Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past Wirral History How to find your house history????

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 )

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?

Links to census records for England and Wales from 1841 to 1901: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/census/

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!!

As MissGuided said, the Land Registry will provide information. A record or a plan costs £3
http://www.landregistry.gov.uk/

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?

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
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.

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

ste

Thanks, ste. I'll just ask for a huge thick red book then.

Cheers, Chris.

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.

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.

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.

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.