09 May 2022
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English land tax records from the years leading up to the Great War have been released by The Genealogist, allowing researchers to discover their ancestors from Merton, Mitcham, Morden and the Wimbledon areas.
Each record is linked to clear scanned pages of the actual IR58 Field books, sourced from The National Archives, and the properties plotted onto large scale contemporary IR121 maps.
These maps are digital copies of the ones used at the time by the Valuation Office of the Board of the Inland Revenue to locate each and every parcel of land in the survey taken in between 1910 and 1915.
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TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer™ allows Diamond subscribers to view georeferenced modern and historical layers beneath the IR121 record set map and so discover how the roads, fields and general environment has changed over the years.
Included in the newly-released records is the past and present home of the Wimbledon Championship. The records show that the present day Centre Court, home to the only Grand Slam tennis event still to be held on grass, had in 1910 been rural fields put to use as “Grazing Land” by its owner Lady Sarah Lane.
The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, at the time of the survey, was then squeezed into a much smaller area of land in Wimbledon than it is today. That plot, where once the Championship played out, still plays a part in sport today albeit at a much lower level of competition.
Explore the records and read a blog about the new release at The Genealogist.