House research - even if the house isn't particularly old

[JohnArmer]

My house was probably built in the 1870s so isn't particularly old, but as most know there's a wealth of information to be gleaned from census records, newspapers and BMD records of the previous inhabitants.

What has surprised me, though, is how much information I've been able to find out about the land the house is built on - before the house was built. The land it stands on was part of a much larger field, enclosed as an allotment in the Inclosure Acts, which means I now know who owned the field in 1808, when the road at the front of the property was created (the same year as the enclosure) the name of the field ('Newfoundland'), the name of the road (which was quite different from the current name), the field's tithable value, and the fact that there was some sort of building on it before my house was built. This has led me to find out about the owner of the land and his role in the town etc etc, and when the land was sold before it was built on. It also explains why the house isn't parallel to the road - it is built on the edge of the old field boundary created in the enclosure.

I've found out quite a bit online (the British Newspaper Archive is well worth the subscription), but a visit to the library and County Record Office was needed to view the Enclosure Award and Tithe Map. I'd say this part of the research has been just as fascinating as finding out about the house itself.

 

[Socksitis]

Very interesting to read how you have got on with your research. I found the BNA very difficult, all I could find from it was when our house was up for rent or sale, but nothing newsy. I have a sneaking suspicion on the house of something happening like a fire or some reason for extended emptiness, but I cannot get the search in the BNA past the adverts?
Any tips would be most welcome.

 

[CliffordPope]

I found out a bit about mine when I was contacted by a Canadian woman researching her family who had lived here in the early eighteen hundreds. She pointed me to gravestones in local churchyards which mentioned the house. I've often searched churchyards looking for family names, but I'd never have thought of looking for house names regardless of surname. No one ever indexes them.

Old maps are useful obviously, but it doesn't follow that all the details were re-surveyed at the date of the map. Early 20th century OS maps of this area show houses that had been demolished in the previous century, some now just slight bumps in fields. There's a time delay. Just as Google and Street View are 10 years old, maps can be 100 years out of date.

 

[charlieboy]

The BNA enabled me to find the name of our house. I was hoping that the name would give me a clue as to the origins of our house.
It turns out that it was simply called “The Cottage”
(Strangely the other half of the semi was also called “The Cottage”)
More interestingly the farmhouse and farm on the other side of the road is “The Cottage Farm”. So, was the farm named after our house or was our house the original farmhouse? I suspect the latter since our house is about 500 years old and the farmhouse opposite is only 200 years old.
The farm is called “The Cottage Farm” rather than just “Cottage Farm”. I can’t quite get my head round the subtle difference the word ”The” makes. Any ideas?
CB

 

[Feltwell]

Interesting! The British Newspaper Archive didn't have much on my house, which is even newer at 1899, but it did confirm a suspicion we had that one room was for a live-in servant. The archives had 2 adverts, from 1906 and 1909, for a "General Servant, Country Girl preferred, must be fond of children". The poor girl would have frozen here in winter - it's a 3 storey house, but with fireplaces only on the bottom 2 floors. She had a decent size room but it would have been cold!

I need to do some more research here really. I've got some old maps, but that's about it. One thing that did surprise me was the head of a local auction house died here in 1939, leaving £9000 in his will, which must have been a fair sum of money back then - t'interweb says £571k in today's terms - but he only rented the house, he didn't own it.

Does anyone know what permissions, if any, were required to build a house in Victorian times? I know the modern planning laws didn't really start until the 1940's.

 

[malcolm]

I found my pub was used to hold auctions in the 1800s. The newspaper archive has thousands of auction listings under the name.

 

[Owain]

Interesting! The British Newspaper Archive didn't have much on my house, which is even newer at 1899, but it did confirm a suspicion we had that one room was for a live-in servant. The archives had 2 adverts, from 1906 and 1909, for a "General Servant, Country Girl preferred, must be fond of children". The poor girl would have frozen here in winter - it's a 3 storey house, but with fireplaces only on the bottom 2 floors. She had a decent size room but it would have been cold!

I don't expect she got to spend much time in it, up at 4.30 to blacklead all those fireplaces before Master's breakfast :lol:

 

[Owain]

The BNA is a useful source - I've just found that my road may be named after a local doctor or surgeon. Or perhaps it's where a medal winner in WWI died in France.

 

[CliffordPope]

Does anyone know what permissions, if any, were required to build a house in Victorian times?

I think there had been some sort of control in London since the Great Fire, and sanitation regulations came in as a result of cholera epidemics in the mid nineteenth century.
But it's hard to believe there was any kind of regulation in the countryside until much later. Before local government came in, who would have bothered to keep a check?