Catalogue description Office of the Auditors of Land Revenue: Declared Accounts for the Sale of Wood

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Details of LR 4
Reference: LR 4
Title: Office of the Auditors of Land Revenue: Declared Accounts for the Sale of Wood
Description:

Declared accounts for the sale of wood from crown forests and parks, of the surveyors general of woods and forests to July 1810 and of the commissioners of woods, forests and land revenues thereafter.

Most of the accounts relate to sales of wood in order to raise money for specific local purposes (eg repairs to buildings in the royal parks, fencing, enclosure, wages): some relate to the sale of wood to raise money for a wide variety of national obligations (the fortification of Jersey and the Secret Service in the 1690s; repairs after the Great Storm of 1703, etc). Some accounts are for wood not sold, but delivered to the naval dockyards.

The dating of these documents is sometimes difficult: the date given is usually either the date of the warrant authorising the action accounted for, or the date at which the account was rendered (sometimes posthumously, by executors), rather than the date of the action itself.
Date: 1663-1831
Arrangement:

Rough chronological order of by Surveyor General of Woods and Forests.
Related material:

Similar accounts are in LRRO 2
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Physical description: 953 papers and volumes
Administrative / biographical background:

Accounts of forest services were examined in the Office of the Auditors of Land Revenue, then sworn before the Cursitor Baron of the Exchequer, and were finally declared before the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

From 1663 to 1803, the forest services were individually declared by each Surveyor General of Woods and Forests. After 1803, the accounts were rendered in the form of a general account for each year, ending 31 December: the commissioners of woods, forests and land revenues continued this system from 1810.

Each of these general accounts has a preamble declaring all the items of account: the preamble of the account of 1826 seems to be representative. The Commissioners were then required to account for:

  • timber felled in royal forests and delivered to HM Dockyards for the use of the Navy
  • bark, lops, tops and offal wood thereof, and scrubbed, decayed and defective trees, disposed of according to Treasury warrants etc
  • money received for timber felled and sold from demised estates of the crown
  • money imprested to the commissioners by debenture or otherwise out of the land revenues
  • moneys received by sale of fee farm rents and enfranchisement of copyhold premises
  • moneys paid for fines on renewal of crown leases
  • moneys received on sale of waste land and estates... and made applicable to the charges of the commissioners
  • money spent in execution of enclosure and disafforestation commissions in various forests
  • money spent for services performed under the superintendence of the Surveyor General of HM Works and Public Buildings in royal parks and forests
  • money paid for works, service and attendance in execution of warrants
  • salaries and wages of forest officers, commissioners and officers of the united department of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues of the Crown
  • moneys spent for services relating to the management and improvement of the possessions and land revenues of the crown in Ireland [a responsibility added in 1826].

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