Like so much of British bureaucracy, the peppercorn ground rent system is antiquated and pointless. It's also entertaining. The name comes from the historical use of real peppercorns to seal property deals, which was first reported in the codices of King Aethelred (King of Wessex around the 11th century AD) and became a common occurrence in the 16th and 17th centuries. The little pods of spice were rare and very valuable during the Middle Ages and beyond, and were thus the perfect way to collect bills, debts and taxes. But as time went on, peppercorn exchanges became symbolic, and ceased to be used to generate income. In legal terms, a lease can only be valid with an exchange of goods or services, and so the practice survived as a way for renters to confirm a commitment to their landlord, and would often come in the form of acts of service (like working the land).
Nowadays, this form of rent is a token exchange between people – a gesture that denotes a formal exchange between parties, rather than having any monetary significance. So despite the reduction of value in peppercorns, we still call this little symbolic gesture ‘peppercorn rent.’ The term today refers to any trivial exchange, usually for long-term lease agreements. It tends to be as little as a pound, and is really akin to signing your name on a form or shaking hands.
But peppercorns weren't the only eccentric thing that changed hands according to English common law rules, some of which remain today like surreal relics from a bygone era. The University of Bath currently rents their land from the East Somerset Council for one peppercorn a year, as is traditional, but The Covent Garden Area Trust must pay an annual rent of ‘five red apples and five posies’ to commemorate the area's history as a lively produce marketplace. Flowers, and roses in particular, have long been a popular form of peppercorn rent; the 15th-century Suffolk landowner William Clopton once allowed a lease on part of his land in the town of Hadleigh for the payment of a single red rose each year ‘si pytatur’ (if demanded). In 1984 a descendant apparently began to demand the rose, and a tradition began of placing one on Clopton's tomb in the church at Long Melford. The National Coastwatch Institute has a slightly less appealing agreement, paying their ‘peppercorns’ in the form of one crab per year. This isn't the only seafood charge; the Billingsgate fish market rents their land from the Corporation of London for one salmon a year.
The City of London pays the Crown two knives – one blunt, one sharp (but of course!) – per two plots of land. At Sevenoaks Cricket Club, they lease their pavilion from Lord Sackville for the symbolic rent of one cricket ball per year.
Some of the earliest recorded peppercorn rents in America were uncovered in the Tarlton Library, Texas, where a landlord requested a ‘haunch of venison’ to be given at Michaelmas (September 29th) to mark the end of the harvest season, as well as ‘two hens at Christmas and ’one red rose on the quarter days' (March 25th, June 24th, September 29th and Christmas Day).
Though it seems like an outdated practice, it was enshrined yet further in the law in 2022, when The Leasehold Reform Act changed the law on peppercorn rent in the UK, prohibiting ground rents on new leases from being higher than one peppercorn per year. The aim here is to avoid issues caused by escalating ground rents and to effortlessly create a legally binding contract. It also maintains a strange and silly tradition that has puzzled tenants for hundreds of years.
