"Let's go back to the year 1275, and the recently crowned King Edward I is busy drafting and passing laws to tidy up his Kingdom. One of them was the Statute of Westminster, which covered a lot of matters relating to how legal processes should be carried out, oh and of course, new taxes. However, for the purposes of this article, it's also the document that introduced the concept of Time Immemorial."
"Explicitly why 3rd September 1189 was chosen as the barrier between that which we know and that which we don't has itself been lost to time. But a very good theory exists. That date marks the coronation of King Richard (the Lionheart), the great-granddad of King Edward I, and a good theory exists about why great-granddad was the point at which time immemorial began."
The legal concept of time immemorial was introduced by the 1275 Statute of Westminster and fixed a historical cutoff at 3 September 1189. That date corresponds to King Richard I's coronation and became the boundary for events considered too remote for ordinary legal proof. Prior practice allowed land claims based on oral testimony passed down through generations, enabling long-dead ancestors' statements to be used as evidence if relayed by descendants. The Statute aimed to replace oral familial proof with documentary evidence, clarifying land ownership and tax obligations for the Crown and courts. The Statute's creation reached its 750th anniversary in 2025.
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