The 1910 Valuation Survey

The “1910 Valuation Survey” (as it is popularly known) was created as part of “The Finance (1909-1910) Act”. The main object of the Finance Act was to tax the capital gain of property related to the site itself, but excluding gain from crops, buildings and improvements paid for by the owners. The value on 30 April 1909 was the baseline for later comparisons of value on sale, lease, or transfer of a property. The Survey was composed of two parts:

Plans

Each unit of property was assigned an assessment number (sometimes also called a hereditament number) and two sets of plans based on large scale Ordnance Survey maps were drawn up. Working plans and other documents used during valuation often survive in local archive offices. Final record plans and assesments are held at The National Archives but, as seems to be the way of these things, the plans for Oatlands and the surrounding area are officially listed as “Lost”, thus making it very difficult to physically locate a property “on the ground” – particularly with those that are listed out of sequence in the field books.

Field Books

In the related field books which contain bound up sheets of 100 properties, the details given vary quite considerably. Typically for Oatlands, the name of owner and occupier, a description and the valuation, rates and rents are given, and it is these that we have recorded within the data set.

We do have a complete set of images, which, for reasons of copyright, we are unable to make available and can advise you of any other information that exists within the Field Books for a particular property – please contact our research coordinator by using this link.