Chris Paton explains how you can use early Scottish land records to research your forebear
The annual Scottish valuation rolls from 1855 onwards, some of which are available on ScotlandsPeople (scotlandspeople.gov.uk), can provide a great deal of information about the principal tenants and occupiers of properties across the country, as well as their landlords or feudal superiors. However, the valuation of land did not start in 1855, and many earlier records dating as far back as the mid-17th century are available to help us research our family history.
Colloquially known as ‘land tax records’, but more specifically comprising ‘cess rolls’ and ‘stent rolls’, such documents can be found in a variety of repositories, including the National Records of Scotland (the NRS; nrscotland.gov.uk) in Edinburgh, in local-authority archives across the country, and even within private papers from Scotland’s landed estates. Not all of the records have survived.
Stent Vs Cess
The original valuation rolls were known as ‘stent rolls’, with the word ‘stent’ a Scots term meaning ‘extent’, while the ‘cess’ was a tax paid based on the determined value of a holding. Such rolls were drawn up at irregular intervals in different parts of the country, for the purpose of providing an income for a specific task, most usually for the funding of the military in the 17th and 18th centuries. The earliest stent rolls collected on a regular basis date back to 1643.
Beginning in 1667, ‘commissioners of supply’ were drawn up in each county to provide valuations across the country, with each commissioner qualifying for the post by holding land to the value of £100 Scots. The subsequent valuation exercises were then revised at irregular periods prior to 1854, with the majority of surviving cess and stent rolls dating from the aftermath of the 1707 Acts of Union, where Scotland’s ‘General Assessment’ (Parliament’s assessment of the amount owed to the Sovereign fund by landowners) was initially set at a rate of £48,000, to be collected by the commissioners, and each county had to pay its share.
If your ancestor lived in a royal burgh – the forerunners of today’s towns and cities – then the stent rolls will not be that useful for the most part, with the valuation usually identified in a lump sum, although some burgh records held at the NRS do list individuals, including those for Inverkeithing, Jedburgh, Linlithgow and Peebles. You can search for them by visiting tinyurl.com/nrs-catalogue, typing the name of the burgh in the ‘Search for’ field, th
