When I started out studying Scottish ancestry and house history, I was introduced to things such as the Sasine Register and Feu Duties. It was where property transfers and ownership were registered and where the registration of Feu Duties were made. It has taken my own research into the history of my house in Earlspark Avenue to fully understand what Feu Duties were. I know that they were registered by Warrant in the Register of Sasines in Edinburgh, but I couldn’t get my head around the concept of Feu payments. In this post I shall try to explain all this and show how it impacted on my house until 1974.
Until the Scottish Parliament abolished it in 2000, Feu was the most common form of land tenure in Scotland, the conditions under which buildings and property are held. It had its origins in the Feudal system of government back in the Middle Ages. The concept is that all the land was owned by the Crown who in turn granted portions to what would have been the landed gentry who then parcelled off portions under the Feu system and maintained ownership in return for payment of Feu Duties (a bit like leasing a portion of land for building on in return for small rent payments). There is also the use of really outdated language that was used in the legal documentation right into the 20th Century, such as Superiors (land owners I presume), Vassals, (the people wo are expected to pay the Feu Duty) and Casualties (not real ones I hope).
At the beginning of the 20th Century, the builder George Anderson, was developing and building in the Shawlands and Newlands area of Glasgow on a prolific scale. He built nearly all of what is commonly known as High Shawlands and all of the sandstone property of Earlspark Avenue and surrounding streets.
At one point he had an office base in the farmhouse of Paper Mill Farm that was situated halfway down Earlspark Avenue. The farm itself consisted of all the land that eventually became Albert Park, now known as Langside Sports Club.
How he started his relationship with Sir John Maxwell Stirling-Maxwell of Pollok, Baronet, I have no idea, but he was buying up plots of land from him on a regular basis. Sir John’s family background goes back to the early days of feudalism and he is probably the best example of what became a worthless method of making future profit out of selling off land and maintaining a financial interest by collecting duties that gave nothing in return. Sir John certainly had plenty of land, much of it agricultural, that he was selling in parcels to George Anderson.
Each parcel of land that was transferred became subject to an entry in the Register of Sasines. Here was listed in great detail, the transfer of land from owner to purchaser, the precise detail of the outline and extent of land which was to be built upon, and the amount of Duty to be paid. These payments were to be made twice yearly at Whitsun and Martinmas, May and November. The duty for my house set in 1908 was £2.3s.10d that is two pounds three shillings and tenpence, or two pounds and forty pence in new money.
The contract containing what is called the Feu Disposition by Sir John Maxwell Stirling-Maxwell Bart, to George Anderson is a 24 page document handwritten on foolscap paper. Foolscap is a size of paper slightly longer than A4 which was the standard size of paper before the metric sizes were adopted in the 1960’s. Its name came from the original watermark which was a fool’s or joker’s cap with bell tassles. Traditionally in Scotland a Feu Contract, or Charter, was a document that would create a new Feu. It held that the tenure of land was held in perpetuity in return for a continuity fee (feu) paid to the landowner.
My copy is an early photocopy, probably pre Rank Xerox, which has been maintained with all the original legal conveyancing documents that are now in my possession. If this copy of the Contract came with the original Disposition of the house from George to Agnes Scott (the first owner of my house) then I would be interested to know how these copies were made.
The language in the document is very difficult to understand but the gist of it is the detailed outline of the several plots of land that had been drawn up by a surveyor on behalf of Anderson to show the exact location of the houses and the exact measurements in Imperial land measurement terms (poles etc). Then it explained what Feu Duties would be levied on each parcel of land. As each house and its site would differ, the duties would differ by a shilling or more.
The last page of the Feu Contract makes for interesting reading. It states when and where the agreement was presented to the two parties for signing and who the witnesses were.
A transcription from it:
….by the said Sir John Maxwell Stirling Maxwell at London on the 14th April 1908 before these witnesses, Charles Pring, his Butler, and Charles Lebaube, his Footman and by the said George Anderson at Newlands aforesaid on the 27th April 1908 before these witnesses, William John Anderson, Joiner Newlands Glasgow, and James Anderson, Joiner Shawlands Glasgow (signed).
Note that George Anderson’s witnesses were probably his sons or brothers. One lived with George and the other in Shawlands.
Although presented to the General Register of Sasines in Edinburgh in May 1908, George Anderson also submitted a copy for registration and execution with the Register of the County of Renfrew.
The next part of this story is about the records for receiving payments of the feu duties, on a six monthly basis, which are kept in the City Archives at the Mitchell Library.
An amendment to the first Disposition of the new house to Agnes Scott shows that the responsibility of collecting the Feu Duty was now in the hands of the Nether Pollok Estate Ltd, the business arm of Sir John’s empire. There were hundreds of houses built by George Anderson in Newlands and Shawlands. Each householder was having to pay an annual Feu Duty of about the same as Agnes Scott. Although the amount in the disposition differes from that in the ledger. It seems as though it has now been fixed at £2 8 shillings per year. It could be paid in May and November at £1.4shillings or as a one off payment annually. Think of the land that was sold off and the number of houses built and then multiply them all by the average Duty of £2.8s.0d. per year. It was an excellent profit for no services provided.
The Nether Pollok Feu Duty Ledgers are enormous. Bespoke made ledgers such as I have not seen or used since the 1960’s when I started work as a clerk with a firm of London solicitors.
The ledgers recorded every payment due and made. As the decades went by, if a house owner defaulted on their payments, Nether Pollok Estates would claim it from the transaction of the next Disposition (Conveyancing) of the house.
I am uncertain how but there does seem to be an ability to increase the Feu Duties that were levied. As the years go by Agnes Scott was paying more.
Thumbing through the pages of the ledgers I came across some interesting entries that showed that Feu Duties were negotiated for the benefit of some. George Anderson had built his own house on the corner of Newlands Road and Broomhall Road. Broomhall Road no longer exists but led down past the small park opposite Kintore Road. It is a stunning small mansion, walled on all sides and with a driveway and frontage that makes it look quite impressive. The Feu Duty that George was paying was just 5/- (25 pence in new money) per year.
Another entry was for The Established Church, which I take to be the Church of Scotland, Merrylee Church on the corner of Merrylee Road and what used to be the other end of the now extinct Broomhall Road. The Trustees of the Church were paying just 1d (less that one new pence in new money).
Householder like Agnes Scott and the owners who came after were paying these Duties up until 1974 when it was allowed for the Feu to be redeemed on payment of a lump sum equivalent to ten or twenty times the annual amount.
In 2000 the Scottish Government at last passed legislation to eradicate the Feu Duty system entirely. It is extraordinary that such an ancient feudal system of land tenure has continued right up until recent times, and my house was subject to it until the 1970’s.
George secured the land in 1908 but it was not until 1910 that he completed my house and sold it to Agnes Scott. A well established property developer and house builder. Sir John was a Conservative MP for one of the Glasgow constituencies at the beginning of the 20th Century. He was instrumental in the start of the National Trust and was also engineering the space for Glasgow City Council to build the Burrell Museum in Pollok Park decades before it was completed.