Valuation Office Survey

Britain

Sep 06, 2023

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries land ownership in Britain was a contentious issue. ‘Historic local quarrels against landowner absenteeism and disinterest were being increasingly mixed with agitation on the perceived injustice that landed elites were benefitting from enhanced land values; brought about not by their own investment, but by greater state investment in roads and communications.’[1]

In response to this David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pushed through Parliament, against political opposition, a bill for more financial contribution from landowners as part of his famous 'People's Budget'.

The Finance Act (1910) proposed a tax on land values. It was therefore necessary to discover who owned land, and this necessitated a survey of all property in England, Wales, and Scotland. The Board of Inland Revenue was directed to determine the value of all land in Britain which it set out to do through the ‘Valuation Office’. The subsequent valuation survey was carried out between 1910-15. It described and assessed the value of both rural and urban land and buildings. This survey is now known as the Valuation Office or Lloyd George survey. It was said to be the most extensive assessment of land ownership in Britain since the Domesday Survey of William the Conqueror in the eleventh century.

The Valuation Office annotated large-scale Ordnance Survey maps to create records on thousands of properties. These records are often referred to as plans. Accompanying ‘Field Books’ contain information collected about properties during the Survey. Properties referred to in the Field Books can be identified from accompanying Ordnance Survey sheets.

Entry No. 1, Crosby Garrett, Westmorland. Valuation Office Survey Field Book [TNA IR 58/19012, 1910]. Images copyright of The National Archives. Not to be reproduced without permission.

The Survey also created other records. Valuation books (also known as ‘Domesday books’) were created by the Valuation Office at the start of the survey. They differ from the Field Books, which were the final record compiled after the survey was complete and usually contain more information. Additionally, forms were used to collect information from land and property owners.

For England and Wales, The National Archives (TNA) holds plans and the Field Books which contain the most detail whilst local archives around the country hold the more basic Valuation Books. In Scotland, the plans and Field Books are held by the National Records of Scotland (NRS). (Useful guides to using these records for TNA and NRS are in the Resources section of this post.)

Records for some areas do not survive, largely due to the bombing of Valuation Offices during the Second World War. Affected areas include, Basildon, Chelmsford, Liverpool, Birkenhead, and most of the Wirral, Coventry, Portsmouth, Southampton, and Winchester.[2] Where plans do not survive, relevant local record offices might hold working plans or Valuation Books.

Fore Street, Seaton, Devon (c.1910) © Gord (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The Valuation Office Survey is a major source for the study of property throughout Britain, as it was on the eve of the First World War. We can see how many rooms a property contained, the date of erection, the state of repair, and details of the tenancy. The survey also included public buildings such as churches, schools, and police stations as well as business premises such as hotels and factories.

There continued to be consistent hostility of the landed classes to the proposed tax on land values. This, combined with the impact of the First World War meant the tax was never implemented. Despite this, the records of the Valuation Office Survey created a benchmark for future land purchase and ratings reform, and are a fantastic source of geographical, archaeological, and social information for pre-war Britain. If you want to know about the ‘value, use, extent or ownership of a property or piece of land around the beginning of the twentieth century’ then these records will be of use.[3]

References and Resources:

Information for this post was taken from the excellent, Land use, value and ownership: Valuation Office Survey 1910-1915 - The National Archives and Inland Revenue Survey Maps and Field Books | National Records of Scotland (nrscotland.gov.uk)

Geraldine Beech and Rose Mitchell (ed.), Maps for Family and Local History: The Records of the Tithe, Valuation Office, and National Farm Surveys of England and Wales, 1836-1943 (2004)

Brian Short, The Geography of England and Wales in 1910: An Evaluation of Lloyd George’s ‘Domesday’ of Landownership (1989)

Brian Short, The Lloyd George Finance Act Material (Historical Association, Short Guides to Records, no. 36) (1994)

Brian Short, Land and Society in Edwardian Britain (2005)