Rigby J:

In this action the plaintiffs, as owners of a piece of land at the junction of Beach Street and Acheen Street Ghaut, Penang, claim a declaration that the defendants are not entitled to remain on the said land, and various orders consequential thereon. The plaintiffs are the legal owners of the land under a vesting deed and hold that land as trustees for a Chinese clan property trust known as Kong Lun Trust. The land is now required by the owners for the erection of a building of a permanent character for which plans have been approved by the City Council of George Town.

The first three defendants are partners in a firm known as Sin Guan Thye, to which firm the land in question was let in the first instance in or about 1942. The tenancy was duly determined by a notice to quit expiring on 30 November 1958. The first three defendants failed to comply with that notice. Hence these proceedings.

The first three defendants, although they ,entered an appearance to the action and duly filed a Statement of Defence, at the commencement of the hearing of these proceedings on the 19 November 1959, submitted to judgment being given against them.

The land in question consists of an open piece of ground forming a corner site at the junction of Beach Street and Acheen Street Ghaut. On this piece of land are four stalls grouped irregularly together under a common roof of corrugated iron. The stalls are open at the sides and the roof is supported by wooden posts or pillars. The posts or pillars themselves are embedded into a cement surface, which serves as the floor for all four stalls. The stalls themselves cater for a section of the public in their several capacities as:-

(1)a "kanji" or rice stall;

(2)a beef soup stall;

(3)a coffee stall; and

(4)a fruit and ice water stall.

The stalls themselves, together with the communal roof which provides a rough and ready shelter, have been somewhat loosely and inaccurately referred to in the course of these proceedings as a "hut". It is, in fact, nothing of the kind.

These four defendants - that is to say, defendants Nos four to seven inclusivebase their claim to be, and to remain, in lawful possession of the land on which this so-called "hut" is constructed on alternative contentions. First, they maintain that their relatives became the tenants of this "hut" standing on the land and paid a monthly rent for the said "hut" to the Kong Lun Trust. They claim that through the passage of time the "hut" was repaired and extended with the permission and consent of the said Kong Lun Trust, or their servants and agents. Lastly, they aver that they succeeded to the tenancy of the premises on the deaths of their respective relatives and have been paying the monthly rents ever since. I have no hesitation in dismissing this limb of the defence. There is no evidence whatsoever of any such original letting to their ancestors, assuming they were their ancestors; nor is there any evidence of any payment of rent by the defendants direct to the plaintiffs from which an acceptance or acknowledgement of the defendants, as successors in title, might adequately or properly be inferred.

Alternatively, the defendants contend that they are the sub-tenants of the Sin Guan Thye partnership. They contend that part of the land originally leased by the Kong Lun Trust to the Sin Guan Thye partnership had a "hut" built on it; that this "hut" was subsequently sub-let to them by the tenants, M/s. Sin Guan Thye; that up to the date of these proceedings they have regularly paid rent to Messrs. Sin Guan Thye; that as sub-tenants they are not affected by the notice to quit served on Messrs. Sin Guan Thye, and they claim the protection of the Control of Rent Ordinance, 1956.

The first question for consideration is: what was, in fact, the subject matter of the original letting by the Kong Lun Trust to Mrs. Sin Guan Thye? The defendants, as I have said, maintain that it was a piece of vacant land with a "hut" built