| Description | Volumes MS 2126/3/5d/3/10 - 18 are essentially registers of précis of leases (building, repairing, meadow/pasture or cottage and garden) which were granted on the estate. They appear to have been used as quick reference tool in the estate office. Each is usually headed with the name of the lessee (sometimes including abode and occupation) and may give: date of commencement, term of years, situation, extent in square yards, dimensions in yards, rent payable per annum, specified expenditure for a building of dwelling houses, time frame for building work, line of building from road, making of pavements and other restrictive covenants or special conditions. Most have an appended or attached ground plan showing names of abutting leaseholders and location of extant buildings. From volume 5 onwards précis of conveyances are also included.
All lease books have been annotated for a substantial period of time after the last entry. Notes concern surrenders, expirations, abandonments and cancellations of leases and occasionally sale of lands. Many entries are marked with new lessees name, date of execution of lease and counterpart and with the ubiquitous 'red reference codes.'
The précis are arranged roughly chronologically. Each volume contains an index of lessee names. Many of the volumes are also covered by other union indexes, which are individually described at the beginning of this section.
Additional indexes have been compiled as part of the process of cataloguing MS 2126/3/5d/2/A and will assist in using these lease books. These are:
Appendix A: Place Name and Property Index
Appendix B: Lessee Name Index
Appendix C: "Red Reference Code" Index
Appendix D: "Lease Number" Index
There is also a leaflet (Appendix E) intended to assist in using this collection for house and property history. |