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House, Field, Tenure, and Quarto books are surviving land valuation notebooks from prior to Griffith's Valuation.
These notes were largely taken in the precarious famine years, when the statuses of tenants and the standing structures they occupied were undergoing rapid change. Some of the notes are chaotic in appearance - building numbers are often crossed out and renumbered, are out of order, tenants names repeated, crossed out, and so forth.
A Tenure Book, if it survived for your parish of interest, might show that the lease terms of your ancestor's tenancy with the landowner might have been something besides At Will, which was the most common tenancy arrangement. Another tenancy arrangement was 3 Lives. If so, there might have been a legal agreement drawn up which could make your search through the Registry of Deeds worthwhile. In such cases, the deeds often gave detailed descriptions of the tenant family.
These notes can be used for genealogical research by comparing them with Griffith's Valuation (with its known dates) in order to better pinpoint the time an ancestor might have moved, emigrated, or died.
The following is a description of the quality letters regarding solidity, age and repair placed on property in the House Books:
New or Nearly New Houses
A+ Built or ornamented with cut stone, and of superior solidity and finish.
A. Very substantial building and finish, without cut stone ornament.
A- Ordinary Building and finish or either of the above when built 20 or 25 years.
Houses of Medium Age (25+?).
B+ Medium but not new, but in sound order and in good repair.
B. Medium, slightly decayed by age, but in good repair.
B- Medium, deteriorated by age, and not in perfect repair.
Old Houses (Older than 25 years).
C+ Old but in good repair.
C Old and out of repair.
C- Old and dilapidated, scarcely habitable.
Numbers for Dwellings
1. Includes all slated dwelling houses, built with stone or brick and lime and mortar.
2. Thatches houses built with stone or lime and mortar.
3. Thatched houses having stone walls, with mud or puddle mortar; dry stone walls pointed, or mud walls of the best kind.
4. Basement stories of slated houses used as dwellings.
Table for Offices
1. Includes all slated offices built with stone, or brick walls with good lime mortar.
2. Thatched offices built with stone or brick walls and lime mortar.
3. Thatched offices having stone walls with mud or puddle mortar, dry stone walls pointed, or good mud walls.
4. Thatched offices built with stone walls.
Some notebooks are not online but are on film. One of the backlogged projects of Cork Gen is to transcribe some of those missing notebooks.