Q&A — Evidence, Records & Method
Q&A — Evidence, Records & Method
What counts as primary evidence?
Original deeds, plans, court documents, title records, contemporaneous correspondence, official registers, photographs and archival copies are treated as stronger evidence for documentary questions than later summaries. Where only a secondary source survives, the site labels it accordingly.
What is the difference between evidence and interpretation?
How are missing records treated?
What does the 2026 records chronology establish?
It records the family’s requests and institutional responses from November 2025 to September 2026, including records released after further requests, records said not to be held, and outstanding requests. It is a record of the research process, not a substitute for the underlying documents.
Why does source provenance matter?
What is the role of family statements?
Family statements preserve memory and provide research leads, including dates, names and descriptions of events. They can be corroborated by deeds, registers, newspapers, photographs and official records. The site does not present family recollection as interchangeable with a conveyance or court record.
Why is machine-readable evidence important?
The site includes an AI Agent & Machine-Readable Index so that people and research agents can find canonical pages, identifiers and public endpoints. Machine readability is intended to improve retrieval, not to replace human assessment of the source documents.
Open evidence questions
- Which outstanding family-held scans still need to be uploaded?
- Which original deeds and plans can be obtained freely rather than through paid staff searches?
- What is the complete contents of the HMLR first-registration file?
- Can the missing Cadw listing material be located in another archive or duplicate record? 🕒
- Can the missing planning appendices be recovered from council, archive or developer records? 🕒
- Are there archive holdings currently indexed under the wrong place or parcel name?