1 88 



THE 



GARDENERS' 



MAGAZINE, 



March 



•9. 189S 



LAW. 



Ti 



ARE GLASSHOUSES AGRICULTURAL LAND? 



l i_ i MM f,fniwi in nurseries and market gardens may for rating 

 „ vS^^^^Zi has during the p£t twelve months been 



now be considered 



4 , ID M «w»™ - - - ° • i tura i and has auring me pasi iwe 



purges be WP^SSSS and legal circles, and may n. 

 much discussed both m horticu 1^ a " f mt judg ' ment W J given in the Court 



to have been fully answered » Worthing v. Richmond, 



of Appeal on an appeal I M 1 H and u ^ Lord Justice Rigby, 



Smrn^dT^i ^^T^Z surveyor of taxes from a decision of 



Lord 



the Divisional Court ^Xe^h^lSsional^Court on a special case stated by the 

 ^^SrteS^S appeal by the overseers of the parish of 



in section three, a definition of land ; and, this word, when used 

 statutes, is to include buildings, unless a contrary intention apneas 

 pretation Act, 1889, contains no definition of buildings, market 25 Ut °- 

 nurseries. The ninth section of the Act of 1896 clearly %h 0 w s L^ltTl * 

 cannot possibly mean or include buildings in the early part of the sec i™ r ^ 

 definition is that agricultural land means any land used as arabU r, , ** 

 or pasture ground only. Market gardens and nursery grounds are, how'evT^' 

 declared to be agricultural land, and this is the enactment which rives n' ' 



difficulty with which we have to deal. The 'definition in section ouLS 

 must not be used to contradict other parts of the Act, or to introduce' Mr!!?' 



now ir» 



assessment 



under the Agricultural 



an imp 

 section 



Ag 



agricultural 



ft 



which the language of the enacting part of the statute does not justify 

 gardens and nursery grounds may or may not have buildings upon thera 

 have not no difficulty arises ; but if they have, then comes the question now 

 those buildings to be rated ? To answer this question, we must loU to 51! 

 enacting clause, which is section I. Here we have " agricultural land" «L |j 

 connexion with, and, as I think, plainly contrasted with, "buildings and otW 

 hereditaments." Similar language is used in sections 5 and 6. This exr** 

 mention of buildings makes the whole statute perfectly clear to my mind » 

 removes the doubt caused by the use of .the words " market gardens a 



hereditaments The facts, as summarised in the 1 tmes, were as iouows : 



of fruit, vegetables, and flowers at Worthing, and d 

 himself and was commonly known as a market gardener and nurseryman 

 the owner and occupier of rather more than four acres of land, on which fifty-seven 

 glasshouses or greenhouses of various sizes were erected. The houses were used 

 by the appellant for the purpose of growing tomatos, cucumbers, and grapes, and, 

 to a smaller extent, other vegetables, for the purpose of sale. The plants and 

 crops urown therein were watered and heated by artificial means, and grown upon 

 soil pi iced upon prepared beds inside the houses and matured much earlier than 

 in the open ground. The vines were planted inside the houses and the roots ran 

 partly in the soil under the houses and partly passed through apertures in the walls 

 into the soil outside. Fifty-one of the glasshouses were thus used for growing 

 vines. In the cucumber houses (which were six out of the fifty-seven houses) 

 there were inside the houses dwarf brick walls supporting corrugated iron sheets, 

 upon which soil taken from the other parts of the nursery ground was placed. In 

 the beds so formed the cucumber plants were planted. Beneath the iron sheets 

 and between them and the ground there were hot-water pipes. The area actually 

 occupied by the fifty -seven houses was rather more than two acres. The rest 

 (rather more than two acres) consisted chiefly of vine borders, paths, and the 

 stokeholes. The whole of the houses were built upon dwarf brick walls like an 

 ordinary greenhouse. It is provided by section 9 of the Act that, "unless the 

 context otherwise requires, the expression 1 agricultural land ' means any land used 



as arable, meadow, or pasture ground only, cottage gardens exceeding one quarter 



of an acre, market gardens, nursery grounds, orchards, or allotments, but does not 

 include land occupied together with a house as a park, gardens other than as 

 aforesaid, pleasure grounds, or any land kept or preserved mainly or exclusively 

 for purposes ol sport or recreation, or land used as a racecourse." 



I or the purposes of the Act section 6, subsection 1, requires certain returns to 

 be made to the Local (Government Hoard. Subsection 2 provides that " for the 

 purpose of the returns statements showing the gross estimated rental and rateable 

 value of the agricultural land in a parish, and in the case of any hereditament 

 separately valm-d which consists in part of agricultural land and in part of buildings 



or other hereditaments of each such part, shall be made by the overseers of every 

 paiish and corrected by the assessment committee and sent to the surveyor of taxes 

 and be subject to objection or appeal by the said surveyor and overseers " as 

 therein provided. In pursuance of the requirements of subsections I and 2 of 

 section 6, of certain regulations made by the Local Government Board under sub- 

 section 3 of that section, the overseers made the prescribed statements, and 

 sent them to the assessment committee and the surveyor of taxes, and in such 

 statements they returned Mr. Piper's property and other property of a 

 similar nature as agricultural land. The assessment committee, however, on the 

 objection of the suiveyor of taxes, decided that the statement, to the extent to 

 which it includes land partly covered with glasshouses, was incorrect, and corrected 

 it by strikingiout that entry. Upon the hearing of the appeal before the quarter 

 sessions it was contended for the appellants, the overseers, that the particulars of 

 the gross estimated rental and the rateable value of the hereditaments^ question 

 were correctly entered by them in their statement under the heading of " agricul- 

 tural land," and that the decision of the assessment committee to correct the state- 

 ment by striking out the entry was wrong, and in support of their contention they 

 cited the case of " Purser v. Local Board for Worthing " (18 Q.B.D., 818). For 

 the respondent it was contended that the case relied on by the appellants did not 

 decide that glasshouses were not buildings, but merely that the land was not the 

 less used as a market garden because the glasshouses had been placed upon it, 

 and that the definition of agricultural land in the Agricultural Rates Act, 1896, 

 was to be read subject to the context, and that the context in the Act required that 

 any buildings should be excluded from the term agricultural land, that the glass- 

 houses were buildings within the meaning of the Act, and that it followed that 

 either the whole of the hereditament in question should be excluded from the over- 

 seers statement, or, alternatively, that so much thereof as consisted of buildings 

 should be inserted under the heading of "buildings not being agricultural land." 

 The quarter sessions were of opinion that the contention of the appellants was 

 right, and allowed the appeal and ordered the statement of the overseers to be 

 altered by restoring all the items which formed the subject of the appeal to the 

 condition in which they were before they were altered by the assessment com- 

 mutee subject to the statement of a case for the opinion of the Court. Upon the machine for the 



~»~l«vv.l &aiucus ana nursert 



grounds" in section 9. The only conclusion at which I can arrive is tW 

 buildings are not to be treated as agricultural land for rating purposes under thk 



He was Act of Parliament. The case of "Purser v. Worthing" (18 Q.B.D., 818)4*1 



not, in my opinion, assist the Court in construing this Act of Parliament. Tk 

 case merely shows that a market garden prima facie includes the buildings upon it 

 used for market garden purposes. To urge that market gardens and m 



grounds do not cease to De so rjecause tney are more or less covered with glass- 

 houses is to urge what is quite true, but is beside the mark. The question is, bow 

 are such houses to be rated under this Act of Parliament ? My answer is, if they 

 are buildings, they must be rated as such, and not as agricultural land. Mr. 

 Salter, in his very able argument, suggested that buildings used only for coverug 

 land which was cultivated under their protection ought to be distinguished from 

 other buildings, and ought to be held to be agricultural land. I can find nothing 

 to justify a distinction between one class of buildings and another for any such pur- 

 pose as his argument requires. Section 5 speaks, no doubt, of buildings used only 

 for the cultivation of land, but this clause in no way shows that such buildings or 

 any others are to be rated as agricultural land. In my opinion, the appeal man 

 be allowed and the orders of the Queen's Bench Division and of the quartet 

 sessions must be reversed, with costs here and below. 



Lord Justice Rigby delivered a written judgment to the like effect. 

 Lord Justice Vaughan Williams differed. His Lordship agreed with Lord 

 Justice Collins, that the cases of " Purser v. Worthing Local Board" and "The 

 London and North-Western Railway Company v. Llandudno Commissioners" 

 showed that prima facie this land covered with these glasshouses was part tod 

 parcel of the market garden, and therefore agricultural land, the occupier of which 

 was entitled to the benefit of this exemption. The form and collocation of wo* 

 used in this Act was not new as defining partial exemptions in rating cases. He 

 could find nothing in the tenour or details of this Act to lead to the concluwi 

 that the words 11 market gardens " and the other collocated words should recem 

 a different construction, so as to exclude from agricultural land the buildings « 

 each hereditament, whatever their character. After discussing sections I, 5, 0, 

 and 9, his Lordship arrived at the conclusion that the land covered with gta» 

 houses fell within the exemption, because the buildings were part and parcel ot U* 

 market garden, which, by the terms of the definition, was agricultural land, 

 were used exclusively for the purpose of cultivating the land. 

 The appeal accordingly was allowed. 



New inventions. 



The Improved Clipper Lawn 



• * MM a ■ ■ a ■ ■ • a T I 



[ower is 



surpass otha 

 arranged on I 



Improved Clipper Lawn Mow- 



er. 



,, mese uciug ~ 



of behind the front rollers. l« 

 accompanying illustration show 

 that the wheels travel ova U* 

 ground where the grass u j* 

 never rolling down the stand* 

 grass with the wheels. The ; m»u 

 gauge wheels at the side are to 



the grass. Ine Knno ^ 

 sharpened in the machine wjhj 

 small tile or whetstone, or can* 

 taken out and ground, ^ 

 must never be sharpened anywKK 

 except on the beveled side d « 

 knives. There is 

 which has a cutter bar twent) W 

 inches long. It mak< *m d* 

 ence to the Clipper 

 high the grass is or no* ^ 

 weeds there are m u, •« ^ 



extre m '" v u - 



renders it an 



.•ood* 



appeal to the Divisonal Court the Judges differed. Lord 

 opinion'that the buildings in question wi 

 while Mr. Justice Ridley thought that 



n mat me ouiutings in question were to be treated as part of the market garden, 

 Mr. justice Ridley thought that no buildings were entitled to the partial 



una, um**&~- — t 



scythe before the usual 



ClipP« 



" t5 a lilr the A flS* " The '^1 was heard on February 8. " 



Trevor 7 1 (S f ,r L K,cha '« WebstW, Q.C.), Mr. Day, and Mr 

 SeU K; ST^^ M <- J-P« Wdton. Q.C y ; and Mr. 



in ol'onf mlrke! t^t^l^^ ^ £. fiBS 



i 1 J* . . A,c wed as buildings or as agricultural land under 



^ ™5»n.unuiui Kates Acts, 1896. The Cc 



bsshouses ought to lie rated as agricultural 



tonch Division \h*> matt— .u>, cullural 



l^w W. Smythe.-I should like to add my meed of P^ise ^d ^eeinjj 

 this good gardener, so well spoken of by Mr. A. Dean. Basing rw ^ 



mil^c fr™« Q-«« " • . — r a\a nnSr* a stranger, 



to him ior mfornntTon £ _ 



» T . ^mmmj •.■■v. 1 ollUUlU 11*VC IU «.viva »"J 



thls good gardener, so well spoken of by Mr. A. Dean, basi 

 miles from Swanmore, and coming here as I did, quite a sti 

 since to undertake the making of this garden, I found Mr, Sov 

 bour in every wav. Manv * fimp have I pone to him for 1 



t« Sessions held that ZZ l? ' kD ° Uy P ? D ^ and in every '"^T ^ f i he value of in*** 

 appeal to the Queen's ^ *i my comman <i- I therefore know and appreciate the value m 

 ;.,EET :1a ly™ en s , so well, truthfully, and liberallv aiven. Not only is Mr. Smythe a sp* 



members of the Court 



issed. but W» — . -i^TT^"^ fi"**** <"™ea, ana trie appeal 



question are clearly building in th. J 9 ^ ° "" s CoUrt ' The grouses 

 cW stated leaves ^d.nary legal meaning of the word. 1 



true construction 

 section contains i 



bour in every way. a UI11C „.„ . fe — . . • nce „ -r 



m ,e rne v^-nnform-!- 



so well, truthfully, and nbeTaUy^give^ Not only is Mr. Sm > l "" f " " vKg o* 

 he is one of the best all-round gardeners that I know.— Edwin m ■ 



doubt on this point. 

 >• die Act — 



definition 



detinition 



th 



Gardeners Magazi 



year is the " P*» 

 ■rs, Fruit, .Vegetables, ~ 



[AdvtJI 



