Superfluous-land records for land taken in Llandough under the Lands Clauses Acts: to whom any surplus was offered back, and when

Where a company took land under the Lands Clauses Consolidation Act 1845 and did not need all of it for its works, the Act required it to sell the superfluous land within a fixed period after the time for completing the works, and first to offer it to the person then entitled to the land from which it was taken, or failing that to the owners of adjoining land (ss.127-128). The railway and waterworks schemes with powers over Llandough-juxta-Cardiff incorporated the Lands Clauses Acts. A company that sold or offered back surplus land in the parish should therefore have left a record of the offer, the person it was made to and the answer: the offer-back rule is the nineteenth-century forerunner of the arrangements later named after Crichel Down. Against: the offer went to the person entitled to the land, that is the owner of record, or to adjoining owners, not to an occupier or tenant, so for land of the Bute estate an offer would be expected to go to the estate; the rule did not apply to land kept for the works, and whether any Llandough land was ever treated as superfluous is not checked; the company records may survive only in part. Parcel not identified (the conveyances and land plans would name the plots).

Who should hold it: The railway companies' land and estate papers: Barry Railway Company (The National Archives RAIL 23) and Taff Vale Railway Company (RAIL 684), with any later successor estate files; Cardiff Corporation waterworks land papers (Cardiff Council / Glamorgan Archives, not checked). Not yet searched item by item.

Date of the record: 1885-1960s