Dating old buildings

[Armchair]

Are there any good books that will help me date old houses? I don't need to know the age to within a couple of years but would like to improve my knowledge of what periods properties were constructed (and extended in).

 

[Nemesis]

Click on bookshop on the menu on the left.

Plenty there which will help.

Ron Brunskill, Alec Clifton-Taylor for starters...

Nick Barrat...

 

[glayzell]

there is a website which helps date a property but looking at the stair components....but i cant find it anywhere....

 

[justin1970]

You can usually get a good idea from the census to within a ten year window. Ancestry.co.uk has a full list up to 1901. Doesn't always work... my hosue was built in 1891 and they've renumbered/renamed since then but its worth a look.

 

[plumbers mate]

Try going through the local Directories at your local library. They will show up when the street first occurs and also who lived in the house throughout it's life.

Beware, though - you will get sidetracked down every little alley there is and hours later, realise you've forgotten to check what you actually wanted to know.

 

[Nemesis]

Have a look here:

http://www.bricksandbrass.co.uk/houseage/ageform.htm

Mind it was about a century out with mine...

 

[Matey Plumber]

It came up with 1848 - 1903 - a fifty year span.

My house is 1891.

 

[Timw]

Opening up the roof void of our Norfolk cottage reveals what seem to be exceptionally thin, rather flimsy, hand-cut joists. Does this give a clue to the age?

 

[biffvernon]

It came up with 1848 - 1903 - a fifty year span.

Same result for my house - which is mid 18th century. Methinks the algorithm a bit simple.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

Are there any good books that will help me date old houses? I don't need to know the age to within a couple of years but would like to improve my knowledge of what periods properties were constructed (and extended in).

You could do worse than try these:

http://www.countrysidebooks.co.uk/book-catalogue-book-details.php?book=52

http://www.countrysidebooks.co.uk/book-catalogue-book-details.php?book=50

 

[plumbers mate]

..>> Same result for my house - which is mid 18th century. Methinks the algorithm a bit simple

The design of the questions was wrong - eg
Q - Do you have a bay window?
A - sort of.

But you have to answer Yes or No -- mine doesn't have a bay window, though the windows are built out from the front of the house and the ones across the road have little windows in the sides of the sticky out bits. So it is like a bay, but isn't one.....

 

[Nemesis]

Mine has a slate roof and two over two sashes, but originally it would have been sandstone and six over six...

 

[stickybeak]

.

 

[Nemesis]

Oh Sir Banister Fletcher - mine's the twelfth edition 1945, 'revised and enlarged with over four thousand illustrations'.

In truth I find it fun and interesting but not really totally useful for a great deal beyond 'great architecture'.

I love the Tree of Architecture illustration though!

Can't think what Disney used... French Gothic?

 

[chuckey]

Plumbers mate, when the windows are in "sticky out bits", I think you can call them "Oriel Bays", that is if the sticky out bits don't touch the ground!
frank

 

[stickybeak]

They'll be the less-well-known 'wingnut bays' then.
:lol:
More boring (altho more accurate) types would describe them as 'square bays'- if the corners are right angles. 'Canted bays' have the side elements at angles to the front elevation, and are a late Victorian interpretation of a mediaeval feature, and are what people usually visualise when the term 'bay window' is used, because there are so many of them lining our streets up and down the country. I take it from your description that you only have windows along the plane of the front elevation?
This feature appears in several different ages of buildings, including Jacobethan, where the early appearance of classical forms ornamented earlier Tudor or mediaeval buildings. See Fountains Hall, Yorkshire, lookingatbuildings.org.uk

 

[Nemesis]

What is becoming urgent with those stickyoutybits (to quote TV personality, maker of excellent telly progs about northern architecture, Pevs writer etc John Grundy) and the newly Ventrolla'd lovely original sashes is a painting session!

Possibly your neighbours will stop the onward march of placcy windows and see that conservation is best.

Then of course you will be Pathfindered and all will have been in vain...

 

[plumbers mate]

Thank goodness it's been a mild winter!
Still can't get used to the silence and stillness of the curtains when it's windy.....
I hope I'll be be long gone before that street gets Pathfindered.
We did try to get the area special status as there is such a mix of houses in our 5 terraces - small houses, tyneside flats, middle class dwellings (like mine) and posher ones in the next street - a full social mix of victorian houses except for detached.
They wouldn't go for it though :-(

When I bought the house in 1979, it was eligible for an 80% improvement grant. Thank goodness I couldn't afford the 20% I'd have had to pay!

What needed doing so urgently - according to the surveyor?
Front door - crack in a panel - replace with 1979 style front door.
Windows - replace (pre placcy and double glazing too)
Ceilings - cracked - tear down and replaster (oh my cornices and ceiling roses)
Fireplaces - strip out, plaster up holes and fit new gas fire in front room. (oh, my wonderful marble and cast iron firepaces - all four of them)
Kitchen - leave 1950's fireplace and 1970's gas fire as it was a back burner (no it wasn't! and guess which is the only fireplace we got rid of??)

The aim was a bland modern box in a victorian shell - in which case I'd have bought a bland box not fallen in love with a shabby, decrepit and filthy victorian beauty. And it's still in that condition 28 years later..... I had to watch as the house across the road was done like that though - it was heartbreaking and was done by the Council.

 

[Nemesis]

Here's Mr G, who is really far too good to be only on northern telly but there you go...

The Mountain Daisy, Sunderland?

http://icnewcastle.icnetwork.co.uk/sundaysun/thebiginterview/tm_objectid=16255752&method=full&siteid=50081&headline=passion-built-my-career-name_page.html


A pub outing required...

Here's a flavour of his latest series 'Northern Pride' a step up from 'Grundy's Wonders':

http://www.itvregions.com/Tyne_Tees/Programmes/Grundy+s+Northern+Pride.htm

http://www.tynetees.tv/Grundy_5.htm



Last prog Tuesday.

 

[plumbers mate]

He said some lovely things about terraced houses and how it was so much more economical to keep them and restore them rather than pull them down and build boxes ---- and pubs and chip shops - I could smell the vinegar! Best watched after, rather than before, dinner!