PETERSFIELD.
HOWARD v. THE PETERSFIELD RAILWAY.—To the Editor of the West Sussex Gazette.— Sir,— I have neither time to spare or inclination to become a newspaper correspondent, but a paragraph appeared in your last publication headed “extraordinary compensation case,” containing a garbled and one- sided statement evidently imposed upon you by some interested person. Such a statement will not have any weight with a competent judge as the umpire is known to be, but as my name is placed before the public as the arbitrator for the claimant, I feel you will do me the justice to insert in your next paper the following brief facts, and beg to request you and the public to withhold their judgement until the umpire has made his award. Mr. Dean, who was the arbitrator for the Railway Company, came to the meeting with a solicitor and several witnesses. I told the umpire I did not intend to call witnesses, and that I had no solicitor; if the representative of the railway insisted upon calling witnesses I ask for an adjournment, in order to be prepared in a similar manner. The request was acceded to, and Mr. Dean then said he would withdraw his witnesses. The claim was for damage to two houses, let respectively at £35 and £28 a year, which the railway passed within 30 yards, on an embankment as high or higher than the bedroom windows, destroying the privacy, and annoying the inmates by the shaking dust, smoke, fire, and noise of the trains; it severed in two a valuable meadow of three acres, situate within the borough and abutting on one side of the town, having a valuable frontage, the embankment through the meadow being about 20 feet high, obstructing a beautiful view of the town and country below, from 50 acres of land above, belonging to the claimant, which was purchased with an intention, from having an undulating surface, of being set out in plots for building villas, having an approach from the town through the meadows which is now cut unsecured, and disfigured by the railway embankment, and the frontage of the meadow to the road or street also damaged. The claim, therefore, included the injuries I have enumerated, as also the value of the land and the compulsory taking thereof.—I am, sir, your obedient servant, G.H. APPLEBY.—Fareham. August 10th, 1863.
See also 6-Aug-1863