Claiming Land at the End of our Garden

GTE

Hi all,

I hope to keep this concise and clear.

Basically, I moved into a new build estate. The house is in the corner of the estate, and there is a small piece of land which no one seems to know anything about (it is not on the property register, the developer doesn't own it, the estate agent (who is local) doesn't know either).

Prior to the estate, it made part of an open ditch/drain. It goes under the town through a culvert (left of the image I am attaching). The developer has piped the drain under the back of my back garden, and all the back gardens on the right of the image until the far edge of the estate.

I hope the drawing below makes it clearer. My house is the orange one. The yellow piece is the land in question (just an open ditch). The top of the image is a school and its field. The school is on higher ground and has its own fences, so they don't own it. Historical OSI mapping backs that up. On the left is the end of a garden for a house built before the estate.

All I want to do is take the yellow chunk that would make my garden a regular shape. I would extend the piped drain/culvert (in green), fill it in and redo the fences. It is not possible to access this land without climbing a wall; its completely enclosed by my grade, my left-hand neighbour, the other house to the left of that and the school at the top. I suppose you could crawl through the culvert, but that is just to demonstrate how there is no way into it.

The historical OSI maps are interesting in that there is some line, like a town boundary or something, which actually runs along the entire length of what used to be the ditch. I have crudely tried to represent this on the OSI historical screenshots.

The developer apparently owned all the land for the estate, except for this curious small patch behind my left hand neighbour, and half behind me.

Does anyone have advice on where to go, since the PRAI doesn't have a listing for it?

Thank you in advance!

Peregrinus

The school fence doesn't necessarily run along the boundary of the school's land. There's a sporting chance that the boundary is actually the ditch/watercourse itself, and the fence was erected some way back from the ditch to keep children (or animals, if the property was agricultural at the time the land was fenced) out of the ditch.

Legal issues aside, before I did anything I'd find out what lands this watercourse drains, and where it flows to. Even modest interference with watercourses can adversely affect other people in ways that you might not expect, so I think carefully before asserting any control over (and therefore responsibility for) this section of the watercourse.

Having said that, if the land is effectively unoccupied and nobody is asserting ownership of it, there is nothing to stop you occupying it and annexing it to your back garden. Whether or not you culvert the watercourse, you can remove the fence that separates this patch from your garden and erect a new fence to mark the limit of the area you are annexing. Consider doing this in conjunction with your neighbour — i.e. at the same time you annex the bit next to your garden, he annexes the bit next to his, dividing the area between you on an agreed basis.

Don't spend too much money, because it is possible that somebody will come along and assert title, and you will lose the value of any improvements you have made in the way of fencing and culverting. But equally or more possibly nobody will. After you have occupied the land without challenge for more than 12 years, you can lodge an application with the PRAI to be registered as the owner.