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Hi, and thanks in advance...
My wife purchased a house about ten years ago from a friend, who was living in the property we now own (No 10) and still owns one of the adjacent properties (No 11). The house comes with a portion of an outbuilding. All the buildings and outbuildings described below are stone-walled.
The outbuilding (which is actually off the side of unrelated property No 9) used to be the coal room and the wash room, and there were various rights of access. The coal room was owned by No 10, and there are currently no other rights of access to this (I think they were sold at some point in the past). The wash room was owned by No 11 but No 12 also had access to it (this is still the current situation).
The complexity is that at some point the (presumably stone) wall between the coal room (owned by No 10, us) and the wash room (owned by No 11, access rights for No 12) was knocked down - before we bought the house. On the conveyancing plans, it just shows a line drawn across the outbuilding but it says 'do not scale measurements' (or something similar on it) and there is no details/explanations on the plan to make it clear how you know where the boundary is (and no dividing wall shown in the plan). For the last ten years, we have just had our stuff on 'our' half, and No 11's stuff on the 'other' half, but there was no clear boundary agreed; we were working to the back of some shelves.
A few weeks ago, No 11. installed a wood-faced stud wall to divide the outbuilding. They had mentioned the idea of getting a wall, which we weren't opposed to, but we hadn't agreed anything. In the process, our stuff got rearranged and moved further into 'our' side; the wall makes our side smaller than what we were using. I am aware that installing a wall like this is not allowed under the Party Wall act etc; No 11. has apologised and offered to take the wall down. I know that if we really wanted we could insist on that and refuse to have a wall installed on 'our' side of the boundary.
No 11. installed the wall on what they believed to be the boundary. The outbuilding is fairly undecorated, and you can see on the wall the old paint/plastering on either side of where the old wall used to be, and a cement strip along the floor which is presumably also where the old wall was dug out of the floor. If you were to scale off the conveyancing plans, they would give us slightly more space, but by less than 40cm or so. When we talk to them, I need to check the exact position of the 'centre' of the old wall and the position of the new wall, but it won't be more than 10cm out I think from the 'middle'.
So my question is:
- Would the boundary would be determined to be along the centre of the old wall, or by scaling off the conveyancing plans, or by 'past use' over the last ten years, or something else? Since No 12 also have rights to part of the outbuilding, I don't know how that would affect a boundary agreement between us (No. 10) and No. 11.
(PS some unimportant details have been changed)
My wife purchased a house about ten years ago from a friend, who was living in the property we now own (No 10) and still owns one of the adjacent properties (No 11). The house comes with a portion of an outbuilding. All the buildings and outbuildings described below are stone-walled.
The outbuilding (which is actually off the side of unrelated property No 9) used to be the coal room and the wash room, and there were various rights of access. The coal room was owned by No 10, and there are currently no other rights of access to this (I think they were sold at some point in the past). The wash room was owned by No 11 but No 12 also had access to it (this is still the current situation).
The complexity is that at some point the (presumably stone) wall between the coal room (owned by No 10, us) and the wash room (owned by No 11, access rights for No 12) was knocked down - before we bought the house. On the conveyancing plans, it just shows a line drawn across the outbuilding but it says 'do not scale measurements' (or something similar on it) and there is no details/explanations on the plan to make it clear how you know where the boundary is (and no dividing wall shown in the plan). For the last ten years, we have just had our stuff on 'our' half, and No 11's stuff on the 'other' half, but there was no clear boundary agreed; we were working to the back of some shelves.
A few weeks ago, No 11. installed a wood-faced stud wall to divide the outbuilding. They had mentioned the idea of getting a wall, which we weren't opposed to, but we hadn't agreed anything. In the process, our stuff got rearranged and moved further into 'our' side; the wall makes our side smaller than what we were using. I am aware that installing a wall like this is not allowed under the Party Wall act etc; No 11. has apologised and offered to take the wall down. I know that if we really wanted we could insist on that and refuse to have a wall installed on 'our' side of the boundary.
No 11. installed the wall on what they believed to be the boundary. The outbuilding is fairly undecorated, and you can see on the wall the old paint/plastering on either side of where the old wall used to be, and a cement strip along the floor which is presumably also where the old wall was dug out of the floor. If you were to scale off the conveyancing plans, they would give us slightly more space, but by less than 40cm or so. When we talk to them, I need to check the exact position of the 'centre' of the old wall and the position of the new wall, but it won't be more than 10cm out I think from the 'middle'.
So my question is:
- Would the boundary would be determined to be along the centre of the old wall, or by scaling off the conveyancing plans, or by 'past use' over the last ten years, or something else? Since No 12 also have rights to part of the outbuilding, I don't know how that would affect a boundary agreement between us (No. 10) and No. 11.
(PS some unimportant details have been changed)
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