PAYNTER AND WHITFORD, SOLICITORS.

The documents include account books and other papers relating to the firm's legal practice, and a number of documents relating to the many public appointments held either by individuals or by the firm; these include under-sheriff, registrar, clerk to the Rural District Council, and returning officer.

Qualifications, 1804-1809

Assizes, 1806-1835

Westminster Courts, 1779-1878

County Court, 1828-1830

Quarter Sessions and Shrievalty, 1773-1828

Hundred and Hundred Court, 1771-1828

Stannary court, 1790

Estate duty papers, 1906

Lawsuits, 1725-1911

Sale Catalogues, 1791-1923

Plans, 1781-1907

Office records, 1697-1930

Public appointments, 1790-1915

Paynter family papers, 1725-1911

<p>Vivian's Visitations of the County of Cornwall, p. 354, for pedigree of Paynter family.</p>

The firm of Whitford and sons grew out of the eighteenth-century legal practice of Thomas Hawkey of St. Columb Major. In 1715 Mrs. Mary Hawkey, widow, married Francis Paynter of Boskenna, St. Buryan, and their son Francis, born in 1716, practised as a lawyer in St. Columb. The family was related by marriage to the Hearles of Penryn, who were related to the Lemons, Rodds and Tremaynes, thus introducing a number of influential clients to the firm. In the late eighteenth century Francis Paynter became head of the firm, and two generations of the family brought the business into the nineteenth century, when Thomas Whitford became junior partner. Members of the Whitford family continued as heads of the firm almost until the present day.

The firm acted as legal advisers and estate agents to a number of Cornish families, including Lemon of Carclew, Hearle of Penryn, and Williams of Carnanton, and administered part of the extensive Buller properties. Records of these families are among those deposited by the firm.