Genealogy Chat

Information about who bought or sold a house, specifically in Uley, Gloucestershire in 1890. Would there be anything in Gloucester Records Office or is there a specific place that deals with houses? Jane

You might stand a chance with the 1881 cenus. have you a name that you hope was living at a specific place? Jess

HM Land Registry now holds all information about property sales and purchases. In 1890 a house may or may not have been registered but you could start there and try working backwards. I had occasion to call them recently about something, got the telephone number from the web, (different offices around the country deal with different areas so be sure to get the right one), and found the people I spoke to amazingly helpful. Best of luck! Felicity

Hi Jess, Its a house my gt grandparents moved into when they were married, reputedly bought and paid for, and I just wondered by whom. Gt Gran was illegitimate, and a servant on her marriage cert, Gt grandfather was a sawyer, not the sort of folk to have a paid for house I would have thought. Just wondered if it might give me a clue to Gt Gran.s father. Jane

Hi Felicity That sounds promising. Do you happen to know the web site, I expect I would find it by googling Thanks Jane

Try www(.)landregisteronline(.)co.uk - with no brackets of course! :-)

Jane Registration did not begin in this country until 1925, and then spread very, very slowly throughout the whole country, so your property will not have been registered. The only chance there would be of any mention of a conveyance of this date at the Land Registry would be if there were restrictive covenants on the conveyance which had to be included on the register, and even then it would most probably not mention the names of the parties to the transaction. I would have thought your best bet would be the census before and after the date you are interested it. It can be tedious to find a particular address on most of the censuses, but if you look at the description of the area covered by a particular enumerator, sometimes it mentions the name of the road you want, then you have to trawl through each page until you get to it. Alternatively, if you know who is at the address on one census, but they have moved by the next census, you can try searching for the names of their neighbours, in the hopes they will not have moved. The other source might by the historical directories for the area around that time. They might possibly give you an idea of who was living at the address. If you think someone owned the property and died shortly afterwards, you could look to see if they left a Will and mentioned the property in it. However, I cannot think of anywhere you would get details of the sale of the property (unless it is a stately home!) Tina

Jane, TIna is absolutely right about the property not being registered in 1890, but I was thinking more along the lines of finding out who owns the property now and being able to look back from there. If the property has been owned for a substantial length of time by anyone it will make the searching easier and in any event the present owners may well have all the original conveyancing documents in their possession. When my property was registered for the first time the old documents were given to me for 'safe keeping' as the Land Registry were no longer interested in storing them and I passed them on to the new people when I sold up as I had been instructed. They proved to be a fascinating history of the place right back to before the house was built and I have often wished that I had copied them for my own interest. Best wishes, Felicity

Hi Tina & Felicity, Thanks for your information and sugestions Jane