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Services / Property Deeds

Not to be confused with the present day Land Register of Deeds, the Deeds Registries of Yorkshire would be unique if it were not for the fact that just one other English county has available this class of record...Middlesex. The county of Yorkshire has four such registries, one for each of the three riding's of the county and one for the City of York. It is this aspect which provides researchers of a Yorkshire family with an incredibly rich seam of valuable family information which, save for Middlesex, is simply not available for any other English county.

  • The East Riding Register of Deeds was established in 1708 and contains copies of deeds for the East Riding and Hull up to April 1974. The Register is a valuable source for legal searches, house history and family history.
  • The registers of the North Riding Register of Deeds contains approximately 1.25 million deeds made between 1736 and 1970.
  • The West Riding Register of Deeds was established by Act of Parliament in September 1704 and was created to allow land holders to register publicly deeds relating to their property. The Registry contains summaries of properties located in the West Riding of Yorkshire. It closed for registrations in September 1970 and between 1704 and 1914 some 1.5 million deeds were registered. The growth of owner occupation led to an increased rate of registration, adding several million more deeds between 1910 and 1970.
  • The available Registry of Deeds for the City of York cover the years 1718-1866.

The research fees for this type of research are best paid for on an Hourly Rate basis as the duration of any particular research case is unknown. Your ancestor may have left quite a trail and therefore there may be many deeds to research and copy. On the other hand your ancestor may not have owned any property at all but may be mentioned as an occupier of a property within a deed or deeds...the vast indexes to the deeds list ALL names within a deed.

The Internet Archive has a particularly good introduction to the Yorkshire Deeds Registries entitled "A practical treatise on the statutes for registering deeds and other instruments in the counties of Middlesex and York; with precedents of memorials (1819)...a copy of which can be viewed and downloaded from this link.