I’ve spent a couple of evenings with my friend Jane, who administers the excellent website www.sharehistory.org looking through old title deeds and documents.
These can be very tricky to decipher, not least because of the legal terminology used, but often contain a wealth of information for both the family and the local historian. They include field names and descriptions and a vast number of names, occupations and relationships.
I shall never cease to be grateful for the course in Legal History I took as part of my degree.
I mentioned above that the terminology can be tricky to understand: not least because English (and Welsh) Property Law remained firmly rooted in the medieval traditions until the sweeping reforms of the 1925 legislation.
If your only experience of looking at title deeds is of the title now produced by the Land Registry, you’re going to be very confused by pre-1925 title deeds. I found myself referring time and time again to my most treasured book: ‘An Historical Introduction to the Land Law’ by W S Holdsworth. Holdsworth traces the history of the land law from 1066 to 1925, and it’s a most valuable work for distinguishing the various ways in which land could be held and the reasons for some of the documents that were created.
I’ve added Holdsworth’s book to the page “Useful Books”. You can find a full copy on Google Books.
In the meantime, why not pop over to Sharehistory and have a look at some of the documents we’ve been working on? They all refer to the Shropshire parish of Worfield.
