I am not looking for legal advice, I am not the land owner nor do I work for the council. Yes I would like to see the work complete and am glad the council is finally doing it as I use the road, I am more interested in if the land owner will be able to stop the council from doing so or whether the council should have jurisdiction here when it comes to road maintenance.
There is bound to a website somewhere that stipulate rules around this?

Mr. Incognito

The Council owns the road as it would have been compulsory acquired years ago.

You'd have to look at the CPO / Land Registry Records to see where the Boundary lies.

No hard and fast rule.

Peregrinus

Mr. Incognito wrote: »

The Council owns the road as it would have been compulsory acquired years ago.

Not necessarily. A council can take a road in charge without acquiring it. I'm open to correction here, but I think the great majority of the roads in Ireland are in charge of local authorities, but not owned by them.

Mr. Incognito wrote: »

You'd have to look at the CPO / Land Registry Records to see where the Boundary lies.

You'd have to look at the land registry records to see if this road has been acquired by the county council and, if so, where the boundary lies.

If the road has not been acquired, but merely taken in charge, I think the usual convention is that the boundary walls (or other boundary markers) erected by landowners on either side are taken to represent the limits of the strip of which the local authority is in charge. So if there's, let's say, a two-metre grass-and-weed verge between the wall and the paved carriageway, the Council maintains that (or, more usually, neglects it, but is responsible for maintaining it and is entitled to maintain it).

But the presumption that all the land outside the boundary is part of the strip which has been dedicated as a public highway can be rebutted if the landowners can show that, in fact, he uses/maintains some of it in a way that's not consistent with it being used as a highway. He'd need to have done this consistently over a long period of time to rebut any presumption that he had ever dedicated it as a highway. So if he has always planted and harvested a crop on the verge, or has maintained ornamental plants or trees there, or has maintained a drainage ditch or similar, he can reasonably say no, it's not part of the highway, it never has been.

Simply parking his vehicles there from time to time isn't enough to rebut the presumption that it's part of the highway, since parking vehicles on the margin is a normal aspect of using a highway. But if he has constructed and maintained a dedicated parking space, and signposted it as private and not for public use then, yes, that would do it.

The landowner can't reclaim part of the strip by demolishing his wall and erecting a new one further forward. Once the land has been dedicated as highway and taken in charge, that can't be unilaterally reversed.

nuac

Thanks for that scholarly summary

Yes the highway normally runs from fence to fence, or wall to wall

Heard of this issue as part of family lore long before I ever saw a law book.
About seven miles outside Westport there is an ancient village of Aughagower. A road leads up the hills from there to a smaller village of Sraheen. One of my grandfathers was from that area
His family were active in the Land League

The Land League had kicked off in Westport via the first public meeting at which Parnell and Davitt had spoken together off the same platform.

League was very active in the area. Landlord evicted a family in Sraheen. Local League built her a house in a wide part of the margin of the Aughagower-Sraheen road. ( Landlord owned all other land about ), ,League chose the margin on basis that landlord had no jurisdiction over it and therefore could not evict.

Landlord got AG involved. After much litigation held that the margin was part of the highway, so the cottage had to go.

Case is AG v Mayo COunty Council 1902 Irish reports 1 page 13
Quoted in various legal text books in Ireland, and as far away as New Zealand.

btw my other grandfather grew up on the shores of Lough Mask. An estate near their land was owned by Crichton, an absentee landlord, and was managed by an agent. A particularly oppressive agent was opposed by the local Land League. A proposal to shoot him was replaced with a plan to shun the agent, and withdraw all services from him in the area and in surrounding towns and villages. To bring in the harvest workers had to be imported from Ulster under military protection. And that was the end in Mayo of that agent, Captain Boycott. Got his name into many languages.

Emotions can run high in the West over land. Think of The Field