Finding House History?

[Adam F]

Does anyone have any tips or sites to help me research the history of our Dorset 1700's Georgian Farmhouse?

It is Grade II listed, and despite my wife being a fanatical family tree researcher - finding out anything on the house has been very hard work.

We are planning a visit to our local records office, but I would have thought that the mighty www. would have had a small amount of info? We cant even find the listing details?

Thanks

Adam

 

[Flyfisher]

You might find a photo and the listing details here: http://www.imagesofengland.org.uk/

The www can certainly be useful but it's not guaranteed to have the info you're looking for, much will depend on how 'grand' or significant the house is to the general area. The online census records allow you to search by property, so you should be able to find out who lived in your house at the time of the census. Local records may not be on the web and therefore still mainly paper and stored in the county archives but the indexes might be on the web - that's the case with our Norfolk records anyway. I'm sure it must vary quite a bit from county to county.

 

[Adam F]

Thanks Flyfisher - the images of England website was one I found when we moved in but had forgottern and not found since.

Our house is listed: http://www.imagesofengland.org.uk/Details/Default.aspx?id=438021&mode=quick

The image is the 'poorer' less grand back of the house which is a shame, but good to see it listed. We will have a better look through the census records - it looks as though the name changed at some point.

Thanks

 

[DaveBrigg]

I managed to get a couple of great early pictures of our house from a postcard collector in a nearby town. He had hundreds of the local villages. I found him after searching on Ebay for items of local interest, and then realised that he had written a book full of postcard pictures of the area.
The national archives in Kew had an ordnance survey name book of our village too (and possibly one for all towns and villages) It dated from about 1840, and listed the correct spellings of all the features named on the 'new' local ordnance survey maps. There was also a 'comments' column, which named the person who owned our house then. The features are listed in geographical order, with a distance (in rods and chains) from the local church, so even if your property has changed name, it still might be able to identify it. I believe that the National Archive will email pictures of documents for a price, if you know exactly what you are looking for.
The archives also hold the hearth tax records covering most areas of the country in the latter half of the 17th C. Our one just lists names of property owners and number of hearths, so it may not be possible to precisely pinpoint which is your house, if it was around at that time. I have looked at our local archives, but most of the pre 20th C documents just refer to 'transfer of a house', or 'sale of 6 acres in the East field', making it hard to track things down without a name.

 

[Bitstreams]

I've been trying to do this for our place and found the county archive the most useful. Our centre had a Tythe map which shows who owned the house and also who was resident in it. I could then use census records to get the family names (but obviously only really as far back as 1841). To go back further you'd then look for wills etc in the county archive (or online if you have a subscription with somewhere like ancestry.co.uk) .

Ordnance survey maps are also interesting - 1818 is a date that springs to mind. This all may be too new for your place.

As for photos - our place wasn't ever grand enough to warranty a photo.

Simon

 

[Adam F]

The house is listed on oldmaps.co.uk - I ordered a copy of one of the oldest maps for the wife for xmas.

Thanks for all advice - off to the local archives I guess.