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Land & Property information for Cornwall and places above it in the hierarchy

Cornwall

• Inquisitions Post-Mortem 1372/3. In 1235, Henry III created regional officials called Escheators who, on the death of any tenant-in-chief in their area holding lands in fee, were to take possession of the deceased's lands and summon juries of free local men in the neighbourhood, to give details on oath about the lands and their value, the services by which they were held, the date of the deceased owner's death, and the identity and age of the heir. These reports are called Inquisitions Post-Mortem. The purpose of these was to discover what income and legal rights were due to the Crown (the King). On completion, the Escheator then sent his report to the royal court of Chancery, with a copy to the Exchequer.
• Family Deeds. The Family Deeds Project provides a large amount of FREE online information to help you with your family history using information contained in their collection of old deeds and documents. These documents can contain a wealth of information for family historians and so the Family Deeds project was created with the aim of trying to preserve some of that information and make it easily available to all. Those deeds relating to Cornwall are on-line.
• Land Conveyances. Abstracts of Cornwall Feet of Fines (land conveyances), covering 1461-1509, are available on-line courtesy of MEDIEVAL ENGLISH GENEALOGY.
• Tenures. Copyhold was a form of land tenure for land held from a lord of the manor, originally for agricultural labour, but since Tudor times for monetary payment. The term copyhold is used because the land could only be transferred by surrender to the lord and the admission of a new tenant, which admission was recorded in the Manor Rolls and a copy given to the tenant. In Cornwall many properties were held on Copyhold terms of tenure. "Copyhold" is a type of tenure that was also very commonly used throughout the rest of the UK. (This is quite different to a 'freehold' or 'leasehold'). In simple terms.... "a person purchases a Copyhold to land or property from the Lord of the Manor. These transactions are recorded in the Manor Court. (Most Manor Court records are held in the Cornwall Record Office).
  Copyhold was so called because from early times it was customary for two copies of the lease to be made - one for the lord of the manor and one for the tenant. A copyhold lease was normally granted for the lives of three named persons; but it might last in practice for four lives, because the widow of a male tenant dying in possession was allowed what was called "free bench" so long as she remained unwed.
  Rents were normally fixed by custom, and the lord of the manor could not increase them. He could however demand an increased fine on a change of tenancy, as this was generally subject to negotiation (though mostly determined by custom, like rents, in the western counties). But in practice it seems the lord of the manor had little redress if the tenant refused to agree to an increase in his fine.
  Tenants were indeed in a strong position. They had no absolute right of inheritance after a grant of copyhold had expired. But when one life dropped, the tenant might offer to surrender the remaining portion of his grant in return for another that incorporated a replacement life or lives, and the fine for this would be less than for a new three-life grant "out of hand" (which was accordingly rare). In effect, if a tenant continued to pay his rents and fines, and to meet his other obligations, he enjoyed what amounted to hereditary tenure.
  However, with Copyhold, there is a catch. Normally, a Copyhold can be willed to a descendant, usually a son (but in some cases a wife or daughter).... and it is possible for a surviving spouse to remain the holder of the copyhold. But on her death, the property *reverts* back to the ownership of the Manor. No money is paid. Hence the term "reversion". In the mid 1800s, a law was passed entitling individuals to purchase their Copyhold outright. (However few could afford it).
• Some bibliography on land matters include:
  • Gray, Todd. Harvest Failure in Devon and Cornwall [1623 and 1630-1]: The Book of Orders and the Corn Surveys (1992). [ISBN 0903686651] [Devon FHS Library 942.036].
  • N.G. (ed.) The Parliamentary Survey of the Duchy of Cornwall, Part 1, Devon and Cornwall Record Society (1982). [Lookups].
  • Pounds, N.G. (ed.) The Parliamentary Survey of the Duchy of Cornwall, Part 2, Devon and Cornwall Record Society (1984).
• The Harvard School of Law contains a collection of early Land Deeds relating to England (including Cornwall). This collection is searchable from the Home Page.
• Those with research interests impacting upon the Trevelyan Cornish estates should not overlook the Trevelyan Papers held by the Somerset Record Office - many of which are indexed there, but not at the PRO. The catalogue refers to the names of numerous lessees and to places such as Colan, Duloe, Marchamchurch, Mawgan, Perranuthnoe, St Veep, Trevelyan and Whalesborough.

England

• There are many useful Research Guides from The National Archives - try keywords 'enclosure (land)', 'land' and 'land ownership'.
• The Harvard Law School Library Special Collections: English Deeds, Manor Rolls, and Chancery Writs.
• For a general search for information on England's historic sites and buildings, including images of listed buildings, try the Heritage Gateway

UK and Ireland

• For English and Welsh records see PRO Leaflet: Tithe Records in the National Archives. Scottish records are held at the National Archives of Scotland in Edinburgh.
• The University of Nottingham provides a detailed set of explanatory pages: Introduction to Deeds.
• Legal Terms in Land Records is a useful glossary of obscure terms which occur in property deeds.
• Robin Alston's Country House Database (archived copy) "represents a first attempt at listing country houses in the British Isles from the late medieval period to ca. 1850, together with an index to all the families so far traced as having occupied them".
• Estate Records held by Kings College, Cambridge.
• Disused Railway Stations website - a large and growing set of photographs of closed stations, with brief details of each station and a map showing its location.
• The Trace My House website provides extensive information and guidance for anyone wishing to investigate the history of a house and the people who lived in it.
• TNA's Research Guide on Houses - "Records relating to the history of houses are kept in a variety of archives. This guide will help you to find out where the information you are looking for might be, and how to go about finding it."
• British Listed Buildings - "an online database of buildings and structures that are listed as being of special architectural and historic interest".
• Researching Historic Buildings in the British Isles - a guide.