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Information ResourcesHow to Research your HouseThere is no easy way to research your house. There is no law or requirement for any documents relating to your house to be preserved or recorded in a public repository, hence there may be few records or details of your house available to find. The further back you go the less there is likely to be. It can be very difficult to go back further than the beginning of the reign of Victoria (1836). DeedsThe property or title deeds are always the best place to start, although, since 2004, most deeds are now redundant. If your house is very old the original deeds may not survive but there is often a solicitors ‘abstract’ which traces the history of the property and its owners back, sometimes to before the house was built when it was part of a field or farm.
Today, the only legal requirement is to have evidence of title to your property going back 30 years; anything older than this can be legally destroyed or disposed of, even sold to collectors or dealers. Remember, the law is only interested in you being able to prove ownership; it is completely blind to the fact that any documents not encompassed by this simple requirement may be historically interesting, or of cultural or commercial value. There have been cases where solicitors have carefully abstracted the information to meet the 30-year rule and then destroyed or disposed of the original deed bundle, without telling the property owners. Deeds are held by the owners of the property. This may be you or your mortgage company, or a solicitor acting for one of you. Every owner is entitled to see their deeds held by their mortgage company, although there may be a small fee involved. Since 2004 when the Land Registration Act of 2002 came into force, property transfers now only require a copy of the Land Registry entry as a legal document of ownership. In effect, this means all deeds are now redundant and are often not passed on with the sale of the property. Prior to this, many, many deeds had already become redundant through time, particularly where the originals related to property such as a field or meadow which was then divided up for building i.e. you may hold a set of copy deeds dating from when your house was built in 1850 but the original deeds for the field it was built on, going back to 1670, are held elsewhere and are of no legal use. Most of these old redundant deeds and newly-redundant existing deeds were held in solicitor’s offices but the changes in the law led to many solicitors’ collections being destroyed, dumped, sold to private hands or deposited in local museums and archives. Finding out where these deeds are and whether they are relevant to your house can be very difficult. If you can trace which solicitor last held your deeds, whether he was yours, a previous owner’s, or a mortgage company’s, they may well tell you where they deposited their collections if they were not destroyed or sold.
The Land RegistryThe Land Registry is the only governmental database or index of property ownership. It contains a description of the property, its tenure, the name and address of the owners, purchase price, details of mortgages and other charges, covenants, etc. but it does not include a history of the house or details of previous owners. It dates back to the late 1800’s but didn’t really get going until the 1950’s and wasn’t compulsory until the 1970’s so a lot of properties are missed off or have few details recorded. Since October 2003, the Land Registry entry has replaced property deeds as the legal proof of ownership. The Land Registry is available to anyone - it can even be downloaded for a very small fee (currently £3 on-line, or £6 for postal applications). This is very useful if you are researching a building you do not own as it will give you the address of the deeds holder. Town or Trade DirectoriesDirectories for most urban areas begin in the early 1800’s (1797 for Dover). These will list all the businesses and trades in a town or village as well as the prominent private residences. The early ones often only give a street name with no number and they will not list cottages, tenements or working class housing (unless occupied by a trade). By about 1900 proper street directories had arrived (Kelly’s, Pike’s Blue Books, etc.) which list every premises in every street and the head of each household. They are available for every couple of years in the 20th century. Villages are often included in the town directories – for instance the Dover Blue Books also include River, Temple Ewell, Shepherdswell, Guston and St. Margaret’s. Smaller villages and hamlets may only be in the less detailed County directories, such as Kelly’s Kent. Most surviving directories are held by local libraries and the county or local record office. Sometimes other establishments such as museums and history societies will also hold copies. They are usually available up to the 1970’s Reprints and electronic copies on CD-ROM are becoming increasingly common, and are also available over the internet or from genealogy suppliers. The best place to source these are the various genealogy magazines such as ‘Family Tree Magazine’, available from most newsagents.
Important PropertiesAs well as featuring in the town directories, important, expensive or large properties may well feature in published histories. Early parish-by-parish histories such as The Historical and Topographical Survey of Kent by Edward Hasted 1793 or The History of the County of Kent by W.H. Ireland 1828 are available at local libraries or record offices. Both contain detailed histories of the families and houses of every Kent manor. Your local reference library will also have the “Victoria History of the Counties of England”, a project begun in 1899. Some counties are now completely covered, and work is in progress on completing thirteen more, including Kent. Old buildings or buildings of architectural merit should also feature in the Pevsner architectural guides (see the Kent: North East & East volume for the Dover area) and if it is a listed building, the description will be available from your local council, county council or local reference library (although English Heritage are responsible for compiling and maintaining the listings). Poll Books/Electoral RollsPrinted lists of those eligible to vote in local, county and national elections begin after 1836. They are usually held by county record offices although local libraries will often have copies relating to their area. Initially, only a few males were allowed to vote, dependent on the value of the property they owned or rented. Various changes in electoral law meant more and more people became eligible to vote as the 19th century progressed but, as all you will get is a name and address, the rolls will rarely add more information than that from the Town directories MapsUnless your property went through significant changes over its life, maps will not tell you much other than help with dating (and then only if your house is less than, say, 150 years old). The Ordnance Survey (O.S.) began producing maps in the early part of the 1800’s but mostly only for towns; for some areas detailed O.S. maps are not available until the 1860’s or even 1880’s. Your county record office and local library will have lists of O.S. maps available for your area. One-off maps (such as those for Tithe reform or for the Public Health Acts) will be in the local record office or with the archives of the relevant local authority (Dover Borough, Deal Borough, Dover Rural District and Eastry Rural District Councils are held by the East Kent Archive). Detailed maps were also drawn for canals, railways and other major engineering projects that involved the land of multiple owners. Many of these are copied in County Record Offices but the originals are often in more obscure record depositories, such as the House of Lords Library in London. Nevertheless, if your house is anywhere near something like a railway it is worth checking both the map and the relevant Parliamentary Acts – details of local property and its owners that may or may not be affected by the project are often given. Very early maps, going back to the 1500’s, are also available for many important towns like Dover – many are held in national collections such as the British Library but your local museum and/or library will usually have copies and may well have some interesting originals of their own.
Estate PapersIf your property was part of an estate or was owned as an investment by landed gentry, your property (including early deeds) may feature in deposited estate papers. These are usually with local/County record offices although some of the larger property estates are deposited with the National Archives. There are other types of Estate paper that may be relevant i.e. the Dover Harbour Board records at the East Kent Archive includes masses of details of properties within the harbour area including Snargate Street and the Pier District. Local Tax Records;(available from County Record Offices/National Archives)
Manorial RecordsThe Manorial records are useful for the period 1066 to the early 1800’s but are difficult for amateurs to use. Each manor had a Lord who held court sessions on a regular basis, generating documents relating to land tenure. These contain tenancy lists, rentals, surveys, manorial fees, maps and estate documents. Until local government changed in the 1830’s every property owner in rural areas would have owed some kind of allegiance to the manor, even if only a small annual fee, which should be recorded if the records are extant. Documents produced by manorial courts, which continued to operate in many areas until the early years of the last century, can provide valuable information about the transfer of land and property. The most common form of tenure in England was copyhold, and much of the relevant information to be found in the surviving records deals with copyhold tenants and their holdings. Valuable information about freehold and leasehold properties can also however often be found in documents such as rentals and surveys. There is no central place to find manorial documents - they will be scattered between local and national archives and private ownership. There is a manorial register that is maintained by the Historical Manuscripts Commission. It is also important to remember that much of the material will be in Latin. The location of surviving manorial documents is recorded in the Manorial Documents Register. The register is arranged by county and then by manor. Parts of the register (but not Kent) have been computerised and can be consulted online. A paper register, which covers the remaining English counties (including Kent), is on open access in the PRO (National Archives). Very often, from the 1800’s on, the officers of the Manor were the Lord of the Manor’s solicitors/clerks, which means many of the records languish unidentified in solicitors storerooms or in mass uncatalogued deposits in record offices 1910-15 Valuation Office maps and booksThe Finance Act 1910 led to the compilation of a nationwide survey of property. Each property was, when valued, allotted a hereditament number. Details were then entered into a field book, and each hereditament number was recorded on an Ordinance Survey map. These Valuation Office maps are held at the PRO. Working maps and Valuation Books are, where they survive, generally held in local record offices. Field books can be of great value for house historians. They normally contain information about owners and occupiers, the owner's interest (whether freehold or copyhold), details of tenancy and the area covered by a particular property. They may also include information about the date of erection, number of rooms and state of repair, and, in some cases, may even include a sketch-plan of the property. Census The Census returns for 1841 to 1901 are easily available, on microfilm at local libraries and record offices, and will tell you exactly who was living in your house and what they did for a living. Many on-line indexes and computerised databases are now becoming available but most of these only operate on name search. For a property search you will probably need to scan If you know a name or are prepared to wade through masses of entries, you can search all the censuses on line; only the 1881 is available free (at www.familysearch.org) but the others can be accessed for a small fee via such commercial sites as www.ancestry.co.uk Be aware that some census returns are missing, the most obvious example being all those for the entire town of Deal in the 1901 census. Local Authority RecordsLocal council records can hold all kinds of interesting material on your house but is rarely indexed in detail and can be very difficult and time-consuming to research. The archives of Dover and Deal Town Councils, along with Eastry and Dover Rural District Councils, are deposited at the EKA/CRO. Anything involving your house with the council will usually be reported in the minutes and can be quite detailed for certain things, such as slum clearance schemes or Board of Health reports. The minutes are also very good for finding out when your street was built and by which builder, especially after 1900 when council minute volumes are properly indexed. Often local museums and local history groups will hold miscellaneous council records, originals or transcripts – for instance Dover Museum has the Medical Officer’s report on the buildings of the Pier District in Dover and the Inspector of Nuisances reports for Deal (which lists things like which house was keeping 2 pigs in the front room!). The survival of such records is very hit-and-miss.
County Record OfficesThe CRO’s (known as the Centre for Kentish Studies in Kent) hold masses of information that could be relevant to your house. Many also run branch record offices (i.e. the East Kent Archive at Whitfield near Dover). Many of the records listed above will be available at your CRO, even if only as copies. A good way to check what kinds of records are available, what information they contain, and where they are held is to use the A2A database at www.a2a.org.uk . This aims to list every record held by every public record office and depository in the land. Over 8 million documents are currently listed and summarised and it is updated with new material very regularly – the Centre for Kentish Studies, the East Kent Archives, and the Canterbury Cathedral Archives are all on A2A and are committed to getting their entire holdings listed. You can find catalogue references to a particular place by typing a keyword (or phrase) into the box on the main Search page. It is possible to search for variant spellings (e.g. Shepherdswell or Sibbertswold) and help is provided on this feature. You can go to the ‘People, Places and Subjects’ page (follow the link on the Search page) to find whole catalogues which are rich in information about a place or places - and which describe archives which will be particularly useful for research into the history of that area. When visiting a record office, always ask the archivist/librarian for advice on your particular interest; they have an in-depth knowledge of their collections and the areas that they relate to and will be able to suggest all kinds of records or sources you will not have thought of. N.B.
If you have not visited a record office before please mention it to the staff; they are very pleased to explain procedures to new users and help with your first few steps. ADDRESSESDover Museum Dover Library Centre For Kentish Studies (County Record Office) East Kent Archives Centre Public Record Office (National Archives) Family Record Centre (Census Reading Room) Canterbury Cathedral Library and Archives (CCA) Land Registry TEL: 01892 510015
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