The Location of the Records

Most of the Property Registers are held by the National Records of Scotland in General Register House at the east end of Princes Street in Edinburgh, although some of them are stored off site in Thomas Thomson House in Sighthill, Edinburgh and have to be ordered in advance. The main exception is that all of Glasgow Burgh Register is held in the Mitchell Library, North Street, Glasgow.

The Land Register is maintained and held by the Registers of Scotland at Meadowbank House, on the east side of Edinburgh and also in Hanover House in Glasgow. There is no public access to either of these sites, but the Registers of Scotland have customer service offices at Erskine House, 68 Queen Street, Edinburgh and at 9 George Square in Glasgow.

Both the Register of Sasines and the Land Register are public registers, although a fee has to be paid for examining them.

As well as all the registers already noted, sometimes the searcher has to source information from other records, like the Register House Plans Series which is held in Thomas Thomson House in Edinburgh. This includes plans relating to titles for railway lines and canals and can be a rich source of information.

The National Records of Scotland also hold the Register of Deeds, which contains miscellaneous documents, although this is not very easy to search. Sheriff Court Books and Valuation Rolls can also be consulted. There are also various Estate and other records which have been gifted to the National Archives, although usually permission is required to copy these.

Sometimes a deed has no plan, but refers to Ordnance Survey Enclosure Numbers from a particular historical OS Map. We can view (and order copies of) old maps at the National Library of Scotland's Map Library at Causewayside, Edinburgh. This facility is also very useful when the topography of the area of search has altered over the years, since we can find what was there before and the approximate date at which changes occurred.