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Using the tithe map

This site lays the 1839 tithe map of Abbots Langley over a present-day map, and links every numbered plot to its record in the tithe award. Here is how to find your way around, and what the old terms mean.

Finding your way around

• Fade between the two maps. The Map blend slider goes from today's map (left) to the 1839 tithe map (right). Slide it to compare the historic field pattern with the modern village.
• Show or hide layers. Show 1839 map turns the historic overlay on or off. Show located plots drops a dot on every plot whose position is known, so you can see the coverage at a glance.
• Search the records. Type in the search box to filter by plot number, landowner, occupier, field name, or land use. The count shows how many records match.
• Jump to a plot. A result with a 📍 marker has a known position, click it to fly to that plot on the map and highlight it.
• On a phone, tap the menu button (top left) to open the panel; it closes when you pick a plot so the map is in view.

What the records mean

The tithe award was a parish-by-parish survey made after the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836, recording who owned and farmed each parcel of land and what tithe was due on it. Its columns are below. The shown tag marks the ones that appear on this site.

Column	Meaning
Landowner	The person who legally owned the land.
Occupier	The tenant or farmer actually working the land, often someone other than the owner. "Himself" means the owner farmed it.
Plot number	The number written on the tithe map, linking the record to a physical parcel of land. ("Numbers referring to the plan" in the original.)
Name & description	The local field name and type of premises, for example "Home Meadow" or "Chambersbury Farm".
State of cultivation	How the land was used. Common values: Arable, Meadow, Pasture, Wood, Garden, Plantation, Water, Road. (The original often abbreviates these, e.g. Ara, Mea, Past; this site spells them out.)
Quantities (A. R. P.)	Land area in the old statute measure: acres, roods and perches (also called poles). 1 acre = 4 roods; 1 rood = 40 perches. So "5a 3r 34p" is five acres, three roods, thirty-four perches.
Rent-charge to the Vicar (£ s d)	The share of the tithe rent-charge owed to the local incumbent vicar, in pounds, shillings and pence.
Rent-charge to Impropriators (£ s d)	The share owed to lay impropriators: people or institutions (often descended from dissolved monasteries) who had acquired the historic right to receive tithes.
Remarks	Miscellaneous notes, for example "Great tithes merged" or a name.

The award records the rent-charge per holding (a landowner-and-occupier's whole group of plots), not per individual plot, as a single lump sum. So where a holding contains several plots, the site shows that holding's total against each of its plots, labelled "holding of N plots". A figure shown against a single-plot holding is that plot's own charge.