By ANNA USHER

Three Mosman women who own a house just 250m from Balmoral Beach have moved to claim the forgotten strip of land right behind it under the century-old law of squatter’s rights, and the clock is ticking.

The state’s Registrar-General will sign the block over to them in early August, about 10 days away, unless someone lodges an objection first.

Mosman Collective found the claim buried in the legal notices of a newspaper, and it has opened a real local mystery. The notice, published on 2 July, spells out a possessory title claim over the land behind 225 Raglan St and names the three women chasing it: Mary Elizabeth French, Janet Muriel Bagnall and Emma Janet Lonsdale.

They have applied under Part 6A of the Real Property Act for what the law calls possessory title. In plain English it is squatter’s rights, the right to be recorded as owner of land you have openly held for at least 12 years, without the registered owner turning up to stop you.

NSW Land Registry Services confirmed to Mosman Collective the application, AW98769, covers the lot at the rear of 225 Raglan St.

The women already own the house in front, a two-bedroom cottage on the Balmoral slopes. Now they want the block behind it.

The name still on the deeds

The claim is made adverse to Walter William Wallace Walker, a Mosman man whose name has not moved on a local title in generations. In 1919, the block in front passed to his wife, Mary Walker, at a time when married women rarely held land in their own right.

Upon a death in 1950, it passed to Ernest Alfred Wallace Walker, a Balmoral plasterer carrying the same family name. It left Walker’s hands for good after that, falling to the Public Trustee in 1977, changing hands in the 1980s, and landing with Marjorie Ella Bagnall in 1986.

The strip behind was never swept up with it and still sits in Walter Walker’s name.

One of the three applicants, Janet Muriel Bagnall, shares her surname with that 1986 buyer.

The block behind the house

The women already own the cottage. What they are chasing is the separate strip directly behind it, still in Walker’s name after a century.

The 1919 plan puts that back parcel at six and a half perches, about 165 square metres, roughly the size of a small backyard.

One local real estate agent told Mosman Collective the parcel of land would be comparable in value to the recent Ausgrid sale on Vista St, where a small block containing an electricity box sold for more than $650,000.

Mosman Council was asked to comment. “As the property is privately owned, Council is unable to comment on this case,” a spokesperson said.

The clock runs out in early August

The notice went in on 2 July. The Registrar-General grants the claim one month later, about 2 August, unless an objection or a caveat is lodged first.

That leaves barely a week for anyone with a rival claim to come forward. Enquiries go to NSW Land Registry Services in Liverpool St, Sydney.

This is one Mosman mystery we would love to solve, and there is not much time. Somewhere there is a relative, an heir or an old neighbour who knows how a slice of an 1853 Crown grant came to sit forgotten behind a Mosman cottage for 100 years.

Do you know the Walker family, or the story of this land? Get in touch with Mosman Collective before the window shuts.