Early 20th century UK land prices

[JoyceCarter]

Does anyone happen to know what you would have had to pay to buy a piece of rural land in England suitable for running a plant/seed nursery in about 1908?  I've discovered that the land valuation records from 1910 are held at Kew in the record office, but I'd really like a rough idea without having to travel for it.

[Ed]

I don't know, but I could probably find out.  My wife works with a lot of deeds. 

I remember from the last house we had, it was built in 1898 and cost £300 when new.  Now it's worth £168,000 and building land is about a million quid an acre, agricultural land is about £10,000 per acre, for good land, dropping as low as £3,000 for hilly or problematic land.

Dunno if that helps at all?  I'll ask my wife if she can take a look at some old deeds, tomorrow.  It might be worth a phonecall to the Land Registry as well, Joyce?  Parish records?

[JoyceCarter]

Thanks for the info, Blunt.  I know there are various places that I can find out exact detail if I take the time to go or make phone calls, but I'd really like not to have to.  You know what I mean - half a day to get this nugget , and it's actually only mentioned in two lines of a story.  So for heaven's sake, please don't ask your wife to get into any huge disruption for this.  (The deeds I've got copies of here, or have found on the internet, give descriptions of quality and acreage but not prices.)  If it's a case of open a couple of files and there is a sale-price, great, and thank her/you very much.  Anyway, your comparison of prices gives me some ideas to work from - thanks.

I'm working on an idea based on a couple in my husband's family.  He was a gardener and she was a lady's maid, working on a country estate that is now a National Trust property.  He'd been saving up, and rather than continue in service, when they married set up in business as a seed and plantsman with his own market garden.  (We've got all kinds of things of theirs, but nothing that actually says what he paid.)  I'm writing about the time just before they left service, and want to mention the approximate amount of his savings - I could fudge it and call it 'a box of sovereigns' or something, but it would be better if I knew it would have been x pounds.  The story is completely fictionalized, so it doesn't matter if a price is from anywhere in the 1890s or 1900s.