In message <005801c43df7$82175480$a0d0fc3e@oemcomputer>, "norman.lee1" <norman.lee1@virgin.net> writes >Just intruding on this one. > >"Freehold and copy" means freehold and copyhold land. Copyhold is a type of >leasehold land, usually a long lease Not really copyhold is normally a perpetual tenancy in a manor, which can be passed from father to son or sold too. Leasehold is ownership for a finite number of years (often 9, 19, 99 etc, with the rare 250 or very rare 999) The record of a lease will possibly be in estate papers but not in a manorial court roll. Copyhold counts as real estate while leasehold, as a wasting asset, counts as personal estate. There is a type of leasehold known as a 'lease of lives', for an unfixed term - as long as 3 named persons are alive. It can usually be extended by one life, on payment of extra money. Apart possibly from the first one, the 'lives' are not the owners, just healthy looking young persons chosen for their staying power. -- Eve McLaughlin Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society

> copyhold is normally a perpetual tenancy in a manor, which can be passed > from father to son or sold too. Leasehold is ownership for a finite > number of years (often 9, 19, 99 etc, with the rare 250 or very rare > 999) > Eve McLaughlin > It may amuse Listers to know that the 999-years concept is not dead yet. When we bought an apartment here in this British Caribbean colony in 1978, there was no condominiums law or strata law. There was a 999-years' Head Lease from the owners of the freehold land to a company that owned the 12 apartments built on it, and a 999-years' Sub-Lease from the company to us. Ground rent of one dollar Jamaican per year; the J$ was then worth five local cents, so I gave the landowner a buck to keep him quiet for the next 20 years. There was a long list of things in the leases telling the lessees what we could and couldn't do during the last few years before the leases expired. I hope somebody remembers... Later, when a strata law was introduced, the landowners wanted us twelve sub-lessees to convert to strata. But he didn't offer us any decent incentive, so we refused. To the best of my knowledge the units are still subject to the leases. Only 976 years to go! Gordon Barlow