WCA 573 Appendix E2

APPENDIX E2 – - 842 - 16 December 2013 Cornwall Council County Hall TRURO Dear Modification Order application WCA 573 Church Lane St Mawgan Approximately two years ago our local Parish Council applied for the above Modification Order and a large number of parishioners supplied evidence, from their own experience, of this Lane being used without hindrance, or permission, by vehicular traffic, horses and pedestrians. At the November meeting of the St Mawgan-in-Pydar Parish Council the Clerk requested that parishioners with additional information should send this to you. This we are now doing. We, as land owners and residents on the lane, were asked to complete a questionnaire at the time of submission of the application for the Modification Order. This we did to the best of our knowledge at the time. Our property was constructed in 1956 and our deeds contain evidence that vehicles have used this Lane throughout that time. Our deeds also contain documents demonstrating that we have rights of access over the Lane. Even if they did not, these rights have been established by usage. Consequently, whatever the outcome of this Modification Order application, it will not change our legal rights and therefore we make the following submission without prejudice. Background to this submission As a result of an application to the Land Registry by the new owners of The Rectory, now called ’Yongala’, to register two parcels of land adjoining the Lane we have undertaken an extensive search of archival documents relating to the Lane. All the documentary evidence we quote below is either contained in the Cornwall Records Office, or St Mawgan-in-Pydar Parish Council Minute Books, or in the Deeds of our property should you wish to verify any of the information. History of the Lane Firstly we wish to point out that the name ‘Church Lane’ or ‘Church Road’ only came into use in 1991. Prior to 1991 it was known as the ‘Road from the School to Lanvean’ or ‘School - 843 - Lane’(1900 onwards); ‘Rectory Road’ [from 1947, when , see below, became Parish Council Clerk]; or ‘Rectory Lane’ - which is in current usage - in 1973 (Parish Council minutes, 10th October, 1973). Ownership of the Lane The Parish Council Minutes from the early Twentieth Century onwards show that the question of ownership of the Lane has been regularly discussed, always without resolution. However, in 1973 , a Church Warden until 1970, signed a Statutory Declaration to the effect that there had never been any other claim of ownership and that the lane belonged to “the encumbent Rector”. was also Parish Council Clerk from 1947 until the early 1990’s. Some might argue that the content of this Statutory Declaration is questionable given that it was made despite the fact that, by this time, as Parish Clerk had twice been requested to obtain proof of the Rector’s ownership of the Road and on both occasions had reported to the Parish Council that no such confirmation or proof could be obtained from the Diocese or Rector (Annual Meeting of the Pariah Council, Item 10, 3 June 1949; Parish Council minutes 19 January 1954 ). Statutory Declaration also seems to ignore a letter written in 1969 from the Church Commissioners’ solicitors to the Clerk, Cornwall County Council. This letter was written in connection with the sale of ‘School House’ on the Lane. The County Council was selling the house to . This letter states that the Lane was not owned by the Church nor, to the best of their knowledge, by the Diocese or the Rector. There is no mention in the Parish Council Minutes that , the Council’s own Clerk, had made his 1973 Statutory Declaration and there is no evidence that he had told any of its members, one of whom is still alive and has confirmed this in writing. This omission is worrying when it is considered that , in his Statutory Declaration, stresses his status as the Parish Council Clerk, emphasising his length of service, thus imparting extra weight to his statement. It is even more worrying that this Statutory Declaration is, essentially, the basis upon which the Church registered the Lane prior to its sale along with The Rectory in 2010. For your information we are currently requesting that the Land Registry re-examine the basis on which it registered title of the Lane in favour of the Diocese. The status of the Lane It is significant, we believe, that after made his 1973 Statutory Declaration, whenever the Lane is referred to in Parish Council Minutes it is consistently known as ‘Rectory Lane’ or ‘Church Road’. Furthermore, after 1973, contrary to the previous 70+ years of indecisive discussions it is stated as being owned, unequivocally, by the Church. This Statutory Declaration by one man is, to the best of our knowledge, the only evidence of this ever being a private road. The fact that the Church relied on this Statutory Declaration, plus one from the current Diocesan Surveyor which basically says ‘nothing has changed since 1973’, to register title of the Lane in 2010 reinforces our opinion that no other documentary evidence supporting their ownership exists. We maintain that all the evidence, apart from these two Statutory Declarations - from people connected with the Diocese - supports the Lane being an unowned, public, unrestricted thoroughfare until 2010. We will now briefly review some of this evidence. Examination of a Plan of Lanherne Mansion House, dated c.1777 (Cornwall Records Office, AR/18/13), shows the Lane in question as not part of ‘Glebe Land’. It is depicted as a highway comparable to: (i) the ‘Coach Road Lanherne from St Columb’ and, (ii) the only other road - 844 - running northwards across the river in the village. The former is now the main road through the village from Carloggas while the latter is now the highway leading out of the village from Penpont bridge up Ox Lane to join the valley road to Mawgan Porth. The Lane currently under dispute would have been, in the mid-Eighteenth Century, the primary route from the north east, including such places as Talskiddy, Gluvian and St Columb via Higher Tolcarne and Lanvean, to St Mawgan, for pedestrians, horses and wagons. In the mid-Nineteenth Century, the Mawgan in Pydar Tithe Map 1843 (Cornwall Record Office CD ref no.TM/141) shows the Lane as a through road from the village to Lanvean not distinguishable from the other public highways in the Parish. The District Valuation Map, 1911, and accompanying land ownership documents, show much of the surrounding land owned by the Rector but shows the Lane as ‘unowned’. It was therefore not a private road at that time. Parish Council minutes from the early Twentieth Century support this and indicate the Council’s belief that the Lane was under the control of the ‘Highway Authority’ or the ‘District Authority’. There is evidence in these minutes that ‘heavy vehicles’ and ‘delivery vehicles’ used the Road at this time. In the late Nineteenth Century, early Twentieth Century, the drive to the mid-Nineteenth Century Rectory - now ‘The Old Rectory’ - was off the Lane that is the subject of this Modification Order. The entrance to this drive was about halfway between Lanvean and the ford, near where the entrance gate to our meadow is today. Therefore, during that time, parishioners wishing to visit the Rector on horseback, by carriage, or later by automobile, would have used the Lane to reach his drive. By extension, parishioners would also have used the Lane to access the Church Room, or Hall (now the property known as ‘Moorland House’), the School, the ’Falcon Inn’, and to go to and from the village by whatever transport means they chose. The Parish Council Minutes and Local Authority Minutes contain evidence that the Local Authority was involved in maintenance of the Lane; there is also a Fire Hydrant on the Lane. The Local Authority has also provided, updated and maintained, street lighting along this Lane. For example, street lighting was installed by the Local Authority/District Council (i) near The Church Hall, (ii) opposite ‘Lanvean Cottage’, and (iii) near ‘Trevelyan’ Bungalow, on the Lane (Parish Council Minutes, 30 March 1932; St Austell Council in Committee Standing Joint Committee - Item 19, Street Lighting, 26 August 1960 ; Annual Assembly of the Parish Meeting, 12th March 1969;Parish Council Minutes 14 October 1970; Parish Council Minutes, 14th February 1979). These street lights are still in use today. Furthermore there is evidence of vehicular traffic along the Lane even during Restormel District Council’s jurisdiction (Parish Council Minutes 14 March 1979). An earlier reference to the use of the Lane by vehicular traffic is in the Parish Council Minutes, 14 January 1964, where it states the following, under an item headed ‘River Board works at St Mawgan’: “The ramp which it is proposed should be constructed in the roadway adjacent to the wall of the school playground will entail the raising of the road level .... The whole will be surfaced with tar macadam to the satisfaction of the County Council and the ramp will in no way interfere with either the free access of pedestrian traffic to the footbridge or to that of vehicular traffic to the ford”. The Chairman of the Parish Council at that time, Mr T.J. Trevenna, still lives in Lanvean House (previously known as ‘School House’, see above) on the Lane. One can only assume that whenever the Parish Council was asked to check and update the - 845 - Definitive Map of Public Rights of Way, the members believed that the Lane belonged to the ‘Local Authority’ and was consequently a byway for all traffic and therefore did not need to bring forward this Lane as having such designation.

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