456 REMOVAL OF WATER FENDER. 



country (Salisbury) where the barn stood, for the tenants who have 

 built such barns to remove them on quitting, or to have them valued 

 to the incoming tenant. The plaintiflFs, after the new tenants had 

 entered, demanded the barn of the defendant off the premises. The 

 defendant said they should not have it till they had agreed with him 

 as to another matter in dispute ; and they afterwards sent men to bring 

 it away ; but the defendant being then on the premises, ordered the 

 men to quit the ground, and locked the gates after them. The defen- 

 dant's counsel applied for a nonsuit, on the grounds, first, that the 

 barn was a fixture for which trover would not lie, and secondly, that 

 no conversion was proved. Liberty was given to move to enter a 

 nonsuit on both points, but the Court of Queen's Bench refused a 

 rule to show cause on the point of the conversion, but granted it on the 

 other. 



In discharging it they observed, if they were to decide it was a fixture 

 they should be overruling the decision in Rex v. Oilcy, where it was 

 decided that the ivooden ivindmill resting by its own weight on a brick 

 foundation was not annexed to the freehold. That, too, was a strong 

 case, for the mill and ground had been demised together by the same 

 person to the pauper, yet it was held that the mill did not constitute a 

 part of the tenement so as to make up the annual value of XlO. 



In Wood V. Hewett, the question for the Court of Queen's Bench was, 

 whether tlte water fender or hatch resting on masonry and brickwork fixed 

 into the bank of the mill stream, on the soil of the defendant (who was 

 tenant from year to year of the close adjoining the mill stream) became 

 his property as a necessary consequence of its position. It had been 

 placed there 43 years before, at the time of a former occupier of tlie 

 close, under whom the defendant claimed. About nine years before 

 this action, repairs had been done to the masonry, with assistance from 

 the plaintiff ; and soon afterwards the plaintiff removed the fender and 

 put in a new one, but without the consent of the tenant for life, who, 

 when he knew what had been done, threatened to bring an action. Tlie 

 Court held, on the authority of Rex v. Oticy and Mant v. C'ottins, that 

 where such chattel has been annexed by its owner to another's freehold, 

 but may be severed without injury to the freehold, it is not neces- 

 sarily to be inferred from the annexation that such chattel becomes 

 the property of the freeholder. Whether in a particular case it has 

 become so or not, may be a question on the evidence ; and a jury may 

 infer, from user or other circumstances, an agreement that when the 

 chattel was annexed the original owner should have liberty to take it 

 away again. 



Wiltshear v. Cottrell was an action for an injury to the reversionary 



