Manorial Documents Register

[Phoenix]

There is going to be a big launch later in the year, but I am told that manorial records (presumably excluding those in private hands) are on Discovery.

https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/manor-search


They have certainly tidied this up, as Norfolk records now have the correct NROCAT reference, which they didn't in the past.

[kiterunner]

Are they definitely saying that the actual records will be available online, though, or just information about where the records are held? I remember seeing something similar years ago which turned out just to be saying where the records are.

[ElizabethHerts]

Kresen Kernow (Cornwall) feature Manorial Documents on their Facebook page every Monday - Manorial Mondays. They usually post an image of an extract from a document.

Last Monday it was a "Composition in Lieu of Best Beast". When a tenant died the Lord had the right to take the tenant's best beast or be paid a heriot. This was found in a lease book from the early 1800s.

Sometimes they feature maps.

[Phoenix]

Are they definitely saying that the actual records will be available online, though, or just information about where the records are held? I remember seeing something similar years ago which turned out just to be saying where the records are.


The huge challenge with manorial records for an amateur is establishing where records are held. A single manor can have records in five, six or seven different archives, often in opposite ends of the country. For many years, only a handful of counties were fully indexed. The search engine is a bit clunky at the moment, but at last I can see where Sussex records are.



Considering the variety of records, formats and archives, we are unlikely ever to see all records being digitised. Admissions and surrenders are the most useful items for family historians, but social historians might be interested in very different documents.

[Olde Crone]

I still mourn the old A2A site and never properly understood why it was taken down, unless it was felt that too much information was being given away free of charge. It was an absolute treasure trove for me, from the most important documents down to fairly trivial day to day stuff you wouldn't think to look for. It also introduced me to the fact of mirrored documents which I had never considered before and which filled in many a gap - where a marriage agreement had been lost on one side of the family, it still existed on the spouse's side. It also, as Phoenix points out, listed many sources holding documents that you would never have found any other way - what you don't know exists, you don't know to look for. One example of this was a bundle of family papers being held by a solicitor in Devon, for my Lancashire family. How they had detached (and why) from the manorial records I'll never know.

OC

[Phoenix]

I hate it when a much loved and well-used site goes, but there are likely to be many reasons: outdated software which cannot cope with modern browsers, and is too expensive to maintain, new agreements with commercial enterprises (Family search keeps losing databases) etc