The 2011 census forms have been thumping onto our doormats over the past few days in preparation for March 27. How very different the answers for those in my Somerset hamlet will be from the last publicly available record, of 1911. Then, apart from the odd railway worker (the railway came to the valley in 1856 and closed 100 years later), nearly all the 300 or so occupants were involved in agriculture and born in the county. Although only four houses have been built since then, and the village’s population has scarcely grown, it is rare these days to find a native — and farmers can be counted on one hand.
This 10-yearly peep through the keyholes of the nation is a godsend to those interested in house and family history, listing inhabitants, their ages, occupations and number of rooms. When the 1911 census data was published online in 2009, the website crashed, such was people’s interest in finding out about the history of their house and their ancestors.
Fortunately, the census is not the only record we have to go on. Thanks to the internet, it has never been easier to conduct research from your own desk, rather than traipsing around libraries — or, at least, to check the online catalogue to see whether it’s worth making the journey in the first place.
A good website to start with is ancestry.co.uk, which charges £12.95 for a month’s premium membership (this can work out cheaper than pay-as-you-go if you have lots of things to look up) and includes births, marriages and deaths, wills, military records and even criminal records, as well as early telephone and trade directories, which give addresses.
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Like thousands of others, I have decided to research the history of my house. Nobody tells you what a dangerous drug it all is — I have morphed into the love child of the Archers’ Lynda Snell, badgering neighbours for information, and Edward Casaubon, George Eliot’s dreary clergyman, whose scholarly researches are never finished.
I have morphed into the love child of the Archers’ Lynda Snell, badgering neighbours for information It can be a frustrating and slow business, with many dead ends, but don’t be put off.
As Jane de Gruchy, an archivist at the Somerset Heritage Centre, who has been helping me, says: “It is very much like piecing together a jigsaw when you don’t know what the picture is meant to be.” And where is the fun in a jigsaw that is finished in five minutes?
There are things I have learnt the hard way. When visiting libraries, as well as leaving enough time for staff to bring out musty old documents from back shelves, and remembering to take a pencil (pens are often banned near precious old documents), you must take a digital camera with you.
Photograph everything you look at, remembering first to take a picture of the reference number: you think you will remember what box the document came from, but you won’t. Even if something seems irrelevant at the time, at least you have it recorded when you later realise that, in fact, it was crucial.
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This happened to me recently on the train back from the National Archives, in Kew, southwest London. After a seemingly fruitless visit, I was as despondent as JR Hartley, searching for Fly Fishing, as I flicked through 1910 land returns for the parish, which I had recorded slightly blurrily on my phone. Then... bingo! There in tiny writing was a reference to “cottage, OS211” — my house and its Ordnance Survey reference — linking it to a farm not even in my village. Now I can appreciate how happy Hartley felt when he found his precious volume.
I know the house is older than that, however, as it appears as a blob on an 1810 estate map. These are a great help in seeing whether there was a building (though be warned, it might not be your present one), especially in urban areas, where there will be building and development plans. Ordnance Survey maps go back to the 1840s; you can find them on sites such as old-maps.co.uk.
Written records are not the only clue to your house’s age. That mine was the building standing in 1810 is confirmed by the style in which it was built, as I discovered when John Rickard, of the Somerset Vernacular Building Research Group (svbrg.org.uk), came round for an inspection. Although the house is humble, with no fancy architectural details, he noticed a few things that dated it to the late 17th or early 18th century. These included an “apotropaic symbol”, carved on the inglenook and intended to keep witches from coming down the chimney. (Fat lot of good that did, some who know me might say.)
Those not lucky enough to have a knowledgeable amateur group nearby can bring in the professionals, such as House-historians.co.uk, based in Kent and East Sussex, or Sticks Research Agency (stick.org.uk), led by Nick Barratt, the Public Records Office-trained sleuth who has appeared in television programmes such as Hidden House History and The House Detectives. If you live in or within reach of London, it will do your work for you, from £250 a day.
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The more people who collaborate, the more knowledge can be shared. On sites such as ancestry.co.uk, you can often gain access to others’ findings and compare them with your own. In my own case, I have extended my delving to the whole parish and put something in the monthly newsletter encouraging others to join in. Some are enthusiastically coming on board: only last week, I got an email from the local quarry owner, saying archeologists had found evidence of a Roman settlement there. Another neighbour who had done painstaking research in the pre-internet era generously lent me his papers.
Oral history is, of course, gold dust, and few can be as lucky as me in having neighbours who have been in the same place all their lives. Tom Spratling, still working on the family farm at 90, lived next door for 50 years. He told me how his father used to tie up his horse and cart in my back garden, before the second world war brought tractors. He also remembers the three spinster sisters who ran the farm to which my cottage belonged in the early 20th century. They tied feed sacks round their dresses to keep clean while working.
Not something you will find in the records — although maybe, one day, a photograph of the fetchingly garbed sisters will turn up in a dusty old box.
For the record
Ancestry.co.uk, findmypast.co.uk and scotlandspeople.gov.uk have lots of information from censuses, telephone books, births, marriages and deaths, criminal registers, shipping lists and more.
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The National Archives, based in Kew, southwest London, has a directory of local sources (nationalarchives.gov.uk/archon) and an online catalogue of its own records and those from elsewhere.
For architectural research, try RW Brunskill’s Traditional Buildings of Britain (YUP £20) or Tracing the History of Your House: The Building, the People, the Past by Nick Barratt (PRO £5.99).