drainage ditch

[julie.angel]

How can you tell which side of a hedge the ditch should be on? Is it always on the lower ground? Ours has disappeared and we are getting waterlogged and need to reinstate it - but where?

[RogerK]

There is a legal point to remember here : The courts have devised a number of methods of ascertaining where on the ground a boundary runs, and one of the best known is the 'hedge and ditch' presumption. Where the boundary runs along the edge of a field which is bounded by a hedge and a ditch, the boundary is taken as the far side of the ditch from the hedge. The presumption is that the landowner dug the ditch at the edge of his property, and threw the spoil up within his land, then planted a hedge upon it. The basis of this presumption was described by Lawrence J in Vowles v Miller almost 200 years ago: 'The rule about ditching is this: no man, making a ditch, can cut into his neighbour's soil, but usually he cuts it to the very extremity of his own land: he is of course bound to throw the soil which he digs out, upon his own land; and often, if he likes it, he plants a hedge on top of it�'