The Bratton Clovelly Land Tax Assessments have now been extended from 10-year snapshots to annual listings of properties, landowners, tenants and tax assessments for the period 1780 to 1832. These details are the best we have found to date for property information in this timeframe preceding the census years. These tax records do not provide a census of the parish because they only list the heads of household for owners and tenants, however they can be helpful in a variety of ways:
- Building histories of farm and tenement ownership and tenancy over a 52-year period.
- Locating your Bratton Clovelly ancestors in this timeframe.
- In conjunction with parish registers, building a more detailed understanding of who was residing in the parish during these years.
- Better understanding patterns of land ownership.
Another key use is in the assessment values. These values were set in 1692 and do not vary from year to year, totalling £137 pounds 12 shillings every year, and are unlikely to reflect the actual rents that people were paying from 1780-1832. However they can be used for relative comparisons of property values. Unsurprisingly, the glebe lands of the church incumbent attracted the highest value at £10 with Ellacott and Eastlake Farms next topping the list.
These listings were stored with the Devon Quarters Session records and used to determine people’s voting eligibility prior to the establishment of electoral lists. See what you can discover about the people of interest to you by looking under Taxes & Tithes on the Records page.
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