This chapter deals with:

Recording The Property As It Is Now

Making a record of how the property is now will help you compare the present-day building against earlier photographs, plans or sketches. You may see some changes in the structure of the buildings, or changes in the neighbouring buildings. Useful tools are as follows:

Photographs

• An overall photograph of the building – do this from several angles and try to include features of neighbouring buildings on some of them.
• Close-ups of original features such as windows, chimneys, rooflines, doors, date marks, fire plaques, etc.

Plan Of The Property

Make a rough sketch as well as one that’s to scale, and make several photocopies so you can use them to make comparisons with other plans (see Chapters 6 and 7). Include:

• The boundaries of the land; it’s also useful to make notes of the position of neighbouring properties, so that you can compare them with earlier plans or maps.
• The position, shape and size of the building, including any outbuildings.
• The position, shape and size of any windows or doors.

 

Internal measurements are also useful as they will help you work out the thickness of the walls – as a rule of thumb, older walls tend to be thicker than more modern walls.

Sketch Of The Property’s Elevations

Make a sketch of the front, sides and back, including measurements.

Where Is The Property Situated?

It sounds an obvious question, but boundaries of parishes and administrative districts tend to change over the years. Make a note of the name of:

• the parish;
• the Hundred (the old administrative unit);
• the ecclesiastical district (deanery);
• the electoral district;
• the council district;
• the poor law district (or union);
• the manor or estate owner.

 

In the example of our case study, Mill House is situated in the parish of Attleborough, which was in the Shropham Hundred of Norfolk. Together with the Guiltcross Hundred, the Shropham Hundred was in the Deanery of Rockland. Attleborough was also part of the Wayland Union under the poor law. In the present day Attleborough is in the administrative district of Breckland Council, and is in the electoral district of South West Norfolk.

Changes To The Property

Do you know if the house’s name or number has changed? What about the street name? Do you know if the house itself has been extended, rebuilt or refaced? If you know of any definite changes make a list of them, including dates.

Mill House is just off the junction between present-day Connaught Plain and the High Street. As far as I knew, the High Street (which was the main street through the town) had always been called that. However, I discovered (via the census records) that the street had previously been known as Levell Street and Mere (or Meer) Street. According to an advertisement in the local newspaper the street was known as Town Street in about 1804; it was also known as ‘the turnpike road’ in the eighteenth century.

What Do You Already Know?

Sources

Look at the sources you already have. For example:

• Title deeds – these should tell you the names and occupations of previous owners, when the property changed hands, and any covenants attached to the property (for example, building lines beyond which any owner shouldn’t extend the property, or any conditions such as not keeping certain types of livestock on the land). The deeds may go back far enough to tell you when the property was built. If there is an enfranchisement deed as part of the bundle, this means the land and/or building once belonged to a manor, so you may also find records of the property and its occupants in the manorial rolls.
• Sales particulars(whether very recent or very old) – these may give a detailed description of the property, which you can compare with the building as it is now. For example, the sales particulars may refer to outbuildings that have long since been pulled down.
• Maps or plans – you can use these for comparison with your present-day records.
• Photographs or sketches – you can use these for comparison with your present-day records.

 

For example, for Mill House my parents had a copy of the abstract of title going back to 1850; there were also sales particulars from 1912, which included a plan of the area and showed who owned neighbouring plots of land and buildings. From those two sets of information I could work out who owned or occupied the building from 1850 until we moved in. Sadly, there were no photographs of the house or garden available from any earlier date than when my family moved in. There were however references to the mill itself on various maps dating back to 1797, and I knew there would be reference to the land on the tithe map dating from the early to mid-nineteenth century and the enclosure map dating from 1812–15.

I discovered a sale notice in the newspaper archive, which actually told me when the house was built. Because the property included a mill at one point, I knew there was a good chance the property would be listed in the nineteenth-century trade directories, and it was also possible that the land had been part of a manor as it was in the centre of the town – so there were plenty of leads to follow up at the record office and local heritage centre.