Stilwell v Blackman [1967] 3 All ER 514
Property law – Annexation – Restrictive covenant
Facts
A conveyance between the predecessors of the parties contained a restrictive covenant requiring that the purchaser did not use the land for any purpose except for a private garden and for keeping no more than 24 hens on the patch of land. The restrictive covenant was expressly signed to the plaintiff. The defendant asked to have the covenant dropped but the plaintiff refused, at which point the defendant parked old cars on the land, in increasing numbers. The plaintiff later issued a writ for an injunction on the basis of the breach of the restrictive covenants. The defendant believed that as the plaintiff had sold of another portion of the land, that the covenant could no longer be enforced as the ‘whole’ of the property no longer existed.
Issue
The court was required to establish the construction of the covenant in the circumstances and to understand whether it had been passed from the parties’ predecessors to the parties and also, whether the covenant had passed with the land as a result of the sale of the piece of land.
Decision/Outcome
The court held that it was a matter of construction whether or not the annexation of the restrictive covenant had passed between the parties’ predecessors. In line with the principles for freedom of contract, the court held that the benefit of the restrictive covenant, in this case, has been expressly passed to the plaintiff and had maintained to the current date. On this basis, the covenant could be enforced by the plaintiff.
Updated 21 March 2026
This case summary accurately reflects the decision in Stilwell v Blackman [1967] 3 All ER 514, which concerned annexation and the running of the benefit of a restrictive covenant with land. The core legal principles described remain good law. The law on annexation of restrictive covenants was subsequently developed significantly by Federated Homes Ltd v Mill Lodge Properties Ltd [1980] 1 WLR 594, in which the Court of Appeal held that section 78 of the Law of Property Act 1925 is capable of effecting statutory annexation automatically, potentially reducing the need for express annexation of the kind at issue in Stilwell. Readers should be aware of this development and the subsequent case law qualifying the scope of Federated Homes, including Roake v Chadha [1984] 1 WLR 40, which confirmed that section 78 annexation can be excluded by contrary intention in the conveyance. The article does not engage with these later developments, which are central to any modern understanding of annexation. The case summary itself remains accurate as a description of the Stilwell decision but should be read in that broader context.
