There were four manors that held land in Pirton: the Manor of Pirton, Manor of Pirton Rectory, Manor of Pirton D’Oddingselles and the Manor of Ramerick. The manorial records cover the period 1376 to 1926 although there are many gaps. The surviving records for the first three of these manors are held by HALS and the last is held by St John’s College Cambridge. The rolls and court books contain information about the Court Baron which records property transactions. The rolls and books are written in Medieval Latin until the mid 18^th century.

These records offer a mass of useful information, but they do have certain limitations. Property is rarely named, it is described by the court in relation to the surrounding properties, and these change over time. Simply identifying a property and building up a sequence of owners can be difficult. There is a lack of consistency in the record. Some records use the names of neighbouring land owners; others use the names of neighbouring tenants, or a combination of the two. Some properties are always identified by the original pattern of neighbours in the 1700s, in others the pattern changes as the neighbours change, and yet others do not include any information to identify the property at all. The manorial record refers to a plot of land. The fact that houses have been demolished and rebuilt is very rarely recorded.

The scarcity of labour following the Black Death in the 14th century meant that the feudal obligation of villein tenure to provide certain services to the lord of the manor had to be commuted to money payments. This led to the creation of tenancies in which land was held by right of title entered into the manor court roll, and tenants were provided with a copy of that entry – hence copyhold. When transferring property the copyhold tenant surrendered it to the lord of the manor who then granted it to the new tenant who paid an admission  fine, usually one year’s manorial rent. Copyhold was abolished in 1922.

Using the names of the vendor and purchaser and details of surrounding properties it has been possible to reconstruct the history of many properties.