Rights of Way, Wells and Septic Tanks: The Rural Title Checklist
18 March 2026 · Mary Molloy Solicitors
A rural house can function perfectly for forty years on arrangements that exist nowhere but in family understanding: the lane belongs to an uncle, the well is across the ditch, the percolation area sits in the corner of the home farm. A remortgage is where those understandings meet a certificate of title — which deals only in registered rights.
What the lender needs the title to show
Three functional assurances: legal access from the public road (a registered right of way over any private lane or shared avenue); entitlement to the water supply (a well easement, or documented group scheme membership); and lawful wastewater disposal (where the tank or percolation area touches neighbouring land, a registered easement covering it, plus registration of the system itself where the domestic wastewater rules require).
Converting understanding into title
The standard cure is a deed of easement: the neighbouring owner — often a parent or sibling — formally grants the right of way or the well and wastewater rights, and the easement is registered against both folios. Where the goodwill exists, this is straightforward drafting and registration. Where the neighbour has died, sold, or fallen out with the family, statutory routes exist but everything slows — the strongest argument for doing these deeds while relationships are warm, ideally before any remortgage needs them.
Timing inside a live remortgage
An easement discovered missing mid-transaction adds the neighbour's engagement, drafting, signing and registration to the critical path. Discovered before application — one honest conversation about how the house actually gets its access, water and drainage — the fix runs in parallel and costs the timeline nothing. This is exactly the ground our readiness checker and our self-build guide are built to cover.
Read more in our main guide: Self-Build and Non-Standard Property Remortgages · or back to the blog.
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