How can I find out how old my house is?

[mfarrar]

Hi,

I am in the process of buying my first period property and was wondering if there is anyway I can find out the age of the house. At the moment im pretty sure its pre 1850 it is attatched to a chapel that was built in 1790 but im not sure what came first the chapel or the house. The house has undergone extensions so has lost its original look which is why im assuming it isnt a listed building, but it definately hasnt changed in appearence from 1900 as I have a photo of it taken in that year.

Is there anyway I can find out roughly when it was built?

Thanks,

Mark

 

[TheForge]

Hi Mark,

Thought I'd bump this back to the top as new posters first posts take a day or so to be moderated and appear.

It's often not straight forward to pin down an exact construction date for a property but there are lots of ways in which you can begin piecing together evidence to hazard at least an educated guess.

Obviously physical features, construction methods, materials and architectural styles can give clues to a rough period at the very least. There's a lot of literature on the net and in books such as English House 1300-1800 M.Johnson or Vernacular Architecture, R.W Brunskill, whilst there's a host of guide books available on tracing your house's past like Tracing the History of Your House by Nick Barratt.

Documentary evidence will be able to take you a long way in narrowing the potential construction date down and exactly what evidence exists will tend to depend where you are in the country, most relevant information will be in the local records office.

Maps are your best and often most accessible resource to pin down a date. Quite simply if you can find a dated map of your property that doesn't show a structure where the house now stands you can begin to assume it must have been built after that date. If you can then find a later dated map showing the house you have identified a window in which it was built. Unfortunately accurate, detailed maps tend not to exist for many areas before the late 18th century.

However enclosure maps and the tithe maps if the 1839-40s are pretty extensive and should be easily accessible at your local county or town records office. Shortly after this various scaled Ordance Survey maps began to be produced with increasing regularity.

Once you've narrowed a possible time window down you can begin looking at written evidence such ad census returns (First census was 1801 but property details only reliably included from about 1831), parish records, sale records, newspaper records and any surviving deeds to be more accurate.

There's plenty of House History companies about who'll undertake research for you for a healthy fee if you have the money but not the time.

Architectural Historians such as Julian Orbach can tell you a lot about your property simply from its physical features but again generally charge for their services. (Although if your house is especially interesting you might be able to arouse their curiosity enough to encourage a free visit!)

Unfortunately our house pre dates maps if our area and we haven't yet been able to date it more reliably than pre 1750 but I would think that if your house was built during the 1800s it should be quite easy to narrow down its date of construction.

Where abouts are you located as I'm sure others might be able to give more localised advice and possible sources?

 

[PeterI]

Good question, the best map for our property was the 1844 tithe map where it's clearly visible. However I suspect it's a bit earlier than that (probably somewhere between 1826-37).

One question is how initial house sales were done? Was this an advert in the paper or some other means? Did they have estate agents back in 1840s? I keep meaning to go and have a look in the local records office and see what I can find.

I'm also wondering what the process was for compulsory purchase in the 1870s as part of the garden (and I suspect the building itself) was used for the Deptford fever hospital, would there be any records of this? We still have a covenant for the NHS to able to inspect the garden wall dating from when the property was auctioned off in the 1960s so I suspect the whole row of buildings was bought as part of the hospital building process (after all who would want to be quite that close to a fever hospital) maybe to provide staff housing.

 

[mfarrar]

Thanks for the replies. The house is in Newton on trent near Lincoln. I was actually able to find out quite a bit of information from a book that was written on the history of the village, it included a picture from an original map from 1885 so I think this may be the earliest map available. The house looked to be the same shape in the map so I don't think there have been alterations since then. The front of the house has been extended by about a metre and if it wasn't for this extension the two front reception rooms and the front bedrooms upstairs would all be square and the same size, which I believe is a georgian feature? Also the pitch of the roof is very low so you can't really see it from the road at the front. Other things I have found out is that the plaster is lime with horse hair and also I think the floor upstairs might be lime and ash.

 

[TheForge]

Hi again Mark, there'll almost certainly be an earlier tithe map from the 1830s or 40's which will be in your local records office and might even be available on line. Lime ash floors are increasingly rare and should be conserved and protected if it really is!

Any photos of the house?!

 

[mfarrar]

I think it is probably a Lime ash floor, a contractor working on the house said he thought it was very strange for an old house to have 2 inches of concrete upstairs and he was wondering whether the house was an old post office and that it had been done for security. After doing a little research I read that lime ash is often mistaken for concrete and I also found online that one of the listed houses in the village has lime ash so im assuming where there is one there is others and likely a close proximity to a lime kiln.

Here is the photo from 1900 it is the house in the middle:



I have had a look at some of the online maps and have emailed one of the companies to see if one of there historical maps from the 1820s is detailed enough in the area to show the individual houses.

 

[mfarrar]

I managed to get hold of a map listed as from 1826-1840, unfortunately the detail isnt really good enough to be of great help. There does look to be a building shown in the place of the house however its impossible to say really if this is the house and the chapel or just the chapel.

 

[another_richard]

For enclosure awards you be needin to be searchin 'ere you be:
http://hds.essex.ac.uk/em/index.html

And 'ere: http://hds.essex.ac.uk/em/index.html

An' 'ere: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/advanced-search.aspx?tab=1

 

[mfarrar]

It does list an enlosure map of Newton in Lincolnshire dated 1768 this would probably pre date the house though. To view the map I take it you have to go to the local archives?

 

[plasticpigeon]

That's a really interesting picture. There are elements of the picture that would have made me assume it was later than 1900, such as the square bollards, and the proportions of the buildings, especially the building next to your house (is that the chapel?). I'm obviously not very well informed, especially about buildings in your area. Do you have pictures of your house today, just as I'm nosey and I'm interested to see how it's changed.

 

[mfarrar]

Hi, Yes the smaller building attached was an early methodist chapel which according to the book I read was built in 1790s. If you go onto google maps you can look at the house as it is today on street view its on High street, Newton on trent. As the property is pretty much on the road you get a really good view of it using streetview.

 

[CliffordPope]

I think you need to be careful with maps. Just because it was drawn on a certain date doesn't mean the author did a survey and only entered features that were actually there. Usually I suspect they just used the last edition and only changed anything that was glaringly altered.
I have found local examples a) of houses still unmarked decades after construction, or b) houses still marked as extant long after they have been demolished. I have a local ordnance survey map supposedly dated 1905. But in the small print it says it was based on surveys carried out from the mid 1800s onwards.

 

[mfarrar]

Yeah I guess it's not all that surprising things like that happening with the maps.

Found out something interesting today, the damp specialist that was in said the roof looks to him to be 1720s and he also said that the floor upstairs is definitely lime ash. He asked if there was a nearby farm as he thought it looked like it could have originally been a farm hand cottage or farm building, as there is a grade II listed farmhouse pretty much next door this would seem likely. The listing for the farmhouse says it has a date stone on it saying 1724 which ties in with what he said about the roof.

 

[plasticpigeon]

Amazing, it looks the same on google maps as the picture, although the shop seems to have gone. The building in its place looks to be in keeping with your house and other buildings though.

 

[mfarrar]

Yes the house exterior doesnt appear to have changed for the last 100 years. The shop changed to a bycycle shop later and eventually closed. The attached chapel became a warehouse and I think was eventually abandoned until it was eventually renovated at the same time as ours in 2008. The renovation of ours was featured on homes under the hammer, I managed to get the DVD which was good to watch.