Valuation Office
Photo by Wiggy
The following words of wisdom are based on my own experiences. Please get in touch if you can add to this advice with your own observations.
What is the context for this archive?
Land has always been valuable and, unlike people and possessions, it has the handy advantage of staying in the same place for pretty much eternity. Handy, that is for the taxman. However, in order to levy a tax fairly, you need to know the relative value of each and every plot of land, including the buildings built upon it. Some task.
Enter, Richard Griffith, an Irish geologist born at the end of the 18th century, who led a team of surveyors in preparing a land audit that is officially called the Primary Valuation of Ireland. It is known more colloquially as Griffith's Valuation, available for free via Ask about Ireland. There is much more detailed information on this source on my own Griffith's Valuations, 1845-1867 page, but I've summarised a few key points again here.
The underlying data that was gathered painstakingly in the field (literally!) is also available online via the National Archives of Ireland's Valuation Office Books, 1824-1856 page and takes the form of a number of different notebooks e.g. house books, field books, quarto books etc.. Do take the time to read the explanatory notes before diving in though, as although there may be additional information in these sources, you may need to piece it together carefully to derive anything meaningful.
The survey work was mostly carried out in the middle of the 19th century, but as you can imagine, it took a long time to complete and the results were published on a county by county basis between about 1847 and 1864. Check when the county publication dates are via Claire Santry's GV Publications Years map. John Grenham's Valuation Office Records page has some good background information on the history of valuation surveys in Ireland which will help you to understand the different value thresholds that have applied in time and therefore may have had a bearing on whether or not your ancestors' property featured. One of his recent blogs posts on the subject is also very enlightening. Given the loss of the Victorian Irish censuses, this work is commonly regarded as a census substitute for the period, but only gives heads of households.
What is the context for this archive?
Land has always been valuable and, unlike people and possessions, it has the handy advantage of staying in the same place for pretty much eternity. Handy, that is for the taxman. However, in order to levy a tax fairly, you need to know the relative value of each and every plot of land, including the buildings built upon it. Some task.
Enter, Richard Griffith, an Irish geologist born at the end of the 18th century, who led a team of surveyors in preparing a land audit that is officially called the Primary Valuation of Ireland. It is known more colloquially as Griffith's Valuation, available for free via Ask about Ireland. There is much more detailed information on this source on my own Griffith's Valuations, 1845-1867 page, but I've summarised a few key points again here.
The underlying data that was gathered painstakingly in the field (literally!) is also available online via the National Archives of Ireland's Valuation Office Books, 1824-1856 page and takes the form of a number of different notebooks e.g. house books, field books, quarto books etc.. Do take the time to read the explanatory notes before diving in though, as although there may be additional information in these sources, you may need to piece it together carefully to derive anything meaningful.
The survey work was mostly carried out in the middle of the 19th century, but as you can imagine, it took a long time to complete and the results were published on a county by county basis between about 1847 and 1864. Check when the county publication dates are via Claire Santry's GV Publications Years map. John Grenham's Valuation Office Records page has some good background information on the history of valuation surveys in Ireland which will help you to understand the different value thresholds that have applied in time and therefore may have had a bearing on whether or not your ancestors' property featured. One of his recent blogs posts on the subject is also very enlightening. Given the loss of the Victorian Irish censuses, this work is commonly regarded as a census substitute for the period, but only gives heads of households.
What is this archive and what might you find there?
Along with the Property Registration Authority and OSI Ireland, the Valuation Office is now part of Tailte Eireann, the state agency concerned with the registration, valuation and surveying of land. The office is located in the Irish Life Centre, Lower Abbey St., Dublin (the LUAS tram goes along this street.) They deal with the ongoing task of assessing the rateable value of land and buildings in Ireland and its historical records date from the publication of the Primary Valuation that spanned the years 1847 to 1864.
Along with the Property Registration Authority and OSI Ireland, the Valuation Office is now part of Tailte Eireann, the state agency concerned with the registration, valuation and surveying of land. The office is located in the Irish Life Centre, Lower Abbey St., Dublin (the LUAS tram goes along this street.) They deal with the ongoing task of assessing the rateable value of land and buildings in Ireland and its historical records date from the publication of the Primary Valuation that spanned the years 1847 to 1864.
Revision Book page - image from PRONI
If you want to find out what happened to the land after the details published in those years, you will have to consult the historical documents in the Valuation Office known as cancelled valuation books or revision books. These are bound ledgers, each covering a span of years, which record changes in the ownership and/or leaseholders. The changes were noted using different coloured inks to represent different years with names being physically struck through in the ledgers and new names inserted. Several different changes of ownership might be scrawled on the pages, so you will have to scrutinise them carefully.
How to find your way to treasure in this archive, in person or remotely?
Firstly you cannot currently access any content from this archive online, so you will have to visit in person or order microfilm to research further. If you plan to visit the Valuation Office in Dublin, be sure to check the appointment booking page carefully, as they are in the process of scanning all the ledgers and some of the counties may not be available.
Each ledger will usually give an index to the townlands it covers arranged in chapters under County, Poor Law Union and Electoral Division (DED). In particular you will need to know the Electoral Division to be able to order the correct books from the staff. Each time I have visited, I have used the original ledgers but I understand from Claire Santry's post that you can use a local terminal to view digital images for some selected counties now - the current list appears on the page accessible from the Valuation Office link above. Access was not free when I visited - there is a nominal charge of a few euros per DED, but check whatever the prevailing policy is before you order so that you can keep tabs on how the costs might mount up for extended searches.
If you would like to familiarise yourself with what you will see in advance then have a look at some random pages from the same books that are free on-line from PRONI for Northern Ireland's counties - see Valuation Revision Books, 1864-1933 (PRONI). This is a good way to familiarise yourself with how the colour-coding works. Generally the years are written in the same colour ink at the beginning of the book, so you will have to browse backwards to find out which years are referenced.
If you can't make it to Dublin, the LDS catalogue has a large number of entries attributed to Great Britain - Office of the Valuation Office in Ireland as the author but unfortunately there has not been a great deal of consistency in how the different types of books have been catalogued. These include the different types of notebooks from the original survey that are now available via the NAI website. (See John Grenham's page above for more information) He also indicates that the Cancelled Land Books are available from the LDS but they took a bit of finding in the catalogue and I'm not sure if I've found them all. Sadly, they appear to have been filmed in black and white so you are probably going to struggle to pick up all the nuances of changes of ownership that the original colours conveyed but you might still be able to make out a chain of possession by the relative position of the annotated entries? You have to use the title or keyword field on their search form to revise your query to include the word "revision" to bring up a list of records catalogued by what looks like Poor Law Union and then 'helpfully' hidden under county specific taxation records instead of under Land and Property which might have been more logical? The problem is that the different books were probably filmed at different times and then catalogued by different people with different ideas of how to describe them.
Firstly you cannot currently access any content from this archive online, so you will have to visit in person or order microfilm to research further. If you plan to visit the Valuation Office in Dublin, be sure to check the appointment booking page carefully, as they are in the process of scanning all the ledgers and some of the counties may not be available.
Each ledger will usually give an index to the townlands it covers arranged in chapters under County, Poor Law Union and Electoral Division (DED). In particular you will need to know the Electoral Division to be able to order the correct books from the staff. Each time I have visited, I have used the original ledgers but I understand from Claire Santry's post that you can use a local terminal to view digital images for some selected counties now - the current list appears on the page accessible from the Valuation Office link above. Access was not free when I visited - there is a nominal charge of a few euros per DED, but check whatever the prevailing policy is before you order so that you can keep tabs on how the costs might mount up for extended searches.
If you would like to familiarise yourself with what you will see in advance then have a look at some random pages from the same books that are free on-line from PRONI for Northern Ireland's counties - see Valuation Revision Books, 1864-1933 (PRONI). This is a good way to familiarise yourself with how the colour-coding works. Generally the years are written in the same colour ink at the beginning of the book, so you will have to browse backwards to find out which years are referenced.
If you can't make it to Dublin, the LDS catalogue has a large number of entries attributed to Great Britain - Office of the Valuation Office in Ireland as the author but unfortunately there has not been a great deal of consistency in how the different types of books have been catalogued. These include the different types of notebooks from the original survey that are now available via the NAI website. (See John Grenham's page above for more information) He also indicates that the Cancelled Land Books are available from the LDS but they took a bit of finding in the catalogue and I'm not sure if I've found them all. Sadly, they appear to have been filmed in black and white so you are probably going to struggle to pick up all the nuances of changes of ownership that the original colours conveyed but you might still be able to make out a chain of possession by the relative position of the annotated entries? You have to use the title or keyword field on their search form to revise your query to include the word "revision" to bring up a list of records catalogued by what looks like Poor Law Union and then 'helpfully' hidden under county specific taxation records instead of under Land and Property which might have been more logical? The problem is that the different books were probably filmed at different times and then catalogued by different people with different ideas of how to describe them.
What can you find out from these records?
There are probably 3 major reasons why a change of ownership or leasehold might be recorded in these records which can give you clues as to where to look next for other evidence;
Also look out for entries stamped "L.A.P." - Land Annuity Purchase. Changes in legislation at the end of the 19th century made it easier for leaseholders to buy their lands and many thousands of small farmers took advantage of these schemes right up until the early decades of the 20th century. You can read more about the various Land Acts (Ireland) to find out when the laws changed and what that might have meant for your ancestors.
There are probably 3 major reasons why a change of ownership or leasehold might be recorded in these records which can give you clues as to where to look next for other evidence;
- Death. Look out for lands passing between (usually male) relatives - father to son, uncle to nephew, brother to brother perhaps. Particularly with common names where you might have multiple candidates within the death indexes, this information can help you to narrow down the set and perhaps focus on one or two certificates to buy. Also be sure to check out any graveyard or cemetery transcripts in the vicinity for burials that correspond with the time period. However, do bear in mind that;
- the data on which the survey was based could have been collected quite some time before the county publication date, so be very flexible when trying to use this information to predict possible death date ranges for anyone.
- it could take anything up to 3 years for a change of ownership to actually make its way into the valuation books.
- Sale or downsizing. Where your ancestor owned the land, they may simply have sold portions of it or if they were leaseholders they may simply have decided to give up uneconomic farmlands. Unfortunately these circumstance are pretty much indistinguishable from death as a reason too, but if you have other evidence that the person in question is definitely still alive after any changes in the cancelled land books perhaps you might find the Registry of Deeds a happy hunting ground for further information around or just after this time? For example, you might find evidence of land holdings being re-organised in a family when a son or daughter marries and this may be documented in a marriage settlement.
- Emigration. The period immediately following the publication of Griffith's Valuation was still a time of struggle following the Great Hunger and Ireland's biggest export has probably always been her people. So, if you cannot find evidence of death or of the land being sold or the leases passed on, then look for evidence of the family leaving Ireland, although this is most likely to be recorded in immigration documents for wherever they landed. America was a popular direct destination through the eastern seaboard ports of New York, Boston and Philadelphia. However, be sure to check out the Canadian ports too as this voyage was often cheaper and emigrants then either stayed in Canada or made their way by land over the border to the north-eastern states of America. Australia and New Zealand also received plenty of Irish emigrant too but I'm not sure if many vessels departed direct to the Antipodes from Ireland or whether most may have departed from English ports? Also don't forget the UK - cheaper to get to - so, be sure to search the various Victorian census records for Scotland and England in particular.
Also look out for entries stamped "L.A.P." - Land Annuity Purchase. Changes in legislation at the end of the 19th century made it easier for leaseholders to buy their lands and many thousands of small farmers took advantage of these schemes right up until the early decades of the 20th century. You can read more about the various Land Acts (Ireland) to find out when the laws changed and what that might have meant for your ancestors.
Details of original leases and lives from sales documents
What other land records should you look at too?
Whilst for most of us, our ancestors will have featured as occupying tenants, they may also have featured as immediate lessors meaning they were outright owners of the land or were acting as a middleman between an aristocratic landowner and many tenants of smaller parcels of land. So, look out for changes in the names in this column particularly lots of changes happening at the same time in the same area (browse a few extra pages to be sure.) This could indicate that a large estate was sold off under the Encumbered Estates Court established in 1849.
Following the deaths or exodus of rural tenants whose lives had been devastated by the Great Hunger, many large estates foundered under the burden of their responsibilities in the face of falling rents. These were often 'encumbrances' i.e. money that was owed from the rental profits to members of the owner's extended family e.g. unmarried sisters or maiden aunts, for whom this might be their only source of income, albeit increasingly unsustainable.
Acts of Parliament were passed to allow the estates to be disposed of in lots and allow the aristocracy to clear their debts. Like any modern estate agent, solicitors compiled particulars of sale to make the lots sound attractive to investors. As most tenants held long leases, these were meticulously detailed for sitting tenants often reciting details of original leases dating from the early 18th century that had been perpetually renewed.
The length of a lease was often made with reference to 3 "named lives", which were generally young male relatives, possibly with a vested interest in the land i.e. sons, nephews. However, don't be surprised to come across members of the Royal family named in this capacity, perhaps as a show of loyalty or perhaps hedging their bets on the longevity of the King, as it cost money to renew leases when a life expired! Because the estates where being sold with tenants in situ, buyers would want to know how long the leases had to run and so, you may also learn who of the named lives were still alive at the time of the preparation of the sale particulars - again very useful for narrowing down potential death date ranges.
These records have been made available on-line by Find My Past and Ancestry and are discussed on my Landed Court Rentals 1850-1885 page. However, as usual, your only means of access is via the index of names - trying to browse by parish will return thousands of names. Be sure to read ALL the pages associated with any document that you find with your relatives named on it as there is usually very useful descriptive information at the beginning and there may even be a map.
Don't forget too, that the original leases mentioned in these documents may also have been registered at the Registry of Deeds. Follow this link to my pages about these documents and use my Townland Timelines to find the correct microfilm files to search for the references you will need to view them online.
Whilst for most of us, our ancestors will have featured as occupying tenants, they may also have featured as immediate lessors meaning they were outright owners of the land or were acting as a middleman between an aristocratic landowner and many tenants of smaller parcels of land. So, look out for changes in the names in this column particularly lots of changes happening at the same time in the same area (browse a few extra pages to be sure.) This could indicate that a large estate was sold off under the Encumbered Estates Court established in 1849.
Following the deaths or exodus of rural tenants whose lives had been devastated by the Great Hunger, many large estates foundered under the burden of their responsibilities in the face of falling rents. These were often 'encumbrances' i.e. money that was owed from the rental profits to members of the owner's extended family e.g. unmarried sisters or maiden aunts, for whom this might be their only source of income, albeit increasingly unsustainable.
Acts of Parliament were passed to allow the estates to be disposed of in lots and allow the aristocracy to clear their debts. Like any modern estate agent, solicitors compiled particulars of sale to make the lots sound attractive to investors. As most tenants held long leases, these were meticulously detailed for sitting tenants often reciting details of original leases dating from the early 18th century that had been perpetually renewed.
The length of a lease was often made with reference to 3 "named lives", which were generally young male relatives, possibly with a vested interest in the land i.e. sons, nephews. However, don't be surprised to come across members of the Royal family named in this capacity, perhaps as a show of loyalty or perhaps hedging their bets on the longevity of the King, as it cost money to renew leases when a life expired! Because the estates where being sold with tenants in situ, buyers would want to know how long the leases had to run and so, you may also learn who of the named lives were still alive at the time of the preparation of the sale particulars - again very useful for narrowing down potential death date ranges.
These records have been made available on-line by Find My Past and Ancestry and are discussed on my Landed Court Rentals 1850-1885 page. However, as usual, your only means of access is via the index of names - trying to browse by parish will return thousands of names. Be sure to read ALL the pages associated with any document that you find with your relatives named on it as there is usually very useful descriptive information at the beginning and there may even be a map.
Don't forget too, that the original leases mentioned in these documents may also have been registered at the Registry of Deeds. Follow this link to my pages about these documents and use my Townland Timelines to find the correct microfilm files to search for the references you will need to view them online.
(c) Irish Geneaography - 2023
