UK law: "houses of one night"?

[Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party]

I was watching a programme (“Escape to the country”) on TV on Friday when the presenter mentioned that there was (or had been) a princinple, in Wales at least, that if you can build a house under the cover of darkness in one night and then have a fire lit before dawn, the land it is built on is yours. There was a Welsh word describing houses of this sort (beginning with “t” I think) and she showed a house that was built in this fashion.

Is this correct? Does this principle still hold? If it does, is it exclusive to Wales? If it holds, how is a house defined? Surely no house built in a night is going to match the safety criteria needed for a modern house, but would it be possible to build a simple shack, light a fire, claim the land, demolish the shack then build a proper house?

[Kimstu]

The Welsh name of the principle is apparently “tai (ty?) unnos”:

The bulk of West Wales cottages which still survive were built during the 18th and 19th century, in response to the demand for additional housing between the middle of the eighteenth and the middle of the nineteenth century. This put a lot of pressure on the land which was available at the time. Use of the common land by means of the famous tai unnos or “One Night” became widespread.
The origins of tai unnos were; the dwelling could be built on common land, the builder had to complete the dwelling overnight. Smoke had to rise from the chimney by the morning, the builder then threw an axe from the front door of the cottage, and the distance he could throw the axe determined the boundary of the property. The cottage dweller then had time to build a more permanent dwelling to replace the original turf and thatch dwelling.

Some north Pembrokeshire thatched cottage have survived almost unchanged since the 19th century. It was first built as a “ty unnos” in about 1800 and later rebuilt in stone.

The house was built with whatever materials were at hand. Turf was generally used for the walls and the roof would typically have been roughly thatched.

Once the cottager had staked his claim on the land and felt secure enough, he would have built a more permanent dwelling on the site.

Note that only common land was subject to this kind of redistribution. I don’t even remotely resemble any kind of excerpt on modern Welsh property law, but I’d be very surprised if this principle still had any legal force nowadays.

[Kimstu]

I don’t resemble an expert on the subject, either.

[Sensibility]

I just LOVE this OP ! I could almost sense the progressive speed of the thought processes going from

well…hang on then…if they could do that THEN, and theyve mentioned it NOW, does that mean I could do it too???

Can see eveyone who reads this running off to Wales, spending the night constructing some sort of dwelling out of bits of everything, and then throwing axes from the front door come the dawn!

Love it!

[Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party]

[Sensibility]

Would certainly have a HUGELY increased population of Wales overnight dont you think?

As it happens, I saw the programme too!

[Gfactor]

Anyone who built a ‘one-night-house’ had to be brave and daring because he would meet with objection and oppression: it was, “Let the strongest oppress and the weakest cry out,” but the more daring and courageous the occupants of the one-night-houses were, the more land they would enclose. That is the history of some of the free-holders of the top part of the parish. The house had to be built in one night without the knowledge of the farmers and landowners who claimed the land as theirs, and this is why such a house was called ‘ty unnos’.

Sounds like stealing.

The timber for the house and the rushes to thatch it were prepared in advance; and several friends would come together with suitable tools at the beginning of the night and work diligently and purposefully throughout the night, and the following morning the occupants would have their breakfast in the new house.

Sounds like a Dopefest. Bring pie.

The occupants of the ‘tai unnos’ were cruelly oppressed by the farmers and landowners, particularly those who enclosed land around their homes. There was much pulling down of embankments. The writer remembers hearing of one Dafydd Morgan (alias Bitws Betty) who was caught pulling down an embankment in broad daylight and was sent to prison for a short time. Before the dispute came to an end, the majority of the smallholders had to pay something for the land that they had enclosed. After that they had peace to labour and cultivate their smallholdings as they wished, and “everyone sat under his own vine and under his fig-tree, without fear” and the surface of the common land has changed much for the better.

http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/wal/CGN/Nancwnlle/HanesNantcwnlle.html

Um. . . enough with the oppression already.

[WotNot]

@Sensibility

I just LOVE this OP ! I could almost sense the progressive speed of the thought processes going from

well…hang on then…if they could do that THEN, and theyve mentioned it NOW, does that mean I could do it too???

Can see eveyone who reads this running off to Wales, spending the night constructing some sort of dwelling out of bits of everything, and then throwing axes from the front door come the dawn!

Love it!

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[Gfactor]

These documents suggest that common lands are now managed like parks.

http://www.defra.gov.uk/wildlife-countryside/issues/common/legislation/consult-response/chap1.pdf (pdf)
http://www.oss.org.uk/village%20greens/villagegreens.htm
http://www.naturenet.net/law/commonland.html (explaining rights of commons and registration of common lands)

[Gfactor]

Apparently tai unnos was an 18th-19th century phenomenon:

During the 18th- and 19th-century new houses on common land were known as tai unnos, which translates as one-night houses. According to tradition, right of possession would be granted if a house was built in one night and smoke was coming from the chimney by dawn. The new owner could also enclose land for as far as he could throw an axe. In other parts of Wales this right to build on common land was bitterly disputed by large estates, the Crown, freeholders and tenants (Murphy 1999, 16-18), but in north Pembrokeshire the practice was tolerated and even encouraged. For instance, in 1786, in Llanfyrnach parish a family was supplied with thatch and boards for finishing a cottage built on common land with ‘the approbation of the Lord of the Manor’ (Lewis n.d., 79-80). However, there were disputes, and Lewis (ibid., 61) records that in Llanfyrnach parish in 1802 hedges that had been illegally erected on the common were torn down.

It is unlikely that any tai unnos or cottages of squatters survive in their original condition. Most have been rebuilt, perhaps several times, or heavily modified during their lifetime.

http://www.acadat.com/HLC/StDavids/StDavidstheme.htm

But similar encroachments continued into the 20th:

Although the creation of new farms had virtually ceased by the mid 19th-century, former moorland continued to be enclosed and taken into cultivation into the 20th century. Examples of this can be traced on high sheltered hollows on the southern flanks of the Preseli Mountains.

*Id. *

[Gfactor]

According to this, the notion that getting the job done in one night gave the squatter title to the property was mostly a legal urban legend. OTOH, the author notes that after the enlosure act, some similar building was encouraged.

With the increasing pressure of the population on the land in the 19th century, the building of cottages began to encroach on the common land. As a result many Welsh cottages started out as crude squats that were built overnight. These squats were known as ‘tai unnos’ (one night houses). **People believed that if they could build the house in one night and have smoke rising from the chimney by morning, the house and the land around it was rightly theirs (even when often this wasn’t actually the case). **These makeshift dwellings were of course temporary and once the occupiers felt secure on their newly claimed land they set about converting it into a more permanent structure.

Such encroachments of dwelling spaces onto the commons were tolerated before the legal enclosure of common land. After this period the erection of these cottages on common lands was far less acceptable. However,** even after the enclosure of common land came into force, building in marginal areas was encouraged in some places as it added value to poor land by way of rents and taxes.**

(Emphasis added.)

Cottage not found - Under the Thatch

[Sensibility]

@WotNot

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Increase the size of your property or your money back!

Hurry! The first 100 lucky purchasers receive a complementary home starter kit.*

• 12 building-grade sods PLUS one bale of thatching straw. While stocks last. Offer void where prohibited by law. Your statuary rites are unaffected. Your home could be at risk if you do not keep up your roof.

Hee hee…wonderful!

[ryobserver]

There was a paragraph about this custom in **The Spoor of Spooks ** by Bergen Evans, a literature professor and proto-Straight Doper back in the 1940s and 50s. (He later hosted quiz shows.) According to him one-night houses were also called “morning surprises” in Wales and “unthanks” or “without leaves” in the Lake District of England. The origin of the belief, to the extent that such notions ever have a traceable origin, may be a theory that if the landowner couldn’t produce witnesses to the construction of the house, then he couldn’t prove it hadn’t been there all along.

[Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party]

The presenter specifically gave the impression that this was a princinple written into common law, however. Was she mistaken, and it was little more than a tradition not backed by any real legal reasoning?

[guizot]

@ryobserver

There was a paragraph about this custom in **The Spoor of Spooks ** by Bergen Evans, a literature professor and proto-Straight Doper back in the 1940s and 50s. (He later hosted quiz shows.) According to him one-night houses were also called “morning surprises” in Wales and “unthanks” or “without leaves” in the Lake District of England. The origin of the belief, to the extent that such notions ever have a traceable origin, may be a theory that if the landowner couldn’t produce witnesses to the construction of the house, then he couldn’t prove it hadn’t been there all along.

What about throwing the axe? How does that justify seizing public land? If no one is watching, how can they know how far the axe actually went?

[Gfactor]

@Dominic Mulligan

The presenter specifically gave the impression that this was a princinple written into common law, however. Was she mistaken, and it was little more than a tradition not backed by any real legal reasoning?

I’m no expert on the legal history of the region, but it seems like it’d be up the the Lord of the Manor.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/localhistory/gallery2/manor.htm

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And again, it appears that the practice was tolerated as a custom–not legaly required:

The Ty Unnos was usually built on common land ground not utilised by the landlord as it was the least productive under his ownership. Therefore it was of no great loss to him to let a tenant build a dwelling on such a paltry pitch, in one night.

http://www.periodproperty.co.uk/article021.htm

During that period much of the common land was enclosed and peasant families set up Ty unnos (one night houses) on the previously unoccupied land. The **custom **was that if a house was built in a single night and smoke was seen coming from the chimney at dawn, then the occupier of that temporary dwelling had a legal right to the homestead. An axe thrown from the house marked the extent of an enclosure around the homestead. In time the claims of the occupier were consolidated, and a stone built dwelling was constructed to replace the temporary ty unnos.

(Emphasis added.)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/historyhunters/locations/pages/12_1_penhros.shtml

The ty unnos **tradition **(literally translates as ‘one night house’) in the 17th to the 19th centuries allowed people to claim a piece of common land if they could erect a home and have a fire lit by dawn the next day. The simple building techniques employed in the tai unnos (turf walls and thatch roofs) were echoed in thousands of cottages that have long since collapsed or been destroyed.

(Emphasis added.)

http://www.swanseamass.org/wales/history/social2.html

[SpikeyMike]

Well apparently my mother’s family were from Wicklow Ireland and were on their way to Liverpool with potatoes when shipwrecked just off Prestatyn North Wales about 1780. They survived and built a hut from grass sods and had smoke going from a chimney between sunset and sunrise and threw a hatchet in each direction and claimed the land. (See 1837 tithe map Thomas Dowell)
My great grandfather was born in the hut 1820. They did eventually build a house called Salem Cottage after the Meliden Church they went to. It was later sold to the Walker family and was later taken by the sea.
The remains of the boat are still to be seen at very low tides. The family claimed insurance from Lloyds and became very well know locally being solicitors, coal merchants, cafe owners, farmers, butchers etc.
How much is that hatchet?

Regards

Mike Lawton
(Mother was Betty Dowell

[Amateur_Barbarian]

It’s only slightly related, and yes, I realize this zombie is about to celebrate its tenth birthday, but after the Oklahoma land rush, settler had some fixed time (a year, IIRC) in which to have “settled,” including building at least a 12x12 cabin on the land. Not every settler had the time or money, so there was reportedly an industry involving 12x12 houses that could be moved around on wagon wheels. With one so parked at his campsite, the settler could go into town and swear “there was a cabin upon his property” and complete his claim. I wonder if this whole process is connected to the old-world practices and legends?

[Saint_Cad]

Seems similar and at a smaller scale of the Homesteading Acts we had here in the States although we did it without leeks being involved.

[Dr.Drake]

Just for the words:

tŷ unnos is the singular (house one-night), and tai unnos is the plural. The former is roughly tee een-nohss and the latter tye een-nohss.

The status in law is dubious, but it was a folk belief and custom.