I had a character that bought a Land Claim Stake (something like two clicks NE from acehigh), I then stopped play for long enough for my character to get deleted. I have made a new character but now there is a stake that will never be built taking up room. Can it somehow be deleted or transfer ownership without the origin character?

As keeper of the Land Registry, I can add the relevant information that your Empty Plot is at [11,28] and has Place ID 1129.

As a fellow player of the game, I'll just point out that Sessine is made of awesome and can fix this sort of thing, including Place transfers and restoring lapsed characters.