There is no one set of records for this period to property on a national scale. After 1837 there are several: tithe apportionments, Land Valuations and the Farm Survey for instance. Instead there is a variety of source material for the propertied Englishman. Remember that many adults – servants and labourers, for instance – did not own property, and that female owners were a distinct minority.

Deeds

Since the Middle Ages, deeds have been drawn up to legally convey property (technically hereditaments) from one party to another. A deed involves at least two parties. Initially two copies of the document were created on the same piece of parchment and then they were cut along a wavy line, so if there were any doubts as to the authenticity of the deed, the two could be matched up. There are three types of land: freehold, which is owned for an indefinite period, leasehold, which is for a limited duration, and copyhold, which is held from a manor by special tenure.

With the increase of the middle class deeds reached their peak in the nineteenth century, with many being created and kept. Until 1925 it was necessary to retain all deeds relating to a property, and these ever growing bundles were passed on to each new purchaser. However, owing to changes in the law of property in the twentieth century, it is no longer necessary to retain deeds going back more than fifteen years before the present owner acquires the property. Banks and solicitors have no need to retain vast numbers of deeds. This has resulted in a great many collections of deeds finding their way into local authority record offices, often via the agency of the British Records Association, which acts as a clearing house for the distribution of archives. Many other deeds were simply thrown away; some ended up as lampshade covers and others can sometimes be found in secondhand bookshops.

These deeds can cover decades of a house’s history from the moment the builder or developer buys the plot of land, through changes of ownership, and increasing prices. A deed can be a very lengthy document, if it was drawn up from the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth (usually these are made from parchment), before being reduced to a more manageable size as the nineteenth century progressed. Abstracts of Title are not deeds but are a summary of deeds relating to that particular piece of land from earliest times to date, so are extremely useful if the original deeds do not survive.

Post-medieval deeds begin with the names, addresses and occupations of those selling the property (this may be several names, such as a man and his wife), then the same information for the buyers (or tenants). There then may be a recital of previous deeds, listing previous owners, before stating the current price/rent, and then listing what the property consists of, such as the grounds and any outbuildings. Any restrictions on the property will be noted – for instance, not using the property as commercial premises. Finally there will usually be the signatures of witnesses to the deed. Expect deeds to be parchment and if dated before 1733 they will usually be written in Latin. Dating is by regnal year, i.e. the year after the current monarch’s accession. So a deed from February 1728 will be one dated in the first year of the reign of George II. Charles II counted his regnal year from the death of his father in 1649, not when he actually became king in 1660, so there are no deeds for the first eleven years of his reign. That said, most deeds prior to about 1300 are not dated, so the only clue comes from the people mentioned in the deed. For nineteenth-century deeds, the date is given in the form recognizable to modern readers and the text is in English. Medieval deeds are generally far more concise.