I'm looking at a document (dated 1721) where a piece of land in the centre of the town where I live (measuring 48ft in length and 28 feet in breadth) was sold for 5 shillings. What would 5 shillings be worth in today's prices.
There was a website where one could convert but I can't find it now.
Many thanks
Jay
That would have been quite a lot of money in 1721. Just being given a penny at the end of the 1930's felt great and then come the 1940's it was a tanner, and so we had the song, 'I've got sixpence'.
But you can get some idea of land and property values from the 18th and 19th century land taxes. My Hutton's were on the same large stretch of land in Eccleshill, Bradford from about the mid 1600's. By the mid 1800's they owned a dozen or so cottages at each end of the 4 large Crofts or Closes, plus a pub, The Smiling Mule.
The land tax they paid on the whole lot was 5s 10d in 1782, and there was clearly much inflation as it rose to 6s 7d by the end of the 1700's. We can even tell what the tax was on just one of the cottages as in some years a cottager was shown below paying 7d or 8d and this amount came off the full amount that my ancestors then paid.
Then there are the land memorials which valued the land according to the value of the Tithes on Corne, Grasse, Hay and Promises whatever promises might have been.
For example from a 1829 memorial - "all those three several closes or parcels of land situate in the same township and to the said messuage belonging and occupied (and now divided into four) known by several names of RADFIELD and the two crofts containing together by estimation eight days work (be the same more or less) and all and every the tithes of corn, grain, and hay and all other the tithes whatsoever existing upon the same several closes or parcels of land or any of them or any part thereof with the appurtenances which said memorialising indenture as to the execution thereof ...."
I always thought that Tithes were purely a tax due to the local Church, but have recently learned that the Church usually sold them off to Farmers quite early on. The land dispute between William Hutton and Edward Ackroid in 1684 and again in 1685 was all about who owned the Tithes.
Today we look at acreage but then they valued land by the Tithes it could produce and how much work it took.
