This chapter deals with the architecture of your house and how it gives you clues to help you to date the property, including:

Keeping It In Context

First you need to look at your house within its surroundings. Where is it built? Settlements usually spread outwards from the centre of the town, city or village, so if your house is near the middle it’s likely to be older than houses on the outskirts unless, of course, the town has spread out far enough to encompass smaller, nearby villages. However, older properties are also more likely to have been rebuilt by a previous owner who either needed more space or wanted the property to look fashionable.

Look at the neighbouring houses too. Do they look similar? Are they from the same sort of date? Has the area been affected by the building of a railway or a bypass?

Simply looking at your house and the style in which it was built can help you give it a rough date. But there are some things you need to be wary about:

• Rebuilding or refacing – this may have been done in an architectural style that reflects an earlier or later date than that of the original building.
• Use of reclaimed materials – the building may have used material from an earlier property, though not necessarily from one that previously existed on the same site.
• ‘Retro’ styles were popular particularly in the nineteenth century, where different features from different periods were used in the same property. Towards the end of the century there was also a movement back to the original or ‘vernacular’ architecture of the particular region. The 1930s was also a period where mock-Tudor houses were built.

So it’s always a good idea to look at the physical evidence side-by-side with documentary evidence, such as deeds, plans and maps, to make sure your house really is as old (or as new!) as you think.

Major Architectural Periods And Styles

As a rough rule of thumb (with dates rounded up), these are: