Certified Folio for Properties in County Wexford

Buying reclaimed land on the slobs
Ground behind the embankments carries maintenance and drainage obligations, and certified evidence establishes what is registered against the holding.

Mortgage security on a Wexford holding
Lenders financing purchases require certified title evidence, and where drainage or embankment burdens appear they expect the position explained.

Administering a Wexford 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.

Acquiring an intensive tillage or horticultural holding
Ground farmed for vegetables and soft fruit commands a premium here, and certified evidence establishes the registered extent precisely.

Buying land in a drainage district
Low-lying ground across the county sits within arterial drainage schemes whose entries appear on the folio.

Acquiring coastal or estuary frontage
Holdings meeting tidal water stop at the high water mark, and certified confirmation of the registered extent precedes any conclusion.

Selling a farm assembled from several parcels
Holdings have been enlarged by purchase over generations, and each parcel commonly retains its own registration.

Separating a site from a family holding
Where ground is carved from a larger farm, certified evidence of the registered position precedes the transfer and the new folio.

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 Wexford is the sunniest and driest corner of Ireland, and the most intensively cropped, but the most distinctive thing about its register lies behind the harbour.

The North and South Slobs are not natural land. They are seabed reclaimed in the middle of the nineteenth century, enclosed by embankments and kept dry ever since by drainage channels and pumping. Several thousand acres of exceptionally productive ground exist there entirely because that system is maintained, and the obligations connected with maintaining the embankments and the drains run with the land rather than resting with any authority. A folio for slob land can therefore convey good title to ground whose continued existence as dry land depends on burdens registered against it, and certified evidence is what sets those out.

The same logic extends more widely. Low-lying land across the county falls within arterial drainage schemes, and folios there carry entries reflecting the channels, outfalls and access rights those schemes require.

Above that level the county is prime tillage and horticultural ground, farmed for cereals, vegetables and soft fruit at an intensity unusual in Ireland, and holdings have been consolidated by purchase over generations so that a working farm commonly spans several folios.

The coastline is long and largely soft, running from the Wicklow boundary round Carnsore Point to the Waterford estuary, and it is actively eroding along parts of its length. Registered title stops at the high water mark, and where the sea is taking ground the registered boundary and the physical one diverge without any dealing being lodged.

The Slaney and the Barrow estuaries close the county at either end, bringing tidal boundaries and port interests of their own.

What ties all of it together is water management: reclaimed slob, drainage district and eroding shoreline are three versions of the same point, which is that a Wexford folio fixes ownership while the physical extent of the land depends on works and forces recorded nowhere on it.

Several Wexford 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. The physical condition of embankments, coastal erosion and flood risk on low-lying ground all require enquiry beyond the folio. 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 Wexford property, order them together.