Deeds to House Question

[janitor]

I, along with many of you I am sure, have set about tracing some of the history of our house and its occupants and discovering the joys of the records office!

I have a question about manorial rolls, which appear to bear little relationship to our property. We are lucky in that our house along with packets of land was sold to the Goodwood Estate (which kept records and drew some lovely estate maps). However the land which was sold has an entry in the manorial roll describing "4 customary tenements": the corresponding map of this land in the Estate documents has our house and a few fields only! The manorial roll entry remains unchanged going back as far as the roll goes (1570).

So what does this mean? Did the land change but the Manorial Roll entry just stay the same or what?

A bit different to the normal questions but I thought someone might be able to shed some light on this!

Thanks
Justin

 

[Nemesis]

Manorial law and types of holding of land is very complex and changed over centuries with changes to the law of England, allied to local manorial agreements and customs and enfranchisement.

http://www.alanmacfarlane.com/FILES/Peasantry_Smith.htm

This is near us, and explains a little more about local custom, but it varied from place to place:

http://www.wannop.info/Wannop_Border_Country/The_Wannops_and_the_Barony_of_Gilsland.html


However, a 'customary tenement' was a type of land holding - along with freehold and copyhold (which was abolished in the early part of the 20th century).

I have the copyhold agreement for our house - interesting if complex stuff.