What to do with old(ish) house deeds?

[Greensleeves]

If I remember correctly, Registration with Land Registry became compulsory in England and Wales in 1988 and therefore, after that date, when properties were sold they would be registered and this would in effect render the deeds of no further  legal use.  When we sold a registered house I passed the deeds over to the purchasers as the solicitors had no need for them any more.  I still have the deeds to the house we sold subsequent to that and I, too, would like to know where I could send them for safe-keeping as they contain information which could be really useful to researchers in the future.

[GrahamSimons]

I'd suggest that you make copies: the original to go to the local Archive Service, where they will be stored securely and conserved if need be, a set of copies for you family history folders, and a set of copies to stay with the house. On a parallel note I had in my possession the paperwork of designing and building a house - when I sent it to the present owners, who are I think the fourth since it was built, they were thrilled to have the documents, even though they are from the relatively recent 1970s.

[Pheno]

Resurrecting this thread as I have just been handed a file of deeds/maps relating to a property for which I am now Power of Attorney.  Having looked through them there are originals/maps relating to when the land was purchased from the local farm in 1884 and from then on showing this land in much smaller parcels until it was sold for development in 1937.

Thereafter there are deeds and lots of other documents (Nigerian marriage certificates, bankruptcy docs) relating to several of the people who have owned the property up to the present day.  I will retain them for now until the property is sold in the next couple of years but was wondering what to do with them after that and found this thread.

Wondered if anybody had gone on to donate to local Record Office and what their experience was and if anybody had experience relating to the family deeds website as noted in Reply#2 as, reading the blurb, it implies to me that once the deed I provided had been copied they would then be sold to provide funds in order to purchase further deeds.

Don't want that to happen to them.

I guess the present owner of the property has all this info as the place was bought outright without a mortgage.

Looking forward to getting such an impressive stack of info when my mortgage matures in the next couple of years and hopefully by then I shall know what to do with them.

Pheno

[Gadget]

We were given a whole batch of deeds, etc., dating back to 1860s-70s, when we bought this house a few years back. I photocopied them and then handed them to our solicitor to keep in the strong room with our wills, etc.

I was able to follow the house/occupants from the 1871 census to now 

Gadget

[Pheno]

I can't do any census searching as the land wasn't built on until 1937 more's the pity and I don't have a family solicitor so can't go down that route.

Pheno

[Gadget]

You could try the 1939 

added - Electoral registers and any planning docs etc. from local authority