Description:The Sutherland Papers contain many documents relating to land and property acquisition from as early as the fourteenth century. Amongst these is an intriguing document from 1615 relating to a butcher's shop in Wolverhampton.
The document was made on the 22nd March 1615, during the ‘Raigne’ of James I ‘Kynge of England Scotland France and Ireland’. The document outlines the terms on which a butcher’s shop had been given over by John Leveson, the owner, to a man named John Day from Wolverhampton. The ‘indenture’ had been made between ‘John Leveson of Halinge in the Countie of Kent’ and ‘John Day of Wolverhampton in the Countie of Stafford butcher’.
The document provided written proof that John Day had paid fifty five pounds ‘of Lawfull money of England’ to John Leveson who was ‘well and truelie contented’. In return for this payment, Sir John Leveson ‘granted aliened bargained Sould and confirmed’ to John Daye and ‘his heires and Assignes for ever’ a ‘Butchers shoppe Burgage or tenement with the sellers and chambers over the same’ located ‘in Wolverhampton’. The document specifies the exact position of the shop in the town as ‘betwene a butchers shoppe now in the occupacon of Robert Lane the Towne hall and the heighe streete and market place’.
This intriguing document provides an insight into central Wolverhampton during the early seventeenth century, reflecting the development of commercial trade in the town during this time and the early life of the bustling City Centre we see today.