Kent Archives’ guide, How to Research the History of your House, lists and explains the range of material available at Kent History and Library Centre for researching properties. This talk focuses on one particular documentary source, namely deeds proving title to land, whether it is built on or not. The speaker intends to provide guidance in locating and then interpreting title deeds. He will demonstrate their value as evidence, discuss their limitations and show how other sources may be used to supplement them. In some cases, historic houses have survived but their title deeds can’t be found; in other cases, some deeds have survived but the houses have not. One example, in the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, demonstrates how they have helped locate the lost house of her grandfather, William Austen, in Tonbridge.

Old Post Office, Upper High Street, Sevenoaks.

Mark Ballard has worked for the Kent Archives Service since 1991, with an interlude at Tower Hamlets Archives working on title deeds for its National Lottery Fund-supported Land and Lives project and the Survey of London’s volumes on Whitechapel. He has published articles about Jane Austen’s Kent relatives, including ‘Tales of inheritance from West Kent’ in Jane Austen’s Geographies, [a collection of essays prompted by the author’s geographical and local allusions,] edited by Robert Clark (Routledge, 2018).

For further information and to reserve a seat, please ring 03000 420673 or email archives@kent.gov.uk