Researching the history of your house

• the exterior of the house. Most 'ordinary' Victorian houses conform to well-established plans and types (e.g. the London terraced house) and have distinctive decoration that helps to date them. Photographs are useful for comparison with illustrations in books.
• the plan of the house. Look for evidence of alterations and compare with neighbouring houses to work out the original internal arrangement of the house.
• the interior architectural decoration. This includes all fixed features such as skirting boards, cornices, fireplaces, panelling, windows, and doors, and fittings such as door handles, fingerplates, and window catches. In particular, look at the hierarchy of decoration — more elaborate mouldings in entrance halls and reception rooms, simpler effects in kitchens and bedrooms.
• evidence of previous services: gas lights, old electrical circuit boards or bell systems.
• the superficial decoration: wall and floor coverings, paintwork, and curtain fixtures. Old paint layers or scraps of wallpaper give valuable clues to the taste and aspirations of previous occupants. Wallpapers in particular can sometimes be very accurately dated.

What sort of documentary evidence should I look for?
You local library should have a local studies collection and be able to put you in touch with the local history society. Local studies collections often include old maps, which can be very useful. Estate maps, drawn up for individual landowners to show rentable properties and plans for new buildings, are often deposited at libraries or county record offices. Tithe maps, showing individual households in each parish, were produced from 1840. The Ordnance Survey produced maps at various scales in the nineteenth century. The 6-inch series (i.e. 6 inches to 1 mile), first produced in 1801 and completed in the 1840s, is particularly useful for identifying individual properties. The historical archive can also be accessed through the Get-a-map facility on the Ordnance Survey website: www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk

How can I find out who lived in the house before me?
Your immediate predecessors can be identified from the title deeds.

Census returns are another useful source of information. From 1801 to 1831 the censuses were simply head counts with no personal information on individuals (except in exceptional cases). From 1841 personal information was recorded. The Family Records Centre (FRC), run jointly by the General Register Office (GRO) and the Public Record Office (PRO) has the population census returns for England and Wales from 1841 to 1891. They can be consulted at the FRC at 1 Myddelton Street, Islington, EC1R 1UW. Website: www.familyrecords.gov.uk. The National Archives Census pages are at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/census/?homepage=fr-census.

Local studies collections often have street directories, which contain house-by-house information on residents and tradespeople in a particular area.