Catalogue description Records of the Office of Land Revenue Records and Enrolments and its predecessors and associated departments

On the abolition of the Court of Augmentations in 1554, the business formerly transacted by its ten auditors was transferred to the five auditors of the Exchequer, whose number was raised to seven. In course of time they became known as Auditors of Land Revenue. In the time of Queen Anne their number was reduced to three, and an act of 1799 laid down that on the deaths of the then auditors their offices should cease, that all the official records remaining in any of their offices should be deemed public property and that the future enrolment of all leases and grants within their respective audits should be made by the Commissioners of Audit.

No steps appear to have been taken to carry out any of these provisions until an act of 1832 abolished the one remaining office of Auditor of Land Revenue; transferred the duties of auditing the accounts of the land revenue to the Commissioners of Audit; and charged a new officer, the Keeper of the Office of Land Revenue Records and Enrolments, with the duties of the custody of existing records and the enrolment of all future deeds, leases, etc. entered into by the Commissioners of Woods and Forests.

At the same time the Treasury was directed to provide a building for the custody of the records formerly belonging to the auditors and of such deeds and instruments as might in future be enrolled or deposited in pursuance of this and subsequent acts.

An act of 1844 required that every general account of the land revenue of the Crown should, after audit, together with the detailed and subsidiary accounts of the receivers, surveyors, rangers, etc., be delivered to the Keeper of the Land Revenue Records and Enrolments and remain of record in his office.

The enrolments of the Land Revenue office were made partly by entry or copy in books but, under an act of 1852, were from that year made mostly by deposit of record copies of deeds, known as 'duplicates'. Upon the separation of the Commissioners of Works and Buildings from the Commissioners of Woods in 1851, the continuing enrolment in the Land Revenue Record Office of the deeds of the Office of Works was authorised.

Likewise when in 1866 responsibility for foreshores was transferred from the Commissioners of Woods to the Board of Trade provision was made for continuing enrolment of deeds relating to foreshores, and this arrangement was maintained when that responsibility subsequently passed to the Ministry of Shipping (1939 to 1941) and the Ministry of Transport before returning to the Commissioners of Crown Lands in 1950.

After the establishment of the Forestry Commission the office was responsible for the enrolment of deeds relating to woods and forests under the commission's management until relieved of that obligation in 1926.

From 1832 until 1903, during which period the Land Revenue Record Office functioned under the general supervision of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, the records were separately housed. Consequent on the appointment in December 1902 of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records to be Keeper of the Office of Land Revenue Records and Enrolments, they were removed in April 1903 to the Public Record Office, where the enrolment business was thereafter conducted until it was abolished under the Crown Estate Act 1961.