Historical records relating to property in Scotland are held by a variety of different archives and by other public and private institutions in Scotland. For more information about property and frequently asked questions about property records, see below. For an essay by David Sellar, Faculty of Law, Edinburgh University, on the feudal origins of Scottish property law, see 'Farewell to Feudalism' by clicking here.

Heritable property
The most frequently used records of Scottish heritable property are:

• Sasine registers
• Valuation rolls
• Title deeds and inventories
• Tax rolls
• Estate papers

When ownership of heritable property changes, through sale or inheritance for example, the property is conveyed. Usually a lawyer draws up a title deed, and these have often survived among the records of the lawyer’s office (and may later have been deposited in archives), or among the personal papers of the family or individual who owned the property (sometimes these too are deposited in archives). Where a family owned an estate, the surviving records of property management are referred to as estate papers, and many collections of estate papers are either in archive offices or still held privately by the families that created them.

The survival of individual title deeds is haphazard. However, the majority of conveyances in Scotland from 1617 until the late 20th century were sent by lawyers to be registered in centrally held registers known collectively as the register of sasines. For more details about the early register of sasines (before 1781) see the fact sheet on sasines on the National Archives of Scotland website. For details of sasines after 1781 go to the Knowledge Base entry on Sasine Abridgements.

A further type of property record which is frequently used is the tax roll. Taxation in Scotland became well organised and better recorded from the 1690s onwards, and most taxes were based on property ownership. Most records of taxation in Scotland are held by the National Archives of Scotland. For further details see the entry on taxation in the National Archives of Scotland website. A special type of tax roll was the valuation roll, on which each property’s rental value and annual tax was estimated, and the name and address of the owner and tenant recorded. For further details see the Knowledge Base entry on Valuation Rolls.

Moveable property
The most frequently used records of Scottish moveable property are:

• Wills and testaments
• Sederunt books
• Household accounts

For further information about wills and testaments and sederunt books, see the Knowledge Base entries on Wills and Testaments and Trust Sederunt Books. Further information about household accounts mayl be added to this website in due course.

Contributors:
Andrew Jackson, Robin Urquhart (both SCAN).

1. How is the word 'sasines' pronounced and what does it mean?

2. What do the abbreviations in Sasine Abridgements stand for?

3. What is, or was, a liferent?

Image 1
Abridgements of Sasine for Aberdeenshire (National Archives of Scotland: reference RS8).

For an essay by David Sellar, Faculty of Law, Edinburgh University, on the feudal origins of Scottish property law, see 'Farewell to Feudalism' by clicking here.