England Land and Property: Difference between revisions

*'''1873''' [http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2040 England, Return of Owners of Land, 1873] at Findmypast — index  ($)  

*[http://www.landregistryservices.com/ Land Registry Title Registers, Title Plans and Conveyancing Searches for UK and Ireland] ($)

Following the Norman Conquest in 1066 all the land of England was technically owned by the Crown. Under the feudal manorial system which subsequently developed, the Crown made grants of land to earls and barons who in turn granted smaller areas to knights in return for the provision of a set period of active military service in the field called ‘knight service’. Over the years this service was slowly commuted to a money payment called ‘scutage’ and it had practically disappeared by the end of the thirteenth century, though feudal tenure was not finally abolished until 1660. These people were not Knights in the modern sense and would remain esquires unless they paid the heavy fees for knighthood (something that they were supposedly obliged to do after 1306 if their property was worth more than £40 a year).  

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The first general survey of the land of England, known as Domesday Book, was compiled by order of William the Conqueror in 1086. The entries were arranged by county in two books under the name of the manor, and show the names of the tenants-in chief and their sub-tenants (the names of the tenants before the Conquest also being noted). They record the number of hides of land in the manor (a hide was about 120 acres); the number of ploughs on the demesne (that part of the manor reserved for the lord’s use) and the number of ploughs available to the tenants; the number, but not names, of homagers (jurors on the manor court), villeins (unfree men who held their land by agricultural service to the lord), cottars (cottagers), serving men or slaves, free tenants, and tenants in soccage (renters); the extent of the woodland, meadows, and pasture; the number of mills and fish ponds; how much land had been added or taken away; and the gross value of the manor in 1086 and in the time of Edward the Confessor.  

Leases for three lives are said to have been popular in the west of England and leases for twenty-one years in the east. Those for three lives, in which three living people (not necessarily related) were named, were cancelled or ‘determined’ at the end of 99 years, fresh names being added to the original three on payment of a fine. Although it was unwise to include the names of children who might die young this form of lease was generally considered more favourable than those for a fixed term of years.  

On the larger estates with good records the rentals, when used alongside the estate labour books, are a rich source of information about employees. Shane Beaver provides a good example from the records of the Marquis of Salisbury’s estate at Hatfield [''Hertfordshire People'', no. 64 (March 1998) page 13; FS Library book 942.58 D25h] where Richard Oakley, a labourer, did hedging and ditching. Richard Oakley started by renting a house from Charles Kidman, who farmed Suttons Farm and was a tenant of the Marquis. As a sub-tenant Richard Oakley does not himself appear in the records (a standard problem with sub-tenants on estates and manors), but when Charles Kidman gave up the farm in 1881, Richard Oakley became a tenant of the Marquis and appears in the estate book. His wife and children appear in the labour book doing ‘twitching’ (weeding) at 2s 6d a day. The books show how, on becoming a parkman in 1894, he moved to one of the park lodges, and later, on retirement, to one of the estate’s cottages in Hatfield New Town.  

Many estate and family papers contain printed advertising material about properties which have been sold in the past and many advertisements about farms in particular have appeared in local newspapers. These may relate to sale, at the end of a tenancy, of farm equipment (both for cultivation and the making of cheese) and of livestock, showing their numbers and breed.  

{{Place|England}}  

[[Category:England Land and Property]]