Valuation Rolls

Valuation rolls are lists of properties and their owners, compiled for the purposes of local taxation, known as rates. The rates were levied by local authorities for various purposes, such as poor relief, schools, policing, cleansing, new streets, or public health. From at least the early 17^th century to 1855, valuation rolls were compiled intermittently, by different local authorities, such as the commissioners of supply in counties or burgh councils or sometimes by other bodies appointed to collect a stent, cess or other assessment. Between 1855 and 1989 valuation rolls were compiled annually by county and burgh assessors following formats and timetables laid down by legislation. After 1989, the basis for local taxation changed and domestic properties were removed from valuation rolls. Instead, domestic properties were covered by community charge rolls (1990-1993) and then council tax rolls (1994 onwards); while valuation rolls continued to be compiled for non-domestic properties only.

Land Tax Rolls, 17^th century-1855

Valuation rolls were compiled by the Commissioners of Supply, the body of landowners in each county responsible for collecting the land tax from 1667.[1] The principal purpose of these land tax rolls was to record who owned which property (worth more than £100 Scots), how much each property was worth in terms of annual rent, and what the owner’s liability was in terms of taxation based on the rental value. Rolls for each county were compiled only sporadically and those for the 17th century and early 18th century normally list the estate names rather than the names of the owners. From the mid-18th century land tax rolls became more elaborate, recording the name of the estate, the owner, and (sometimes) the tenant or occupier. The holdings of leading landowners were sometimes subdivided into smaller estates. However, the valuation rolls compiled in royal burghs for the land tax list only the properties and their values, and not the names of the owners.

Under the County General Assessment Act 1868 the Commissioners of Supply were required to raise funds by rating.[2]

Valuation Rolls 1855-1989

Valuation Rolls between 1855 and 1989 were compiled annually by assessors appointed in each county and each royal or parliamentary burgh.[3] The format and contents were laid down by legislation, as were the annual deadlines for compiling the information, resolving appeals and publishing the rolls. The valuation rolls included all properties whose actual or theoretical annual rental value was estimated to be above a statutory minimum, initially £4 per annum along with the names and designations of the proprietors and the tenants. The rolls include the location and description of the property, what kind of property it was (e.g. dwelling house, shop, warehouse, hospital etc), the name and designation of the owner (proprietor), the name of the occupier (the tenant if the property was let or the owner if not) and, in some cases, the name of other occupants (if the property was sub-let, for example) and yearly rent or rateable value. Until the mid-20th century the rolls also included the occupation of most tenants and occupiers.

County rolls were subdivided by civil parish (and sometimes sub-divided by landowner, rather than address). Burgh rolls, from the early 20th century, were increasingly divided into municipal wards. In 1975 when regional assessors replaced the county and burgh assessors, the format of the valuation rolls changed.[4] Each region’s rolls were subdivided into local government districts, and these into wards.

Every six years, the assessors were required to send copies of the previous six years of valuation rolls to Register House in Edinburgh (now National Records of Scotland).

Non-domestic valuation rolls 1990-present

Valuation rolls after 1989 for non-domestic property (which paid business rates) continued to be produced annually.[5] These no longer included details of domestic and other types of non-commercial property.

Community charge (poll tax) records 1989-1993

In 1990 the community charge (or ‘poll tax’, as it was more popularly known) replaced domestic rates as the principal basis for local taxation. [6] This was a flat rate charge per adult (with a reduction for certain categories such as students and registered unemployed) and therefore the registers recorded the name and address of individuals liable to pay this tax.

Council tax valuation lists 1993-the present

The community charge was replaced by the present system of council tax in 1994.[7] Council tax valuation lists record addresses and the council tax band that applies to that address.

Where to find valuation rolls

Land tax rolls are held in the National Records of Scotland (NRS) and digital copies are available on the Trove website < https://www.trove.scot/> [accessed 26 May 2025]. Some of these pre-1855 valuation rolls can be found in local authority archives among the Commissioners of Supply records for each county. Burgh assessment rolls may also be found in local authority archives. Another series of early valuation rolls is found among the records of the Inland Revenue in the National Records of Scotland (reference IRS/4), which covers 9 counties.

Complete series of valuation rolls, 1855-1989, for the whole of Scotland, by county, burgh or (after 1975) region, are held by NRS: indexed digital copies of these are available on the ScotlandsPeople website (fees apply) <https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/> [accessed 26 April 2024]. Some local authority archives services and local studies libraries hold less comprehensive runs of valuation rolls for particular counties, burghs and regions.

NRS holds copies of all the registers of people in Scotland liable to pay the community charge. Some local authority archives may also hold local copies.

NRS holds complete copies of all council tax valuation lists. Some local authority archives may also hold local copies.

Who uses valuation rolls

Valuation rolls are a key source for local and building history, showing who lived in a house, which estates owned large numbers of properties, where businesses and industries were located and how this changed over time. They are frequently used to identify economic changes as the types of buildings and their values changed. Family historians can use valuation rolls to find individuals and see how long they lived at an address: this task has become easier now that many valuation rolls have been indexed and are available digitally. However, care should be taken to ensure that individuals with the same name are not confused and it should be noted that only the people liable for paying the rates are listed and not the entire household.

Valuation rolls are also used for non-historical research such as by the owners of buildings to establish a previous use of the building when applying for planning permission; by individuals to establish proof of tenancy or residency; by credit agencies and prospective employers, in confirming residential status; and by the police in criminal investigations.

Contributors: Bob Brown, (National Archives of Scotland, 2002) Robin Urquhart, Andrew Jackson (both SCAN, 2002), Elspeth Reid (2021)

Bibliography

National Records of Scotland Tracing Your Scottish Ancestors (Birlinn, 2020)

Sinclair, Cecil Tracing Scottish Local History (HMSO,1994)

References

[1] Act of the convention of estates of the kingdom of Scotland etc, 1667. The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to 1707 [RPS] ed. by K.M. Brown and others (University of St Andrews: 2007-2021) 1667/1/10 http://rps.ac.uk/trans/1667/1/10 accessed 18 May 2021.

[2] County General Assessment (Scotland) Act 1868 (31 & 32 Vict. c.82).

[3] Valuation of Lands (Scotland) Act 1854 (17 & 18 Vict. c.91).

[4] Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 (c.65).

[5] Abolition of Domestic Rates Etc. (Scotland) Act 1987 (c.47).

[6] Abolition of Domestic Rates Etc. (Scotland) Act 1987 (c.47).

[7] Local Government Finance Act 1992 (c.14) ss.70-99.

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Valuation Rolls

Were valuation rolls compiled during wartime?

Yes, valuation rolls were compiled during wartime

Why are valuation rolls for Lanark County (with few exceptions) available only in Edinburgh?

One copy of each valuation roll produced by the Lanark County Assessor was sent to Edinburgh to be kept for historical and legal research at Register House (now the National Records of Scotland). Another copy was kept by the Assessor’s office in Lanarkshire. When the Scottish counties and burghs were abolished in 1975, the surviving valuation rolls (and voters’ rolls) Scotland’s city, district and regional archive services attempted to preserve the valuation rolls and voters rolls for their areas. In most cases they were successful. In the case of Lanark County, the valuation rolls and voters’ rolls belonging to Lanark County Council were removed or destroyed, either by staff in the outgoing County Assessor’s office or by local officials in the successor authority, Strathclyde Regional Council, before staff from the newly created Strathclyde Regional Archives could secure them for preservation. Among the Lanark County records held by Glasgow City Archives there is a valuation roll for Lanark County for 1894, and among the records of several civil parishes with the Lanark County records there are series or individual rolls for those parishes. The National Records of Scotland hold valuation rolls for Lanark County from 1855 until 1975.

If I don’t know someone’s address, can I find his or her details in a valuation roll?

Not very easily. Firstly, the person must be the head of the household (as far as the Assessor is concerned): either the owner or tenant of the property. Secondly, the roll is arranged by the address of the property. The indexed digital records will be helpful for those years that are currently available, but for the unindexed original records you would have to search through randomly occurring surnames (i.e. the surnames are not in alphabetical order). Thirdly, the only distinguishing information between people with the same name is their occupation and it is easy to confuse individuals: it may not be possible to tell the difference between a father and son with the same occupation. It may therefore take about an hour or two to work through the roll for a small community – a village or small town. For larger towns and cities, it would require several days to search through the whole roll.

How do I find an address in a Glasgow valuation roll?

For the period 1913-1989, Glasgow valuation rolls survive at the National Records of Scotland; at Glasgow City Archives; and at the History and Glasgow Room of the Mitchell Library in Glasgow. Valuation rolls for this period are arranged by ward, but every few years there were changes to the boundaries and numbering of wards. You need to consult a street index to find out which ward a street was in at any given year. Glasgow City Archives have street indexes for the period 1913-1995. The National Records of Scotland have a street index for 1875. For the period 1855 – 1912 valuation rolls for Glasgow survive only at the National Records of Scotland. The Glasgow rolls are divided into volumes for Glasgow Burgh, Glasgow Barony, Govan Parish and Gorbals Barony. There is an index of streets compiled from the 1875 valuation roll, which tells you which of the volumes a street is in, but the index is not entirely accurate for the period after 1878, because of boundary changes involving Glasgow burgh. Glasgow City Archives have a database index of owners and occupiers from valuation rolls for 1861, 1881 and 1891. For further details contact Glasgow City Archives.

What information does a valuation roll contain?

A valuation roll records details about each property which was liable for domestic rates (local taxation) for a particular year, in the period 1855-1989. It records the address of the property, the type of property (e.g. a house, factory, hotel, inn, shop etc), the owner, the tenant (if the property is not occupied by the owner), and, sometimes, other occupants (for example where a tenant has sub-let the property). In 19th century rolls and rolls for the first half of the 20th century, the occupation of most tenants and occupiers are given. The roll also records the rateable value and gross annual value of each property: these were used to calculate the level of rates (local taxation) paid for each property.

Are valuation rolls useful sources of information for family history?

If your prime interest is in obtaining dates of birth, marriage and death for ancestors, valuation rolls will not be much use. If you are ‘putting flesh on the bones’ of your family tree, valuation rolls might be useful, as they contain information about individuals such as whether they owned or rented their houses, what their occupations were, and what sort of house and neighbourhood they lived in (by comparing the address and its occupants with others nearby). However, research in valuation rolls can be time-consuming and may simply confirm information about an individual you already know from other sources. There is, however, one use which valuation rolls can be put to with good effect in family history, and that is to identify the nature of a building recorded on a birth or marriage certificate. For example, the marriage or birth certificate might simply state an address, which the valuation roll might confirm was a hotel, church, private house, hospital or poorhouse.

Are valuation rolls useful for tracing missing persons?

Not really. Valuation rolls for domestic properties have not been compiled since 1989, so are now out of date. Secondly they are usually arranged by street, not by personal name. Electoral rolls are slightly better, because they are updated annually and include the names of more people, although Electoral Rolls, again, are arranged by street name. It is possible to buy databases of voters rolls, produced commercially. For further advice on tracing someone you have lost track of read Colin D Rodgers, Tracing Missing Persons: an introduction to agencies, methods and sources in England and Wales (Manchester University Press, 1986).

If I am having trouble finding an address in a valuation roll, why might this be?

Valuation rolls can be difficult to search through. Often a particular address or building does not seem to appear where it should in the roll.

See below for details of common problems and what to do.

Odd and even street numbers

Valuations rolls almost always record the properties on one side of the road and then the other. In most cases, therefore, the odd numbers will be recorded then the even numbers. Before 1975 most valuation rolls record properties in each street by running up the odd numbers (1, 3, 5, 7 etc) and, once the end of the street has been reached, running back down the even numbers (e.g. 36, 34, 32 . . . etc).

What to do: double-check the numbering to make sure you haven’t missed a street number.

Street intersections

In the 19th century and early 20th century, Assessors enumerated streets as far as an intersecting street, then enumerated the intersecting street before continuing with the first street. For example, if Main Street was intersected by Kirk Street, the relevant part of the valuation roll might look like this:

45 Main Street

47 Main Street

49 Main Street

1 Kirk Street

3 Kirk Street

5 Kirk Street

6 Kirk Street

4 Kirk Street

2 Kirk Street

51 Main Street

53 Main Street

55 Main Street

What to do: Double check the numbering, taking into account intersecting streets

Municipal boundaries

A street might start in a city, burgh, parish (or post 1975 local government unit) and continue in another. For example, in the 1890 valuation roll for Glasgow numbers 2-156 Argyle Street were in Glasgow City, while Argyle Street from number 158 onwards were in Barony Parish. Each part of the Street was in a different valuation roll. In some cases a whole town or village straddles a boundary. The town of Barrhead, for example, was partly in Neilston Parish and partly in Abbey Parish, in two separate divisions of the Renfrewshire valuation roll. The village of Busby was partly in East Kilbride Parish, Lanarkshire, and partly in the parishes of Mearns and Cathcart, Renfrewshire.

What to do: refer to a contemporary map or gazetteer to find out if a place was divided by a municipal boundary.

Ward boundaries splitting streets

Streets make ideal physical features for ward boundaries, so it is common to find a street where one side (the odd numbers) are in one ward, while the other side (the even numbers) are in another ward, in different parts of the valuation roll. In addition, a street might be bisected by a ward (or parish or burgh) boundary and appear in two or more parts of the valuation roll.

What to do: if there is no street index available, check if the valuation roll for the parish/burgh/city is divided into wards and check each ward for different parts of the street.

Boundary changes

The boundaries of cities, burghs and parishes change periodically, and this can affect valuation rolls, much as it affects other records such as census returns. A street or place might appear in the valuation rolls for a certain parish for several years, then apparently disappear. This may be because a boundary has changed and the street or place is now within a different parish, or been annexed by a burgh or city.

What to do: refer to contemporary maps and gazetteers to find if a place has been affected by a boundary change.

Local government reorganisation

The local authorities which were required to appoint assessors changed several times due to local government reorganisation. In 1889 there were boundary changes to the counties. From 1855 to 1930, royal burghs and parliamentary burghs had their own assessors who compiled separate valuation rolls while other burghs were included in county valuation rolls. From 1930 to 1975, a new system of cities, large burghs and small burghs was set up, and only cities and large burghs appointed their own assessors to compile valuation rolls, while all other burghs were included in county valuation rolls.

What to do: Check the history of a burgh to find out if it was a royal or parliamentary burgh before 1930 and if it was not, then look at the county valuation rolls. For burghs after 1930, look at the List of Counties, Cities, Large burghs, Small burghs to identify which burghs created valuation rolls and which were included in county valuation rolls. County and burgh boundaries can be seen on historic Ordnance Survey maps many of which can be accessed online through the National Library of Scotland website.

Street name changes

Sometimes the name of a street changes. This may reflect the way a street is commonly referred to, or else the change may be the decision of the municipal authority for the place concerned. Where city boundaries expand and bring in streets, whose name already occurs elsewhere in the city, one of the streets may be renamed in order to prevent confusion.
What to do: refer to contemporary maps and postal directories, or, where available, published guides to street names.

Multiple frontages

Where a large building (especially commercial and industrial properties) occupies a site which fronts onto two or more streets, the valuation roll may record the property under only one address (what the Assessor regards as the postal address). For example, a shop may have entrances at Main Street and Kirk Street, but may appear in the roll only under Main Street.

What to do: refer to contemporary maps.

Terraces and courts

The recording of terraces, courts and other minor streets may change over time in the rolls. A row of houses, or cluster of buildings, might begin life under one name, but eventually be classed as part of a longer street. For example, a row of five houses might originally be recorded as 1-5 Kirk Terrace, but these might be renumbered 54-62 Kirk Street, when the numbering of the street is simplified.

What to do: refer to published street name guides, where available, or else contemporary maps and postal directories. If the street involved appears in the valuation roll for one year, but not the next, check the names of the owners and occupants of the street in the first year, and try to find the matching names in the next year’s roll.

Building not rated

Only buildings over a certain value (originally an actual or theoretical value of £4 in annual rent) were liable for local rates. If the building was a comparatively modest one, therefore, it may not appear in the valuation roll. The building would have to be very modest indeed, however, since categories of buildings which were rated and do occur in valuation rolls include advertising hoardings and garages.

Unnumbered buildings

Sometimes buildings (particularly newly built buildings) are not given a street number in the rolls until the numbering of the street has been formally determined. The property may be known now as ‘175 Kirk Street’, but until fairly recently it may be referred to in the rolls as ‘cottage, Kirk Street’.

What to do: check the valuation roll carefully about the street number in question, looking for buildings without a number which might fit the description of your property.

Administrative time lag

New buildings take time to appear in the valuation roll. A building completed in November 1875, say, would not appear in the 1876 valuation roll (because the Assessor’s survey for that roll was carried out in the Autumn of 1875). It might make its first appearance in the valuation roll in 1877.

What to do: bear in mind the time lag for information reaching the valuation roll.

Subdivisions, e.g. railway, government property etc

Some valuation rolls have separate divisions for different types of property, for example, railway property, central government property, local authority housing and other buildings, and agricultural and sporting property.

What to do: check the valuation roll thoroughly, particularly the final pages of each parish, burgh, or ward.

The source of your information might be wrong

If you cannot find a property in a valuation roll, you should consider whether the information you have about the building is correct. For example, it is not uncommon to find erroneous information in published architectural guides (for example, giving erroneous dates for the construction of a buildings), or for someone to muddle a street number, street name or building name.

What to do: valuation rolls are difficult to search without accurate information about street names and numbers. Consider other sources of information, including postal directories.

Clerical Error

As with any official record, the possibility of clerical error cannot be ruled out. An error could be made at the point of survey, or while the roll was prepared for printing, or in the printing process.

What to do: check the valuation rolls for the following years to see if an error is rectified later.

Why might a person not appear in a valuation roll at an address he or she was resident at?

There are five main reasons why someone may not appear in a valuation roll.

Not the householder or owner

Remember that the purpose of a valuation roll was not to record the names of all residents at a property, but to record merely those liable for local rates: the owner and – if appropriate – the tenant. A person may have been resident at a property but not mentioned in a valuation roll because he or she was not the owner of the property or the tenant. For example, a married couple might have been resident but if the husband or wife was the tenant, the other spouse will not be named. If the person concerned was a subtenant he or she would not be mentioned.

Unofficial house swap

Sometimes the tenants of two houses swap houses informally, between themselves, without changing the lease. This happened particularly between tenants of council houses. Tenants might swap to be nearer family or because a bigger or smaller house is required. If this is done without formal permission from the owner of the property, the valuation roll will not be changed to reflect the informal arrangement.

Administrative time lag

Because valuation rolls were almost always published once per year, they do not take into account changes until the following year. In general county and burgh surveyors surveyed properties in the Autumn and published the roll based on this survey the following Whitsun (15 May). So, for example, a roll published on 15 May 1925 contains information about properties gathered in the Autumn of 1924. A new tenant might move into the property in December 1924, but not appear in the valuation roll until May 1926.

Clerical Error

False information

Owners or occupiers might give false information at the point of survey, deliberately (for example to avoid taxation) or accidentally (for example, a husband or wife giving his or her name as tenant, when, strictly speaking the tenant was the other spouse).

How can valuation rolls help me prove I was a tenant for a number of years?

Because valuation rolls record the name of the tenant and the owner of each property, they are accepted as evidence of a tenancy for some purposes.

To use valuation rolls in this way, someone has to search back through the valuation rolls for period concerned. This typically takes an hour or two but becomes more complicated and time-consuming if the tenant rented several houses in succession. There will be charges for providing copies and there may be charges for the search.

Valuation rolls do not provide exact dates of tenancy. There are, however, limitations, which should be borne in mind:

(1) Valuation rolls record only heads of household (in theory, the person whose name was on the lease). If the spouse of a tenant, or some other member of the household, wishes to prove residence, they may need to use voters rolls in addition to the valuation roll: i.e. the valuation roll proves that the house was a council house, but only records the head of the household, while the voters roll records the names of the other adult members of the household.

(2) Valuation rolls were published once a year (in May, until 1975; in April thereafter).
The information was gathered in the Autumn of the previous year. So, it takes a valuation roll a year or two to catch up with a change of tenancy. For example: a council tenant moves into 999, Letsby Avenue in January 1968 he then moves to 45, Rebellion Street in October 1975.

In the 1968 roll (compiled Autumn 1967) he is not listed at either address.
In the 1969 roll (compiled Autumn 1968) he is listed at Letsby Avenue.
In the 1975 roll (compiled Autumn 1974) he is listed at Letsby Avenue.
In the 1976 roll (compiled Autumn 1975) he is listed at Letsby Avenue.
In the 1977 roll (compiled Autumn 1976) he is listed at Rebellion Street.

Thus, the valuation roll appears to take two years to catch up with his change of address. In exceptional cases, local archives sometimes hold supplementary rolls, compiled by local Assessors, which record the date that a property appeared for the first time in the roll during the previous year. This is useful where the tenant was the first tenant in a new property

For further reasons why someone may not appear in a valuation roll, see the FAQ – Why might a person not appear in a valuation roll at an address he or she was resident at?

What is the difference between a voters’ roll and a valuation roll?

There are several differences because they were compiled for different purposes:

Valuation Rolls (1855-1989):

Voters’ rolls (electoral rolls):

· Record owners and tenants of property who were liable for local taxation in a particular place.

· Are arranged by local authority area (county/district/burgh/parish/ward) and address

· Are no longer compiled for domestic addresses (the last domestic valuation roll was for 1989)

· Were usually published each year on 15 May until 1974, then 1 April from 1975 until 1989.

· List more addresses than corresponding voters’ rolls, but (since the 1880s) fewer people

· Record all those eligible to vote in a particular place.

· Are arranged by parliamentary constituency, polling district and (in most cases) address.

· Are still compiled annually

· Were, and are still, usually published in February each year

· List more people than the corresponding valuation roll (at least since the late 19th century), but the valuation roll will mention more properties (since it will include commercial and government property which contain no residential voters).

Do valuation rolls tell you who owns land?

Land tax (cess) rolls compiled by the Commissioners of Supply from the early 17th to the early 19th century record the names of owners of property worth more than £100 Scots worth of annual rent in each parish. Valuation rolls compiled by county and burgh Assessors, for the period 1855-1974, and by Regional Assessors, for the period 1975-1989, do not include details about the ownership of land directly. They record, on the whole, the ownership of occupied buildings. However, they also include details of shooting and fishing rights on sporting and agricultural estates, some commercial grazing land, and some land used for commercial purposes (for example coal yards).

How do I find the valuation roll for an island or a property on an island?

For the period 1855 – 1974 you need to find out which county and civil parish(es) the island was in. You can do this by closing this box, going to the Knowledge Base home page, and selecting the Gazetteer in ‘Places’.

Why do some valuation rolls have separate lists of ‘service voters’ at the end of the rolls for each parish?

From 1946 onwards ‘service voters’ have been defined as members of HM Armed Forces and their spouses, plus crown servants and British Council employees and their spouses residing abroad. They do not register in the same way as residents and may not necessarily reside in the area of registration. Armed forces’ spouses have the option of registering as residents while in the UK. There were 18,686 service voters registered on the 1999 register.

However, prior to 1946 ‘service voters’ were individuals who occupied properties as part of their conditions of service (e.g. some categories of agricultural employees and domestic servants, such as gamekeepers), and who were enfranchised under the Representation of the People Act, 1884. Separate lists of these appear in the valuation rolls for some counties in the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, as laid down in the Local Government (Scotland) Act, 1889, viz.:

Special provisions as to service franchise occupiers – Notwithstanding section nine, sub-section (5), of the Representation of the People Act, 1884, there shall be entered in such column and with such heading as the deputy clerk register may approve, in the valuation roll of each county in the manner and subject to the provisions of the Valuation Acts, the annual value of every dwelling-house, the situation or description of which is entered in the said roll under the provisions of section nine, sub-section (2), of the Representation of the People Act, 1884. No person shall be liable to be rated in respect of such an entry, but the person rated in respect of the occupancy of the lands and heritages which include such dwelling-house shall be entitled to relief against the person (in this Act referred to as a service franchise occupier) occupying the same under him by virtue of any office, service, or employment, in respect of so much of the occupiers consolidated rate paid by him as is applicable to the amount entered in the valuation roll under the provisions of this Act as the annual value of such dwelling-house: Provided that where an arrangement has been made under which a deduction is expressly made in name of rates from the wages or emoluments of any service franchise occupier, this section shall not confer any right of relief as hereinbefore provided.

Why are photocopies of valuation rolls sometimes more expensive than copies of other records?

The cost of photocopying extracts from valuation rolls is sometimes set by Assessor’s offices which deposit the valuation rolls in the local authority archives and library services.

Trust Sederunt books

Family trusts

Family trusts were usually administered by solicitors, and the records of old-established legal firms may include hundreds of minute books of these trusts, sometimes for several generations of the same families. These are usually referred to as ‘sederunt books’, and in practice contain copies of the papers relating to the administration of the trust, not only minutes of meetings, but also copies of accounts, correspondence and other documents. Elsewhere in the UK these would probably be a loose bundle of papers, labelled and tied with red tape, but Scottish legal practice was to transcribe them into bound volumes. The trusts might arise from marriage contracts, or occasionally from sequestrations (a form of bankruptcy) or from some form of personal incapacity, such as mental illness. Much the commonest type, however (well over 80 per cent), are executries, trusts created normally by a trust disposition and settlement.

Contents of trust sederunt books

A sederunt book will normally begin with a transcript of a trust disposition and settlement. The creator of the trust will appoint a small number of members of his family and friends as his trustees, and convey to them all his property, heritable and moveable, to take effect on his death. He will nominate them as his executors, and if appropriate appoint them as tutors or curators of any children who are minors at the time of his death. The disposition will then proceed to declare the purposes of the trust, normally to provide an income for his widow and children, particularly any unmarried daughters, and will end with a general power to the creator to revoke the disposition at any time during his life. He might also later alter it in detail by one or more codicils, like those to a will, and these will also be transcribed into the sederunt book. The sederunt book will continue with a note of death (perhaps many years after the date of the disposition) and continue with trustees’ agreements to act and minutes of their meetings. A full inventory and valuation of the estate of the deceased at the time of death would be necessary for confirmation purposes. This will be transcribed into the book and may well include a room-by-room inventory of house contents. Thereafter the main contents will be the minutes of meetings of the trustees, usually increasingly formal, and perhaps only quarterly or even less frequent, accounts and copies of correspondence. The trust may wind up in less than five years, but where children are involved, it might well continue for half a century or more.

Location and use of trust sederunt books

Sederunt books are rare before about 1820, but as a record type were still being created in the 1920s and 1930s, and individual trusts continued much longer. They survive among the records of long-established Scottish legal firms, many of which have been deposited in Scottish archives. The largest collections are held by Glasgow City Archives and the National Records of Scotland. They are perhaps of greatest value for those (including business historians, biographers, local historians, and, occasionally, family historians) researching individual business and professional figures. In addition, trust sederunt books are an excellent source for those researching the Victorian middle class, both at the level of prominent entrepreneurs, manufacturers and professional men, some of them historical figures in their own right, and also of the more typical small tradesmen and shopkeepers. They will give details of their assets, perhaps including their businesses, if they were still in business when they died, and the inventories are of interest for the material culture of their homes and daily lives. Glasgow City Archives, in conjunction with Glasgow University, has pioneered the use of trust sederunt books in the study of decorative arts and house interiors by undergraduate students of fine arts.

Contributors: Andrew Jackson, Robin Urquhart (both SCAN 2002); Olive Geddes (National Library of Scotland 2002).

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Trust Sederunt Books

What does the word ‘sederunt’ mean?

‘Sederunt’ is a Latin word, meaning ‘there sat down’, i.e. when a record of a meeting begins ‘sederunt’ followed by a list of names, it indicates that those named sat down to hold a meeting or to form a court.

Are trust sederunt books a good source for the study of middle class women?

Along with testaments, trust sederunt books are valuable as sources of information on the property and lifestyles of middle class women, and provision for them by family trusts. A small proportion of trusts were set up by women (which are obviously useful for studying women who owned and disposed of property in their own right), while the majority of family trusts will deal with provision for widows and children of the person who set up the trust.

Are trust sederunt books a good source for family history?

Bear in mind that the proportion of people who left trusts is small, and the proportion of trust sederunt books which have survived from the 19th century is even smaller. If you are fortunate to find a sederunt book surviving for an ancestor, then it will be a valuable source of information, but principally about his property and lifestyle. It is unlikely to give you information about the family which is not available from other sources.

How do I find out if a trust sederunt book survives for a particular individual?

What you are hoping for is that the sederunt book(s) for the individual, family or trust you are interested in survives among the records of a firm of solicitors (or, less likely, within family or business papers) deposited at an archives service which is open to the public. The National Records of Scotland, Glasgow City Archives and the National Library of Scotland all hold large collections of solicitors’ records. Other local authority archives and university libraries and archives also hold smaller collections.

Most archives services have cataloguing systems available online and you should start by using these systems or Your Scottish Archives to search for the name of the individual, family or trust. If you do not find anything and you have some evidence that the individual or family used a solicitor and set up a trust, contact the relevant archives service and ask for assistance. Always remember, however, that many solicitors have not deposited records with an archives service and that only a few people set up such trusts, so be prepared to be told there is nothing relevant in the collections.

Statistical Accounts of Scotland

There have been three ‘statistical accounts’ of Scotland. The first, undertaken at the end of the 18th century under the direction of Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster (1754-1835), is usually referred to today as the ‘Old’ or ‘First’ statistical account. It was published in twenty-one volumes between 1791 and 1799. The second was the New Statistical Account, published between 1834 and 1845. The Third Statistical Account of Scotland was published between 1951 and 1992.

All three statistical accounts were based on questionnaires sent out to the Church of Scotland ministers in each parish. The Old Statistical Account questionnaire asked for information about the geography and natural history of the parish, its population, their occupations, origins and religious persuasion, the agriculture of the parish and miscellaneous topics including the poor, typical wages, archaeological remains and ruins, the state of roads and other matters. The New Statistical Account questionnaire asked for information about topographical and natural history, civil history, population, industry, parochial economy and miscellaneous observations. The Third Statistical Account included an account of each county as well as accounts of the individual parishes and covered industry, transport and culture as well as population changes, agriculture, religious affiliation and miscellaneous topics.

Online versions of the Old and New Statistical Accounts can be seen, along with more background information about them at Edinburgh University’s <https://stataccscot.edina.ac.uk/static/statacc/dist/home> [accessed 26 April 2024].

School log books

Log books kept by head teachers of schools are an important source of information on education in Scotland since 1872. From 1872 until 1979 the head teacher of each state school was obliged to keep a daily log book of occurrences at the school, particularly factors affecting pupil attendance (such as epidemics and severe weather) and staff absences. Other information which might be entered, depending on the circumstances of the school and the thoroughness of the head teacher, include attendance statistics, lists of teaching staff and subjects taught, dates and results of visits by HM Inspectors and end-of-term or end-of-year prize giving. Log books of faiths schools run by the Roman Catholic or Scottish Episcopalian Church may have visits by church dignitaries or festivals on saints’ days. Some log books may contain references to wider events, such as the arrangements for schools when their buildings were requisitioned by the armed forces at the start of the First World War, or the admission of a group of Belgian refugee children in 1914-1915. There may be references to cookery competitions, particularly during war-time and rationing periods, or to other types of competitions, such as local music, art or drama festivals in the mid-20^th century. They are unlikely to hold information about individual pupils: pupils would usually only be mentioned by name if there was a tragic death, a police enquiry or an outstanding accomplishment.

School log books do not survive for every school. Most that survive have now been placed in the local archives service but some may still be held within the schools themselves. In general, although the names of staff may be listed, school log books tend not to include personal details about identifiable individuals. Where there is personal information, the log books will be subject to closure periods of up to 100 years. Most log books are open 30 years after the last entry in the volume.

Contributors: Alison Lindsay (National Register of Archives for Scotland, 2002); Robin Urquhart (SCAN, 2002); Editor: Elspeth Reid (2021)

Related Knowledge Base entries

Education

Education records

School admission registers

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School log books

Will I find details of pupils in a log book?

In most cases, no. Individuals named in log books are principally members of staff. Occasionally pupils may be mentioned, for example as prize winners in end-of-term or end-of-year award ceremonies, and sometimes the annual dux of the school (i.e. the pupil with the best academic record) is mentioned. The main record kept by a school of individual pupils is the admission register. For further details see the Knowledge Base entry on admission registers.

How do I find log books and other school records for a particular school in Scotland?

If you know the name of the school then you should first contact the local archives service. You can find contact details in Your Scottish Archives. You may also find up to date details in the published Records Management Plan of the relevant local Council. Every Council in Scotland is required to make proper arrangements for its archives and other records. Many Councils run their own archives service or support an arms-length organisation to run the archives service on their behalf, but some Councils run a joint service with another Council or have deposited their older records with one of the larger archives services.

If you do not know the name of the school, then for the period after 1873, there are several options. Postal Directories for each county and town have, in many cases, an appendix with a list of educational establishments. In the case of cities, such as Glasgow and Edinburgh, these are subdivided by district. Many are online at <https://digital.nls.uk/directories/browse/> [accessed 26 April 2024]. Francis H Groome’s Ordnance Gazetteer for Scotland (various editions) mentions how many schools were in each place (in most cases) but does not name the schools.

If the education authority (e.g. school board, county council, etc) published a diary or annual handbook, these might be held by the local authority archive service or local studies library for the area concerned, and these usually list the schools and other educational establishments in the area. The local archives or library may have other resources or might have compiled lists of schools to help with these kinds of enquiries.

Once you know which schools were operating in the area concerned, you can use maps to work out which school was nearest to where your ancestor lived. If your ancestor was Roman Catholic, look for the nearest Roman Catholic School.

School board minutes

School boards first met around April 1873 and will describe themselves as having been elected under the Education (Scotland) Act 1872. They are in the normal form and begin with a sederunt (a list of those present). At the first meeting, or the first after an election (every three years), a chairman would be elected, a treasurer, a clerk or secretary and an officer. The treasurer would open an account with a local bank and would receive all income, mainly from the education rate, but also from school fees and occasionally from other sources. The officer would report all defaulting parents who had not sent their children to school, and in rural parishes might be responsible for carrying out an educational census, since the first work of the board would be to establish the number of children of school age in their area, and the number of places in existing schools. The deficit would require to be made up from a school building programme. The early years of a school board are likely to show intense activity, perhaps with monthly meetings, and in rural areas at least, little or no committee structure. Later on, the minutes would be more routine, concerned mainly with administration and enforcement of attendance. In the cities the boards would have an extensive committee structure, dealing with such matters as property, teachers and teaching and finance. The minutes may well be printed and indexed.

Use of School Board Minutes

School board minutes contain information useful to a variety of researchers. They are used by local historians and, occasionally, by school pupils and teachers interested in educational provision within the area of a school board. For academic historians of education, they are a key primary source for issues concerning education between 1873 and 1919. Occasionally sectarianism was an issue, for example where Roman Catholic children attended school board schools, where they might be involved in religious or other observances to which parents or a local parish priest objected. They are of some value for the history of buildings, and occasionally of architecture more generally. Two of the schools built by Glasgow School Board, for example, were designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and the board’s records detail their relations with him, which involved a certain amount of tension. Where a local authority’s ownership of a school building is in doubt, school board minutes are often used by legal researchers in tracing whether the school building was conveyed from private ownership prior to 1873 to a school board and thereafter to later education authorities. In addition, the minutes may record whether the conveyance included any conditions. School board minutes are of limited family history interest: they rarely mention individual children but may have information about teachers and pupil teachers (young people appointed within schools to monitor and help younger pupils).

School admission registers

School admission registers are an important source of information on individual pupils in Scottish schools from the late 19th century onwards.

From 1873 head teachers kept admission registers. These contained information about the child’s school career, in a type of register which was fairly standard throughout Scotland, but whose information value depends upon the thoroughness of individual head teachers. Usually, the columns in an admission register allowed entries to be written about the following for each pupil:

name, date of birth, date of admission to the school, date of leaving school, reason for leaving (and name of other school, if transferred to or from another school), name of last school attended, name and address of parent or guardian. Sadly, in times of deprivation and childhood diseases such as whooping cough and scarlet fever, they might record the death of a child.

Additional information may be included such as exam results, class marks, annual attendance figures, and (for the second half of the 20th century) IQs

It was left to the head teacher to fill in whichever columns he or she thought fit, and, typically, admission registers contain good details of the child joining the school , but incomplete information in the other columns. Often it is not clear whether a pupil completed a full education: the head teacher was supposed to record the date of leaving and the reason for leaving, including the child attaining the statutory school leaving age, but in a large number of cases this was not done. This is often frustrating for former pupils who are required by emigration authorities, employers or higher education bodies to provide evidence that they received a standard education.

Electronic registers

From the late 1990s, most schools started to keep details of pupils in an electronic system in preference to paper-based registers. Admission and leaving information was often integrated with pupil progress records which contained academic and personal information. Pupil progress records should be retained only for five years after the pupil left school and it is therefore likely that these integrated records have in many cases been deleted. However, in some areas admission and leaving information has been extracted and retained in electronic format and local authority archivists have requested the retention of identified fields in SEEMIS, the current system used by most schools.

Confidentiality

School admission registers are subject to the Data Protection Act 2018 and GDPR. Access is normally restricted for 100 years. Individuals are entitled to access their own information but cannot access information relating to other people until the restriction period ends.

Custody of records

Many school records have not survived. Most that survive have now been placed in the local archives service but some may still be held within the schools themselves.

Contributors: Alison Lindsay (National Register of Archives for Scotland, 2002); Robin Urquhart (SCAN 2002); Editor: Elspeth Reid (2021)

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School admission records

I require evidence that I attended school for higher education/emigration/employment purposes. Where can I find this?

This depends on when you left school and whether you need confirmation of attendance or confirmation of exam results.

Exam certificates, 1948-present

If you require confirmation of any formal examinations, such as ‘O’ Grades, Standard Grades, National 4, National 5, Highers, Certificates of Sixth Year Studies or Advanced Highers, you should apply to the Scottish Qualifications Authority <https://www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/70972.html> [accessed 26 April 2024]

1908-48

If you sat the Higher Leaving exam in Scotland between 1908 and 1948, the records are held by the National Records of Scotland (NRS) under the reference ED36 and ED40. They survive in the form of bound volumes of returns by each school listing the names of the candidates, subjects, grades and marks. The volumes are arranged alphabetically by the parish or burgh in which each school was found. There is a closure period of 75 years. Therefore, if you sat your exams after the mid-1920s you should make your enquiry by letter or by e-mail to NRS, who will treat it as a subject access request under the Data Protection Act.

School Attendance

If you require confirmation that you attended secondary education and left school because you reached the statutory school leaving age, the position is more complicated. If you left school less than 5 years ago, the school or the Council education service will still have an electronic record of your school career.

If you left school more than 5 years ago but after about 1995 it is likely that your school records would have been held in an electronic system. These may have been destroyed 5 years after you left school.

If you left school before about 1995, it is likely that your individual school record (known as a pupil progress record) will have been confidentially destroyed. However, most schools kept admission registers, which record the name of each pupil, date of birth, last school attended, date joined school, date left and reason for leaving. If the head teacher recorded details of each pupil properly in the admission register and the register still exists, then it should provide you with the information you need.

There are three places to contact:

(a) Council Contact Centres. Councils all have contact centres which can refer your request to the relevant person to advise on whether they still hold any electronic or paper admission records of your time at school. This may be the Council’s records manager whose contact details will be found in the Council’s Records Management Plan, or it may be a relevant person in the Council’s education or children’s services.

(b) Archives. Some older paper admission registers have been deposited in the local archives service. If the archives service does not have this register they may be able to tell you who to contact.

(c) Schools. Some schools still hold older paper admission registers. If the school itself survives you may want to contact it directly. If the school still has the admission register for the years you attended school, staff there may be able to send you a letter confirming your attendance, or else will pass your details to the relevant office in the council’s education service, which will send you official confirmation. If the school does not have the register concerned, the head teacher may be able to tell you whether this has been destroyed or whether it has been passed to a local archives service.

If the school admission register does not survive, the council’s education service may be able to give you written confirmation that your school attendance cannot be confirmed because the records have been destroyed.

Are school admission registers a good source for family history or biography?

School admission registers typically contain information about individual pupils (such as date of birth, and the name and address of parent/guardian). However, this is information which can usually be more easily ascertained elsewhere, for example from civil registers of births, marriages and deaths. Access is restricted for 100 years. In most cases, therefore, information from school admission registers will not help you trace your family tree back further but will help ‘flesh out’ a family history by adding details of the life of an individual ancestor. They may confirm the date of migration of the family, whether moving to another area within Scotland or to or from another country.

How do I find out where the school records of a pupil are, if I don’t know the name of the school he or she attended?

For pupils who left school before about 1995 you will need to work out which school they are most likely to have gone to. There are a number of options, depending on the period you are searching.

For the period prior to 1873, the most comprehensive list of schools in Scotland is contained in the questionnaires returned by schoolteachers in each parish and burgh of Scotland to the Parliamentary Education Select Committee of 1838. These form part of official parliamentary papers, series of which are held by the National Library of Scotland, the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, and some university libraries.

For the period after 1873, there are several options. Postal Directories for each county and town have, in many cases, an appendix with a list of educational establishments. In the case of cities, such as Glasgow and Edinburgh, these are subdivided by district. Francis H Groome’s Ordnance Gazetteer for Scotland (various editions) mentions how many schools were in each place (in most cases) but does not name the schools.

If the minutes of the school board for the area concerned survive for the period beginning 1873, it is worth looking at the minutes, as these usually contain information about the various schools in the parish run by the various churches, charitable organizations and so on, usually because the school board would, be discussing which ones to take over themselves.

Once you know which schools were operating in the area concerned, you can use maps to work out which school was nearest to where the pupil lived. If the pupil was Roman Catholic, look for the nearest Roman Catholic School.

Acts & Records – Scottish Parliament

The original records of the Scottish Parliament are held by the National Records of Scotland (NRS). In practice, they are largely available online. For more details see the NRS website guide Scottish Parliament Records | National Records of Scotland (nrscotland.gov.uk) [accessed 26 April 2024].

The acts of the Scottish Parliament are published on the Scottish Parliament’s website as originally enacted <https://www.parliament.scot/bills-and-laws> [accessed 26 April 2024] and on the UK legislation website as enacted and as revised by subsequent amendments <www.legislation.gov.uk> [accessed 26 April 2024].

Official publications can be accessed on the Scottish Parliament’s website <https://www.parliament.scot/> [accessed 26 April 2024].

Printed versions of recent publications can also be consulted in most public libraries.

Acts & Records – Old Scottish Parliament

The original records of the (Old) Parliament of Scotland are held by the National Records of Scotland (NRS). For more details see the NRS website Scottish Parliament Records | National Records of Scotland (nrscotland.gov.uk) or Scottish Record Office Guide to the National Archives of Scotland (Stair Society/HMSO 1996), pp. 9-19.

The majority of the acts of the Scottish parliament have been published in The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, edited by Thomas Thomson and Cosmo Innes (12 vols., 1814 – 1875). A new digital edition with transcriptions and translations has been published online by St Andrews University <https://www.rps.ac.uk/> [accessed 26 April 2024].

Acts of the Old Scottish Parliament which are still in force can also be found online on the UK legislation website <www.legislation.gov.uk> [accessed 26 April 2024].

Property records

The most frequently used records of Scottish heritable property are:

Title deeds (instruments of sasine) and inventories
Sasine registers
Tax rolls
Valuation rolls
Estate papers

The most frequently used records of Scottish moveable property are:

Wills and testaments
Sederunt books
Household accounts

Title deeds and inventories

When ownership of heritable property changes, through sale or inheritance for example, the property is conveyed. Usually, a lawyer will draw up a title deed, which until the late 20^th century was known as an instrument of sasine. The survival of individual title deeds is haphazard. These have often survived among the records of the lawyer’s office, or among the personal papers of the family or individual who owned the property, and sometimes these have been deposited in a local archives service.

Sasine Registers

The majority of conveyances in Scotland from 1617 until the late 20th century were sent by lawyers to be registered in centrally held registers known collectively as the register of sasines. For more details about the early register of sasines (before 1781) go to <https://webarchive.nrscotland.gov.uk/20240326182622/https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/research-guides/research-guides-a-z/sasineshttps://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/research-guides/research-guides-a-z/sasines> [accessed 26 April 2024].For details of sasines after 1781 go to the Knowledge Base entry on Property Records – Sasine Abridgements. The general register of sasines is the responsibility of Registers of Scotland and since the introduction of the Land Register of Scotland in 1981, all conveyances are recorded there instead of the register of sasines. For further details see <https://www.ros.gov.uk/our-registers > [accessed 26 April 2024].

Tax rolls

Taxation in Scotland became well organised and better recorded from the 1690s onwards, and most taxes were based on property ownership. Most records of taxation in Scotland are held by the National Records of Scotland. For further details see <https://webarchive.nrscotland.gov.uk/20240326182516/https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/research-guides/research-guides-a-z/taxation-records > [accessed 26 April 2024].

Valuation rolls

A special type of tax roll was the valuation roll, on which each property’s rental value and annual tax was estimated, and the name and address of the owner and tenant recorded. For further details see the Knowledge Base entry on Valuation Rolls.

Estate papers

Where a family owned an estate, the surviving records of property management are referred to as estate papers, and many collections of estate papers are either in archives services or still held privately by the families that created them. These may include records of tenants and tenancies showing the names of farmers or estate workers as well as their rents, applications for leases, roups of lands, stock or equipment and plans of the estates.

Wills and testaments

For further information about wills and testaments, see the Knowledge Base entry on Wills and Testaments. Inventories of moveable property are usually part of these records.

Sederunt books

For further information about sederunt books see the Knowledge Base entry on Trust Sederunt Books.

Household accounts

Household accounts, where they survive, can contain information about moveable property such as bed linen, furnishings, glassware and crockery, as well as the day-to-day purchases of groceries and other supplies. These types of records can survive in the family papers of people with limited incomes and no heritable property as well as the better off.

Contributors: Andrew Jackson, Robin Urquhart (both SCAN, 2002), Elspeth Reid (2021).

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Property records

How is the word ‘sasine’ pronounced and what does it mean?

Strictly speaking, the word ‘sasine’ is pronounced ‘sezin’, but in archive search rooms in Scotland you are most likely to hear it pronounced ‘say-zeen’.

Sasine means ‘possession’, especially with regard to property. It is similar to the English word ‘seize’, and it medieval times, when property was granted there was a ritual seizing of a clod of earth (or some other symbolic part of the property) in front of witnesses. Further information about this can be found in the website of the Registers of Scotland <https://www.ros.gov.uk/> [accessed 26 April 2024].

What do the abbreviations in the Sasine Abridgements stand for?

The abbreviations mainly concern types of legal document being registered and commonly occurring legal terms. The Scottish Council on Archives is grateful to Andrew Jackson for permission to reproduce this list.

assig.	assignation
bar.	barony
bond and disp	bond and disposition in security. The commonest form of heritable security in the 19^th century. It combines a personal bond by the borrower with a disposition of the lands on which the sum was secured
bond corrob. and disp.	bond of corroboration and disposition. A heritable security where the bond is intended to corroborate an obligation already undertaken (for example by an ancestor of the obligator)
ch.	charter
ch. conf.	charter of confirmation (from a feudal superior)
ch. conf. and novodamus	charter of confirmation and novodamus. A charter of confirmation also containing a new grant (novodamus) or a change in the incidents of tenure of the previous grant.
ch. resig.	charter of resignation (from the feudal superior)
ch. resig. and adjud.	charter of resignation (by a superior) on an adjudication (i.e. a judicial process to attach heritable property for debt)
ch resig G. S.	charter of resignation under the Great Seal
comp.	comprising
con. excamb.	contract of excambion, for the exchange of properties, for example to rationalise boundaries.
con. fee and liferent	conjunct fee and liferent. A joint fee in two or more persons during their lives, the survivor taking a fee of one half and a liferent of the other.
con. of ground annual	contract of ground annual A form of heritable security.
decr. arb.	decreet arbitral. The award of arbitrators on a point or points jointly submitted to them by parties in dispute.
disch.	discharge
disp.	disposition
disp. and assig.	disposition and assignation
disp. in impl.	disposition in implement. A disposition granted in implement of a previous imperfect conveyance.
disp. of tailzie	disposition of tailzie (i.e. constituting an entail).
eod. die	eodem die (on the same day)
extract sp. service	extract of special service (see ret. gen. serv.)
feu. ch.	feu charter
feu. con.	feu contract
feu. disp.	feu disposition. In the 19^th century the distinction between the charter and the disposition was that a charter was used to create a new feu, and a disposition to carry one forward to a new proprietor. A form of disposition was also used for the former purpose, however, and was known as a feu disposition.
G.R.	general register (of sasines)
G.S.	great seal
mar. con.	marriage contract
not. instrument.	notarial instrument Strictly, any instrument drawn up by a notary. The document referred to as such in the late 19^th century normally concerns trustees, either their assumption of the new trust, or the addition of new trustees.
oblig.	obligation
par.	parish
post nupt. mar. con.	post nuptial marriage contract
P.R.	particular register (of sasines)
pr. chan.	precept furth of chancery. A deed similar in effect to a precept of clare constat q.v., used where the crown was the superior
pr. cl. con.	precept of clare constat. A deed granted by the superior to the heir of a deceased vassal, reciting that it ‘clearly appears’ (clare constat) that the recipient is the lawful heir, thus enabling him to take sasine.
proc. resig.	procuratory of resignation. The appointment of one or more procurators to resign property into the hands of the superior. By the 18^th century this was usually a clause in a disposition rather than a separate document.
ratif.	ratification
ren.	renunciation
resig. ad. rem.	resignation ad remanentiam. Resignation into the hands of the superior was either for the purpose of a regrant to a third party (resignation in favorem), or to remain in the superior’s own hands (resignation ad remanentiam).
ret. gen. serv.	retour of general service. The verdict of an inquest establishing that a claimant was the heir of a deceased person. A retour of general service merely established his character as heir. A retour of special service detailed the lands in which the deceased died infeft.
seq.	sequestrated

Latin phrases
eod. die	on the same day
loco tutoris	in place of a tutor
pro indiviso	undivided
propriis manibus	with his own hands
vide	see

How do I convert the legal jargon into who is doing what with which bit of property?

You need to familiarise yourself with the different types of transaction. Compare the entry you are interested in with these various types to see which is the closest. The most common types are:

Outright sales and gifts
Family settlements
Succession
Rights in security
Bankruptcy
Notarial Instruments

You can see typical examples from the sasine abridgements for the first four of the above categories in the Knowledge Base entry for Property Records – Sasine Abridgements.

To see a full entry in the General or Particular Register of Sasines, what information will I need from the sasine abridgement?

You require several bits of information from each abridgement. Firstly the county involved. Secondly whether the entry is in the Particular Register or the General Register. Thirdly the reference number to the corresponding volume in the register.

At the end of each sasine abridgement is a numerical or alpha-numerical reference. If this begins with the letters G. R., then the full sasine entry will be found in the General Register of Sasines prior to 1868, held by the National Records of Scotland (reference RS.3). If the reference begins with the letters P. R. it refers to a full sasine entry in the Particular Register of Sasines for a county or group of counties. If the reference has no letters prefixing it, then it refers to a sasine entry in one of the county divisions of the register after 1868.

Whether or not the reference has a P. R. or G. R. prefix, the remainder of the reference consists of two numbers. The first refers to a volume in the relevant series of registers. The second refers to a folio number within that volume. Once armed with these reference numbers, the next step is to consult the catalogues to the sasine registers at the National Records of Scotland, and then the sasine entry itself.

The example below is taken from the sasine abridgements for Aberdeenshire. The reference at the end of the entry, ringed in red, reads ‘P. R. 249. 114.’ This shows that the full sasine entry will begin on folio 114 of volume 249 of the Particular Register for Aberdeenshire.

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Are sasine abridgements a good source for genealogy?

Sasine abridgements can be a very good source of information for genealogy for those whose ancestors owned land in Scotland from 1781 onwards. They record successions to property, which help establish death dates and family relationships, and they are easily searched by county by personal name.

However, there are limitations. Do not think of the sasine abridgements as an annual list of property owners in Scotland. Rather they are a record of property transactions each year. The limitations of using sasine abridgements for genealogy are that they:

concern owners of property, not tenants or other occupants
record a majority of, but not all, property transactions in any given year
contain legal jargon
require a working knowledge of Scotland’s feudal land law

Property Records – Sasine Abridgements

By the early 19th century, the Registers of Sasines were very large and the process of legal searching very time-consuming. A particular problem was the General Register, which had to be searched along with the Particular Register for the county or other area in question. Both would be searched for 40 years, or sometimes longer. Consequently in 1821 the Record Office began the process of compiling abridgements, going back to 1781, combining short summaries of all the entries for a particular county or registration area in a single chronological series.

These Abridgements:

do not cover the burgh Registers of Sasines, for which there may be no finding aids except contemporary manuscript summaries, not indexed;
are indexed by persons and places, but the indexing of places was abandoned in the period 1831-1871;
were printed, but are not widely available other than in the National Records of Scotland (for the whole of Scotland) and in local archives (for the local area).

Rights to heritable property might be conveyed in a wide range of circumstances. What follows covers the commonest types of entry in the Abridgements, but the user should remember that the abridgment is perhaps only a 5-10 line summary of a document which may itself take up 20 pages or more in the register. A good deal of what is missing is legal verbiage, of which there was more then than now, but a great deal is essential for the full understanding of the sasine. The reader must expect to have to consult the original document for any especially interesting entry. Commonly occurring words, especially forms of title deeds, are abbreviated. These are printed in italics, below, and are explained. The examples are all taken from Aberdeenshire in 1852. Click on one of these types to see an example.

Outright sales and gifts
Family settlements
Succession
Rights in security

Contributors: Andrew Jackson, Robin Urquhart, Alan Borthwick (all SCAN 2002).

Sasine abridgements – Outright sales and gifts

The simplest case is where one individual conveys land to another, normally by sale, and the commonest way of doing this was by a document known as a disposition. In the 19th century these were much longer than they are now, but not very different in essentials.

Prince Albert acquires the estate of Balmoral from the Earl of Fife.

a daugh (or davach) is a traditional Scottish measurement of land
comp. = comprising
the land is in the parish of Crathie in Aberdeenshire
it is conveyed with the tithes (or teinds), that is, there will be no requirement on the landowner to pay teinds
the original conveyance will be found in volume 2611 of the General Register of Sasines, beginning at folio 253 (P.R. would mean the Particular Register for the county of Aberdeenshire)
the party first named (in capital letters) is almost always the party acquiring the lands (or the right) which is being conveyed.

Dispositions were used where an existing unit of land, or a separate right, already existed and was being carried forward to a new owner. If a new right, or unit of land, was being created, for example where a part of a field was being sold as a plot of land for house-building, the conveyancing document would be a charter.

The town council of Inverurie (as it is now spelt) are selling off part of a common moor owned by the burgh by a feu charter. This time registration is in the Particular Register for Aberdeenshire.

Sasine abridgements – family settlements

Sometimes the conveyance is part of a family settlement. A merchant or tradesman, for example, wishes to provide for his wife or perhaps his wife and children. He may acquire land, a house or houses, with a provision that if his wife dies before him, they will descend to his heir. If he dies before her, she will hold them for her lifetime, and only thereafter will they descend to the heir. This is a conveyance in fee and liferent, that is, to the wife outright and to the husband for his life only.

Here the property is owned by an incorporation or craft guild. The Shoemakers of Aberdeen would originally have controlled standards of workmanship in the city and played an important part in civic life. By this date the functions of such incorporations were mainly social, but they also acted as friendly societies, with charitable funds for the relief of widows and orphans, or former members of the craft who had fallen on hard times. They would often own landed property for this purpose. In this case the Shoemakers are feuing out a property for development. One building site is feued to Charles Gordon, cooper in Aberdeen and Ann his wife. If Charles died before Ann, she would hold the property for her life only, and it would then descend to their children. The original sasine contains details of the conditions imposed on Gordon by the Shoemakers, as feudal superiors. He would be required to build a dwelling house of a certain value on the site, for example.

Sasine abridgements – Succession/Inheritance

Heritable property descends to the heir, but he or she should obtain a charter from the feudal superior, transferring the title to himself or herself. If the superior is the crown, this will be a precept furth of Chancery. This simply states that A is the heir of B and should be admitted to the lands. If the superior is someone other than the crown, he or she will issue a precept of clare constat, to the same effect (clare constat is a Latin phrase meaning ‘it clearly appears’, from the opening words of these precepts).

In this example, Dr George Paton, who is a surgeon in the employment of the East India Co, is the heir to his deceased father and has obtained a precept from the feudal superior, Lord Lovat, to have himself entered into the property.

Rights in security

Lenders require security from borrowers. If the sum of money borrowed is secured on land or other heritable property, this will be recorded in a conveyance, which must be entered into the Register. The commonest form is a bond by the borrower, undertaking to pay interest and repay the principal, combined in a single document with a disposition of the property, to take effect only if the debt is not repaid. The borrower remains in possession, like a modern mortgager, but must keep up the interest payments. This is a bond and disposition in security.

The lender now has a right, which he can assign to someone else, either wholly or in part, by an assignation, or disposition and assignation.

A waulk mill is a mill for fulling cloth. Here the original lender, Thomas Henderson, is selling out and transferring his rights to a bank.

The borrower may repay the principal sum and any outstanding interest. As with an assignation, the repayment may only be in part. The borrower will require the lender to grant him a discharge.

Here the creditors happen to be trustees, but that is not significant. They acknowledge receipt of part of what they are owed.