Getting a bit stuck with history before 1840ish

[GrendelsMum]

So the house history is also person history?

You need to find the perosn in the census to find where they where born - as it may not be in the same parish as the house is built. Then once you have the parish where the person that lived in the house was born you need to look at the parish register for about the date they where born (although baptisms can be days to weeks to months or years after birth)

House history it is useful as well to use estate maps and tithe maps as they can someotimes dshed light on additions to a house or who owned it - or just what the land was before and perhaps the field names (there are books on English field names)

Thanks very much IvyKaty! That's a very helpful tip about finding everyone's parish in the census and using that to work backwards - I've been collecting their parishes but didn't make the connection with the parish registers. I'll run through all of those next.

I've actually taken a leap forward since posting this as another post on this board directed me to RootsChat, which directed me to a local history society page, which turns out to have digitised the parish records for the county between 1801 and 1837. So suddenly I have a whole load of extra information!

It's really house history, but I thought I'd try and do a reasonable description of each family to live in the house - names, ages, professions etc, and a little about their life story.

glad you have got a break - the other site is very good and a lot of help when it is needed