SMF - Just Installed!

Registration in West Yorkshire

Started by Ascona1, February 15, 2019, 03:48:08 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Ascona1

I hope that someone can shed some light on a discrepancy between the text of a 1953 memorial in the Wakefield Registry of Deeds, and the map that was attached to the memorial. These lands are due to be included in a very large housing development plan.

The preamble to the memorial states that what had been sold (by the trustees of a will Trust) were the mineral rights to the lands within the delineated area on the map attached to the memorial. On the face or it, according to the map, and the preamble, but not the list in the text, the trustees were selling the mineral rights to lands which included lands in which they had no interests.

It is difficult to explain without the details. All the land in question had been part of a Settled Land Trust (1901-1928) derived from the estate of a coal master. As life tenant, his niece held all his real estate on behalf of her children. It is her name in the Valuation Maps and Field Books produced for the Inland Revenue's 'Domesday Valuation' of 1910.

In 1929, her son, S, sold a mansion house, and gardens etc, totalling 14.46 acres, to his aunt, sister of the coal master's niece. Later in 1929, S sold the adjoining farmhouse, and farmland, 64 acres 2 roods and 27½ perches (64.61 acres) to H. It is not known whether S ever saw these lands which were remote from where he lived.

In 1931, the aunt sold the mansion house and its land to H; who now owns 79 acres.

In 1953 the trustees (an administrative solicitor trustee and the widow of S) of S's will sell the mineral rights. Without any explanation following the preamble the text of the 1953 memorial lists each stated Field number, and its particular acreage, for which the mineral rights are being sold. Whether by design or not, the stated total acreage of the list, 64 acres 2 roods and 27½ is actually 1.9 acres more than the arithmetic total]

All the maps associated with the above transactions use the Field numbers, and the acreages, of the 1907 O/S map.

The four fields that made up the land of the 1929 sale to S's aunt.
a) The field upon which stood (and stands) the mansion house is not mentioned in the 1953 list.

b) Another field is omitted from the 1953 text, not is it within the delineated area in the 1953 map

c) A field of 1.12 acres in the 1953 map is stated to be just 0.32 acres in the 1953 list.

d) The remaining field is mentioned in the 1953 list, but whereas the actual acreage was actually 7-2-28, and stated to be so in the 1953 map, the acreage is incorrectly stated in the 1953 list as 2-3-9; this being the acreage of an adjoining field; which had been part of the farmland H had purchased from S in 1929.

Therefore, for some unknown reason, there appears to have been 'adjustments; to the acreages in the 1953 list in order to come to an acreage of 64-2-27½; i.e. the same as the 1929 sale of the farmhouse, and farmland alone.

The acreages and the Field Numbers delineated in the map that is attached to the memorial, are correct.

The net result, if the  acreage of the farmhouse, the farmland, the mansion house and its cartilage, should all have been included in the list of fields stated in the text, is 80.94 less 64.61 = 16.33 acres; (actually 18.03 acres) which is what you expect if the list of Field numbers in the 1953 text matched the 1953 map.

Clearly, the inheritors in title to H own the mineral rights to the farm, the farmland, and, presumably, the 'extra' fields excluded from the 1953 list but included in the map. With regard to the discrepancy, a member of staff at the Registry replying via email to my queries has said that I might want to get professional legal help, from which remark I infer that a quirk in the rules of registration was not a possible cause of the discrepancy. If so, the question of who owns the mineral rights to the lands that were, and are, part of the mansion house and its cartilage may be open to question?

I am wondering whether it is worthwhile checking up the provenance of the 'extra' fields by going to the National Archives.