ROYAL BOROUGH OF KINGSTON UPON THAMES; CORPORATION DEEDS AND ASSOCIATED DOCUMENTS

KC

ROYAL BOROUGH OF KINGSTON UPON THAMES; CORPORATION DEEDS AND ASSOCIATED DOCUMENTS

1295 -c1934

KC1 Consists of property belonging to the Bailiffs and Chamberlains, which included manorial waste land, and also some property for which no specific charity could be traced. The group covers Kingston and Thames Ditton. The geographical arrangement used in Miss Powell's list has been maintained with one exception: deeds KC1/1/311-460 were transferred from the modern records section after renumbering had been completed and have therefore been placed for convenience at the end of the section.

KC2 Deeds of Kingston Bridge Endowment. The group includes the lands left for charitable purposes by Clement Mileham, and the gifts of Hugh Stevynson of property in Kingston, and of Robert Hamond of property in Harmondsworth, Mddx. and Iver, Bucks.

KC3 Deeds of property belonging to the grammer school which was endowed by Elizabeth I with the Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene and its appurtenances, and with property formerly owned by the Charterhouse, Merton Priory and Sheen Monastery.

KC4-KC15 Deeds of Charity lands the main group being the Almshouse endowment. This includes 17th century deeds of the Tiffin, Chelsham and Pope families. Robert Tiffin, the father of the founders of the Tiffin charity, sold property, some of which he had purchased from the Evelyn family, to Roge Pope. Roger Pope had married Grace, the daughter of John Chelsham, which introduced deeds of the Chelsham family to the group. After the death of Roger Pope, Thomas Tiffin, eldest son of Robert, married Pope's widow, thus getting control of her property. The Tiffin brothers by their wills of 1638 and 1639 eventually left most of their property to their kinsman, William Cleave. Thomas Cleave, probably the father of William, had bought some property from them before this, which was part of the land left for the Almshouses by William Cleave in 1667.

Other charity properties are listed in the summary following.

KC16 The majority of the deeds in this group are dated before 1500. Although the properties cannot be identified as such, it is possible that some of them may have belonged to the Corporation at a later date, and they have accordingly been placed here.

Editorial Note

Original spelling of place names has for the most part been maintained. All documents are in English unless otherwise stated. Some early numbers are visible on a number of the deeds and have been indicated in the list thus: End [orsed] 14. The numbers used by Miss Powell in her earlier arrangement of the mediaeval deeds, [ie. G.1-453] have been indicated in square brackets, but the letter G. has been omitted. The presence of signatures and seals has been noted. When dating is by the church calendar this has been entered, eg. St. Martin or Tues. in Pentecost 14 Hen. VI but in other cases the regnal year has not been given.

Place of issue is entered only when this is not Kingston.

All names, including Bailiffs, Chamberlains, lists of freemen and witnesses are given up to the end of Hen. VIII's reign (save in the case of long lists where their presence only is indicated). This date has been chosen since the Kingston Parish Registers begin in 1542. Parties are from Kingston unless otherwise stated.

The following is a plan of a typical entry

Deed number Type of deed date

1. 2.) Parties

Description of property

Consideration and rent: Special stipulations

Witnesses

Place of issue. Date if by church calendar

Physical description of deed and old numbers.

Abbreviations (excluding familiar abbreviations for Christian names)

C. Circa

Corpn Corporation

End Endorsed

FF Fee Farm

Fo(s) folios(s)

M(m) membrane(s)

N.d. No date

Sig(s) Signatures

W: Witnesses

N, S, E, W North, South, East, West

Present arrangement

The documents have been arranged where possible in their archival groups, which were traced from the destination of the rent stated in the document, or from endorsements, and have been renumbered with the prefix KC. To these have been added deeds obtained from the Modern Records Section, and others which were removed from among the main body of corporation records. For example, the old class DIX (bonds), included many that were related to the deeds.

English

1032 files

Previous arrangement (see County of Surrey, Inventory of Borough Records, Surrey Record Society and Surrey County Council, 1929, compiled by Miss D.L. Powell)

These documents, together with others that have now been classed as private documents (see list KP), were in two main series. Deeds prior to 1600 had been arranged strictly in date order, while those later than 1600 were boxed alphabetically under a rough geographical principle, for example A = Aits, B = Barefield.