Here are 3 fascinating pages found amongst the collection of historic documents at our main library.
They are from the original fragile land books of the early 1800s in which all grants of land by the Colonial Government to the city were detailed. They are hand written in flowing copperplate, and accompanied by hand drawn maps by the Surveyor, to detail the exact positions of the properties. These are for the Donkin Terrace that we are currently featuring, and as you can see, they are dated 31st January 1856. The top one is the grant, next the survey drawing, and the last one details the first owners and how much they paid for the land.
The writing in the first photo is beautiful!
ReplyDeleteCan just imagine it being writen with real ink.
Fascinating. I love old manuscripts like this.
ReplyDeletePamela and Jilly, Hi. It is an amazing feeling handling these old books and knowing they were carefully written so long ago, when time moved so much more slowly and people took such a pride in their work. A real privilege.
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