The Newport, Wormit & Forgan Archive

Valuation Rolls, 1855 - 1974

Valuation Rolls, created under the Lands Valuation (Scotland) Act 1854, are lists of property valuations used as the basis of local taxation. They were created annually from 1855 to 1974.

For each property, they will show a reference number, an address, proprietor (owner), tenant and / or occupier, and an annual valuation. From 1864, they will also give the value and recipient of any feu duty.

Some property is omitted from the roll:

non-rated property e.g. churches
railways - listed in a separate valuation roll
quarries are only included if they are being worked in the year in question

Properties with an annual rental value of less than £4 are listed, but are grouped together for each proprietor and only the proprietor is named. Names of tenants and occupiers are usually omitted (although they do occasionally show up).

The rolls transcribed here cover the parish of Forgan, in Fife. From 1895, the rolls are divided into the Burgh of Newport, and the landward (non-burgh) area. From 1903, the Burgh Wards are shown (Ward 1 - East Newport as far west as the Cupar Road; Ward 2 - West Newport from the Cupar Road west to Netherlea; Ward 3 - Woodhaven and Wormit; L for Landward, i.e.non-Burgh, enries).

The rolls as originally published have two major difficulties for researchers:

they are not indexed by name. This transcription overcomes that problem.
in rural areas such as this, the address information is minimal. In Newport, it is only in 1915 that the properties are grouped together by streets. Before then, the order of properties on the roll, although consistent, is meaningless to anyone without detailed local knowledge. Valuation rolls needed to be used in conjunction with directories and censuses to try to identify individual properties. By linking the valuation roll enties to the individual properties, this transcription overcomes that problem as well.

Originals are held by the National Records of Scotland, refs. VR 101/1 (for the 1855-56 roll) to VR 101/167 (for the 1974-75 roll). The rolls for 1855, 1865, 1875, 1885, 1895, 1905, 1915, 1920, 1925, 1930, 1935 and 1940 can be viewed at the ScotlandsPeople website.

The transcripts available here cover a selection of years from 1855-56 to 1974-75. There are over 63,000 entries.

These pages allow you to

either view transcripts of the complete Forgan and Newport sections of the rolls (by clicking on the list of included volumes below)
or search for any name, phrase or value across all the rolls.

Information about this transcription is on the Methodology page.

For complete Valuation Rolls, select the appropriate link at the foot of the page.

The following Valuation Rolls are included:

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