This chapter looks at:

Sales Particulars

Sales particulars vary in the level of details they give. At the very least they will tell you where and when the sale of properties took place, right down to the time of day. The detailed particulars might include plans, any conditions for sale and details of the properties involved. If you have access to the deeds, it’s worth cross-referencing the sale particulars to the deeds – you may be able to confirm details of the property that aren’t shown in the deeds.

One of the properties in the sale referred to in the particulars below was Mill House. It was part of a sale which included ‘three capital shops with dwelling houses in the main street, eight dwelling houses & villa residences, two public houses, four eligible buildings sites, two enclosures of Accommodation Arable and Pasture Land, fifty-seven cottages,




all situate in Attleborough’ as well as 13 cottages in neighbouring villages. These were sold in 30 lots through the auctioneers Salter, Simpson and Sons.

The other photocopy from those particulars shows a detailed map of the lots involved (part of which was copied over to an indenture – see picture 8.1 on page 115). Sadly, the other side of the plan refers only to the first three lots (and Mill House was lot five). The detail is minute, though, and invaluable to the house historian. For example, the particulars for lot one are:

Newspaper Advertisements

Sales particulars such as those above might also be listed in newspapers, and again it’s worth cross-referring to the deeds. Sometimes even more detail is given; or you may find a reference to the property that dates from before the deeds you’ve already seen. During my researches I was lucky enough to come across a really choice find in the Norfolk Chronicle and Norwich Gazette, dated 21 July 1804, reproduced below with original punctuation:

The advertisement was repeated in the Norfolk Chronicle and Norwich Gazette on 4 August, this time with the additional detail that the sale would be by William Parson ‘On Thursday the 9th of August, at four o’clock, at the Bear, in Attleburgh, Norfolk’.

I had thought that the house dated from the mid 1820s, so I was surprised to discover it was older than it looked. It was also interesting to see such full details of the mill and the cottage – we’d had no idea about presence of the piggeries and granary – and it confirmed my suspicion that the original roof was entirely tile rather than tile and slate.

Deposited Plans

From 1792 if you wanted to build a canal, turnpike, railway or dock, you had to deposit plans with the clerk of the peace as part of your building application. These are usually found in local record offices. They tend to be plans of public undertakings such as railways, but will often give details of who owned and occupied the land in the immediate vicinity of the railway, turnpike or other scheme.

The plans tend to be ‘strip maps’ – that is, a map of the strip of land. There is sometimes a book of reference that goes with the map, showing details of the land adjacent to the planned scheme. The details may include the size of the land in acres, roods and perches, who owned it, who occupied it and how the land was used, e.g. pasture, orchard, common land.

The amount of detail given in deposited plans really varies. Those for the railways tend to be very detailed, though it’s worth noting that often the plans submitted by railway companies were never actually carried out.