Dyer v Dorset County Council [1989] QB 346
Dyer v Dorset is an important Court of Appeal authority on curtilage. A lecturer’s house stood within the wider grounds of an agricultural college but about 450 yards from the principal college buildings. The court held that the house was not within the curtilage of those buildings merely because it formed part of the same 100-acre estate.
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- Neutral citation
- [1989] QB 346; [1988] 3 WLR 213
- Court
- Court of Appeal (Civil Division)
- Judgment date
- 4th May 1988
- Judge
- Lord Donaldson of Lymington MR, Lord Justice Nourse and Lord Justice Mann
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What Dyer v Dorset decided
Dorset County Council owned Kingston Maurward College of Agriculture, an estate of about 100 acres centred on a large country house with numerous college buildings and grounds.
Mr Dyer was a senior lecturer at the college. He occupied one of four staff houses which had been built in an isolated close about 450 yards from Kingston Maurward House and some distance from the main college buildings.
He claimed a statutory right to buy his house. The council argued that the house was excluded because it lay within the curtilage of buildings used for the college.
The Court of Appeal rejected the council’s argument.
Being within the same estate is not the same as being within a curtilage
The staff house stood within the wider college grounds and had been provided because of Mr Dyer’s employment.
That institutional relationship did not make the whole 100-acre estate the curtilage of the college buildings. The statutory wording referred to the curtilage of a building, not the grounds of an institution or campus as a whole.
The distinction is useful in planning too. A large estate, farm, school site or commercial holding can contain several buildings and parcels without all of the land forming the curtilage of each building.
Curtilage is a question of fact and degree
Lord Donaldson MR described the question as one of fact and degree, provided the decision-maker correctly understands the meaning of curtilage in its statutory context.
The house was physically separate and remote from the relevant college buildings. Fields, internal roads and other parts of the estate lay between them.
On those facts, it could not sensibly be described as part of the curtilage of the main college buildings.
Dyer stressed the restricted character of curtilage
The judgments repeatedly referred to curtilage as a relatively confined area associated with a building. Lord Donaldson spoke of some small and necessary extension to the building, while Lord Justice Nourse emphasised the requirement for the land to form part and parcel of it.
The court relied on the earlier Methuen-Campbell authority.
However, the later Court of Appeal decision in Skerritts is essential before treating the word small as a legal test.
Skerritts later qualified the smallness language
In Skerritts of Nottingham, the Court of Appeal said Dyer was correctly decided on its facts but had gone further than necessary in suggesting that curtilage must always be small.
For a substantial mansion, for example, historic stables or other ancillary buildings may be within the curtilage even at a meaningful distance from the principal building.
The size of the curtilage is therefore relative to the building and its circumstances. Distance and scale matter, but there is no universal number of metres or acres.
The part-and-parcel relationship remains central
Later authorities, particularly Blackbushe Airport, have brought the cases together.
The central question is whether the land or structure is sufficiently and intimately associated with the building to form part and parcel of it. Physical layout, historic ownership and use can all assist, but a wide operational or institutional connection is not enough by itself.
About the Planning Geek copy of Dyer
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Related Planning Geek guidance
See our practical guide to curtilage.
Dyer v Dorset Case Law Page Updated: 10th September 2026