Manorial Records for Family and Local Historians (401)
The manorial system was a framework for people's lives in England and Wales for hundreds of years, enduring well into the 19th century in some areas, and not finally abolished until the 20th century. Manorial records can be used to locate people within a community and to set them in their social and economic context. This course examines the place of the manor in the legal and social system, the records created by the manor, and changes that occurred through the centuries.
You will get to understand the complexities as well as the background historical context, and how local customs can differ from place to place. You will read court rolls, look at court books and learn about property transactions, surveys, maps, accounts and even people's wills that may not be recorded elsewhere. Manorial court records offer genealogists and local historians more than just a glimpse of local justice being dispensed. You will be taught to search for and locate manorial records with confidence and understand how to use them to solve genealogical problems. Many records are in Latin and although this course does not teach Latin, it does provide strategies for getting to grips with the records with key words and phrases.
Set book:
The set book for this course, N J Hone, The Manor & Manorial Records (1906), is available for free online at sites such as Archive.org.
Lesson Headings:
- History and development of the manorial system
- People and their roles
- Records of the Manor Courts
- Farming the estate - Surveys, Maps and Rentals
- Demise of the manorial system
Relevant countries: England, Wales
What to expect:
Each lesson includes lesson notes, activities and forum exercises for students to complete during the week and a one-hour live tutorial (text chat or Zoom) with the tutor and the rest of the class. Times for the tutorials are set at the beginning of each course by the tutor.
This is an assessed course. The length of the course given is the number of teaching weeks but students should also allow time in the couple of weeks after the course ends to complete assignments.
Students said:
"Manorial Records are an extremely interesting record set and I now understand that you don't have to have wealthy ancestors to find your ancestors in these records and for them to prove hugely beneficial for genealogical research."
"This course really stimulated my interest in manorial records and has already opened up some new areas of research for me."
- Tutor: Joe Saunders
- Length: 5 weeks
- Start date: Mon 19 Oct 2026
- Start date: Mon 18 Oct 2027