The history of your home

Q How do I find out more about the history of my house?

What’s the story behind your house? The Record Office can help you research its history

A. You can approach this from two angles: who owned and occupied your house in the past, or the building and architectural history.

We at the Archives can make a start helping you with both with free access to our collections. Maps, title deeds, census returns, electoral registers, council rating records, building control plans and even manorial records and papers of large estates as you go further back can often help with the former, while our local studies library’s shelves contain a good selection of reference books giving information on particular types of architectural styles, houses or converted buildings.

Also check out our Local Studies files for a number of places where you may find newspaper cuttings and photographs of buildings or streets. Some sources can also be found on the web: the country’s census can be found on the pay-per-view family history websites and www.old-maps.co.uk has Ordnance Survey historical mapping, and you can search by place to get an overview of a particular location.

You could also make a start with your house history at home if you have the title deeds to your property. If you don’t they may be with your bank, building society, or solicitor.

Some deeds have been deposited with the record office as part of solicitors’ collections, but many earlier deeds appear not to have survived. Although the deeds for your property will not tell you when it was built they may include a conveyance of the original piece of land, or at least allow you to trace the succession of ownership.

Bear in mind that while, for some people researching a house history can be relatively straightforward, for others it can be a real mine-field. You can simply encounter problems due to the lack of survival of some types of records or due to the fact that until fairly recently not all properties had a detailed address, or the details may have changed, so you will need to work backwards through the sources to ensure the records you consult refer to the same property over the years.

Your local Archive: Cumbria Record Office, Scotch St, Whitehaven, CA28 7NL. For opening times see www.cumbria.gov.uk