Hidden House History

6. Medieval and Early Modern Century Housing

Step 1

If your house contains features that can be dated to the medieval period, then the chances are that it formed part of a manor. If so, then you can use manorial records to find out who lived in your house

Step 2 – Court Rolls

Houses that are listed as leasehold were probably once referred to as copyhold before the 1920s. This means that the owner held them according to the custom of the manor in which they stood, and was given the property at a session of the manorial court, presided over by the lord of the manor’s steward. A written record of the transactions of the manorial court was created, known as a court roll. To prove that the property had been correctly granted to a customary tenant, they were given a copy of the relevant entry in the court roll – hence the name copyholder.

From the sixteenth century onwards, surviving court rolls are usually indexed by the names of the manorial tenants, and can run in an unbroken sequence from the late nineteenth century as far back as the thirteenth century or earlier, depending on the survival of records. The whereabouts of court rolls vary from place to place, but can normally be found deposited in the relevant county archive. However, other institutions such as the British Library and The National Archives hold extensive collections, and the best way of tracking down court rolls is through the Manorial Documents Register, also housed at The National Archives.

Step 3 – Title Deeds

Title deeds are the collected documents relating to the transfer of a property from one party to the next. As such, they contain a wide range of source material – legal paperwork generated by the conveyance, wills passing property from one generation to the next, marriage agreements settling land or houses on a bride or groom, sections of manorial documents, even family trees showing that someone is the next of kin and therefore rightful inheritor of a property.

Before the law changed in the 1920s, it was necessary to prove the right to own a property, and the chain of previous ownership, as far back as possible, hence long unbroken chains of documents in title deeds. However, after legislation was introduced to reduce the need to keep historic documents further back than 30 years, many old title deeds were simply thrown away. Where they survive, they tend to be in private hands – so track down the past owners of your house to see if they have any deeds – or deposited in the relevant county archive amongst the collected paperwork of estate agents, solicitors and family collections.

Don’t forget, you can always see what used to stand on your land by checking out the tithe apportionment records in Step 1.