ACC2452 - Grissell of Brightling Park: maps and deeds of the Brightling Park Estate

Until 1771 when Thomas Hogben drew maps of several farms, no comprehensive mapping of the Fuller estate seems to have taken place, reliance being had either upon surveys commissioned by previous owners or on surveys of individual farms. In the late 1770s Rose Gregson the estate steward copied almost all of those earlier surveys and reduced them to a consistent scale. Again in the early 19th century individual surveys were used until in 1833 and 1834 Jonathan and Sylvan Harmer undertook a full survey of the estates. Both Gregson's and Harmer's survey became dispersed between the solicitors, agents and the landowner but since the collections of all these individuals have now been deposited with the East Sussex Record Office it should soon be possible to reconstruct this part of the Fuller archive.

These deeds were deposited on the same date as the maps but not listed until January 2014, leading to the somewhat unsatisfactory disparity of references between the two elements of ACC 2452. The deeds were those handed over to Percy Tew on his purchase of the Brightling Park Estate on 6 January 1879. Many are annotated with references to abstracts of title, which are not present here but which are included in ACC 2452/6/7. In almost all cases they represent the deeds by which the estates to which they relate were conveyed to the Fullers and Fuller-Meyricks of Brightling, which are conspicuously absent from the title deeds deposited by the estate's solicitors, Messrs Raper and Fovargue of Battle, and listed as SAS/RF. Key to an understanding of the titles represented both here and in SAS/RF is the comprehensive survey of the estate and its title deeds, carried out by Frederic Ellman of the same firm in 1837. For the written survey, see ACC 2300/170/2; for the accompanying maps, see SAS/RF 15/10-11 and ACC 2449/23. It is from Ellman's arrangement that the current SAS/RF series-numbers are derived, and as far as ACC 2452/2/47, this list employs the same bundle-numbers, which are written on the deeds, occasionally resulting in the inclusion of numbers for which no deeds are present, probably on account of the properties concerned not forming part of the sale to Percy Tew in 1879. Ellman's list was not continued beyond the admissions of Augustus Eliott Fuller and the resettlement of the estate in 1835. For the deeds of property added to the estate by Augustus Eliott Fuller, see ACC 2452/3.