RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: suffolkboy_ on Friday 15 August 14 12:20 BST (UK)
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I have recently bought an old mill house, with the remains of a brick tower mill in the garden.
I've been doing loads of research into the history of the house and the mill and found out lots of information, but my solicitor handed me something yesterday that was the icing on the cake - it turns out the deeds of the house back to 1753 (when the original windmill was built) are still intact!
I have looked through the giant stack of them briefly - pretty difficult to read, but beautifully written.
What should I do with them? Do I let him keep them locked up safely? Do I keep them/frame on or two? Do I donate them to a museum?
Your suggestions would be most welcome. Perhaps someone has a similar experience?
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I would keep them yourself somewhere safe, and pass them on to the next owner as they are part of the house's history.
if there is ever a dispute about boundaries or rights of way they may be useful.
mike
added, my land was once part of a large estate and the deeds give a history of the estate ownership and the names of various mortgagees, interesting reading.
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Whatever you do, don't do what we did with the deeds and various documents relating to our old (C17th) cottage, which was to give them to the solicitors when we sold the house. They never passed them on to the new owners, and now deny all knowledge of them.
:'(
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Land Registry will have a copy which can be purchased for a small fee...so I would keep the originals in a safe fire proof box as I believe like Mike that they should stay with the property. Solicitors don't keep house deeds like they used to as they are now digitised...that's what I was told.
Carol
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You could offer to loan them to Suffolk County archives & ask that they digitise them for preservation & sharing before handing them back & you could THEN put them in a safe, fireproof place. Or even perhaps offer to donate them to a museum or county archive on condition that they digitise them for you & others to look at the images at any time in the future.
They do belong with the house, but it would be a shame if any owner after you was less caring & careful. If you wanted to display them you could mount prints from the digital images in a frame.
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Firstly congratulations on the purchase of your new house. It is wonderful that you are preserving this wonderful building and are so interested in it's history.
You are very fortunate to have the deeds. I agree with Mike, that you should keep them somewhere safe rather than framing them. It would be tempting to do this but I think that framing the documents would not preserve them, and the expose to light would probably damage and fade them over time.
Do some googling for some information about the best way to store them, but I think paper items are usually wrapped in paper. I think it will need to be acid free or you may be able to buy some special archival paper. There were some discussions on rootschat about how to store old documents, so you might like to search for some key words via the [search] box at the top of the page. Perhpas even consider a fire safe box?
Ps. Any chance of seeing a couple of pictures of your house? ;)
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I would keep them yourself somewhere safe, and pass them on to the next owner as they are part of the house's history.
if there is ever a dispute about boundaries or rights of way they may be useful.
mike
added, my land was once part of a large estate and the deeds give a history of the estate ownership and the names of various mortgagees, interesting reading.
Mike,
Similarly this mill was part of an estate early in its life. There is a lot of information regarding mortgages and also a few wilsl in there and other legal documents where millers have died and it has been left to others.
The problem is i'm struggling to read a lot of it!! Who might I be able to go to who would be able to interperate it for me?
Josey, good idea! I hadn't thought of this. I'm sure there is a lot of information that is of interest to to others, not just to the house.
Some of them are beautifully written and must have taken a long time, they are almost like artwork.
Is it certain that land registry will already have a copy or will they just have the more recent documents?
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You can post the relevant bits you can't read on the deciphering board. There are several people here who can read old writing and understand documents. Depending on size and number of pages, you might like to post in sections to make it a bit more manageable.
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Firstly congratulations on the purchase of your new house. It is wonderful that you are preserving this wonderful building and are so interested in it's history.
You are very fortunate to have the deeds. I agree with Mike, that you should keep them somewhere safe rather than framing them. It would be tempting to do this but I think that framing the documents would not preserve them, and the expose to light would probably damage and fade them over time.
Do some googling for some information about the best way to store them, but I think paper items are usually wrapped in paper. I think it will need to be acid free or you may be able to buy some special archival paper. There were some discussions on rootschat about how to store old documents, so you might like to search for some key words via the [search] box at the top of the page. Perhpas even consider a fire safe box?
Ps. Any chance of seeing a couple of pictures of your house? ;)
Thanks :)
They came to me as a bundle of papers wrapped in string, so I have to do something with them!
I have attached some photos. The first of the house and mill in 1900, the second of it now, and the third of the mill 'stump' as it is now. It's a shame that most of the mill was demolished in December 1962!
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I would keep them yourself somewhere safe, and pass them on to the next owner as they are part of the house's history.
if there is ever a dispute about boundaries or rights of way they may be useful.
mike
added, my land was once part of a large estate and the deeds give a history of the estate ownership and the names of various mortgagees, interesting reading.
Mike,
Similarly this mill was part of an estate early in its life. There is a lot of information regarding mortgages and also a few wilsl in there and other legal documents where millers have died and it has been left to others.
The problem is i'm struggling to read a lot of it!! Who might I be able to go to who would be able to interperate it for me?
Josey, good idea! I hadn't thought of this. I'm sure there is a lot of information that is of interest to to others, not just to the house.
Some of them are beautifully written and must have taken a long time, they are almost like artwork.
Is it certain that land registry will already have a copy or will they just have the more recent documents?
No they will not have everything, in fact they may have very little. They will only have for certain the most recent document that's regarded as the 'root of title'. There may also be extracts from some of the more recent conveyances regarding restrictive covenants etc. Their main concerns are ownership (title) and the extent of the property (title plan).
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This may be of interest:
http://blog.landregistry.gov.uk/a-title-deed-is-a-friend-indeed/
Carol
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I agree the land registry may not have everything, they certainly did not in my case, but the deeds were referred to: "all that land shewn on the doc dated xxxxxx and any additional land shewn on the attatched plan"
"this plan may not be used for exact measurement and cannot be used to determine boundaries"
mike
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I have recently bought an old mill house, with the remains of a brick tower mill in the garden.
I've been doing loads of research into the history of the house and the mill and found out lots of information, but my solicitor handed me something yesterday that was the icing on the cake - it turns out the deeds of the house back to 1753 (when the original windmill was built) are still intact!
I have looked through the giant stack of them briefly - pretty difficult to read, but beautifully written.
What should I do with them? Do I let him keep them locked up safely? Do I keep them/frame on or two? Do I donate them to a museum?
Your suggestions would be most welcome. Perhaps someone has a similar experience?
If you send them to me at Anguline Research Archives (contact details on the website), I will scan them for you and return them and digital copies to you free of charge.
You could then consider donating them to the local records library, a local archive or keep them and pass on to the next owner of the property.
Cheers
Guy
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Just to note that the land registry do not hold paper deeds now.
I purchased a house some years ago in England and saw the paper deeds these were sent to the land registry, when I had paid for the house in 2010 I had a letter from land registry to acknowledge that I was the owner and I wrote and asked for the copy of my deeds to be told they do not hold paper deeds and it is all digital now.
In 2004 I purchased a 200 yrs old property and thankfully here they do have paper deeds and they are ( like you say) beautifully written, this was originally built as the flax millers home and the mill itself ( foundations only, plus one stone built wall) are still there and all the stone built water runs, which is in 'my front garden by the river', someone 'borrowed' one of the water wheels some years before I purchased and it is in a 'neighbours' garden and the other wheel is still there but not in very good condition and would cost too much to sort out unfortunately.
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The Land Registry will sometimes hold a digitised copy of the deed that they regard as the 'root of title' and will provide this for a small fee. The Office Copy of title will indicate if this is the case.
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Suffolkboy, Many thanks for sharing the photos. It is such a shame that part of the mill was 'vandalised' so extensively in the 1960s. >:( :'( What plans do you have for the mill building?
I think that before donating the deeds to any library you need to find out if it would be something that they are interested in. I think the ideal thing would be for the deeds to stay with the house if, or when, you sell it. But I would also check with any future purchasers whether or not they are interested, as they may not be. Sadly (surprisingly) some people have no interest in old documents so I think you need to pass them to someone who will treasure them or keep them yourself. :)
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Personally, I would keep them! (Somewhere safe, of course)
When we sold my Mother's property six years ago, I collected the deeds of her house from safekeeping expecting the solicitor acting for me would ask for them so they could be passed to the new owner or mortgage lender. Apparently this no longer happens, the relevant documents are held electronically, so paper documents no longer required. (Must admit I am confused as to how this can be, since our documents had been locked away for 30 years. Maybe there have always been duplicates at the land registry?)
How exciting to have such old documents in your possession. Mine only go back a few years in comparison!
FS
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When I bought my first house, the deeds made great reading. I had the earliest transfer, from 1806, professionally photographed and the full-size print framed.
When I sold, the deeds went in the direction of the purchaser's building society. I wish now that I had copied more, especially the copy of a will of someone who had lent money with the house as security. It named all his children, legitimate and illegitimate. It would be great to research that family!
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Personally, I would keep them! (Somewhere safe, of course)
When we sold my Mother's property six years ago, I collected the deeds of her house from safekeeping expecting the solicitor acting for me would ask for them so they could be passed to the new owner or mortgage lender. Apparently this no longer happens, the relevant documents are held electronically, so paper documents no longer required. (Must admit I am confused as to how this can be, since our documents had been locked away for 30 years. Maybe there have always been duplicates at the land registry?)
How exciting to have such old documents in your possession. Mine only go back a few years in comparison!
FS
When the property went through first registration at the Land Registry the most relevant documents would have been sent to the Land Registry. They would have probably kept a copy of the document that shows the 'root' of the title, and typed out a copy of any relevant restrictive covenants etc from the documents and then returned them all to the solicitor for the buyer or any mortgagor to keep. From the information they have extracted they produce their one title document which can be downloaded from them for a fee. Everything relevant to the title of the property is there so the original deeds are no longer required.
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The deeds to my house are on permanent loan to the history dept of the local library in their archives
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Paper deeds ARE still necessary if the title is still unregistered ... but hardly any unregistered titles remain. The whole of the country has been subject to compulsory registration since the early 1990s, so for land to be unregistered it needs not to have been subject to a conveyance on sale for at least quarter of a century now (and possibly much longer if it is in certain parts of the country). That is an absolute minimum condition.
When I trained as a solicitor in the early 1990s there was still a lot of unregistered land about, and I had to learn to work from deeds such as you have there, Suffolkboy. If you would like, I should be very happy to sit down with you and go through what you have, produce a proper Abstract of Title for you (if there isn't one there already) and help you to decipher the more tricky ones.