Historic property

“ FYVIE CASTLE.
Great are the vicissitudes of landed property in these modern times. Estates of more than local name are constantly being placed in the market, and even manors and castles of national interest are occasionally brought to the auctioneer’s hammer. Old families are dying out or becoming embarrassed, and many of ‘the stately homes of England’—often associated with legendary lore and the history of centuries—have to be handed over to the highest bidder. ”

“ One of the most important sources of our sense of national direction is our architectural heritage-the historic sites, structures and landmarks that link us physically with our past. This great fund of cultural resources includes not only sites such as well-known battlefields and structures of national significance such as the homes of famous patriots, but also includes typical houses, office buildings, factories, and stores, and other public buildings such as post offices, courthouses, and railroad stations. ”

“ Three hundred years ago the edifice had hardly begun to rise from the ground, most property was real, most people lived directly on the land, most business was on a cash basis, oversea trade was a proportionately small affair, labour was locally fixed. ”

“ Not only do all obligations and all productive real property find their way into the great national crucible to be converted into assignats2261, but a number of special buildings, all monastic real estate and a portion of the ecclesiastical real estate, diverted from its natural course, becomes swallowed up in the same gulf. ”

“ In an age when freedom was the exceptional condition, the ownership of land was the mark of a free man, and ample territory the inseparable appanage of rank. No amount of gold or chattel property conferred the franchise: land alone was recognized as the vehicle of all personal privilege, and the basis of civil rank. Centuries have not obliterated these features in their descendants to this day ”

“ You start with the site value of the land at the present moment, and by site value—I am not going into technicalities—we mean, roughly speaking, the value of the land divested of the buildings. You do not go back into the past, you take things as they are; you do not rip up the previous history; you do not interfere with existing or past contracts. You give to every man, however he has acquired it, the full and undisturbed enjoyment of the rights, privileges, and property which he at present possesses. ”

“ Land is real property, or real estate. Stocks, lumber, evidences of debt, and all that property which is classed as movable is personal estate. Personal estate may become real estate. How? Take lumber, bricks, etc., which are personal property, and therewith construct a house, and locate it, with stone or brick foundation, on your land. ”

“ Suppose you're married; grand ceremonial, great éclat, delighted friends and relatives, handsome presents, diamonds and all—he'd do the thing well—honeymoon, say, the Riviera—limit, three months—what next? Where are you going to live? London? It won't do. Property—that property you're so interested in—can't take care of itself; the young heir of those broad plantations must go home and learn the business. ”

“ Apart from the numerous national and archaeological societies, whose proceedings contain invaluable accounts of practically every monument of interest throughout the kingdom, there are two societies directly formed with the object of monument preservation in its widest sense, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, founded in 1877, and the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest and Natural Beauty, constituted in 1894 under the Joint Stock Companies Acts for the purchase and preservation of sites and buildings, which it can hold in perpetuity for the benefit of the public. ”

“ In it a correct valuation of all property, from the noble lord's down to the agricultural implements of the peasant, is entered, with the position of every church and castle extant conspicuously marked on the chart in Latin. ”

“ For these and other reasons a good deal of land has changed and is changing hands, but the old custom whereby real property can be transferred only from relative to relative is still observed with very slight if any relaxation of its former strictness. ”

“ Even antique works of art in private collections are considered as national property in a sense and their owner can be punished for injuring them; if the owner of an ancient building attempts to demolish it or refuses to keep it in repair, the State may expropriate him. ¶ Holland, Prussia, Saxony, Spain, Sweden and Norway, Switzerland, and many American States have provisions of a more or less stringent character with the same purpose. ”

“ Far from the present age being hostile to the supremacy of property, there has been no period of our history where property has been more esteemed, because there has been no period when the nation has been so industrious. ”

“ In the further property development during succeeding centuries your ancestors continually improved, and increased their [Pg 86] property power so that now it is the dominant factor controlling the very life and destiny of every one of you. ”

“ Where the Commissioners of Works are of opinion that the preservation of any ancient or mediæval structure, erection, or monument, or of any remains thereof, is a matter of public interest by reason of the historic, traditional, or artistic interest attaching thereto, they may at the request of the owner consent to become the guardians thereof ”

“ You will pass in your journeys many a fine park and noble palace going to decay through the fines and alienations which have fallen upon them, and you will thus see for yourself how truly it has been lately written, that ‘an estate is but a pond, but trade a spring;’ for you will also come upon fair houses, whose owners’ names were unknown before the late Civil Wars, and you will find them flourishing by means of trade, honourably carried on from father to son, whereby not only wealth, but titles too have been won for this generation, and which promise to last for many yet to come. ”

“ So long as elaborate conveyances, written or acted, are required for the alienation of land alone, the chances of mistake are not considerable in the transfer of a description of property which is seldom got rid of with much precipitation. But the higher class of property in the ancient world comprised not only land but several of the commonest and several of the most valuable moveables. ”

“ A number of medieval buildings, civil or military, were cleared away for the sake of regularity of plan and improvements in the public streets, or to satisfy the taste of the owners, who thought more of their comfort or profit than of the historic interest of their old mansions or houses. ”

“ For if the present large estates were, by the dilapidation of families, to be broken to pieces and sold, others equally great would, in the free circulation of property, speedily accumulate; and the moment any possessor arrived at a certain pitch of fortune, he would probably choose to reside in the better country—near the Parliament, or the Court. ”

“ The towns on ecclesiastical estates form a distinct group, whose lot was materially different from boroughs on ancient demesne or on feudal lands. All lay property was subject only to laws and customs which had been ultimately determined by the necessities of social or political expediency, and which, dealing with secular possessions for secular purposes, were capable of being unmade as they had been made. ”

“ The spot is interesting, not only as being the property and the occasional residence of a distinguished public man, but as affording a specimen of those cotton estates, the culture of which exerts so important an influence on the commercial and financial destinies of the republic. ”

“ Chapter XIX Property in land historically considered The treatment of land as individual property is so thoroughly recognized in our laws, manners and customs that the vast majority never think of questioning it but look upon it as necessary to the use of land. ”

“ The preponderance everywhere given to property in land, over wealth in money, trade, or other moveable goods, is a result of the same policy. Indeed it may be said, that the leading principles which govern property in this Kingdom, have their main origin and foundation in the feudal system ”

“ One cannot view an institution so unlike any thing we have in our own country without having many reflections excited, for one of these estates may justly be called an institution; it includes within itself all the influence on a community of a great model farm, of model housekeeping, of a general museum of historic remains, and of a gallery of fine arts. ”

“ No one shall take from them any property which they hold by hereditary right, such as building sites, gardens, vineyards, fields, slaves, or any other movable or immovable property. No one shall interfere with their right to erect buildings against the walls of the city, on the inside or outside. ”

“ The title to such real property remains in abeyance during military occupation, and until the conquest is made complete. As a general rule, the property belonging to churches, to hospitals, or other establishments of an exclusively charitable nature, to establishments of education, or foundations for the promotion of knowledge, whether public schools, universities, academies of learning, or observatories, museums of the fine arts, or of a scientific character,—such property is not to be considered public property ”

“ Property lies in the foundation of every happy home, however humble; and property gilds the pinnacle of every consecrated temple. The wise and impartial Disposer, therefore, makes the endowments of his creatures equal with their responsibilities: to all those on whom he lays the obligations of religion and of the family state, he gives the right of holding the property on which the dwelling and the sanctuary must be founded. ”

“ Without regarding public opinion, however, the honest courtiers proceeded to endow one another with the honours and estates agreed upon. They hesitated to sell the king's jewels or plate, but there was property still more to their taste, as it would give hereditary estates in connection with the desired titles—there were different manors and lordships belonging to the dissolved monasteries, or to bishoprics still existing. ”

“ Each agency shall ensure that the management of historic properties in its ownership is conducted in a manner that promotes the long-term preservation and use of those properties as Federal assets and, where consistent with agency missions, governing law, and the nature of the properties, contributes to the local community and its economy. ”

“ Their permission to own property and to live in their own house instead of in the houses of native merchants, as was the usual custom, was derived, like most privileges of foreigners, from the gift of the king. Little by little they had purchased property surrounding their original grants until they had a great group of buildings, including a meeting and dining hall, tower, kitchen, storage house, offices and other warehouses, and a considerable number of dwelling-houses, all enclosed by a wall and fences. ”

“ I am a practical man, sir. I now possess in the north property representing, in farming lands, in shooting rights, and what not, a locked-up capital of many a [150] thousand pounds. As you seem to know everything, sir, perhaps you are aware that I propose to build a modern mansion on the estate.'
'Yes ”

“ A fatherly Conservative Government may, therefore, some day be expected to come handsomely to the rescue of the owners of historic mansions: owners with acres of reception-rooms, picture-galleries, and baronial halls; owners with long pedigrees but slim purses, who can scarcely afford even to keep their many windows cleaned, let alone maintain floors and roofs and keep the91 moth out of priceless ancient tapestries and silken hangings. ”

“ Any person entitled for his own benefit, at law or in equity, for an estate in fee, to the possession or receipt of the rents and profits of any freehold or copyhold land, being the site of an ancient monument, whether such land is or not subject to incumbrances: (2.) Any person absolutely entitled in possession, at law or in equity, for his own benefit, to a beneficial lease of land, being the site of an ancient monument, of which not less than forty-five years are unexpired, whether such land is or not subject to incumbrances ”

“ The god of a city was originally owner of its land, which encircled it with an inner ring of irrigable arable land and an outer fringe of pasture, and the citizens were his tenants. The god and his viceregent, the king, had long ceased to disturb tenancy, and were content with fixed dues in naturalia, stock, money or service. One of the earliest monuments records the purchase by a king of a large estate for his son, paying a fair market price and adding a handsome honorarium to the many owners in costly garments, plate, and precious articles of furniture. ”

“ This basis is the basis of residence. Given that a conqueror, or a seat of Government established by routine, is established in a particular place and chooses there to remain; or given that the pleasure attached to a particular site—its natural pleasures or the inherited grandeur of its buildings or what not—make it an established residence for those who control the expenditure of wealth, then that place will acquire an economic importance which has for its foundation nothing more material than the human will. ”

“ One might own a thousand acres of rich soil covered with as fine oak, walnut, and poplar as the world could produce and might still be a poor man, though the timber in these latter days would bring a fortune. Cleared land was wealth at the time of which I write, and in building their houses the settlers used woods from which nowadays furniture is made for royal palaces. Every man on Blue might have said with Louis XIV, "I am housed like a king." ”

“ Such are many of our older houses, to say nothing of later and more splendid ones; nothing of all the modern attractions that have been added to their ancient ones; nothing of those sumptuous places which our nobility have raised on their estates, and filled with all the luxurious adornments of modern life, and with the wealth of art. And then those houses stand scattered over all the kingdom, in fine old parks, in gardens of quaint alleys and topiary work ”