Certified Folio for Properties in County Mayo

Acquiring a holding with western commonage
Grazing shares over mountain and blanket bog attach to a registered holding rather than existing as mapped parcels, and certified evidence establishes what runs with the land.

Mortgage security on a Mayo holding
Lenders financing purchases require certified title evidence, and where commonage or possessory title appears they expect the position addressed before funds issue.

Administering a Mayo estate
Executors dealing with property anywhere in the county use the Certified Folio to prove the deceased's registered ownership to the Probate Office and to financial institutions.

Buying a striped holding in Erris or Achill
Parcels laid out by the Congested Districts Board are long and narrow with conditions registered at the time, and certified evidence brings both into view.

Acquiring land on Clew Bay or the islands
Holdings meeting tidal water stop at the high water mark, and certified confirmation of the registered extent precedes any conclusion about the shore.

Selling a farm held informally within a family
Ground has passed between generations here without dealings being lodged, and certified evidence reconciles the register with what a household believes it owns.

Transferring turbary rights on blanket bog
Entitlements to cut turf attach as burdens rather than mapped ground, and certified confirmation shows what actually passes.

Upgrading a possessory title
Where first registration rested on long occupation alone, certified evidence of the current class is the starting point for improving it.

Refinancing a business in one of the towns
Commercial premises across the county are regularly offered as security, and banks want certified title rather than an information copy of the register.

County Mayo is large, western and predominantly poor ground, and its register reflects a century of state intervention aimed at making that ground workable.

Commonage is the defining feature. Mountain and blanket bog across Erris, Achill, the Nephin Beg range and the Partry hills are held in common by the owners of holdings below, and a share appears on the folio as a right rather than as a mapped parcel. What that share amounts to — how many stock units, over which ground — depends on the instrument that created it, so a certified folio establishes that the entitlement exists and the accompanying documents establish its extent.

The Congested Districts Board and its successors rearranged large parts of the western county, buying out estates and breaking up rundale townlands where holdings had been intermixed in scattered strips. The replacement layout gave each family a single continuous stripe running from the road to the bog or the shore, and those long narrow parcels remain the registered shape today. Conditions imposed at the time — restrictions on subdivision among them — can still sit on the folio.

Registration came late to much of the county and documentary chains were often incomplete, so possessory title is more common here than in the east, and lenders approach it more cautiously than absolute.

The coastline is long and heavily indented, with Clew Bay alone carrying a great many small islands. Registered title on the coast and the islands stops at the high water mark, and the foreshore beyond is State property that no folio conveys.

Islands and remote holdings also raise access questions that the register handles poorly, since a right of way over rough ground may be registered without any made road existing on it.

For a conveyancer the practical result is that a Mayo folio is very often the beginning of the enquiry rather than the end of it.

Several Mayo questions need more than the Certified Folio. Where the registered extent is genuinely at issue, a Certified Map must be read with it. Where a covenant, wayleave or right of way requires construing rather than merely noticing, obtain the registered instrument as an Instrument Copy, since the terms live there rather than on the folio. Commonage extent, island access and the foreshore beyond the high water mark all require enquiry beyond the folio itself. If the property proves unregistered, no folio exists and the Registry of Deeds becomes the record to search. And where general ownership information is all that is wanted, a Folio Search covers it.

Delivery time:

The Certified Folio is prepared as a certified hard copy and posted to you. Its standing rests entirely on the seal applied by the Property Registration Authority, so it is issued physically rather than as a download.

The copy certifies the register on the date it carries. Where a Certified Map, Instrument Copy or ordinary Folio Search is wanted for the same Mayo property, order them together.