This chapter deals with:

• the work you’ll need to do before you start looking at primary sources.

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.

Date the property was built

Do you know exactly – or even approximately – when the property was built? You may be able to narrow it down by using maps. See Chapter 6 for more details about the different types of maps that can help with your research.

Before I started my research into the history of the house, I knew from the deeds that Mill House existed in 1850; obviously there was a mill nearby at some point, which gave the house its name. The mill was marked by a little ‘windmill’ symbol (of an x-shaped cross on an oval, sitting on top of a triangular post) on Faden’s Map of Norfolk in 1797 (see picture 6.9 on page 96) and there was a similar symbol on Bryant’s Map of Norfolk in 1826, which had a slightly larger scale. However, neither of these two maps was detailed enough to show the cottage itself. So all I knew definitely was that the cottage existed in 1850 (and, from the architectural evidence, probably before then) and the mill was there from at least 1797.

Listed buildings

Is the building listed? If it’s over 150 years old it may be recorded on the Department of the Environment’s list of buildings they think are worthy of preservation. English Heritage holds descriptions and some photographs of listed buildings on their website, www.english-heritage.org.uk – a particularly good database on the site is Images of England www.imagesofengland.org.uk/, which holds photographic records of listed buildings. However, note that the description of the property is unlikely to be very detailed as it’s based on a very brief external inspection.

There is also a list prepared for the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, which is rather more detailed and sometimes includes maps and plans.

I checked the lists for properties in Attleborough. I wasn’t expecting to see Mill House on the Historical Monuments list, but I was disappointed to discover that it wasn’t on the Department of the Environment’s List. There were also no records whatsoever of the mill.

Secondary sources

Is the building named in any secondary sources? (See Chapter 3 for more details about secondary sources.) These include:

• Pevsner’s Buildings of England series.
• The Victoria History of the Counties of England series (VCH for short).
• Street/trade directories (if the building is not noted in the actual street lists, it may be mentioned in the potted history of the city, town or village).

I checked the secondary sources for Mill House. There was no mention of the building in Pevsner or in the VCH. However, the street directories were much more useful. Pigot and Co’s National Commercial Directory of Norfolk and Suffolk for 1830 gave an intriguing reference to John Mann at ‘Attleburgh Great Mill’ as well as listing a mill owned by Thomas Dodd (near an area known in modern times as Dodd’s Road, to the south of the town), one owned by William Harris at Rivett Lane (now known as Hargham Road), and ones owned by Robert Lovett and Robert Palmer at ‘Bisthorpe’ (now known as Besthorpe). Earlier directories named some millers, but not their exact locations within the town – which meant checking the census returns to see if I could fit names to locations.

Former use

Do you know if the building was formerly something other than a house? Examples are:

• a shop;
• a mill;
• a farm;
• a hospital;
• a workhouse;
• a school;
• a pub;
• a toll house.

For any of these there may be additional records you can look up, such as licensing registers for a pub, log books for a school, or minutes of the Board of Trustees for a hospital, workhouse, or school, or Turnpike Trust for a toll house.

There may also be contemporary articles in local newspapers about the building, for example when it was built or when the school, hospital or workhouse opened or closed, as well as who built or owned it, and who worked there. Local newspapers might also cover events at the building – if there was a flood or fire, for example, or if there was an epidemic at a school or workhouse, or if there was a royal visit or a visit by a celebrity to a school or hospital. (See Chapter 10 for more information about researching in newspapers.)

If the house involved a business such as a pub, shop or factory, there may also be advertisements in local newspapers or in the early twentieth-century trade directories.

Local historians may also have built databases or websites about particular types of buildings such as mills or pubs; these may contain information about your building. There may also be organisations that specialise in the history of particular types of buildings, and who may be able to give you more information about your home.

For Mill House I knew that there had been a mill near to the house (because of the name of the cottage and also from the position of the mill marked on early maps of the county – Faden’s Map of 1797 and Bryant’s Map of 1826). So that meant that I could check trade directory listings for millers – and that in turn would help me cross-check against census records for occupants of the cottage, assuming that the miller lived near to his workplace.