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Agricultural Valuations

Agricultural Valuations: A Practical Guide has long been the standard text for
students and professionals working on agricultural valuations. Taking a practical
approach, it covers all the relevant techniques and legislation necessary to
correctly value farms, assess farm rents, carry out arbitrations, inventories and
records of condition, including valuation clauses on sales of farms, livestock,
soils, management agreements, valuation in court proceedings and a glossary
of useful information.
In this ffth edition, Gwyn Williams’s original text is taken on by Jeremy Moody
and Nick Millard, renowned experts in the feld, bringing the book right up to
date to refect recent changes in the rural economy, including development,
diversifcation and renewable energy and specialist valuations and reference to
all the latest legislation. Clear and accessible to students and professionals alike,
readers will fnd Agricultural Valuations an invaluable guide to best practice in
agricultural valuations.

Jeremy Moody is Secretary and Adviser to the Central Association of Agricultural

Valuers (CAAV), Vice Chairman of the European Valuation Standards Board
(EVSB), an independent adviser, Visiting Professor of Rural Land Management
and Policy at the RAU and an honorary doctor of Harper Adams University.
Working on farm structures, land occupation and use, taxation and tenancy
issues throughout the United Kingdom, he was closely involved with the
Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995 and is a member of the Tenancy Reform
Industry Group (TRIG). Involved with the practical operation of agricultural
policy since the 1980s with milk quota, the MacSharry reforms, the Single and
Basic Payment Schemes and now post-Brexit policies, he liaises with governments
and others in all parts of the UK. With work on matters from natural capital
and soils to planning policy and the UK’s recent Electronic Communications
Code governing masts and cables, he has addressed conferences abroad from
Portugal and Kosovo to Turkey and China.

Nick Millard began his professional career in a West Country market practice
and joined Bruton Knowles in 1989 where he became Chairman of Partners
in 2005. Having spent much of his career with the frm in estate management,
latterly he concentrated on strategic property advice for clients in the public
and private sectors. He has combined his commercial career with academic
work and currently lectures at the Royal Agricultural University and Henley
Business School at the University of Reading and is a consultant to Michelmore
Hughes Stags. He is a member and former chairman of the CAAV Valuation,
Compensation and Taxation Committee and a former delegate to TEGoVA. He
has been a member of the RICS Tax Policy Panel and a lecturer and Visiting
Fellow at the University of Plymouth. He is currently a Visiting Research
Fellow at the University of Exeter, where he has worked with the Centre for
Rural Policy Research. He has contributed to research for Defra, the devolved
administrations and government agencies on a variety of land tenure and rural
economy issues. He is a past president of the CAAV.
Agricultural Valuations
A Practical Guide

Fifth Edition

Jeremy Moody and Nick Millard

Fifth edition published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2021 Jeremy Moody and Nick Millard
The right of Jeremy Moody and Nick Millard to be identifed as
authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and
explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Estates Gazette 1984
Fourth edition published by Routledge 2008
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Moody, Jeremy, author. | Williams, R. G. (R. Gwyn)
Agricultural valuations.
Title: Agricultural valuations : a practical guide / Jeremy Moody and
Nick Millard.
Description: Fifth edition. | Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY :
Routledge, 2021. | Revised edition of: Agricultural valuations : a
practical guide / R.G. Williams. 4th edition. 2008. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifers: LCCN 2020039898 (print) | LCCN 2020039899 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781138678040 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138678057 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781315559162 (ebook) | ISBN 9781317194293 (adobe pdf) |
ISBN 9781317194279 (mobi) | ISBN 9781317194286 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Farms—Valuation—Handbooks, manuals, etc. |
Farms—Valuation—Great Britain—Handbooks, manuals, etc.
Classifcation: LCC HD1393 .W55 2021 (print) |
LCC HD1393 (ebook) | DDC 333.33/520941—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020039898
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020039899
ISBN: 978-1-138-67804-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-67805-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-55916-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Baskerville
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents ContentsContents

Preface viii
Foreword x

1 Introduction and history 1

PART 1
Foundations 7

2 Agricultural land 9
3 Basic property law 14
4 Business structures for farming 26
5 Agricultural support: from the EU to beyond Brexit 31
6 Farm accounting 48

PART 2
Valuations 53

7 Professional issues 55
8 Introduction to valuation standards and bases of value 65
9 Undertaking a valuation 77
10 Valuation of farm property with vacant possession 87
11 Valuation of let property 113
12 Valuations for insurance 131
13 Woodland and sporting 134
vi Contents
14 Diversifcation 144
15 Development 153
16 Livestock, machinery, growing crops and produce 187
17 Environmental valuations 202

PART 3
Valuations for taxation, compulsory purchase, utilities
and communications 213

18 Valuations for capital taxes 215

19 Agricultural stocktaking for income tax 232
20 Valuations for business rates and council tax 237
21 Compensation for compulsory purchase 247
22 Cables and pipes for electricity, gas, water and sewerage 313
23 Masts and cables for communications 333

PART 4
Agricultural tenancies 341

24 Introduction to agricultural tenancies 343

25 Issues during a tenancy requiring valuation 345
26 Rent reviews under the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986 348
27 Rent reviews for farm business tenancies 374
28 Rent reviews for Scottish agricultural tenancies 379
29 End of tenancy: tenant’s claims 391
30 Compensation for disturbance 412
31 End of tenancy: landlord’s claims 416
32 Valuing the tenancy 422
33 Valuations for other agreements 430
 Contents vii
PART 5
Professional practice 435

34 Farm agency 437

35 Dispute resolution and expert witness work 456
36 Future skills and services 467
37 Advice to young practitioners 475

Appendices
A Calendar of dates for farming agreements and other purposes 481
B Headings for a valuation report for agricultural
property: the valuation report 483
C Schedule of statutes and cases 488
Index 494
Preface PrefacePreface

Gwyn Williams was a tenant farmer’s son from Montgomeryshire, born

in 1930. Left physically unsuited for farming by osteomyelitis, he became
an agricultural valuer and auctioneer. Starting as an assistant to Kenneth
Glenny, then also CAAV Secretary, he moved to south Herefordshire and
Ross on Wye in 1954 where he practised until he died in 2018, working from
the town and Ross Livestock Market as well as farming. Greatly respected
and liked, he achieved many awards including the CAAV’s Kenneth Glenny
Prize for writing the frst edition of this book, with a further three editions
then following establishing it as a point of reference for many students and
those progressing in the profession.
That project, taken on by two authors, now reaches its ffth edition with
a scope showing how the work of an agricultural valuer has broadened
with the widening range of economic activity on farms and in the coun-
tryside. It is published on the threshold of the different countries of the
United Kingdom introducing their own agricultural policies on leaving
the European Union with an independence not possible since 1972: a
decision-making moment not seen since 1947 but now taking account of
devolution. With potential post-Brexit changes in trade, the developing
response to climate change and environmental issues and unfolding tech-
nologies, these offer challenge but also opportunity and are likely to drive
major change in which the professional skills of agricultural valuers will
be in great demand. Building on the work of Gwyn Williams, the authors
offer this book to support them in helping clients identify and deliver the
most apt answers.
In taking this book forward at this time, we pay not only homage to
Gwyn Williams but also tribute to those who supported our careers. More
generally, we express our appreciation of the fellowship of agricultural
valuers in all parts of the United Kingdom without whose good spirit,
practicality, knowledge and humour a task like this would be much
harder. We thank Sarah Anderton and Flossy Freeman-Inglis for bring-
ing fresh eyes in reviewing drafts of this text as it developed and set on
record the tolerance of our editor. Finally, we thank our wives, Tricia
 Preface ix
Moody and Laraine Millard, for their support in all our varied work that
has made a text such as this possible. The faws and omissions in this text
are, though, ours, but it is nonetheless offered to stand the profession,
and so farming and the countryside, in as good a stead as we can in the
coming years.
Jeremy Moody Nick Millard
Foreword ForewordForeword

Williams has long been an authoritative text on the subject of agricultural

valuations, but this latest edition, published in 2020 at a time of great poten-
tial change and with a political will and government majority seemingly
able to deliver such change, not only updates earlier editions but opens a
window onto the post-Brexit world of 2021 and beyond. Law is taken up to
the Agriculture Act 2020 and with reference also to the delayed Environ-
ment Bill. Case law is up to date and its application explained. As such, it
is a book for those embarking on their career, seasoned practitioners and
anyone wishing to learn exactly what is required to perform such a task.
The art of the agricultural valuer mystifes many. It is understood by some
but misunderstood by more. This book provides a clear understanding of
what undertaking a valuation of rural property actually involves and what
skills are needed to arrive at the valuation itself.
The book explains the breadth of knowledge required to undertake
agricultural valuations, far more than likely to be needed for other types
of valuation. Methods may be similar, but their application and variety of
valuation types require a working comprehension of all facets of property
occupation in addition to an understanding of peripheral matters such as
residential and commercial tenancies, environmental matters, waste, inva-
sive species and soils, to name but a few.
The late Gwyn Williams’s original text has been expanded to include
advice on other practical issues relating to valuations of all types and also
matters which all those working as a rural-based professional would be likely
to encounter. Jeremy Moody and Nick Millard have together produced a
book which is both readable and understandable. Each author is a noted
professional with a full understanding of the subject and the result is some-
thing which should not only be standard reading for any student but be in
the armoury of every agricultural valuer in the country.
David Brooks, BSc, FRICS, FAAV, REV
President, CAAV 2019–20
Colchester, Essex
1 Introduction and history Introduction and historyIntroduction and history

1.1 Agricultural valuations have been needed as long as there have been
transactions in and taxation of farmland. The oldest recorded lease in Eng-
land was granted soon after 700 with references in Anglo-Saxon literature
to those managing land in the decades before and after that. Much of the
Domesday Book of 1086 can be seen as a register of the values of agricul-
tural properties for taxation purposes, prepared with the skills of preceding
centuries of Anglo-Saxon administration. Changes in land occupation and
taxation have continued as key drivers of rural valuation work.
1.2 The rise of agricultural tenancies saw an increasing need for valua-
tions, whether of premiums to take tenancies or the rack rents that replaced
that approach in the early nineteenth century. The last hundred or so years
have seen, frst, a swing from a rural world that was almost wholly tenanted
to one in which ownership and farming use became steadily more aligned
in the mid-twentieth century and then, undoing that, a growing division
between the ownership, occupation and use of farmland in recent decades
with the variety of ways in which this can be achieved.
1.3 Transactions and borrowing – Across the centuries, farmland with
its fxed equipment, housing and other attributes is an asset to be valued
whether as a whole farm or as parts. That might be for a proposed sale
or purchase. Equally, the collateral offered by agricultural land can offer
access to competitively priced fnance and this too requires valuation. Val-
uations may also be needed to recognise transfers of value between con-
nected parties. The knowledge of value and factors affecting it may inform
and infuence other business and family decisions.
1.4 Landlord and tenant – The eighteenth-century focus on agricultural
improvement and the needs of the French wars saw the emergence of a
market-based answer to the problem of encouraging a tenant to invest in
the land for the longer term, with fertility and improvement. Tenant right
grew as a complex of local customs responding to the farming needs and
practices of each area. Those customs of the country with provisions for
hold over, early entry and compensation for work improving fertility, apply-
ing in an overwhelmingly tenanted landscape, created the initial core of the
profession in agricultural valuations. The corollary was the need to assess
2 Introduction and history
dilapidations, the tenant’s compensation to the landlord for shortcomings
in his management of the property. The assessments, frst done by respected
farmers, were increasingly handled by skilled local practitioners with some
of today’s practices founded in the eighteenth century. They then formed
local groups to discuss and refne practice – such as the present Suffolk
Association of Agricultural Valuers founded in 1847. Those groups are the
roots of the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers (CAAV), founded
by them as a national body for the profession in 1910.
1.5 The custom of tenant right was progressively overtaken by statute law
for England and Wales with a parallel process unfolding for Scotland. The
present provision for an agricultural tenant’s fxtures was introduced in
1851. A voluntary basis for tenant right provided in 1875 was made manda-
tory in 1883. The successive Agricultural Holdings Acts from 1908 onwards
provided occasions for valuation from tenant’s improvements to game dam-
age, as well as the formalisation of the Evesham Custom to support tenants’
larger and commercial investments in fruit bushes. Custom itself was for-
mally abolished by the Agriculture Act 1947, leaving the matter to statute
and contract. The post-war security given to agricultural tenancies in Great
Britain by the Agricultural Holdings Acts was accompanied by statutory rent
review provisions which became ever more detailed with successive Acts.
1.6 By contrast, in Ireland the tenancy system which had seen the similar
emergence of Ulster tenant right was, after further political pressure over
land tenure, dismantled from the late nineteenth century, creating a land-
scape of small owner-occupiers. However, both parts of the island are now
looking at reviving the use of tenancies rather than the seasonal right to
farm offered by conacre.
1.7 With the 1995 reversion in England and Wales to the much greater
freedom of contract for Farm Business Tenancies (FBTs), the essential
problem of recognising the continuing value of benefcial improvements
was handled by statutory provisions for the compensation of improvements,
with tenant right now addressed as routine improvements.
1.8 Since the late 1970s, there has been increasing experimentation with
alternatives to tenancies for a landholder to engage with a farmer to secure
the farming of land. Contract farming, partnerships, joint ventures and
other arrangements have all required valuation support.
1.9 Other uses – Continuing development pressure for housing and
other uses creates opportunities for value while the economic incentives
for diversifcation outside agriculture and the release of assets from farming
have seen a growing need to consider not only residential lettings but also
business and other uses with new legal regimes, issues, opportunities and
risks. This has been illustrated by the explosion of activity with renewable
energy production since 2010.
1.10 Development control does of course do exactly that, limiting
access to a consequently greater value, and, with the historic bias of the
system against new development in open country, there have been specifc
 Introduction and history 3
provisions for agriculture and forestry to be able to have new dwellings,
usually subject to agricultural occupancy conditions, and buildings. A wid-
ening range of permitted development rights now requires understanding
and appraisal for the value they might bring.
1.11 Statutory acquisition – Statute law has imposed on the countryside
in other ways to require agricultural valuations. Turnpike roads, canals and
the railways all drove the need to consider the value of the land taken and
the effects on retained land in the compulsory purchase code frst pulled
together as general legislation in 1845. That has then been applied to the
later needs for highways, water, electricity, gas and other compulsory acqui-
sitions of land or rights from reservoirs to new towns, so much of which
are necessarily on or across rural land. As the current HS2 railway scheme
shows, these all raise issues for the agricultural valuer. The 2019 UK govern-
ment’s emphasis on infrastructure is likely to add to the volume of compul-
sory purchase work.
1.12 Alongside that, there is a separate regime for communications
apparatus from Napoleonic-era semaphore stations to today’s masts and
fbre optic cables, most recently revised in 2017 as part of the government’s
strategy for broadband with as yet unresolved valuation issues.
1.13 Taxation – Governments have always needed to raise money and
land has usually been an easy target. Rating applied to agricultural land
from its mediaeval origins until substantially exempted in 1929 while some
buildings and uses are liable and so need assessments. Taxes on inheritance
began with Legacy Duty in 1796 and then Succession Duty in 1853 – both
paid by the heir. They were overlaid with Estate Duty in 1894 and then
Capital Transfer Tax (CTT) in 1975, relabelled as Inheritance Tax (IHT)
in 1986.
1.14 Both Estate Duty and then CTT/IHT have had important but
incomplete reliefs for agricultural property. Valuations have been needed
under the various forms of Capital Gains Tax, Stamp Duty now replaced by
the differing transactions taxes around the United Kingdom, VAT and even
the Annual Tax on Enveloped Dwellings (ATED). Since at least the Second
World War, stocktaking has been relevant to the tax assessment of farmers
under Income Tax or Corporation Tax.
1.15 Other farming property – While other farming property such as
livestock and machinery often have to be valued (whether for sale with
the farm on their own or for other reasons including divorce), this can be
especially critical when required by state disease control policy. This was
seen sharply in the 2001 outbreak of food-and-mouth disease across much
of England, Wales and south-western Scotland, as in the earlier 1967 out-
break, the culling for BSE and then TB (now rarely requiring valuations in
England but continuing in Wales)
1.16 Government intervention in agriculture and the countryside –
Valuers had had roles in assisting the effects of the last century’s regimes and
arrangements for two world wars while the support policies that operated
4 Introduction and history
from the Wheat Act 1932, the various marketing boards and then post-war
defciency payments framed the marketplace. Conservation measures saw
the identifcation of Sites (or Areas) of Special Scientifc Interest (and so
management agreements) from 1949 and the creation of national parks.
1.17 The UK’s membership of the European Union (EU) from 1973 to
2020 meant that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was a powerful
infuence on farming. While intervention payments again did not need
direct consideration, the developing policies of restraint with milk quotas,
set aside, livestock premium rights, status for Arable Area Aid and then
entitlements to the Single and Basic Payment Schemes all variously created
identifable assets, restrictions or income streams that directly required
work. Professional ingenuity rapidly made milk quotas transferable, creat-
ing markets for their sale and lease, with the lessons learnt from that applied
to later developments in the CAP.
1.18 Evolving policy has then made not only environmental restrictions
signifcant but also created opportunities for value, starting with Environ-
mentally Sensitive Areas and then the developing variety of schemes in each
part of the United Kingdom with detailed rules and interactions.
1.19 The future – Looking ahead with the United Kingdom leaving the
EU, issues of resource management and climate change seem likely to
become more signifcant with a renewed attention to soils and water quality
as well as food management and mitigation with restrictions and oppor-
tunities both affecting or creating value. Energy effciency is likely to bear
more heavily in the consideration of property. There is discussion of the
potential for new markets in environmental services as a means to manage
issues or offset other development.
1.20 Throughout, formal valuations and valuation advice with accompa-
nying services have been needed to aid decision making by owners, farm-
ers, businesses, lenders and others. From purchase and tenancy through
investment and business actions to partnership dissolutions and divorce,
agricultural valuations have been required as an objective appraisal.
1.21 Dispute resolution has been a longstanding skill for senior and expe-
rienced agricultural valuers. Tenancy statutes historically focused on arbi-
tration, but we now also see expert determination and mediation. Building
on the more ordinary but vital work of negotiation between parties, these
should all be means to give practical answers in a timely and cost-effective
way for businesses to move on with their work, with application across the
whole rural economy.
1.22 What is clear is the continuing relevance of agricultural valuations
recognising and managing value within the United Kingdom’s market
economy with new price signals driving change and adaption. They need to
be undertaken by those who understand the three quarters of the country
that is farmed together with the people that do that, bringing the skills of
practical appraisal and judgment to deliver the required professional sup-
port for all parties needing these services. Those underlying practical skills
 Introduction and history 5
were recorded a thousand years ago in the Anglo-Saxon model of the man-
agement of a rural manor in Gerefa and Walter of Henley’s land manage-
ment lectures at Oxford University in the 1270s. This book follows those in
a long line, and directly on Gwyn Williams’s work, to assist those resolving
agricultural and rural issues in the twenty-frst century.
Part 1

Foundations
2 Agricultural land FoundationsAgricultural land

2.1 Land
2.1.1 Land (typically defned in the United Kingdom to include the
buildings on it) is very distinctive as an asset as its character comes from
both its nature and its physical location. Especially for farming, it can be
seen not only as a fxed physical asset but also as the working material of the
business, in that sense akin to plant and machinery. It may have buildings
and fxed equipment or simply be bare. The legal framework for land varies
between the parts of the United Kingdom.
2.1.2 All these points and any other factors may affect the value of rural
property within markets that express the supply and demand for it and such
attributes.

2.2 Character of the land

2.2.1 The nature or character of any individual parcel of land or farm
will be the accumulation of a wide range of possible points of interest. The
list offered here can only be illustrative and not exhaustive, while the bal-
ance of factors will vary between cases, over time and between markets:
• underlying geology
• type and depth of soil
• height above sea level, slope and aspect
• climate
• size and layout of felds
• boundaries with fences, walls, ditches, etc
• drainage
• contamination
• access
• proximity to markets
• fxed equipment
• dwellings
• buildings
• water supply
10 Foundations
• vulnerability to fooding or drought
• other services (including for renewables, grid connection possibilities)
• public access
• exposure to and risks from intrusion, rabbits, deer, game damage, etc
• sporting opportunities
• state of repair, maintenance and management.

2.2.2 There may be specifc legal issues binding the land such as:
• obligations (such as to repair the chancel of the local church) or oppor-
tunities (frst refusals) under the legal title
• restrictive covenants (real burdens in Scotland) and, potentially, com-
mitments for conservation management
• reservation to others of an access route or other rights such as sporting
or drainage over the land
• easements (servitudes in Scotland)
• rights taken by utilities.

2.3 Location and designations

2.3.1 The place of any parcel of land in the market will depend on its
location. In the modern world that is not only a function of its accessibility
or otherwise, its position vis-à-vis neighbours and other such factors but also
how it is affected by offcial designations.
2.3.2 In particular, the market for farmland, especially for smaller blocks,
is usually very much locally driven as few will want to buy a block of land that
is not conveniently placed for their operation and so will not compete for
land further away, segmenting the market. Thus, location may largely drive
the market of potential buyers, save for larger freestanding units.
2.3.3 One particular consideration for the value of farmland, more than
for many assets, is the potential for neighbours or others nearby to see con-
venient land not only for itself but for the additional value it might bring
to their own businesses, whether by better supporting overheads or using
facilities such as buildings or irrigation. Each might be a special purchaser
but, where there are several such possible buyers, they may make a market.
2.3.4 More generally, relevant issues can include:
• the country within the United Kingdom, each having its own legislation
and approaches
• agricultural designations, including:
• whether in the Less Favoured Area (LFA) and so Severely Disad-
vantaged Area (SDA) (generally upland except for the Scilly Isles)
or Disadvantaged Area (less material now). This can be relevant
to access to rates of payments, such as the Scottish LFA Support
Scheme (LFASS) and its headage payments
• direct payment region with the differing rates for area payments
(currently Basic Payment)
 Agricultural land 11
• relevance and impact of cross compliance, greening and equiva-
lent provisions of state agricultural policies
• inclusion in a Nitrate Vulnerable Zone
• environmental and landscape designations:
• National Parks (and areas with related designations such as the
Norfolk Broads)
• Areas of Outstanding National Beauty (AONBs)
• Conservation Areas
• designations of buildings, structures, parks, etc. as listed for their
historical, architectural or other interest
• Natura 2000 sites
• Ramsar sites
• National Nature Reserves
• Sites of Special Scientifc Interest (SSSIs), called Areas of Special
Scientifc Interest (ASSIs) in Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man
• development control:
• is it in a Green Belt?
• is it brownfeld land?
• is it with in the village envelope or other settlement boundary?
• how does the land sit within the local planning policies?
• the permitted development rights available and useful
• have permitted development rights been withdrawn (under Article
4 or equivalent powers in Scotland or Northern Ireland)?
• is it subject to planning restrictions because of issues such as a high-
pressure gas main?
• public rights of way and open access provisions
• areas with particular costs, such as an Internal Drainage Board or other
area with a drainage rate.

2.4 Buildings and fxtures

2.4.1 The basic principle is that anything fxed to land belongs with it
and so passes with it when ownership changes or, potentially, when it is let.
2.4.2 While that may appear obvious for substantial items like major
buildings, road, drains or hedges, there are often items that have been
added by an occupier or which can appear to be chattels (moveables in
Scotland). Sometimes these are clearly removeable without damaging the
land and so likely to remain personal property. In other cases, they may
have needed to be fxed to land to be useful (as with the calibration of a
bulk milk tank). In yet further cases, they may have become part of the
land. The issue was summarised by the court in Holland v Hodgson:

Thus blocks of stone placed one on the top of another without any
mortar or cement for the purpose of forming a dry stone wall would
become part of the land, though the same stones, if deposited in a
12 Foundations
builder’s yard and for convenience sake stacked on the top of each
other in the form of a wall, would remain chattels.

2.4.3 These situations have been considered in a number of cases over

many years with the key tests being the degree and the object of fxing an
item to the property. In Elitestone v Morris, the House of Lords decided that
a prefabricated bungalow had become part of the land on which it only
rested, contrasting it with a greenhouse that could be regularly moved, with
this review:

Many different tests have been suggested, such as whether the object
which has been fxed to the property has been so fxed for the bet-
ter enjoyment of the object as a chattel, or whether it has been fxed
with a view to effecting a permanent improvement of the freehold.
This and similar tests are useful when one is considering an object
such as a tapestry, which may or may not be fxed to a house so as to
become part of the freehold: see Leigh v. Taylor [1902] AC 157. These
tests are less useful when one is considering the house itself. In the
case of the house the answer is as much a matter of common sense as
precise analysis. A house which is constructed in such a way so as to be
removable, whether as a unit, or in sections, may well remain a chat-
tel, even though it is connected temporarily to mains services such as
water and electricity. But a house which is constructed in such a way
that it cannot be removed at all, save by destruction, cannot have been
intended to remain as a chattel. It must have been intended to form
part of the realty.

2.4.4 These issues are relevant when considering what is to be valued for
the sale, mortgage or other purpose for a property. Recent disputes con-
cern whether fsh in lakes or solar panels are part of land. Additional points
arise for tenancies.
2.4.5 Tenant’s fxtures – That common law position has been overlaid
by statutory intervention whereby the tenant, here particularly an agricul-
tural tenant, is given a statutory procedure for removing some fxtures –
“unfxing” them.
2.4.6 Under what is now s.10 of the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986, s.8
of the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995 for farm business tenancies and s.18
of the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act 1991 and in slightly differing
terms, the agricultural tenant has the right to remove buildings and many
fxtures but must frst give the landlord the chance to buy the item in ques-
tion at its value to an incoming tenant. This does not apply to the various
forms of Limited Duration Tenancy in Scotland.
2.4.7 For Northern Ireland, s.17 of the Landlord and Tenant Amend-
ment (Ireland) Act 1860 provides the right to a tenant to remove many
fxtures where this can be done without substantial damage to the freehold
 Agricultural land 13
or the fxture at any time up to two months after the end of tenancy, com-
pensating the landlord for any damage.
2.4.8 Crops, etc – More fundamentally and a key reason for the existence
of separate agricultural tenancy legislation, the rule that what is fxed to
land, belongs with land applies to crops, fertilisers and other basic aspects
of farm work, revealing land not only to be premises but here more akin to
plant and machinery used in production. Without some form of statutory
intervention, a seed would, once sown, belong to the landlord with the ten-
ant having no right in it.
2.4.9 The tenancy agreement allows the tenant to harvest and have the
beneft of work during the tenancy, but agricultural tenancy statutes in
Great Britain intervene in two broad ways:
• providing a structure (often referred to as “tenant right”) at the end of
the tenancy for compensating the outgoing tenant for what are then
still growing crops, applied fertilisers and improvements to the soil,
harvested crops (such as perhaps silage in the clamp), hefted hill sheep
and some other works that must be left so that value is paid for what is
left behind, encouraging the tenant to maintain the farm to the end
• disregarding at a rent review the generality of fxed equipment pro-
vided by the tenant (limited in Scotland to compensatable improve-
ments) so that the tenant does not pay rent on the beneft of works the
tenant has made.
3 Basic property law FoundationsBasic property law

3.1 Introduction
3.1.1 Agricultural valuation work requires a knowledge of land law to
understand the rights and obligations relevant to a property. That law is a
mix of basic common law and the growing volume of specifc statutes. That
combination then interacts with other regimes of law, such as those for sub-
sidy policy and for development control.
3.1.2 Devolution in the United Kingdom – Basic land law is very simi-
lar in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, but it differs a little more in
Scotland.
3.1.3 England and Wales have essentially had the same statute law until
very recently, but with devolution some aspects of law relating to agricul-
tural valuations are now beginning to diverge as the Welsh Parliament
(Senedd) enacts its own legislation, varying or replacing existing acts and
substituting Land Transactions Tax for Stamp Duty Land Tax.
3.1.4 Northern Ireland has had a different legislative history. While largely
having the same common law as England regarding land, Ireland had a Par-
liament in Dublin until 1801 when legislation passed to Westminster before
moving to Stormont in 1921. Much nineteenth-century legislation remains in
place, as for conveyancing and the basic framework for all tenancy law (the
Landlord and Tenant Law Amendment (Ireland) Act 1860 – “Deasy’s Act”).
3.1.5 Scottish law, including its land law, has developed slightly sepa-
rately. It was a key term of the 1707 Act of Union that Scotland retained its
own law and courts. In addition to its earlier history (including the Leases
Act 1449 with its defnition of what is a lease found to catch arrangements
that might be licences elsewhere in the UK), more specifc Scottish legis-
lation was made in the second half of the twentieth century (such as the
Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Act 1991). Since its creation in 1999, the
Scottish Parliament has been passing statutes within its wide range of com-
petence (including the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 and introducing
the Land and Buildings Transactions Tax).
3.1.6 Taxation – Not only are land tenure arrangements and busi-
ness agreements important in themselves and their associated rights and
 Basic property law 15
obligations, opportunities and restrictions, but they also have consequences
in the treatment of the parties under both capital and revenue taxes. In this,
a critical distinction lies in whether the taxpayer is using the land in busi-
ness or, more passively, as an investment. Landlords’ interests and rental
income are generally treated differently from an owner-occupier’s interest
and business income. There are both general rules which apply irrespective
of the nature of the land use and specifc rules for agricultural use. These
are discussed in Chapter 18.
3.1.7 Tenancies and valuation – Whatever the tenancy, the agricultural
valuer may need to consider values for:
• the rent when the agreement is granted, whether in submitting or review-
ing rent tenders with their justifcations or negotiating it, taking into
account the property, the proposed terms of the lease and the market
• the rent if it is later reviewed, when the valuer could be acting for either
party or determining a dispute between them, similarly having regard
to all circumstances
• the impact of the tenancy on the value of the land, whether for negotia-
tion, security for lending, taxation purposes, compulsory purchase or
other reasons
• end of tenancy claims for compensation between the parties for
improvements and dilapidations
• very rarely and, if at all, more likely in commercial and residential let-
tings, the value and effect of any premium paid.
• the tenancy itself.

3.2 Introduction to England and Wales

3.2.1 The basic form of ownership is of freehold land (more formally,
held from the Crown by tenancy in fee simple absolute in possession). The
land may be owned by a single individual, individuals jointly or in common,
a company or trust or in other ways.
3.2.2 In principle, the owner of land owns the subsoil and everything
below it to the centre of the earth and all the airspace above. However,
not only does practicality impose some limits on the real value of those
dimensions but statute law has limited that in a variety of ways including the
reservation of:
• gold and silver to the Crown, including treasure trove
• coal, oil and gas to the Crown
• rights for overfying by aircraft.

3.2.3 Statutory powers for authorised bodies to be able to compulsorily

acquire land or rights in land intrude on the quality of freehold ownership.
3.2.4 The use of land is not solely at the owner’s discretion but limited
by, for example, the development control regime, public rights of way, the
protection of buildings and sites of historic or scientifc importance and
16 Foundations
other regimes as well as the risk of nuisance from others and the need to
avoid causing nuisance.
3.2.5 The property may also beneft from or be regulated by other rights
and obligations, such as may be created by:
• restrictive covenants, binding the land to beneft other land or vice
versa
• easements, whether taking rights over neighbouring land or giving
rights over the owned land as for water pipes, drainage and other
reasons
• impositions under statutory powers as by utilities for water, electricity
and gas regimes or for communications apparatus under the Electronic
Communications Code
• the reservation or alienation of minerals, sporting or other distinct
rights by a previous owner
• limitations under development control policies, most obviously agri-
cultural occupancy conditions for a planning permission for a dwell-
ing, limiting who may live in it, but also other limitations as may have
been required under a planning agreement or with reduced permit-
ted development rights in AONBs and National Parks and occasionally
their full withdrawal under an Article 4 direction.

3.2.6 The land may be subject to mortgage where it has been used as
security for a loan, whether to buy it or for other purposes. If the owner, as
borrower, fails to meet the payments due, the lender can then take posses-
sion of the land pledged as the security for the loan.
3.2.7 Land referred to as a “common” will have an owner but be sub-
ject to the rights by others (“commoners”), often for defned powers
to graze but with no ownership or larger management powers over the
land.
3.2.8 Easements – An easement is a legally protected right over or use
of someone else’s property that might typically be used for a private right
of way across a feld to a house or for a water supply or drainage pipe. It is
subject to the terms on which it is granted.
3.2.9 Legally, an easement requires:
• a dominant tenement or landholding that benefts from the right
• a subservient tenement over which the right applies
• that those two properties are adjacent.
It can then bind the legal title of the affected property and so beneft future
owners of the dominant tenement.
3.2.10 Agreements Between landowners and farmers – Owners may have
many reasons for owning farmland but not all wish or have the skills to farm
it themselves without the help of others. Accordingly, there are a variety of
means by which an owner may have an agreement with a farmer regarding
the farming of the land. These include:
 Basic property law 17
• arrangements in respect of the use of or access to the land, such as:
• a tenancy, with some 35% of the agricultural area of England let on
tenancies
• a grant of rights such as proft of pasturage
• a licence for access, such as for grazing, mowing or taking a stand-
ing crop
• business arrangements between farmers having one of those relation-
ships with land:
• a partnership or company as a means of business collaboration
• instructing a farmer or other business as a contractor to provide
services to the owner’s own business
• a variety of arrangements loosely referred to as joint ventures and
share farming.

3.2.11 These differ in the legal nature of the rights granted, rules pro-
vided by statute especially for tenancies, and the actual agreements them-
selves. They will have differing consequences in terms of tax treatment,
eligibility for subsidies and support schemes based on the land, livestock
regimes and other issues, but each can be practical means to a desired end.
The agricultural valuer will often be required to advise on appropriate
structures and agreements.
3.2.12 Clear sighted analysis is important when negotiating, preparing,
using and identifying such agreements since the label used will not com-
monly matter much. It is the practical effects of the benefts and obliga-
tions and how the parties really behave that will have far more weight
should there be a dispute. Thus, a “partnership” or a “licence” may yet
prove to be a tenancy while a “share farming arrangement” may, on
inspection, prove instead to be a tenancy, a partnership or an employ-
ment contract.

3.3 Tenancies in England and Wales

3.3.1 The hallmarks of a tenancy have been clarifed by case law, most
recently, the House of Lords decision in Street v Mountford which found that
a tenancy requires:
• a landlord and a tenant, who have
• an agreement to allow exclusive occupation
• of a defned property
• for a defnite period whether for a fxed term or a repeating period,
such as from year to year
• usually in return for a consideration.

3.3.2 That grant of exclusive occupation gives the tenant all rights in
the land for the duration of the tenancy save what has been reserved in the
18 Foundations
agreement or is limited by statute. Thus, a tenant can assign or sublet the
tenancy unless (as is usual) the agreement or statute prevents that – though
the tenant cannot pass on any more rights than he or she has. Such issues
explain the importance of discussing these issues frst and then putting a
practical agreement in place to record what has been agreed between the
owner and the tenant.
3.3.3 Agricultural tenancies – The frst critical point is whether the
owner retains legal possession of the land or not. A tenancy gives pos-
session of the land to the tenant who has the right to quiet enjoyment
of what has been let to him, subject only to the terms of the agreement
and any rules provided by statute. That may often arise by formal grant,
sometimes written, sometimes oral, but can simply be found to have been
created by the way the parties have behaved, requiring care in manag-
ing arrangements so that they do not lapse into something that was not
intended.
3.3.4 This section considers farmland lettings (which are then consid-
ered in more detail in later chapters), but the underlying points also arise
when considering the lettings of dwellings (with the effect of housing ten-
ancy legislation) and for commercial uses (with business tenancy legisla-
tion, save in Scotland). For uses that are not necessarily agricultural, such
as equestrian ones, it will be a matter of fact to determine if they are in, say,
England and Wales, a farm business tenancy, a common law tenancy or a
business tenancy.
3.3.5 Agricultural law intervenes to provide two main tenancy structures
for farmland in England and Wales:
• the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986 which, with some subsequent
amendments, consolidated the law as it had developed to that date,
providing much detailed legislation for tenancies in place before Sep-
tember 1995 and in particular:
• protecting the tenant’s occupation beyond the agreed term of the
tenancy by only providing very specifc grounds for the landlord to
enforce recovery of the land
• the opportunity for all tenancies from before July 1984 to give rise
to two successions being granted to qualifying family members
• statutory provisions for the review of rent and a default position for
repairs
• end of tenancy compensation between the parties for improve-
ments and dilapidations.
• the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995, amended in 2006, which
introduced the Farm Business Tenancy for almost all new lettings
since September 1995. This provides much greater freedom of con-
tract for the parties to qualifying tenancies, so that:
• the security of tenure is just that granted by the agreement
• tenancies let for more than two years can though continue
from year to year until terminated on 12 months’ notice
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
PLATE XIV.

From Layard Sulpis sc.

1. ENAMELLED BRICK
2. FRAGMENT OF PAINTING ON STUCCO
From Nimroud
 PLATE XV

After F. Thomas Sulpis sc.

ENAMELLED BRICKS IN THE HAREM
Khorsabad
Imp. Ch. Chardon
The Chaldæans made a wide use of lapis, which they imported
from central Asia. The fatherland of that mineral is the region now
called Badakshan, in Bactriana, whence, in ancient times, came
what Theophrastus calls the Scythian stone. The caravans brought it
into the upper valley of the Tigris, whence it made its way to Babylon
and even as far as Egypt. The inscriptions of Thothmes III. mention
the good khesbet of Babylon among the objects offered to Pharaoh
by the Rotennou, or people of Syria.[354]
This fine lapis-powder, intimately united with the clay by firing,
gave a solid enamel of a very pure colour. If mixed with a body of
some consistence it might be used upon the sculptures; perhaps the
blue with which certain accessories were tinted was thus obtained.
The yellow is an antimoniate of lead containing a certain quantity
of tin; its composition is the same as that of the pigment now called
Naples yellow.[355] White is an oxide of tin, so that the Arabs do not
deserve the credit they have long enjoyed of being the first, about
the ninth century a.d., to make use of white so composed.[356] The
black is perhaps an animal pigment.[357] The green may have been
obtained by a mixture of blue and yellow pigments, of ochre with
oxide of copper, for instance. As for red, no colour is easier to get.
The Nimroud enamellers used, perhaps, a sub-oxide of copper,[358]
while those of Khorsabad employed the iron oxide of which our red
chalk is composed.[359] We can examine the latter at our ease. The
cake of red found by Place weighed some five-and-forty pounds. It
dissolves readily in water.
The whole palette consisted, then, of some five or six colours,
and their composition was so simple that no attempt to produce an
appearance of reality by their aid could have been successful. Taken
altogether, the painting of Mesopotamia was purely decorative; its
ornamental purpose was never for a moment lost sight of, and the
forms it borrowed from the organic world always had a peculiar
character. When the figures of men and animals were introduced
they were never shown engaged in some action which might of itself
excite the curiosity of the spectator; their forms are not studied with
the religious care that proves the artist to have been impelled by
their own beauty and grace of movement to give them a place in his
work. There are no shadows marking the succession of planes; in
the choice of flat tints the artist has not allowed himself to be tied
down to fact. Thus we find that in the kind of frieze of which we give
a fragment at the foot of our Plate XIV. there is a blue bull, the hoofs
and the end of the tail alone being black. Upon the plinth from the
Khorsabad harem, a lion, a bird, a bull, a tree, and a plough are all
yellow, without change of tint (Plate XV.) In the glazed brick on which
a subject so often treated by the sculptors is represented (Plate XIV.,
Fig. 1), the painter has tried to compose a kind of picture, but even
there the colours are frankly conventional. The flesh and the robes
with their ornaments are all carried out in different shades of yellow.
He makes no attempt to imitate the real colours of nature; all he
cares about is to please the eye and to vary the monotony of the
wide surfaces left unbroken by the architect. The winged genii and
the fantastic animals could be used for such a purpose no less than
the fret and the palmette, but as soon as they were so employed
they become pure ornament. In a decoration like that of the
archivolts at Khorsabad (Vol. I., Fig. 124), the great rosettes have the
same value and brilliancy of tone as the figures by which they are
separated; the whiteness of their petals may even give them a
greater importance and more power to attract the eye of the
spectator than the figures with their yellow draperies.
If the Ninevite bricks had never been recovered, we should have
been in danger of being led into error by the expressions employed
by Ctesias in describing the pictures he saw at Babylon, on the walls
of the royal city: “One saw there,” he says, “every kind of animal,
whose images were impressed on the brick while still unburnt; these
figures imitated nature by the use of colour.”[360] We cannot say
whether the words we have italicised belong to the text of Ctesias, or
whether they were added by Diodorus to round off the phrase. It is
certain that they give a false notion of the painted decorations.
Those to whom the latter were intrusted no more thought of imitating
the real colours of nature than the artists to whom we owe the glazed
tiles of the Turkish and Persian mosques. The latter, indeed, gave no
place in their scheme of ornament to the figures either of men or
animals, and in that they showed, perhaps, a finer taste. The lions
and bulls of the friezes had no doubt their effect, but yet our
intelligence receives some little shock in finding them deprived of
their true colours, and presented to our eyes in a kind of travesty of
their real selves. Things used as ornaments have no inalienable
colour of their own; the decorative artist is free to twist his lines and
vary his tints as he pleases; his work will be judged by the result, and
so long as that is harmonious and pleasing to the eye nothing more
is required. We are tempted, therefore, on the whole, to consider
some of those slabs of faïence upon which nothing appears but
certain ornamental lines and combinations, suggested by
geometrical and vegetable forms but elaborated by his own unaided
fancy, as the masterpieces of the Assyrian enameller. If he had
resolutely persevered in this path he might perhaps have produced
something worthy to be compared for grace and variety with the
marvellous faïence of Persia.
 CHAPTER IV.
THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS.

§ 1.—Ceramics.

Of all the materials put in use by the inhabitants of Mesopotamia,

clay was the first and by far the most important. Clay furnished the
sun-dried bricks of which the great buildings were constructed, the
burnt bricks with which the artificial mounds on which those buildings
stood were cased, and the enamelled bricks that enabled certain
parts to be covered with a rich polychromatic decoration. The figures
of the gods and demons they worshipped and the tombs into which
they were thrust after death were both made of this same material. It
was upon clay that they learnt to write; it was to slabs of terra-cotta
that their kings confided the memory of their victories and acts of
devotion, and the private population their engagements and the
contracts into which they entered. For thousands of years tablets of
clay thus received not only long texts, but those impressions from
seals, each one of which represents a signature. While wet and soft,
clay readily accepted any symbol that man chose to place upon it;
once it was burnt, those symbols became practically indestructible.
Accustomed to employ the unrivalled docility of kneaded earth in
so many ways, the Chaldæans must, at a very early date, have used
it for domestic purposes, for cooking, for holding grain, fruits, and
liquids. Like every one else they must have begun by shaping such
utensils with their fingers and drying them in the sun. Few remains of
these early attempts have been preserved. The invention of the
potter’s wheel and firing-oven must have taken place at a very
remote period both in Egypt and Chaldæa. The oldest vases found in
the country, those taken from tombs at Warka and Mugheir, have
been burnt in the oven. Some, however, do not seem to have been
‘thrown’ on the wheel. The thickness of their walls and their irregular
shape suggest that the potter fashioned them with the back and
palm of his hand (Figs. 163–165). The paste is coarse; it is mixed
with chopped straw, which shows here and there on the surface;
there is neither ornament nor glaze, and the curves are without
grace.[361]

Figs. 163–165.—Chaldæan vases of the first period. British Museum.

Figs. 166–168.—Chaldæan vases of the second period. British Museum.

Some other vases found in the same cemeteries are ascribed to
a later epoch. They give evidence of a real progress in art. We have
already figured two examples in our first volume (Figs. 159 and 160);
three more are given in Figs. 166–168. The body is finer, and
sometimes covered with a slight glaze; there is still no decoration,
but the forms are obviously meant, and not without distinction. These
objects have been thrown on the wheel, and the dexterity of their
maker is further shown by the skill with which their handles are
attached.

Fig. 169.—Chaldæan vase,

about 4 inches high. British
Museum.
We have no means of assigning even an approximate date to the
vases found in other parts of Chaldæa. A curious vase from Hillah
may be ascribed to a much later period, however, on the evidence of
its shape alone (Fig. 169). It has the general form of a bucket. The
body is decorated with indented triangles cut in its thickness and
detached from the background. In all this there is a striving after
effect that suggests the decadence. Nothing like it has been found in
Assyria dating from the ninth, eighth, or seventh centuries. Sir H.
Layard brought from Nimroud a certain number of vases showing a
real progress even when compared with the remains from the
second period of Chaldæan ceramics. Among these were some
quaintly shaped pieces, such as the hexagonal vase with slightly
concave sides reproduced in Fig. 170. To the same class belongs
the very common form, with a pointed base, that could be thrust into
the sand (Fig. 171), and the large bottles shown in Figs. 172 and
173. By the side of these not very graceful pieces we find some with
shapes at once simple and happy, and comparable, in more than
one instance, to those that the Greeks were to adopt in later years.
Goblets with feet and without (Figs. 174–176), a well-shaped ewer
(Fig. 177) and some variously contoured amphoræ, should be
noticed. One of the latter has a long neck and two very small
handles (Fig. 178), the handles of the other two are larger and more
boldly salient, while in one they are twisted to look like ropes.
The vase last figured, like many others from the same place, is
glazed, and glazed in two colours, a bluish-green round the neck and
a decided yellow upon the body. At the line where they meet the two
colours run one into the other, producing a far from disagreeable
effect.

Figs. 170–173.—Assyrian vases; from Layard.

It will be noticed that the decoration upon all these objects is very
slight. We can point to little beyond the double row of chevrons on
one of the amphoræ (Fig. 178), and the collar of reversed leaves
round a kind of alabastron found at the same place (Fig. 181).
Figs. 174–176.—Goblets; from Layard.

Fig. 177.—Ewer; from Layard.

Figs. 178–180.—Amphoræ; from Layard.

Fig. 181.—Alabastron; from

Layard.
 Fig. 182.—Fragment of a vase. British Museum.
The taste for decorating their works seems to have spread
among the Assyrian potters between the ninth and seventh centuries
b.c. At least many traces of it have been found among the remains
at Kouyundjik. The date is fixed for us by a fragment on which the
name of Esarhaddon occurs, the letters of which it is composed
standing out in light against a dull black background. There is no
further ornament than a line of zig-zags traced with some brown
pigment. The fragment we reproduce (Fig. 182) formed part of
another vase decorated in the same way. We cannot point to a
single complete specimen of this work, but by comparing many
pieces all from the same place, we may gain some idea of the taste
in pottery that prevailed under the Sargonids. A vase upon which
certain Aramaic characters were traced with the brush was
decorated with bands of a reddish-brown pigment turning round the
neck and body at irregular intervals (Fig. 183).[362] Elsewhere we
find a more complicated form of the same ornament. The horizontal
bands are separated by a kind of trellis-work, in which the lines cross
each other, sometimes at right angles and sometimes obliquely,
while in the blank spaces we find a motive often repeated, which
might be taken at first sight for a Greek sigma. The resemblance, we
need hardly say, is purely accidental (Fig. 184). We may also
mention a fragment where the surface is sprinkled with reddish-
brown spots on a light yellow ground (Fig. 185). So far as we know
the only complete example of this decoration is the fine goblet dug
up by Place in the Jigan mound (Fig. 186).[363]

Fig. 183.—Fragment of a vase.

British Museum.

Figs. 184, 185.—Fragments of vases. British Museum.

 Fig. 186.—Goblet. Height, 5
inches. Louvre.

Fig. 187.—Fragment of a vase.

Actual size. British Museum.
In all these fragments the decoration is purely geometrical; it is
composed of lines, spots, and other motives having no relation to the
organic world. A step in advance of this seems, however, to have
been taken. On some other fragments from the same districts, files
of roughly-suggested birds appear upon the bands and between
opposed triangles (Figs. 187 and 188). We shall find the same
motive in Cyprus, at Mycenæ, and at Athens, in the pottery forming
the transition between the purely geometrical period and that in
which imitation of life begins. In a fragment which is tantalizingly
small we catch a glimpse of three lion’s paws playing with a chess-
board ornament. A row of cuneiform characters runs along the lower
part (Fig. 189).

Figs. 188, 189.—Fragments of vases. Actual sizes. British

Museum.
These fragments, taken altogether, show that a certain effort was
made to produce decorated pottery towards the end of the Assyrian
period. Why was the attempt not carried farther? Why were
earthenware vases not covered with ornamental designs that might
be compared for richness and variety with those chiselled in or
beaten out of stone or wood, ivory or metal? The reason may, we
think, be guessed. Clay appeared such a common material that they
never thought of using it for objects of luxury, for anything that
required great skill in the making, or in which its proprietor could take
any pride. When they wanted fine vases they turned to bronze;
bronze could be gilded, it could be damascened with gold and silver,
and when so treated was more pleasing to the eye and more
provocative of thought and ingenuity on the part of the artist than
mere clay. It was reserved for Greece to erect the painted vase into
a work of art. Her taste alone was able to make us forget the poverty
of the material in the nobility of the form and the beauty of the
decoration; we shall see that her artists were the first to give to an
earthenware jar or cup a value greater, for the true connoisseur, than
if they were of massive gold or silver.
During the period on which we are now engaged, the
Mesopotamians sometimes attempted to cover their vases with
enamel. The British Museum has several specimens of a pottery
covered with a blue glaze like that of the Egyptian faïence.[364] Here
and there the blue has turned green under the action of time. One of
the vases reproduced above (Fig. 180) belongs to this class. Vases
of the same kind, covered with a rather thick layer of blue and yellow
enamel, have been found among the rubbish in the Birs-Nimroud at
Babylon,[365] but it is difficult to fix an exact date for them with any
confidence. On the other hand, it is generally agreed that the large
earthenware coffins brought from the funerary mounds of Lower
Chaldæa are very much later. In style the small figures with which
they are decorated resemble the medals and rock sculptures of the
Parthians and Sassanids.[366]
The art of making glass, which dates in Egypt at least as far back
as the first Theban dynasty,[367] was invented in Mesopotamia, or
imported into it, at a very early period. No glass objects have been
found in the oldest Chaldæan tombs, but they abound in the ruins of
the Assyrian palaces. A great number of small glass bottles,
resembling the Greek alabastron or aryballos in shape,[368] have
been dug up; many of them have been made brilliantly iridescent by
their long sojourn in the earth.[369] A vase found by Layard at
Nimroud, and engraved with Sargon’s name just below the neck, is
generally quoted as the oldest known example of transparent glass
(see Fig. 190).[370] It has been blown solid, and then the inside cut
out by means of an instrument which has left easily-visible traces of
its passage; this instrument was no doubt mounted on a lathe. Sir H.
Layard believes, however, that many of the glass objects he found
are much older, and date from the very beginning of the Assyrian
monarchy, but their material is opaque and coloured.[371] Some
bracelets of black glass, which were dug up at Kouyundjik, prove
that common jewelry was sometimes made of that material; glass
beads, sometimes round, sometimes flat, have also been found.[372]
A glass cylinder or tube, of unknown use, was found by Layard at
Kouyundjik; it is covered with a decoration made up of lozenges with
a concave surface (Fig. 191).
 Fig. 190.—Glass vase or bottle.
Height 3½ inches. British
Museum.

Fig. 191.—Glass tube. Height 8¾

inches. British Museum.
It is curious that no cylinders or cones of terra-cotta or glass have
come down to us from the Assyro-Chaldæan period. Clay was
doubtless thought too common a material for such uses, and as for
glass, they had not yet learnt how to make it a worthy substitute for
pietra dura, as the Greeks and Romans did in later years.
Before we quit the subject of glass we must not forget to mention
a very curious object found by Layard at Nimroud, in the palace of
Assurnazirpal, and in the neighbourhood of the glass bottle and the
two alabaster vases on which the name of Sargon appears. It is a
lens of rock-crystal; its convex face seems to have been set up, with
some clumsiness, opposite to the lapidary on his wheel. In spite of
the imperfect cutting, it may have been used either as a magnifying,
or, with a very strong sun, as a burning, glass.[373] The fineness of
the work on some of the cylinders, and the minuteness of the
wedges on some of the terra-cotta tubs, had already excited
attention, and it was asked whether the Assyrians might not have
been acquainted with some aid to eyesight like our magnifying glass.
It is difficult, however, to come to any certain conclusion from a
single find like this; but if any more lenses come to light we may fairly
suppose that the scribes and lapidaries of Mesopotamia understood
how thus to reinforce their eyesight. In any case it is pretty certain
that this is the oldest object of the kind transmitted to us by antiquity.

§ 2.—Metallurgy.

Even at the time to which we are carried back by the oldest of the
graves at Warka and Mugheir, metallurgy was already far advanced
in Chaldæa. Tools and weapons of stone are still found in those
tombs in great numbers;[374] but side by side with them we find
copper, bronze, lead, iron, and gold. Silver alone is absent.
Copper seems to have been the first of all the metals to attract
the notice of man, and to be manufactured by him. This is to be
accounted for partly by the frequency of its occurrence in its native
state, partly by the fact that it can be smelted at a comparatively low
temperature. Soft and ductile, copper has rendered many services to
man from a very early period, and, both in Chaldæa and the Nile
valley, he very soon learnt to add greatly to its hardness by mixing a
certain quantity of tin with it. Where did the latter material come
from? This question we can no more answer in the case of
Mesopotamia than in that of Egypt; no deposits of tin have yet been
discovered in the mountain chains of Kurdistan or Armenia.[375]
However this may be, the use of tin, and the knowledge of its
properties as an alloy with copper, dates from a very remote period
in the history of civilization. In its natural state, tin is always found in
combination, but the ore which contains it in the form of an oxide
does not look like ordinary rock; it is black and very dense; as soon
as attention was turned to such things it must have been noticed,
and no great heat was required to make it yield the metal it
contained. We do not know where the first experiments were made.
The uses of pure tin are very limited, and we cannot even guess how
the remarkable discovery was made that its addition in very small
quantities to copper would give the precious metal that we call
bronze. In the sepulchral furniture with which the oldest of the
Chaldæan tombs were filled we already find more bronze than pure
copper.[376]
Lead is rare. A jar of that metal, and the fragment of a pipe dug
up by Loftus at Mugheir may be mentioned.[377] It is curious that iron
though still far from common, was not unknown. Iron nowhere exists
in its native state on the surface of our planet, except in aerolites. Its
discovery and elimination from the ore requires more time and effort
and a far higher temperature than copper or tin. Those difficulties
had already been surmounted, but the smelting of iron ore was still
such a tedious operation that bronze was in much more common
use. Iron was looked upon as a precious metal; neither arms, nor
utensils, nor tools of any kind were made of it; it was employed
almost exclusively for personal ornaments, such as rings and
bracelets.[378]
Gold, which is found pure in the veins of certain rocks and in the
beds of mountain torrents, and in pieces of a size varying from that
of a grain of dust to nuggets of many pounds, must very soon have
attracted the attention of man, and excited his curiosity, by its colour
and brilliancy. We find it in the tombs mixed with objects of stone and
bronze. Round beads for necklaces, earrings and finger rings of not
inelegant design were made of it.