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I dont know if this is the right place for this but here is something I just thought of. A historical holdover that is almost 1000 years old if I have gotten it right.If I remember right, (any Brits on the board feel free to correct me) you can't legally own property in Great Britain, the queen own's it all, you only hold property in trust of the Monarchy. This is why the queen is the richest landholder in the world, she literally owns the entire country. This was established by William the Conqueror when he consolidated his conquests. I wonder if this is still true or if the books I have read have it wrong? It strikes me that if true, this is just one of those laws that never got changed like some of the silly laws still on the books in the States about chickens crowing at night and such like.
I'm not entirely sure about the modern legal effect, but you are basically right – in the beginning it was the king who after 1066 owned all the land and gave it out to his nobles and such as “fees”. The nobles were able to give such land to others, who could also further divide it up. My understanding of it is that in cases where there was no longer any legal recipient for the land to go to, or when the conveyance was temporary in nature, the king would get it back. However, with conveyances such as a fee tail absolute, it might be difficult for the land to go back to the monarch unless there were absolutely no heirs left. The United States inherited English common law and we operate on more or less the same system, but I believe that the land goes back to the government in end-case scenarios. At least in the U.S., one can't say the government "owns" all the property even if it could ultimately get it back in certain cases. Rather, it remains in the line of legal conveyance. I imagine the monarch of England is in the same type of situation in which he/she does not "own" the land but has a legal right to it (i.e. is in the line of conveyance) in certain cases. Then again, there could be something quirky about English property law that says the monarch does technically "own" it after all....
As far as I know there are two kinds of real property in England; Leasehold and freehold. The freehold properties are owned by private entities whereas the leashold properties are owned by the Crown and leased out to private entities (for very long periods).
