This volume describes how the courts created rights for land owners and users competing to appropriate water for factories, town supply, drainage, and transport. It covers the period from early times to the late nineteenth century, illustrating the changing common law of property and tort, and throwing new light on the growth of the economy and the social and legal dimensions of technological innovation.

Readership: Academics and post-graduate/advanced students in law and legal history. It will also have a readership in economic and social history and also the history of technology.

Introduction 1. The Exploitation of Water in Historical Perspective 2. Servitude Doctrine in Early Law 3. The Common Law of Riparian Rights 1580-1750 4. Blackstone and Hale's Doctrines of Land and Water Use 5. Appropriation Theory in the Courts 6. Establishment of the Modern Riparian Doctrine Conclusion Bibliography Index

Joshua Getzler , Fellow and Tutor in Law at St Hugh's College, Oxford

`... the first comprehensive study of the history of English water law...a lucid account...[Getzler] seems equally at home in the medieval period... as with the later developments circa 1580-1750, or with the development of the modern law in the nineteenth century. The depth of learning is just as impressive as its scope, with copious references provided throughout. ...Primarily...this is a doctrinal legal history. It is not narrow in focus, and could not afford to be narrow given the complex conceptual stock for modern water law. ' Jonathan Morgan, Christ's College, Cambridge, Journal of Legal History