Deed, lease

This lease is one of two documents recording a property sale in Wandsworth, Surrey, in 1698. It is not a lease in the true sense because the second document, the release, actually transferred the freehold. The release would usually be a larger document. The payment of five shillings and the annual peppercorn rent were token clauses in the lease. The use of 'lease and release' deeds was the most common method of property conveyance in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Lawyers were paid by the line when drawing up these documents so they tended to be long and repetitive!

This lease records that Peter and Margaret Hudson of Sutton Place have 'bargained and sold' a house and land to William Browne of London. The document was then witnessed and sealed.