Title Search
Andrew Seante for Peter Eaton. Title Search for the Manor of Clayhall and Sands. Clayhall, Essex: 1742. English.
Brown ink on parchment. 130 X 400 mm.
A title search prior to a sale is by no means new. This transaction represents a large land purchase and as such a comprehensive title search was undertaken. The search went back to 1623 and concludes with a reference to the current sale by Campbell Price to Peter Eaton, the purchaser. Additional later documents in the collection trace the later history of the property before it was inherited by Peter Eaton’s cousin, Hannah Markland in 1769. In addition to the title search, the collection includes related sale documents.
Clayhall lies in north east London, England. The manor is first mentioned in a document of 1203. In the middle of the seventeenth century, Sir Christopher Hatton, cousin of the lord chancellor of the same name, lived at the Manor House, but by the middle of the eighteenth century, the estate was leased to tenant farmers. Hatton is mentioned in the title search. The manor house itself was demolished, probably during the ownership of Peter Eaton, in the middle of the eighteenth century, and replaced by a farm house. The estate was broken up for building sites in 1935.