Western Ground Rents Ltd

page · Updated 2026-10-09T01:07:35 · Original source

Western Ground Rents Ltd (WGR) held the documentary reversionary interest conveyed by the Bute Estate in 1938 and was the landlord in the later possession and tenancy sequence at Great House Farm until it sold to BP Pension Trust in 1969. The family’s established title case is that the 1877 arrangement took effect in 1928, passing the full Parcel A to the Williams family. Parcel A includes the farmhouse/buildings, barn, stable and yard west of the house, garden, north forest and south-east ground later registered as VG41. Parcel B is the separate eastern agricultural fields. The already-obtained 1939 WGR–John Williams agreement/plan depicts Parcel B only. The disputed question is how WGR’s later descriptions and enforcement of Parcel B were extended over Parcel-A forest and green on 4 July 1955, as the family says happened, and how those areas entered later title records.

Parcel BWGR’s documentary chain principally concerns the eastern agricultural fields. Its later dealings with the occupied farmhouse/buildings/garden group must not be treated as defining or establishing title to the full Parcel A, which the family says had passed to the Williams family in 1928 and included north forest and south-east green.

Events

1938 — takes Bute’s reversion on the 1916 tenancy (details)
1939 — grants John Williams a revised tenancy in May 1939; its plan shows the fields east of the house (details; plan)
1949 — grants Frederick an unwritten yearly agricultural tenancy of Parcel B from 2 February. The family’s case is that the same step was the first failed attempt to make Mary’s separate Parcel-A occupation appear permissive (details)
1955 — ends Frederick’s Parcel-B tenancy on 2 February and obtains a High Court order worded for the “whole farm” (details); on 4 July, while enforcing possession of Parcel B, WGR also seized, on the family’s established account, the Parcel-A north forest and south-east green, while Mary stayed in the occupied farmhouse/buildings/garden group (details)
1959 — offers Mary a tenancy of the occupied farmhouse/buildings/garden group; she refuses and asserts ownership. This concerned the remaining occupied centre, not the full Parcel A, whose north forest and south-east green had already been seized on the family’s account (details)
1962 — obtains a possession and mesne profits order at Cardiff County Court, 11 December 1962; not enforced against the house (details)
1965 — agents’ letter of 2 March 1965 offers “Mrs Williams” a weekly tenancy of the farmhouse and garden at £2; not signed; the estate treated her occupation as adverse from then (details)
1969 — conveys to BP Pension Trust on 31 December 1969; the deed is not on the Land Registry’s first-registration files (details)

Family note. The family reads the 1949–1965 steps as repeated attempts to make Mary’s occupation of Parcel A permissive, and the 1969 sale as the point at which a Parcel A claim enters the BP chain without an identified documentary conveyance into WGR (title test).

Evidence: Court of Appeal judgment, 1987 (cat. GHF-E017-01, -04, -06, -08, -10) · 1938 conveyance and 1939 tenancy plan, held by the family (cat. GHF-E017-02, -03) · 1955 High Court order and 1962 county court order, to be obtained (cat. GHF-E017-05, -07) · 1965 agents’ letter, recited in the 1987 judgment (cat. GHF-E017-09) · HMLR letter, 23 March 2026 and schedule of first-registration documents, 30 July 2026 (cat. GHF-E017-11, -12); 1969 conveyance missing (cat. GHF-E017-13)