This chapter covers: It’s always a good idea to work backwards from the present day, looking first at the 1910–15 valuation (or Domesday) maps, then the Ordnance Survey maps, tithe maps and enclosure maps, so you can work back from known landmarks.Working backwards in this way can also help you to pin a rough date on your property – i.e. it’s likely to have been built somewhere between the earliest map that shows your house and the next earliest map that doesn’t show your house.
Be careful when you’re using maps, though; your house may be built on the site of an earlier property, so you’ll need to confirm the details with other records (such as title deeds) to make sure you’re looking at the same property. And, just to make things awkward, not all maps show all buildings.One of the important things to think about with maps is who made it and what the purpose of the map was. The valuation maps of 1910–15 are very accurate because the survey was made for the purposes of taxation.
1910–15 Valuation Maps (Domesday)
Under the Finance Act 1910, all properties in England and Wales were surveyed and valued. The idea was to levy a tax when the property was sold; the tax was 20% of the difference between the value of the land at the ‘Domesday’ survey and the value when the land was sold. Although the tax was repealed in 1920 (and there were exemptions anyway – on farmland which hadn’t increased its agricultural value, or on land less than 50 acres) the records produced are very useful now to house historians.
As part of the survey, all landowners had to fill in a form, and there was a fine of £50 for not returning it (equivalent to nearly £3,400 in today’s money – this gives an idea of the importance the government placed on the survey). The records from this survey are known as the Lloyd George ‘Domesday’ books, and there are two parts to the information:
- the record maps themselves;
- the field/valuation books.
Each property surveyed was called a ‘hereditament’.
The valuation books and maps are kept in local record offices, and the field books are kept in the National Archives in Kew (in series IR58). The working maps are also in the National Archives. They’re split by region:
- London is IR121;
- South East is IR124;
- Wessex is IR125;
- Central is IR126;
- Anglia is IR127;
- Western is IR128;
- West Midland is IR129;
- East Midland is IR130;
- Welsh is IR131;
- Liverpool is IR132;
- Manchester is IR133;
- Yorkshire is IR134;
- Northern is IR135.
Within each region there are up to 22 districts.
Not all records survive; some were destroyed during the Second World War.
Record Maps
The record maps are based on Ordnance Survey maps, which were the largest scale and most recent edition available. The most common scale used was the 25-inch maps (25 inches to the mile), although even larger scales were used for towns. Two sets of maps are used:
- Working plans – these were used during the survey and contain notes about rights of way and ownership of property. The hereditament number was marked in red ink and the boundaries have a colour wash, usually red or green. The boundaries of income tax parishes are marked in yellow.
- Record sheet plans – these were marked up with the boundaries and reference numbers of the hereditaments and were kept in district valuation offices,
You’ll need to check the map first to get the hereditament number of the property; without that, you’re working pretty much in the dark. However, if you know the owners’ and occupiers’ names you may still be able to trace the property in the valuation books if the map isn’t available.
To get the map reference relating to your property, you’ll need to check on a map grid (available at your local record office) to see which series
of maps are concerned. Every part of England and Wales has been given a reference on a grid; for example, the part of Norfolk containing Attleborough is covered by grid reference 85. You then convert that number to Roman numerals (so in our example it’s LXXXV).
That grid area is then divided into 16 smaller rectangles, numbered from 1 to 16: to get the number for the map area you want, you count the rectangles from left to right, row by row, i.e.:
In the example above, Attleborough town centre was covered by square number 11, so I ordered the map reference LXXXV/11.
Frustratingly, the local record office’s copy of the map hadn’t survived, although the valuation book was available. Finding the hereditament number for Mill House might have meant a trip to the National Archives in Kew. You can search the catalogues in the National Archives online at
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/search.asp , so I was able to confirm that the reference for the field book was IR 58/15499 and the reference for the map was IR 127/9/672. The online catalogue showed that the map and the field books were held at Kew, so if I needed to I could order the documents before going to visit the archives.
Luckily, I was saved the trip to London because I already knew the owner’s and occupier’s names from other records (the deeds, the rate book and a sale catalogue), so I was able to look at the valuation book in my local record office and find the relevant record.