Whether a covenant survives a sale of the land turns on a handful of rules that fit together with surprising precision. This chapter begins with the nature of freehold covenants — covenantor and covenantee, benefit and burden, and the substance-over-form test that separates positive from restrictive obligations — before setting out enforcement between the original parties and the core rule that the burden of a positive covenant does not run with freehold land. It then traces how the benefit passes at common law and in equity, including statutory annexation under s.78 LPA 1925, and how building schemes and the conditions for the burden running in equity complete the picture. The final sections deal with protecting covenants in registered and unregistered land, remedies and equitable defences, discharge or modification by the Upper Tribunal, and the indirect devices — indemnity chains, mutual benefit and burden, and estate rentcharges — that work around the positive burden rule.
