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The Search Sheets

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Landownership Scotland is a confidential service that carries out professional searches of Scottish property records, here you can find more information on the service.


The Search Sheets

A big bonus for searchers is that just prior to 1871 an (unknown) employee of the Registers had the brilliant idea of noting the details for each property on a separate page, known as a Search Sheet. The search sheets were introduced over the next few years, with most of the Counties' search sheets commencing in 1876.

The First Series of Search Sheets lasted until 1905, when a Second Series was introduced. A second part of the Second Series was started in 1959-60. This continued until about 1993, when a Computerised Search Sheet was introduced. Each of these four different series of search sheets has its own Persons and Places Indexes.

If you can find the correct search sheet for a property, it is then relatively straightforward to see all the various transactions that have affected that property since 1876.

Searching backwards from 1876 to 1781 is fairly straightforward in most cases, although it can be very time-consuming depending on the name being searched, as every entry for a particular name has to be examined year by year.