土地法(第4版影印本)/麦克米伦法学精要丛书

4.3 Legal and Equitable Freeholds

Out of all the possibilities raised in the sections above, only the fee simple
absolute in possession can be a legal estate (subject to the exception for
conditional fees), because of s.1 LPA (see 1.5 above). The fee tail, therefore, can only be equitable, held behind a trust.

4.4 The Rights of the Freeholder

In theory at common law the owner can do whatever he likes with his land: he owns everything under, above and on his land, down to the centre of the earth and up to the heavens (the Latin expression is ciuis est solum eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos).
In 1885, Challis wrote that ownership of the fee simple ‘confers ... the lawful right to exercise over, upon, and in respect of the land, every act of
ownership which can enter into the imagination'. However, even then this
was not true because the law of tort could be used (in nuisance, for example, to prevent a landowner unreasonably interfering with his neighbour’s enjoyment of his land). Today, legislation has imposed great limitations on the owner of land, so that, for instance, he cannot prevent aeroplanes from flying above his land, may not mine coal, demolish a listed building, kill protected species or pollute water； he must also observe building regulations and licensing laws.
The Town and Country Planning Acts impose probably the best known limitation on landowners. When the first was passed, in 1947, it was suggested by some that the fee simple had been destroyed by the powers taken by the government to control land use. Few people would say so now,since most landowners appreciate the fact that the value of their land is maintained for them by the local authority, which can forbid their neighbours to open an amusement arcade or a garage, for example.