A House in Time BBC 2

[LouiseBrooks]

Anyone else watching? My house is around 150 years old and I've looked it up on a couple of censuses but there's nothing as interesting as this. (Mine is also much smaller.)

I loved this too, our house is over 200 years old and it has made me want to find out more about the people who lived here (also in Liverpool). I know the lady before us lived here for about 80 years. My DH painstakingly stripped layers of paint off our fireplace and I really love it, we are really keen to keep as much of the features of the house as we can. I can’t wait for the next episode, if only I had a spare 600 grand I would put an offer in. I imagine that house will sell fast after the coverage it has had

And the use of clerk pronounced wrongly was irritating

Grockle - agreed!

How did they pronounce clerk?
Clark?

They were saying clerk rather than clark, Lill. And a later contributor was saying clark which reassured me I hadn't completely lost my grip on English.

I think it would have been pronounced clerk at that time.
Or it could be a Liverpool/northern thing.

The pronunciation has changed over time
Going to check

Looks like it was pronounced clerk originally( from cleric/clergyman)
We took that pronounciation over the Atlantic, then it began to change here in the South.
www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2012/03/clerk.html

Yes I'd expect clerk from an American but not in a 'history lite' thing on the BBC. It may well be a Liverpudlian thing but it just jarred.

Yy to wanting to know more about the women. It might be that records are harder to come by for women and children, but the programme could have surfaced that. Jane Garvey tweeted about this too.

It may be a South - North thing e.g. the way bath is pronounced; the phonetic way is the short 'a' in 'bath' not the drawled ""barth"

As I'm sure you are all aware

I wanted to know more about the women and children too, but I guess a historian can only go by what's in the census and other public records. Anything else would be speculation and I quite admire David O/the programme for resisting that, especially as the stories in the first episode were potentially quite juicy.

I can't find the Tom D programme about streets on Google Anyone know what it was called?

I did a local history project in school, it's amazing what you can deduce from the old records. I had school registers, and it was so sad because I could see a family with 5 children and 2 of them died. I still remember their names

Don't know that Tom fella, it's not the one about the road in Notting Hill?
Looked him up on IMDb, there's only these

Yes, I think one episode was about Notting Hill. Is it Saving Britain's Streets? The description doesn't quite sound like what posters on here are talking about, but maybe it is.

It was a fascinating programme and the presenter is excellent. I feel there isn't enough teaching of social history. We see to be obsessed with learning about wars and conflict.
The house is lovely. I really like the area. It's full of great bars and restaurants and you have your choice of two Cathedrals!

Not to mention the excellent Everyman and Unity theatres which are a stones throw away.

Saving Britain's past- the last episode is called The Street

Inspired by the programme, I dug out our old deeds for this house.

Built around 1850 or so. It was a quarry cottage owned by a huge landowner and the cottage had tenants for a long time. It was finally bought in 1901 by a man who presumably couldn't read and write and so just had an x mark which was notarised by a solicitor presumably.

I'd be interested to find out more. One of the problems is that a few successive owners changed the name of the house each time.

Thanks, Lillie.

Yes thanks Lillie

. Popchyk This house in Fr. is very old (poss 15C) but our deeds only go back as far as the farmer who used to own it as a ruin. It's on a site that had 6 11thC towers on it and is built with the stones!

It's common here! But I'd love to get it and the garden looked at by archeologists.

It's normally said " Clark". As in the surname.

The English man's pronunciation jarred. Maybe he chats to a lot of Americans.

I enjoyed it very much, but the application of 21st century sensibilities to 19th century actions jarred a little. there was nothing in the information given to suggest Wilfred had 'abandoned' his family to go to America. He could have done it with the full consent of his wife in the expecation that she and the children would join him at some point. It was pure speculation as to why he joined the Union side in the civil war (or why he joined up at all) and the background information on the civil war itself was very simplistic. And yes, he was a cotton trader and the trade was enabled by slavery, but the presenter should really have put his own views on this aside - not relevant at all (and in any case it wouldn't have been hard to guess).

I agree with you, squashy, particularly about the reasons why Wilfred went to the US and joined the side of the army he did. I did find myself wondering where the notion of 'abandoned' had suddenly come from in the commentary.

Loved this. Right up my street 😂

Agreed squashy & Rhiannon. My family research shows married men going off alone to North America. One definitely abandoned his family. The rest mostly seemed to end up back in the UK or the family appears in North America.
We can't possibly know his long term plans or his motives.

RhiannonOHara - the previous series about the streets (Notting Hill and others) was called The Secret History of Our Streets.