What is a right of way and an easement?
An easement is a right one piece of land has over another. A right of way is the most common type — a right to pass over someone else's land.
The structure. An easement benefits the dominant land and burdens the servient land. Crucially, it attaches to the land itself, not to the people — so it passes automatically to future owners on both sides, whether or not they welcome it.
Common easements:
Rights of way, on foot or with vehicles, over a driveway, path or track.
Rights of drainage, for pipes and sewers crossing neighbouring land.
Rights of support, particularly between terraced and semi-detached properties.
Rights of light, to defined windows.
Rights to run services — cables, gas, water.
Rights of access for maintenance, allowing entry to repair a wall or gutter.
How easements arise:
Express grant, written into a deed or transfer. The clearest, and what a conveyancer looks for on the title.
Implied grant, where the circumstances of a sale imply it — for instance a plot sold with no other means of access, giving a right of way of necessity.
Prescription — long use. Twenty years of uninterrupted use as of right, without force, secrecy or permission, can establish a legal right. This is how many informal arrangements become binding, and why long-standing use matters.
Why it matters when buying:
Rights you benefit from may be essential — check your access is legally secured rather than tolerated. A driveway used for decades by permission is not a right.
Rights over your land restrict what you can do. You cannot block a right of way, and building over a drainage easement causes serious problems.
Maintenance liability is a frequent source of dispute and is often unclear in older deeds.
Restrictive covenants are different — they restrict what you may do, rather than granting someone a right over your land.
Public rights of way are a separate system entirely, recorded on definitive maps.