The 1877 Agreement

Evidence description: “Prior to 1877 my Grandfather held the farm as tenant of the Bute Family Estates and in that year he received notice to quit from the Bute Estate Office. I was told this by my father and he showed me the notice to quit.” Part of the farm had been taken for the Llandough Limeworks from 1876.

Evidence: Mary Williams’s statement (extract)

‹A + B as one›Before the sale, the whole farm was one Bute tenancy.

“Daniel Thomas required the farm for quarrying limestone and I remember seeing the tenancy agreement between D. Thomas and my grandfather which contained special provisions with regard to this.”

“I remember that the agreement provided that the rent should progressively decrease as land was taken for quarrying. It was also provided that when the quarrying ceased the freehold should belong to my grandfather.”

Evidence description: Bute sold the freehold of the farmhouse, buildings and about 10 acres to Daniel Thomas and kept about 9 acres “up on the top”. Mary’s grandfather took tenancies from both. The Thomas tenancy’s rent fell as land was quarried, and the freehold was to pass to her grandfather when quarrying ceased. It was kept in the blanket box at the farmhouse.

Evidence: Mary Williams’s statement (extract)

Parcel AThe land sold to Thomas and let back under the Thomas tenancy.

Parcel BA Bute lease after the sale could only cover what Bute kept: the ~9 acres, which Mary says “was given up later”. Whether this lease is to Mary’s grandfather will be clear from its plan.

Parcel AThe parcel the Williams family occupied.

Evidence description: the last quarry machinery left in 1928 and the last rent, about £4 a year, was paid by John Williams to Alfred Thomas. “I saw the receipt for this last payment of rent. After this my father regarded the farm as his own.” Rent continued to be paid on the fields only. HM Land Registry holds a record of 15 May 1924 (a Bute–Corbett agreement about a drain) on the WA231076 file. Whether it is connected to this step is one of the questions the family is pressing HM Land Registry to answer (Land Registry titles; analysis in the Legal Review, section 2).

Evidence: Mary Williams’s statement (extract)

Parcel AThe end of rent to the Thomases for the house parcel.

Evidence description: a lodger placed at the farmhouse in June 1950 by a Penarth estate agent stayed about two years. He later told Mary he had taken “the papers which were in the blanket box including the agreement relating to the farm” and given them to the agent. She found them gone, and thought their loss “was in some way connected” with WGR’s first possession application. When she told WGR in 1959 that documents proved her title, none could be produced (1959), and the 1987 judgment records that they were “never produced” (1987). Stolen documents are not subject to a time limit for their return (Limitation Act 1980, s.4); see the Legal Review, section 1.4.

Evidence: Mary Williams’s statement (extract)

Parcel AThe title papers for the house parcel.

Evidence description: a copy of the Bute–Thomas deed and its index card were reported missing from Cardiff Library, in the year BP served its writ. ^🕒

Parcel AThe second known copy of the house parcel’s deed.

Documentary fact: Glamorgan Archives stated that it does not appear to hold deeds relating to the 1877 Daniel Thomas transaction after a catalogue search. It nevertheless identified Bute X.6(12), an abstract of payments and receipts by the trustees of the Marquis of Bute’s properties for 1877 (copy), as a record that could be worth searching. The archivist stated that other similar Bute X records may also be relevant and that the records were then with Cardiff Library.

Attached finding-aid evidence: the Bute X catalogue supplied with the response identifies a substantial run of Bute estate financial material, including annual abstracts for 1871–1880; 1867–69 notes concerning the Glamorgan estate and minerals; 1832 bills and receipts including improvements on Llandough Farm; and 1833–35 bills and receipts concerning building and repairs on the estate, farms, woods and plantations. The catalogue also includes earlier files concerning manorial evidence, disputed properties and mineral surveys.

Research significance: these references give the family a specific, independently identified Bute Estate documentary trail to test against the property reconstruction. In particular, D31.49 (1832), the 1867–69 mineral and accounting material and Bute X.6(12) (1877) are targeted archival leads. The 1877 item is especially important because it falls in the same year as the Bute–Thomas transaction: a capital receipt from Daniel Thomas would corroborate the sale.

Archive search status: the response distinguishes between a negative catalogue search for deeds and a positive identification of potentially relevant Bute Estate accounting records. It therefore should not be recorded as “the 1877 transaction was not found anywhere”; the narrower fact is that Glamorgan Archives did not identify surviving deeds for the transaction in its search and directed the research toward Cardiff Library’s Bute X material. ^🕒

Finding the conveyance is the single most important step for any legal route. Leads: Bute papers D153/4-8, D219 and DB/E/1-2 (Sources and archives); the Glamorgan Archives lease above and its plan; the Land Registry first-registration bundle (Land Registry titles); and return requests to the legacy files of BP, Linklaters and the successors of Western Ground Rents and the Penarth estate agent (Legal Review, section 1.4).