> How can you prove it's yours? or if someone challenges it, you register it? For an unregistered plot, in theory you demonstrate ownership by providing a seri

> How can you prove it's yours? or if someone challenges it, you register it? For an unregistered plot, in theory you demonstrate ownership by providing a series of valid conveyancing deeds back to a valid original grant. If they're lost, flawed, or destroyed in a fire, things can get messy. The Land Registry's guide to handling first registration in situations where the deeds are missing is a good example: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/first-registration-of-title-where-deeds-have-been-lost-or-destroyed/practice-guide-2-first-registration-of-title-if-deeds-are-lost-or-destroyed https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/first-registratio... In practice, if you've occupied the land continuously for a long period of time then you can have possessory rights in the land even in the absence of a good chain of title. You're right that this is all pretty unsatisfactory, which is why the Land Registry was set up in 1925 and registration made increasingly-more-compulsory since then. But as pjc50 notes, we don't have a full cadastre, so we are where we are. Interestingly Scotland had a registration system (of conveyances rather than of land per se) much earlier. So even within the UK we're not without precedents.