Forums
Posted By: spinking How to find your house history???? - 16th Nov 2008 1:44pm
Does anybody know how i would go about finding the history of my house???

Wanted to know how old who lived/died and if anything of interest happened.

Cheers peps.

If anybody has a way of searching pm me for address (of course if i dont know you i wont give it raftl )
Posted By: MissGuided Re: How to find your house history???? - 16th Nov 2008 1:53pm
Usually when a house changes hands so do all the papers associated with the property. Or at least that's what has happened to me twice now. If you were not given a load of paperwork it may be with the mortgage lenders. You could check with the solicitors who did the conveyance.
I've got the original deeds for the first time my house was bought and everything since then. Also the details of who owned the land etc
Failing that you could try the Kelly's directories (reference library) to look back at names associated with the address. Sometimes people in the area will have little stories of the people who lived there.
You'll be able to see what was there hopefully by looking at the tithe maps and other maps of the area. You could probably get a rough idea of when the property was built by comparing maps from different dates.
If your house is old enough you may be able to find details of occupants from Census results.
Also try te Land Registry - though this will incure a fee.
Can anyone add anything to this?
Posted By: little_pob Re: How to find your house history???? - 16th Nov 2008 2:49pm
Links to census records for England and Wales from 1841 to 1901: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/census/
Posted By: hoseman Re: How to find your house history???? - 16th Nov 2008 3:00pm
As Miss said, you can get all the documents relating to your property from the mortgage lender or the solicitors (think thats who i got mine from)
Mine is good, shows all the area around and the development in stages, not just for my road (cul-de-sac). Shows the proposed area, and then later after the houses and streets were built, all the changes they made!
Over the road is a layby, which on the plans shud have been a road into the next street, which was never built and ended up being a factory complex - not demolished and developed into houses, nursing home and store and car park!
Tells the conditions of trade that can occupy the ares, abatoirs, steel works etc!
Realy good info to find out about your local area, not just your house!! thumbsup
Posted By: chriskay Re: How to find your house history???? - 16th Nov 2008 11:20pm
As MissGuided said, the Land Registry will provide information. A record or a plan costs £3
http://www.landregistry.gov.uk/
Posted By: _Ste_ Re: How to find your house history???? - 17th Nov 2008 4:38am
Or if you goto earlston libary they have books upstairs which list everyone who has lived in the house from a certain year to whatever date the book was published (obviously) lol
Posted By: Morseman Re: How to find your house history???? - 17th Nov 2008 9:08am
Originally Posted by _Ste_
Or if you goto earlston libary they have books upstairs which list everyone who has lived in the house from a certain year to whatever date the book was published (obviously) lol


Agreed but a lot of theirs were destroyed by bomb damage in the war. Birkenhead has the full set.

Hope you don't live in the house where the guy hanged himself in the loft and wasn't found for a couple of years, or the one were the old lady of the house collapsed onto the fire and melted. I worked on both houses years ago and it was spooky. I was in the library some years ago and got talking to a lady who was searching the books. She wanted to know who lived in her house previously because there was a ghost in it. We knew there was a ghost in it as well because it was well known when we lived around the corner from it in Moreton.

I know in my house there once lived a police sergeant. I know it used to be an orchard before it was built on. I know a man was tried for murder in the street way back when they had hanging but he was found not guilty. I know they used to have pigs and cows in the street years ago. Hard to imagine that Wallasey used to be quite rural. There was a model farm on Rullerton road Liscard years ago and the house is still there to this day. Worked on that as well.

I can remember the farm on Breck road but am digressing. Hope I haven't put you off? laugh
Posted By: chriskay Re: How to find your house history???? - 17th Nov 2008 11:12am
Originally Posted by Morseman
Originally Posted by _Ste_
Or if you goto earlston libary they have books upstairs which list everyone who has lived in the house from a certain year to whatever date the book was published (obviously) lol


Agreed but a lot of theirs were destroyed by bomb damage in the war. Birkenhead has the full set.



What are these books called; i.e. what do you ask for at the library? I'd be interested to have a look at my old house.
Posted By: _Ste_ Re: How to find your house history???? - 17th Nov 2008 1:13pm
Originally Posted by chriskay
Originally Posted by Morseman
Originally Posted by _Ste_
Or if you goto earlston libary they have books upstairs which list everyone who has lived in the house from a certain year to whatever date the book was published (obviously) lol


Agreed but a lot of theirs were destroyed by bomb damage in the war. Birkenhead has the full set.



What are these books called; i.e. what do you ask for at the library? I'd be interested to have a look at my old house.


Sorry chris i cant remember frown
I remember reading through them though when i was younger as i wanted to know who lived in our house before us in seabank road as i heard it was hit by a bomb and had a bedroom missing.
Posted By: _Ste_ Re: How to find your house history???? - 17th Nov 2008 1:16pm
they are huge thick red books and are on the top floor, only thing is, where they used to be is where the internet cafe is now, ask the libritian for assistance mate, it would be interesting to have a scan through these again, good luck chris happy

ste
Posted By: chriskay Re: How to find your house history???? - 17th Nov 2008 2:32pm
Thanks, ste. I'll just ask for a huge thick red book then. laugh

Cheers, Chris.
Posted By: Jeeps Re: How to find your house history???? - 17th Nov 2008 3:21pm
You can find out who lived in your house in 1901 from the Census by searching this site. http://www.1901censusonline.com There is a fee, I think it's £5 and you can get about 5 searches for that. As far as I know there is no where else online where you can do an address search against the Census returns.

Now that compulsory registration is in force in the UK, the mortgage lenders/solicitors don't necessarily have the old title documentation because registration rendered it obsolete and old documents can take up a lot of storage space. What often happens/happened is that after 1st registration the deeds were sent to the current owner of the property and the mortgage lender/solicitor kept the Charge Certificate/Land Certificate. When the property is sold on, the old deeds would remain with the person selling the property and just the updated Charge Certificate/Land Certificate would get passed onto the new owner (normally their mortgage lender or solicitor would hold it). So the deeds in many instances will no longer be with anyone connected with the property iyswim. I hold the deeds relating to the last house we sold in England over 14 years ago because they are no longer relevant or needed for the sale of the property.

The Land Registry will be able to supply you with Office Copies of the current Land or Charge Certificate and there may be details in there that you might find interesting. HTH. smile
Posted By: Morseman Re: How to find your house history???? - 17th Nov 2008 5:06pm
They are called Kelly/Gores street directories. You will find every house in them and who lived in that house at the time. Bet you find your dad/grandad in them. They only stopped producing them in the 60's. If you ever get your hands on any them keep them as they are gold dust these days.
Posted By: Jeeps Re: How to find your house history???? - 17th Nov 2008 5:53pm
There are some online directories here http://www.historicaldirectories.org/hd/index.asp They are a bit of a pain to search, imho, and it's better looking up names rather than addresses but they may be of use to someone. smile
Posted By: dingle Re: How to find your house history???? - 18th Nov 2008 1:51am
Thanks Jeeps, these are the Kelly and Gore directories previously mentioned and I found who lived in my old house in 1900. Excellent, well done.
Posted By: dingle Re: How to find your house history???? - 18th Nov 2008 1:54am
I like the suburb Tranmere Park, cool....
Posted By: spinking Re: How to find your house history???? - 18th Nov 2008 6:57am
Exellent cheers peps.
Posted By: Morseman Re: How to find your house history???? - 18th Nov 2008 7:25am
Originally Posted by Jeeps
There are some online directories here http://www.historicaldirectories.org/hd/index.asp They are a bit of a pain to search, imho, and it's better looking up names rather than addresses but they may be of use to someone. smile


Yes but in Kelly/Gores you can look up both. Either the address or look for the name. Ideal for cross checking. Only lists the main occupant though so if you are looking at family history you will have to dig deeper.

If anyone is not aware then you can check your Cheshire ancestors on here http://www.cheshirebmd.org.uk/ Of course it is likely that some of you youngsters might not realise we used to be Cheshire laugh

These are not full lists as they are still working on them but you can find a fair few ancestoral relatives if from Cheshire.
Posted By: dingle Re: How to find your house history???? - 20th Nov 2008 1:34am
Just some tips on the online Historical Directories, Kelly is by name and or business and Gores is by street name. The easiest way is to select the decade then browse the directory and manually put in the image number and work out backwards and forwards, as per the alphabet. Somebody in another thread was looking for Orderly Place , I could not find it in the 1900 directory. Still checking to see if there are any later ones. But they have heaps ofinfo for most of the wirral.
Posted By: dingle Re: How to find your house history???? - 20th Nov 2008 1:50am
OK my bad, Kelly does have street address as well, but still can't find Orderly Place. But an interesting one is a pork butcher in Oxton Rd named Carl Deuschele I wonder if that became Dashley in later years(Pork Butcher in my time 50's onwards).
Posted By: chriskay Re: How to find your house history???? - 20th Nov 2008 9:44am
Originally Posted by mindplayer
OK my bad, Kelly does have street address as well, but still can't find Orderly Place. But an interesting one is a pork butcher in Oxton Rd named Carl Deuschele I wonder if that became Dashley in later years(Pork Butcher in my time 50's onwards).


Seems very likely.

BTW, it's Orderley Place; found it a map.

Cheers, Chris.
Posted By: jonno40 Re: How to find your house history???? - 20th Nov 2008 9:54am
Apparently during the early 1900s there were quite a few German family's in the Birkenhead area and a few butchers amongst them but a lot of them bore the brunt of the anti German riots after the sinking of the liner the Lusitania on may the 7th 1915 of the coast of Ireland
Posted By: Morseman Re: How to find your house history???? - 20th Nov 2008 2:26pm
There was one in Victoria road New Brighton called Bohms. Used to love going in there. Mother used to buy poloney (sp?).
Posted By: Snodvan Re: How to find your house history???? - 20th Nov 2008 8:32pm
Folks

Memories, memories. You are stirring up memories about books I have seen in the past. I am SURE I have/ had a small book listing the roads in some areas of Wallasey/ New Brighton and who lived at each address & what was the main occupation. I KNOW I had. The problem is I have maybe 1000 books in the house and the storage/ ordering is not what it should be. I could also have loaned it to someone because I have not seen it for yonks. Loaned it to mother is most likely - I will ask tomorrow.

While having a quick hunt tonight I found these two. Again I knew they were there but had forgotten about them until you all started this thread. I'm getting too old I think.

Snod

Attached picture Books_s.jpg
Posted By: dingle Re: How to find your house history???? - 21st Nov 2008 12:30am
Great Snodvan, now all we need is for you to to start posting the books one a t a time.......Er um alright I'll get me coat... whippy
Posted By: Snodvan Re: How to find your house history???? - 21st Nov 2008 5:27pm
Hummm - mother remembers the book of road names/ houses/ occupants & occupations but says she does not have it. However, she always says that.

Maybe this weekend I will "tidy" one of the bookcases and it will magically appear.

Snod
Posted By: history Re: How to find your house history???? - 1st Dec 2008 6:41pm
if you want Cheshire directories try

http://cheshiredirectories.manuscripteye.com/index.htm

I have Ancestry and can get the census.

When we moved into our house, we were given all the paperwork for the past owners. We were even given transcribed wills before our house was built and the way the road was.
Grange Road West used to have a farm on it in the late 1800's.
Posted By: genji Re: How to find your house history???? - 18th Feb 2010 8:35pm
Originally Posted by Snooze
Usually when a house changes hands so do all the papers associated with the property. Or at least that's what has happened to me twice now. If you were not given a load of paperwork it may be with the mortgage lenders. You could check with the solicitors who did the conveyance.
I've got the original deeds for the first time my house was bought and everything since then. Also the details of who owned the land etc
Failing that you could try the Kelly's directories (reference library) to look back at names associated with the address. Sometimes people in the area will have little stories of the people who lived there.
You'll be able to see what was there hopefully by looking at the tithe maps and other maps of the area. You could probably get a rough idea of when the property was built by comparing maps from different dates.
If your house is old enough you may be able to find details of occupants from Census results.
Also try te Land Registry - though this will incure a fee.
Can anyone add anything to this?


This was excellent information - thank you.

I think I've exhausted all online resources now, but the tithe maps and some of the old maps posted elsewhere on this forum have been really interesting.

I'm interested in the top end of Whetstone Lane, which, I think, was listed as part of Holt Hill for some time (Wellington Terrace was, anyway).

I'm still drawing a blank because I believe the house numbers have changed over time.

I'm planning on going to the Wirral Archives near Pacific Road, unless someone can tell me it's a waste of time...
Posted By: diggingdeeper Re: How to find your house history???? - 18th Feb 2010 9:41pm
Look in the Electoral Registers, when Roads change name there is often bracketed info about it in the index.
Posted By: Roslynmuse Re: How to find your house history???? - 18th Feb 2010 10:31pm
Originally Posted by Morseman

Hope you don't live in the house where the guy hanged himself in the loft and wasn't found for a couple of years, or the one were the old lady of the house collapsed onto the fire and melted. I worked on both houses years ago and it was spooky.


The old lady one wasn't in Birkenhead was it? Near Grange Road West? I've a vague memory of something like that happening to a relative's neighbour.
Posted By: genji Re: How to find your house history???? - 19th Feb 2010 7:19am
Originally Posted by diggingdeeper
Look in the Electoral Registers, when Roads change name there is often bracketed info about it in the index.


OK, thanks.
Posted By: 2005wireman Re: How to find your house history???? - 27th Apr 2013 6:54am
I Can remeber its having that name back in the 1980s Cause i used to deliver the morning paper and the liverpool echo in the evening.At christmas he would get a big roll off notes out of his apron and give me my xmas tip. Nice bloke and his staff.
© Wirral-Wikiwirral