The word mortgage has an etymology believed to be from Old French mort meaning dead and gage meaning pledge.
In a traditional sense for most of us a mortgage is a loan on property where the deeds for said property are held by the lender until the loan is repaid.
The mortgage lender will loan you the money to purchase a home or land from the present owner, The deeds for the property are then transferred to the mortgage lender from the present owner since this is there insurance against you defaulting on the debt since without the deeds you cannot resell the property. After you have repaid the loan and interest, which is typically over a 25 year period the mortgage lender will then release the property deeds over to you.
There are a number of different schemes in which the loan is repaid and I hopefully will be outlining some of these in forthcoming blogs. What I cannot do is advice you on your personal circumstances, for this you need to consult an Independant Financial Advisor or IFA that in England is governered by the FSA or Financial Services Authority.