Property Records

Property, apart from a very small amount of freehold, fell into three categories

1. Lord's Rent - Land nominally owned by the Lord and rented out as tenements - in practice regarded by tenants as their own property, which property right was codified by the 1704 Act of Settlement - the annual rent roll was held in Lib Assed whilst Lib Vas gave the changes from one year to the next - additional levies were often laid by the Lord upon landowners for the support of garrisons etc - these could be fixed for a certain number of years and compounded into the rent - the Composition Books give the names and rentals of such properties - these too were codified by the Act of Settlement and alienation fines imposed at each change of ownership.
2. Abbey Rental - land which pre 1540 was held by Rushen Abbey but after this year became the property of the Lord - however the rentals and changes to the rentals continued to noted in Lib Mon
3. Other Baronial land - small tracts held by the Bishop, Abbeys of Sabbal and Bangor etc - noted in the respective Barony book

There are several significant changes to the form and location of records:

• Pre 1704 - Bills of Sale would be noted in several places - Lib Canc (records of Chancery court), within Lib Vas for Lord's rent and Lib Mon for Abbey rental - a partial list of these can be found for most parishes preceeding the index to Old Deeds - Quayle's Precedents (a handlist of entries in Lib Canc and Lib Scacc) also lists many such transfers.
• Post 1704 - following the Act of Settlement all changes in land ownership had to be recorded by the Rolls office and to have passed through the relevant court (Sheading court for Lord's rent, Abbey court or Barony Court) - these courts would meet when required but at most twice a year in May and Oct. The transfer, which included mortgages, was noted by the deed held by the Rolls Office - the format of the indices to these deeds changed over the years:
  • Pre 1723 the deeds where numbered in bundles (generally about 100) and collected by Parish - these are the Old Deeds and Old Mortgages - the number in the bundle was not related to the date of the deed and most bundles contain deeds/mortgages dating pre Act of Settlement deposited in the court for both safekeeping and official record.
  • 1724-1798 - Deeds of sale and similar permanent transfers (gift, settlement etc) were now grouped into North Side Sales and South Side Sales - these were numbered in a common sequence for each Court (May/Oct) and year but grouped by Parish. The sequence for the Mortgages (North Side Mortgages and South Side Mortgages) commenced after those for all deeds of sale - there are some 23,000 registered deeds, about 20,000 registered Mortgages - the index to these Mortgages is currently under construction.
  • 1798-1847 - a reorganization of parishes within NSS and SSS and the use of individual sequences for each
  • 1780-1847 - another mechanism for recording deeds of sale, mortgage or giving Bond and Security (for loans) was introduced in 1780 using the court at Castletown - these courts met in each of the 4 legal terms (Michaelmas, Hillary, Easter and Trinity) and took over much of the recording for the southernmost parishes as well as for giving Bond + Security for loans (presumably based on the quicker mechanism than the old Sheading courts). These are the Castletown Deeds which comprise about 10,000 registrations. Pre 1798 there were relatively few documents - the numbering was in two sequences one for Deeds and the other for Morts though both are included in the same index. Post 1798 a single sequence was used for all documents for each Term and and Year - also grouped by parish but Parishes ordered in a different sequence than in the NSS and SSS deeds etc. An index to these Castletown deeds is currently under construction - an index to those pre-1798 is available
  • Some deeds and mortgages were Enrolled or copied into a bound book - early instances are also numbered in the corresponding sales or mortgages but later entries are numbered by their appearance in the books which were organised by parish - these are the Enrolled Deeds
• Post 1847-1911 - In Nov 1847 a different indexing scheme was adopted until the abolition of Lords rent etc in 1911 - the indices for this period have been transcribed by Manx Museum and are (or will shortly be) on www.iMuseum.im.

Marriage Contracts form about 10% of the Deeds found in North & South Side Sales - these are discussed elsewhere

Lib Assed - indexed by Year

• 1639 - on CD Only
• 1686

Lib Vas

• 1600-1704 - on CD Only (exact coverage depends on Parish)

Property Transfers - indexed by Parish

Note that only a small fraction of the records available on the CD are included on line

• Andreas
• Arbory
• Ballaugh
• Braddan
• Bride
• Castletown [see under Malew]
• Douglas [cottages in Douglas extracted from Onchan]
• German
• Jurby
• Lezayre
• Lonan
• Malew
• Marown
• Maughold
• Michael
• Onchan
• Patrick
• Peel [see under German]
• Santan
• Ramsey [see under Maughold, North Ramsey (mostly developed post 1847) is under Lezayre]
• Rushen

The Parish indices for Old Deeds, Old Mortgages, North + South Side Sales, North + South Side Mortgages, and Castletown deeds are complete ; that for the Enrolled Deeds is currently in preparation.

Any comments, errors or omissions gratefully received The Editor HTML Transcription © F.Coakley , 2013