Mabel Sayer – property owner

Mabel Sayer, the lady who dresses up for carnivals, we know but we were not aware, until some old documents were recently given to us, that Mabel was a property owner in her own right.

This conveyance has recently arrived at the museum.

Front page of conveyance – Mabel Sayer buys a cottage

Legal documents tend to be a nightmare to read but this one starts:

This conveyance is made the twenty sixth day of May one thousand nine hundred and twenty six between William John Mann solicitor and Harry Victor Case bacon curer both of Trowbridge in the county of wilts hereinafter called ‘the vendors’ of the one part and Mabel Sayer the wife of Frederick Herbert Sayer of Market Lavington in the said county of Wilts hereinafter called ‘the purchaser’ of the other part

The property was a cottage near the old Independent Chapel on High Street which looks to have had a Mrs Potter as a tenant and others had right of entry to use the well.

Fred Sayer, Mabel’s husband had run the bus company locally. Both of the Sayers were well known locally. We imagine that at this time they had money to invest. No doubt there were potential advantages in having investments in Mrs Sayer’s name.

All in the Deeds

This blog is not to do with any ‘doing’ of deeds. It’s about the transfer of land and property from one person to another and the rather beautiful documents that can go with it. It is also a tale of a rather chance find and a journey which has ended at Market Lavington Museum.

Let’s start with the deed or indenture..

1865 indenture or conveyance – recently given to Market Lavington Museum

Here we have one of those large legal documents. It is on that classy legal vellum type paper and beautifully written. It tells of the sale of land between the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church, Oxford and the Right Honourable Edward Pleydell Bouverie MP. It concerns the transfer of land – being the glebe lands of the Rectory of Lavington and is dated 12^th May 1865.

The document concerns Market Lavington glebe lands

In 1865, Edward Pleydell Bouverie was establishing himself as Lord of Market Lavington Manor. 1865 is the date upon Edward’s brand new Manor House. No doubt for a man with aspirations it seemed appropriate to pay some £2800 for parts of ‘his’ parish. That’s the equivalent of anything up to 4 million pounds today. Altogether Edward purchased a little over 77 acres including a cottage and buildings, orchards and meadows.

The seal set on this document is just gorgeous.

It is a fascinating and lovely document but its arrival at the museum is a wonderful story.

The final gift, just the other day came from the Rector in Market Lavington. He had held the document since 2010 when it arrived, quite unsolicited, with this letter.

Letter received by the Market Lavington rector

So the document arrived in Market Lavington from Northampton where a lady had given it to the sender, to send it to the church concerned. The lady’s late husband had bought it in a car boot sale – we do not know where that was but assume it was in the Northampton area.

But how did it arrive in a boot sale? That maybe something we’ll never know. But we are so pleased that by its roundabout route it has arrived back home

Our museum building is still owned by the Pleydell Bouverie family.