Record#
Page ID: 19 · Title: The 1877 Agreement · Evidence status: Not yet labelled — see the Editing Protocol · Version: 1.0.1 · Editing Protocol
AI AGENT ENTRY POINT · 1877 transaction and quarry arrangement
This page is the home of the 1877… … read more
This page is the home of the 1877 Bute–Thomas division, the 1928 end of quarry rent, the 1950–52 loss of the family papers and the 1984 library loss.
The 1877 agreement is the family’s name for… … read more
The 1877 agreement is the family’s name for the arrangement under which the Bute Estate sold the house parcel of Great House Farm to Daniel Thomas for quarrying, with the freehold to pass to the Williams family when quarrying ended [PENDING: EV-0006]. It is the foundation of the family’s title claim. No copy was ever put before a court: the family’s copy was taken from the farmhouse in 1950–52, and the library copy went missing in 1984, the year BP served its writ. Its terms are known from Mary (Nancy) Williams, who saw it. 🕒
The 1928 title effect and later Parcel-A/Parcel-B conflation#
Family title position. The 1877 arrangement… … read more
Family title position. The 1877 arrangement took effect in 1928 when quarrying ceased and rent to Alfred Thomas ended. On the family’s established case, that event carried the whole Parcel-A house/quarrying estate to the Williams family—not merely the farmhouse and garden, but also the forest north of the house and the ground south-east of the house/garden that later became village green VG41. WGR’s later rights related to the distinct Parcel-B eastern fields; later use of “whole farm” did not itself enlarge those rights into Parcel A.
* Yellow text on olive-green highlight = presumption used where primary evidence is missing.
PRESUMPTION — The reported 1877 Bute–Thomas arrangement made the end of quarrying and rent in 1928 the trigger for the Williams family to take the freehold of the whole Parcel-A house/quarrying estate, distinct from Parcel B, the eastern land retained by Bute.
This is the working premise for the chronology while the original 1877 instrument remains unavailable. The separate 15 May 1924 drainage agreement and its missing plan are catalogued at GHF-E119; they are not treated as the sale contract.
Chronology of the permissive-occupation… … read more
Chronology of the permissive-occupation narrative. The family’s case is that the 1949 step was the first later attempt to make Mary’s occupation appear permissive. It preceded the reported loss of the title deed in 1950–52 and failed. The 1955 order’s “whole farm” wording then blurred Parcel B’s agricultural tenancy with the family’s Parcel A, and enforcement on 4 July 1955 seized the north forest and south-east green along with Parcel B. Mary remained in the farmhouse/buildings/garden group because she resisted removal after a leg amputation, with seven children to care for, and was not physically able to defend Parcel A’s entire perimeter.
Do not misread Mary’s practical defence.… … read more
Do not misread Mary’s practical defence. Later accounts that Mary fought for the “house and garden” describe the part she could physically hold onto after the forest and green were seized. They do not establish that the title claim was limited to the farmhouse and garden. Read with the 1877 arrangement, Mary (Nancy) Williams, formerly Buckler, witness statement c.1974 (Mary (Nancy) Williams testimony) supports an underlying claim covering the whole Parcel-A estate, while her litigation posture and the coercive circumstances made the defended area appear narrower. The family’s alternative limitation case is that twelve years from 1928 would have matured by 1940 if the legally relevant requirements were satisfied; the 1955 recharacterisation instead made the clock appear to start in 1955. The underlying-title and limitation arguments must remain distinct.
Evidence, in date order#
1877: Notice to quit
Letter Bute Estate Office notice to quit to Mary’s grandfather, 1877
Missing: seen by Mary; believed taken with the family papers, 1950–52
Catalogue: GHF-E019-03
Location: Family archive / privately held material
Evidence description: “Prior to 1877 my Grandfather held the farm as tenant of the Bute Family Estates and in that year he received notice to quit from the Bute Estate Office. I was told this by my father and he showed me the notice to quit.” A separate Wiki chronology note associates quarrying at the Llandough Limeworks with 1876; the original D153 item cited for the “33 acres” has not been inspected, and it is not established that those acres are the land discussed in the following 1877 account. See Llandough Limeworks and SC-21.
Evidence: Mary (Nancy) Williams’s statement (extract)
‹A + B as one›Before the sale, the whole farm was one Bute tenancy.
Nomenclature
Selected wording: the farm
Nomenclature
Selected wording: whole farm
Nomenclature
Selected wording: Great House Farm
Nomenclature
Selected wording: Parcels A and B
1877: Reported sale / quarrying arrangement and two tenancies
Reported document Reported Bute–Thomas agreement / conveyance and Thomas tenancy, 1877 (original unlocated)
Missing: family copy taken 1950–52; library copy reported missing 1984
Catalogue: GHF-E019-04
Location: Family archive / privately held material
“Daniel Thomas required the farm for quarrying limestone and I remember seeing the tenancy agreement between D. Thomas and my grandfather which contained special provisions with regard to this.”
“I remember that the agreement provided that the rent should progressively decrease as land was taken for quarrying. It was also provided that when the quarrying ceased the freehold should belong to my grandfather.”
Evidence description: Bute sold the freehold of the farmhouse, buildings and about 10 acres to Daniel Thomas and kept about 9 acres “up on the top”. Mary’s grandfather took tenancies from both. The Thomas tenancy’s rent fell as land was quarried, and the freehold was to pass to her grandfather when quarrying ceased. It was kept in the blanket box at the farmhouse.
Evidence: Mary (Nancy) Williams’s statement (extract)
Parcel AThe land sold to Thomas and let back under the Thomas tenancy.
Research note. Mary (Nancy) Williams, witness statement c.1974 (Mary (Nancy) Williams testimony) describes this as a reverter tied to quarrying: “when the quarrying ceased the freehold should belong to my grandfather.”
Reported document Mary (Nancy) Williams’s reported 6 November 1877 lease to John Williams — original unlocated
No matching Llandough instrument or associated plan has been identified. SC-20 records that DBDT/79/1 was physically examined and proved to be a 2 May 1877 lease for Pembroke Terrace, Cardiff, with no mention of Llandough, Great House Farm or Tŷ Mawr. DBDT/18/1 and DBDT/1/3 are catalogue entries for other Cardiff properties; their originals have not been checked for this enquiry. Do not treat these as the Llandough lease.
Catalogue: GHF-E019-06
Location: original not located; repository and catalogue reference for the reported Llandough lease not established
Parcel unassignedInterpretation withdrawn pending the original. It cannot be concluded that the reported lease covered only Bute’s retained approximately 9 acres or that it belonged to Mary’s grandfather. Those questions depend on locating and reading the instrument and any plan; the current evidence does not support an A/B assignment.
The plan of the Williams parcel
Catalogue: GHF-E019-07
Location: family heirloom collection, disclosed 2026; original repository not established
Plan of the Williams parcel. Date and origin unknown; from a family heirloom collection, disclosed 2026. Click to enlarge.
Parcel AThe parcel the Williams family occupied.
Research note. [SOURCE PENDING] Date and origin unknown. The plan comes from a family heirloom collection, disclosed in 2026 with a family statement; it is not shown to come from the 1877 Daniel Thomas & Son agreement, which is not yet in hand. Our case, prospective, links the two. It is the only known source for the three-way split of Parcel A, much as Parcel B is known from the 1939 tenancy plan. Compare the 1939 tenancy plan of the parcel to the east.
1928: Quarrying ends and the last rent is paid
Estate record Receipt for the last rent to Alfred Thomas, 1928; rent receipts or rent book, 1916–39
Missing: the 1928 receipt was seen by Mary; to be traced
Catalogue: GHF-E012-06
Location: Not yet established from the present record
Evidence description: the last quarry machinery left in 1928 and the last rent, about £4 a year, was paid by John Williams to Alfred Thomas. “I saw the receipt for this last payment of rent. After this my father regarded the farm as his own.” Rent continued to be paid on the fields only. HM Land Registry holds a record of 15 May 1924 (a Bute–Corbett agreement about a drain) on the WA231076 file [PENDING: EV-0015]. Whether it is connected to this step is one of the questions the family is pressing HM Land Registry to answer (Land Registry titles; analysis in the Legal Review, section 2).
Evidence: Mary (Nancy) Williams’s statement (extract)
Parcel AThe end of rent to the Thomases for the house parcel.
Research note. On the 1877 terms as Mary (Nancy) Williams’s c.1974 statement records them (Mary (Nancy) Williams testimony), this is when John Williams became freeholder of Parcel A under the 1877 terms, and the house parcel left any tenancy. In the alternative, twelve years’ rent-free occupation from 1928 gave the family title by about 1940.
1950 – 1952: Papers taken from the farmhouse
Evidence description: a lodger placed at the farmhouse in June 1950 by a Penarth estate agent stayed about two years. He later told Mary he had taken “the papers which were in the blanket box including the agreement relating to the farm” and given them to the agent. She found them gone, and thought their loss “was in some way connected” with WGR’s first possession application. When she told WGR in 1959 that documents proved her title, none could be produced (1959), and the 1987 judgment records that they were “never produced” (1987) [EV-0080]. Stolen documents are not subject to a time limit for their return (Limitation Act 1980, s.4); see the Legal Review, section 1.4.
Evidence: Mary (Nancy) Williams’s statement (extract)
Parcel AThe title papers for the house parcel.
1984: Library copy missing
SOURCE PENDING No document or identified speaker yet
Not yet sourced; a named statement is to be taken
Catalogue: GHF-E019-12
Location: Family archive / privately held material
Evidence description: a copy of the Bute–Thomas deed and its index card were reported missing from Cardiff Library, in the year BP served its writ. 🕒
Parcel AThe second known copy of the house parcel’s deed.
2026: Glamorgan Archives response and Bute X finding aid — Ref. 2026/4097b
Archive correspondence + finding aid Glamorgan Archives, Ref. 2026/4097b; Louise Hunt, Archivist, response received 8 September 2026
Catalogue: GHF-E019-13
Location: Family archive / privately held email and attached Bute X catalogue extract
Documentary fact: Glamorgan Archives stated that it does not appear to hold deeds relating to the 1877 Daniel Thomas transaction after a catalogue search. It nevertheless identified Bute X.6(12), an abstract of payments and receipts by the trustees of the Marquis of Bute’s properties for 1877 (copy), as a record that could be worth searching. The archivist stated that other similar Bute X records may also be relevant and that the records were then with Cardiff Library.
Attached finding-aid evidence: the Bute X catalogue supplied with the response identifies a substantial run of Bute estate financial material, including annual abstracts for 1871–1880; 1867–69 notes concerning the Glamorgan estate and minerals; 1832 bills and receipts including improvements on Llandough Farm; and 1833–35 bills and receipts concerning building and repairs on the estate, farms, woods and plantations. The catalogue also includes earlier files concerning manorial evidence, disputed properties and mineral surveys.
Research significance: these references give the family a specific, independently identified Bute Estate documentary trail to test against the property reconstruction. In particular, D31.49 (1832), the 1867–69 mineral and accounting material and Bute X.6(12) (1877) are targeted archival leads. The 1877 item is especially important because it falls in the same year as the Bute–Thomas transaction: a capital receipt from Daniel Thomas would corroborate the sale.
Archive search status: the response distinguishes between a negative catalogue search for deeds and a positive identification of potentially relevant Bute Estate accounting records. It therefore should not be recorded as “the 1877 transaction was not found anywhere”; the narrower fact is that Glamorgan Archives did not identify surviving deeds for the transaction in its search and directed the research toward Cardiff Library’s Bute X material. 🕒
Today: The search
Finding the conveyance is the single most important step for any legal route. Leads: NLW Bute Estate Collection D153/1–8 (the Wiki’s D153/4–8 target span is not yet verified against the original catalogue item; SC-21), D219 and DB/E/1-2 (Sources and archives); the reported but unlocated 1877 Llandough lease (do not confuse it with the examined Cardiff lease in SC-20); the Land Registry first-registration bundle (Land Registry titles); and return requests to the legacy files of BP, Linklaters and the successors of Western Ground Rents and the Penarth estate agent (Legal Review, section 1.4).
See also: The two parcels · 1916 tenancy ·… … read more
See also: The two parcels · 1916 tenancy · Master timeline · Legal Review
Name/location reference: Great House Farm … … read more
Name/location reference: Great House Farm — Name & Location Variations (historical spellings and Llandough-juxta-Penarth location forms).
1877 source-control addendum — do not substitute the Cardiff leases#
The family’s reported Bute–Thomas arrangement, and the separate reported lease to John Williams, remain unresolved because the matching Llandough originals/plans have not been identified. The photographed 6 November 1877 Clyde Street, Roath counterpart is a 99-year building lease for a plot in Cardiff, granted to a builder of System Street, Roath; it is not the missing farm instrument. The 2 May 1877 DBDT/79/1 lease is likewise a Cardiff/Pembroke Terrace instrument.
The date “6 November 1877” should not be attributed to a specific Llandough deed unless the source passage or matching instrument is quoted and verified. Preserve the family’s reported 1877 arrangement as an unresolved lead; do not use the Cardiff deed to fill the gap. See EV-0006, EV-0008, EV-0213, and the Kissed Frogs register.
The separate NLW catalogue distinction also matters: Cydfin / Tŷ Mawr Farm is listed at 107 acres, while Llandough Farm is a different 166-acre holding. See the NLW D 219 catalogue. None of these catalogue entries alone proves the 1877 transfer or fraud/concealment.
Page version & change log#
Current version: 1.0.1
Version |
Date (UTC) |
Editor (human or agent name) |
Change |
Source / evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1.0.1 |
2026-10-20T21:45Z |
Sion’s Tab agent |
Plan of the Williams parcel (media 89): date and origin now shown as unknown; from a family heirloom collection, disclosed 2026. The link to the 1877 Daniel Thomas & Son agreement is marked as our case, prospective (agreement not yet in hand). Nothing removed. |
Family statement disclosed 2026; 1877 agreement SOURCE PENDING |
1.0.0 |
2026-10-18T15:15Z |
Sion’s Tab agent |
Footer standardised; no content change |
Editing Protocol, 18 Oct 2026 |
Agents and editors: follow the Editing Protocol.