Solicitors: Practitioners in County Roscommon read mineral reservations carefully in the north of the county, since a folio can convey the surface while excepting what lies beneath and reserving rights to get at it.
Instrument Copy for Registered Land in County Roscommon
Quick Answer
An Instrument Copy for County Roscommon land is a copy of a document lodged with the Land Registry - a transfer, charge, covenant or grant of a right of way. The folio records that the burden exists and gives its number; the instrument is where the terms are actually written. In County Roscommon, where the Arigna coalfield was worked for two centuries, instruments severing mineral interests from the surface still govern what a folio actually conveys.
A Part III entry on a County Roscommon folio tells you that something affects the land without telling you what it requires. The Property Registration Authority retains the document behind every such entry, and the Instrument Copy is how it is read.
What Is This Document
An Instrument Copy is a copy of a document actually lodged with the Land Registry – a transfer, a charge, a deed granting a right of way, a deed imposing covenants, a vesting order. When such a document is lodged and registered, the folio records that the interest exists and gives the instrument its own number. The document itself is retained, and the Instrument Copy is how you read it.
That division of labour is the whole point of the product. A folio will tell you that a right of way exists over your land, and it will identify the instrument that created it. It will not tell you how wide the right of way is, where exactly it runs, who is responsible for maintaining the surface, whether it is limited to agricultural use, or whether it may be used by anyone other than the owner of the dominant land. Every one of those questions is answered in the instrument and nowhere else.
The Arigna coalfield in the north of County Roscommon was worked from the eighteenth century until the 1990s, and mining of that duration leaves a distinctive mark on a register. Mineral interests were in many cases severed from the surface by instrument, so ownership of the land and ownership of what lies beneath became separate titles. The deed effecting that severance is what states exactly what was excepted and what rights of working and access were reserved with it.
Ordering therefore usually starts from the folio rather than from the instrument. The Part III entry gives the instrument number, and that number is what identifies the document to be copied. If you do not have it, a folio search establishes it first, and it is entirely normal to order the two together – the folio to find out what burdens exist, the instrument to find out what each of them actually says.
Which Document Do I Need
Different questions need different documents:
| Need | Product | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Find out who owns a property in County Roscommon | Folio Search | €32.99 |
| See what burdens are registered against it | Folio Search | €32.99 |
| Read what a burden actually permits or requires | Instrument Copy | €349.99 |
| Prove the register entry to a lender or court | Certified Folio | €149.99 |
| Prove the registered extent | Certified Map | €149.99 |
What Information Is Included
An Instrument Copy order for County Roscommon returns:
- The full text of the instrument as lodged and registered
- The parties to it, and the date it was executed and registered
- The operative provisions – what was granted, transferred, charged or covenanted
- Any plan or schedule annexed to the document
- Conditions, reservations and exceptions attaching to what was granted
- The instrument number and the folio it is registered against
What Is Not Included
An Instrument Copy gives you the text of a document lodged and registered against County Roscommon land. It does not establish current ownership, show the registered extent, carry certification under seal, or reach anything that was never lodged – informal arrangements, rights acquired by long occupation, or deeds relating to unregistered land held at the Registry of Deeds. The physical legacy of former mine workings, ground stability and current minerals licensing all fall outside the instrument record.
Why People Order
- Reading a mineral severance or reservation: The deed states what was excepted from the surface title and on what terms.
- Checking rights of working reserved with minerals: Severance commonly reserved access and working rights over the surface.
- Reading a drainage or navigation instrument: Riverside and callows holdings carry arrangements registered against them.
- Quantifying a turbary entitlement: Grants define a bank and commonly a quantity.
- Investigating a right of way to a scattered parcel: Holdings here are frequently spread and access was granted formally.
- Examining a charge before redemption: The deed sets out what is secured and on what terms.
- Advising on a farm purchase: A scattered holding carries instruments from several separate dealings.
- Acting on a family transfer: Earlier transfers set out reservations that bind later owners.
- Reconstructing how a burden arose: Researchers work from the instruments rather than the register entries.
- Preparing to answer requisitions: A purchaser’s solicitor will raise the terms of every substantive burden, and having the instruments for a County Roscommon property to hand at the outset shortens that exchange considerably rather than leaving it to run over several weeks.
- Settling an argument from the document: Where neighbours disagree about what a registered right permits, the instrument is the only authoritative answer, and it is frequently shorter and clearer than either party expects.
- Checking what a burden means before committing: Establishing what a registered entry actually requires costs very little compared with discovering it after contracts have been exchanged.
Real World Use Cases
Farmers and Landowners: Where minerals were severed, the deed states whether rights of working, access and support were reserved with them, and those reservations affect what the surface owner may do.
Home Buyers: Property in the former coalfield area may be subject to reservations whose practical effect is stated only in the severance instrument.
Title Researchers: Reconstructing a severed title means following both the surface dealings and the mineral instruments, which diverge at the point of severance.
Lenders and Their Advisers: Security over land with severed minerals requires the reservation to be examined, since reserved working rights affect use and value.
Title Researchers and Surveyors: Professional researchers working on County Roscommon property use instrument copies constantly, because the register is an index to the documents rather than a substitute for them. Reconstructing how a burden arose, what was intended by it, and how it interacts with later dealings is work that can only be done from the instruments themselves, and the folio entries are simply the route to finding which documents matter.
Land Registry Context
County Roscommon is bounded by water on nearly every side and holds, in its far north, one of the few worked coalfields in the State – and it is the coalfield that gives its instrument record a feature few other counties share.
Arigna was worked from the eighteenth century until the 1990s. Mining over that span required more than access to a seam: it required the mineral interest itself to be dealt with separately from the land above. In many cases that was done by instrument, excepting the minerals from a conveyance of the surface and reserving with them the rights needed to work them – to sink shafts, to drive adits, to use the surface for access and spoil, sometimes to let the surface subside without liability. The consequence is a severed title, where the folio conveys the land and expressly does not convey what lies beneath it.
A folio entry recording such a reservation is brief. What was actually excepted, what rights were reserved with it and whether any obligation to support the surface was retained are questions answered only in the severance deed, and they matter to a purchaser who intends to build.
Elsewhere the county is bog, callows and modest grazing land. The Shannon runs its whole eastern boundary and the Suck most of the western one, so riverside holdings carry navigation and arterial drainage instruments, and the callows flood seasonally without any of that reaching the register.
Holdings are frequently scattered across several townlands rather than continuous, which produces access grants to parcels without frontage, and turbary grants define banks across the bogs.
For anyone working on a Roscommon title, the question worth asking early in the north of the county is whether the minerals were ever severed, because the answer changes what the folio is actually conveying.
Common Mistakes
Expecting the folio to explain its own burdens: This is the gap the product fills. The folio records that a right of way, covenant or charge exists and gives its instrument number. The terms – width, route, permitted use, maintenance, duration – are in the instrument, and reading the folio entry alone tells you almost nothing about what you are actually bound by.
Ordering without the instrument number: Each entry in Part III refers to its own instrument, and a folio in County Roscommon can carry several. Ordering by folio number alone risks receiving a copy of the wrong document, so the Part III entry is what identifies which one is wanted – /folio-search/roscommon/.
Assuming everything affecting the land was lodged: Only registered dealings produce instruments. Informal agreements between neighbours, rights acquired by long occupation and arrangements never reduced to a registered deed generate no document to copy, and their absence from the register is not evidence that they do not bind the land.
Assuming the folio conveys the minerals: In the former coalfield area mineral interests were commonly severed from the surface by instrument. The deed states what was excepted and what working rights were reserved with it, and the folio entry alone will not.
Overlooking rights reserved with severed minerals: Severance frequently reserved rights of access, working and spoil over the surface, and sometimes excluded liability for subsidence. Those reservations bind the surface owner and appear only in the document.
How To Order
The most useful thing to send is the folio number with its county and the instrument number from the Part III entry you are interested in. That identifies the exact document without ambiguity.
If you do not have the instrument number, send the address and Eircode, or the folio number and county, and say which burden you are asking about – a right of way, a charge, a covenant. Our team locates the entry, confirms which instrument it refers to and comes back to you before anything is prepared.
If the land lies in the north of the county, say so, since mineral severance instruments are the documents most likely to matter there.
Turnaround & Delivery
The instrument is supplied as an electronic copy, sent to the email address you provide, so nothing waits on the post. Each order is checked against the entry you identified before it is sent.
Where the instrument cannot be located from the details supplied, where the County Roscommon land turns out to be unregistered so that no lodged instrument exists, or where the burden you are asking about arises otherwise than by registered deed, we contact you rather than sending something that does not answer your question.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the folio not already show what the right of way allows?
No. The folio records that the right exists and gives the instrument number. The width, route, permitted use, maintenance obligations and any conditions attaching to it are set out in the instrument that created it, and that document is what has to be read.
How is the instrument copy delivered?
As an electronic copy sent to the email address you give us, within. Each order is checked against the Part III entry you identified before it is sent, so you receive the document you actually asked about.
Do I own the minerals under my Roscommon land?
Not necessarily. In the former Arigna coalfield area mineral interests were commonly severed by instrument, so a folio can convey the surface while excepting what lies beneath. The severance deed states exactly what was excepted.
What rights were reserved with the minerals?
Commonly rights to sink shafts, drive adits, use the surface for access and spoil, and sometimes an exclusion of liability for subsidence. The folio entry is brief; the severance deed sets out the reservations in full.
Do I need the instrument number to order?
It helps considerably, but it is not essential. If you send the folio number and county and say which burden you are asking about, our team locates the entry and identifies the instrument first - or you can order a folio search to obtain the numbers - /folio-search/roscommon/.
Will an instrument show old mine workings?
No. The physical legacy of workings and any question of ground stability are not registrable interests. The instrument establishes the legal position on minerals; the state of the ground requires separate investigation.
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