Inspired by the 1921 census, have you looked up the history of your house?

[MedusasBadHairDay]

I'm not having a lot of luck finding out about the history of my house, so hoping to hear some success stories to inspire me

We're fairly certain the house was built in the early twenties as part of the drive to build council houses after WWI so I'm hoping I can find it's first residents on the census, though aware it might not have even been built in time, let alone occupied.

Ours isn't on it but is on the 1911 one and the 1939 register

My house was built in 1925 so not on any censuses yet, but I do have all the original deeds so have details of previous owners (and the maps of when it was all fields before being sold for housing!)

If you go on find my past you can search via address.

Sometimes looking at neighbouring properties on the census can help with the geography. Similarly if you look at directories they were often in order as you proceed down the road; perhaps mentioning junctions or other landmarks.

@TyneFilth

If you look at www.old-maps.co.uk for your postcode, you can go back through older map editions and you may be able to see house names or numbers for the right time period.

My house was built in 1937 so I've got a while to wait before I can find out about its first residents!

@TyneFilth Your link sends you to a website explaining you can no longer look at the maps

I tried looking up DMs house which I thought was built in 1919 but although the road exists the numbering has gaps and theirs is missing. I know that the street was renumbered when I was a child but It doesn’t make sense.

It can also be useful to look at photos, try Francis Frith, checkout wikimedia commons or your local county record office may sell historical photos that you can search on their website.

If you want old maps try the national maps of Scotland site.
It surprisingly covers the whole of Great Britain and is free and quite easy to use. Many of the maps go back to 1848 and cover until recent maps so you can see how an area has developed

Ok, getting less and less impressed by the quality of transcription. I tried searching for an address by doing a distance search and found 27 different spellings of the name of the street my grandfather lived in. Even something simple like ‘Crosses’ had eight varieties.

Do we know how the transcription was done? Human or machine?

We have no road name or house number, so I get 26 houses in the village. Guess I would need to pay for each in turn until I find ours?

Might try by occupant name instead.

You can see the first names of 3 people in each house. You could try matching this up with the names of the 1911 census and the 1939 records to elimnate some? I found in my street of 22 houses about half were still there in 1939.

I'm clueless, how do I go about this? I just trued the link for the 1939 records but no obvious matches. My house was definitely built by then!

Seems like you can't get any further than your road before being asked to pay!

My parents did this for their house a few years ago, they actually had a historian in as they live in a 600 year old place. It was fascinating!

Our house was built in 1930 but we have all the original deeds.

@Ozgirl75 that sounds fascinating! What did they find out?

@rosewater20 loads of stuff about the more recent history like how it housed evacuees in the war (and how one had stayed and then married the local blacksmith and their family still lives in the same village), various people who had been born there and their relatives, great grandchildren etc now live in the area, how it was updated with indoor plumbing and then indoor bathrooms, loads of stuff about families who had lived there, how it was at times split into two houses and then back again (which we guessed as there are two staircases at either end) etc. Nothing Earth shattering, just an interesting history of ordinary people’s lives over the past couple of hundred years.

@Happydaysandhappysmiles yes thats what ive found, and I'm not convinced it's even the right place.

I paid the £2.50 to look up my house, and as well as the record of the family who lived there, and their occupations, it provided an 1895 map which was fascinating.

We live in an old farm house, and there were adjacent buildings on the old map that are no longer there (just fields now) - plus a cottage which is also not there any more, no sign of it, and an old woodland that doesn't exist either.

@Ozgirl75 Thank you for sharing. I love history and hearing about how people lived in the past.

Our estate was built after the war. Before that it was church land with only one lane cutting through it leading to the main road. The lady who lived here before us was the first tenant and only moved out just before she died. I know this because we looked on an old map of the area and because the lady's family still live close by.

@Happydaysandhappysmiles if you click on buy transcript, it tells you a few names living at that address before you actually pay.

It appears only the houses either side of ours filled in the census as our house isn't included which is a shame, perhaps it was not yet occupied.

Part of our house dates to the early 1500s and we know more about it than the newer part. Sadly nothing came out with this census despite me buying 6 transcripts 🤦‍♀️

Sorry guys.

I’m clueless at this: my house was built in 1900, what websites should I look on to research it? This thread reads like everyone is in the know and if you’re not… you’re not!