268 LEGAL. [Aug. 



i 



EGAL. 



GOVERNMENT FORESHORE RIGHTS. 



QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION.— Tuesday, Junk 9. 

 (Divisional Court, before Lord Coleridge and Mr. Baron Pollock.) 



The Attorney-General, on behalf oe Her Majesty, v. Eeeve. 



THIS was an information by Sir Henry James, Attorney-General, 

 on behalf of Her Majesty, against a gentleman in Norfolk, to 

 establish the title of the Crown to some land lately added by 

 accretion to the shore at Lowestoft, in the county of Suffolk, and it 

 was the revival — for the first time in the High Court — of a very 

 ancient proceeding — that of an information in the Exchequer — to 

 establish a right of the Crown. Under the Judicature Act, the 

 jurisdiction of the Court of Exchequer was vested in this Court, and 

 no application was made in the proceedings of the Court as a Crown 

 Court, which therefore stands as it was altered by the Crown Suits 

 Act, 1865 ; and this was the first case of the kind that had arisen 

 since that Act. It was, therefore, at once a proceeding extremely 

 ancient, though one rarely heard of in modern times, and it was the 

 first case arising out of the acquisition of land from the sea by 

 accretion since a case of the late Lord Yarborough's, which was 

 litigated sixty years ago, and in which the House of Lords affirmed 

 the law as laid down by Bracton and Lord Hale and all other old 

 authorities — that land gained by alluvion, or accretion from the sea, 

 belonged to the Crown, unless the accretion had been so slow and 

 gradual as to be imperceptible, as it was held to be in that case. 



The effect of a pier and works by the Norfolk and Great Eastern 

 Eailway Companies on land granted by the Commissioners of 

 Woods and Eorests at Lowestoft, on the coast of Suffolk, has been to 

 cause the sea to recede on the north side of the north pier for a 

 certain distance, so that on that side the sea at ordinary high tides 

 does not now advance farther landwards than the extremity of the 

 north pier, leaving the original foreshore and part of what was 

 originally bed of the sea uncovered. Such recession of the sea the 

 Crown alleged to have taken place from time to time perceptibly in 

 its progress, and was due, as the Crown alleged, solely to the 

 existence of the pier and other works, the line of high-water mark 

 southward of the harbour remaining unaffected. Even if this 

 recession of the sea had been imperceptible in its progress, which on 

 the part of the Crown was denied, it was alleged that, at any rate, 

 the bounds of the former line of ordinary high-water mark were 

 known, and the limits of the land left uncovered by such recession 



