Old deeds and information on our House

[lottie2008]

First time poster here....

We've recently purchased a 500yr old house. When we viewed the property the sellers told us they had 2/3 boxes of literature regarding the house that had been passed down through previous owners.

When we moved in there was no sign of any boxes. We've messaged the sellers and they haven't responded. We know the previous owners and they have confirmed the amount of information and newspaper cuttings.

Do we have a legal leg to stand on with obtaining this information? Are the sellers legally obliged to hand this over to the new custodians?

Did you actual negotiate inclusion of this as part of the sale? Legally if it's newspaper cuttings of interest etc then it doesn't have to be passed on with the house any more than a particularly nice lampshade...

Might the message have not got through to them?

I don’t think you do if it wasn’t mentioned as part of the sale. It’s nice to have but not vital. Some of the info might be on line and mentioned in historical records. Why not google it? Your local archive dept of the council might be able to help too or a local history society. It might be fun to do this.

Might they be with the solicitor who managed the sale? We got a box of old deeds and property transfer records from our solicitor when we completed the sale.

Thank you very much for your replies.

No they weren't included in the sale listing / inventory. Apparently there has is 25+ generations of information here.

I went to the records office just before we moved in and while I found some info there's really not much considering the age of the house.

I had been hoping to piece together a timeline of occupants.

Thank you again

Thank you re. Suggestion they might be with the solicitor. I hadn't thought if this.

We didn’t know we were getting them. Just had a phone call to ask us to come and pick them up. 150 years from the sale of the land to the owners before us, most in beautiful legal copperplate.
I hope you manage to track yours down. We will be leaving them to the next owner if we ever sell.

Thank you Professor. I will check with the solicitors.
I would so love to find any old information on our house. We know it's been the village Inn and a blacksmiths.
I found an original sale catalogue at our local records office which was dated 1900. The quality of the paper and print was just beautiful.