| Description | The Town Clerks Deeds sequence compirse over 30,000 property deeds relating to property purchased by the Corporation of Birmingham. The deeds were kept by the City Estates Department and relate to land and property that was compulsorily purchased by the Council for the purposes of street improvement, slum clearance and redevelopment schemes during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, most notably the Borough Improvement Scheme, 1875, and the post-war Central Areas Redevelopment Schemes, 1946. The deeds are dated mainly early nineteenth centuy onwards, although a significant proportion go back as far as the seventeenth century;a few are written in Latin.
The deposit was given a generic accession number 1955/017 although the deeds were deposited in a fairly ad hoc manner both prior to and after this date. A number of filing boxes are kept in our Archive Stores containing box lists, with lists for each batch of deeds relating to a specific property / street. The lists were created by the Town Clerks Department after the deeds were received by the Estates Department, and subsequently were handed over with the deeds when they were eventually deposited at the old Central Reference Library, Ratcliffe Place.
This catalogue has been largely created following the original order given in the lists and corresponding numbering sequence of the deeds. The deed batches relating to each street address are catalogued at file level, in accordance with a generic running number allocated to each deed and their respective bundle lists. In some cases documentation relating to a single address can be as little as one deed, in other cases documentation relating to a specific address or site can run up to several hundred items.
So for example, the first six deeds that appear in the lists as TC 1-6 relating to specific property around Great Hampton Row etc are catalogued here as:
- BCC/1/AM/D/1/3/1/1-6 Deeds and documents (not required) relating to freehold property situate fronting Great Hampton Row, Harford Street and Tower Street in the City of Birmingham. [As listed c1955]
And the next three deeds [TC 7-9] relating to Callowbrook Lane, Rubery, are catalogued here as:
- BCC/1/AM/D/1/3/1/7-9 Deeds and documents relating to Nos. 188 and 190, Callowbrook Lane, Rubery in the County of Worcester. [As listed c1955]
To search for a street within the collection follow link to on-line catalogue http://calmview.birmingham.gov.uk/CalmView/, then click advanced search, then add search term (i.e. street or place name) to AnyText field and reference number BCC/1/AM/D/1/3/1/* to RefNo field.
Please note, if deeds relating to a specific property are found in the catalogue, do not assume the address given in the catalogue is the same as the equivalent street address today. The titles of each catalogue record have been put together from lists that were compiled during the 1950s. The title of each deed bundle will list roughly when the deeds were listed, which will correspond more to the maps and street directories created when the deeds were originally listed, as opposed to today. Some of the properties or streets listed in the deeds do not exist today (for example, John Street). Because many of the deed bundles relate to property that was compulsorily purchased by the Council, in some cases they detail the history of that particular building or area at a moment in time prior to the area / building's improvement or demolition.
Subsequent improvement or demolition works might mean the street number for the property today (if it exists) might be markedly different to the time the property and deeds were purchased by the Council. The deeds should be looked at in conjunction with street directories, electoral registers, historic ordnance survey maps, old photographs and other records (i.e. minutes of relevant City Council committees). In some cases the deeds include a block plan that can help the researcher verify more exactly whether the deeds match the property they are looking at.
According to the hand lists, some deed numbers were missed out in error: TC 84, 94, 1086, 1104, 1273, 1552 - 1554. 1343 - 1386 [Not yet indexed].
N.B. At present, numbers TC 1-8300 are live on our on-line catalogue, now appearing as BCC/1/AM/D/1/3/1/1-8300. Its is hoped cataloguing work will continuie and more catalogues will become available on-line at a later date. There is a card street index for the deeds in this sub series, although it is not in the public search rooms. Please ask a member of staff for details. A card index was created for the deeds sequence which covers the whole of this deposit, including material that has not yet been catalogued following the last deed that appears in this sequence (TC 8301). The index is currently kept in our Archive Stores at the Library of Birmingham. Please ask staff for further information. |