| Description | Cheap 'cottage' accommodation for miners and ironworkers burgeoned on the estate from 1774. However, many of these houses were held by middlemen who sublet the properties. The estate, therefore, lost potential income whilst the tenants suffered from poor housing and high rents. In 1841, the Auditor James Loch proposed that the Estate Trustees should sell the land on which the cottages stood, giving the first opportunity to purchase to the tenants. Loch's proposal was put into place when Lord Ward Estate's Act was passed in 1847 [DE/4/6/1]. The Land Agent, John Maughan, sent a circular to all cottage tenants on 30 October 1847, offering them the option to purchase the property. These sales of cottage property to tenants continued until copyhold was abolished in 1926.
The dates of the Cottage Property Sale Agreements refer to the date of the agreement as entered into the Cottage Sales volume (documents variously dated). Most consist only of the forms stating desire to purchase only, though others include the sale agreement as well and are endorsed with a number [possibly referring to the parish plan]. In this catalogue, the agreements are ordered by agreement number and then the red endorsed number (for those without an agreement number); other agreements and related documents follow at the end. The agreements are also arranged by number in a chronological order in the Sales of Cottage Property Indexes No.1-3 (1848 - 1946), which provide further information [see DE/4/5/4/1, DE/4/5/4/2 and DE/4/5/4/3]. |