The information you can find in a valuation roll varies slightly from year to year and between county and burghs. Early years tend to contain the least information. The 1855 valuation rolls for rural areas, for example, do not give a detailed address; merely recording the designation as, for example, 'House and Farm, Dykesmains'. This can also be the case in early rolls for towns and cities where the house or flat number of a property is omitted.
The later valuation rolls, include more accurate descriptions of properties and occupations are more frequently included. The following can be found in most valuation roll records:
- Address of property
- Type of property, for example, house, shop, croft, mill
- Name of proprietor (surname, forename and title, sometimes forename can be omitted)
- Name of occupier, tenant or inhabited occupier (surname, forename and title, sometimes forename can be omitted)
- Occupation
- Yearly rent or rateable value of property
The valuation rolls do not record the depth of information found in a census record and are not a census substitute in terms of listing all people resident at a property. On the other hand, valuation rolls attempt to give information on almost all buildings and other properties in a particular place, including those which do not appear on census records (because no-one was living there).
