Moved to a 1930s place, interested to try to find out more about its past. Things like what it looked like when marketed, who lived there, any old photos or aerial imagery of the area.

Where is best to start? Google brings up Zoopla and the like which is not what I’m after

the local library archives, i’m sure someone their will be able to advise

Census records?

Best to speak to neighbours, especially if there is any elderly ones around. Use it as a chance to get to know them and offer help to them if they ever need it too. Might be nice for them for you to pop round for a cuppa and a chinwag about the street!

I got a couple of photos from neighbours of our last place and a full run down of who lived there over the last 50 years! Difficult to know what it might have looked like in the past – maybe there is a house which has been kept nearby on same street with its original features you could check out.

Elderly neighbours who have lived in the area all their lives would be the best source. You can get historical OS maps that show quite well the development of an area. A local museum might be a good place and you could try contacting the Parish Council.
EDIT – as above !!

Your local council archive probably has the builder’s plans, they do of my 1901 place, together with the planning permission docs.

Brighton and Hove has this;

http://www.mhms.org.uk/search/apachesolr_search/?filters=type%3Adirectory&solrsort=created%20asc&retain-filters=1

You type the name of the road in and it gives results from all the street directories back to the 1790’s. You can see the occupants names for every house and see them changing over time.

There may be an accessible online resource like this for you locally.

When I had to get older building regs docs for my last house it was going to cost a fair bit from the local council for anything that wasn’t online already. They wanted to charge me £70 but I argued it should be only £20 in the end.

Good call on the neighbours have been meaning to ask when I see them, but given its been winter there hasn’t been much chance.

There are some build,in general regs from the 60s around the garage but that’s all I can find, it looks like it had a lift in it at some stage of its life as bits of it are still present but boxed in. Also found whopping electrical things that Google tells me we’re. Used for external neons….

Seems to be no regs from the time half the garage was converted or a flat roof ensuite built, and it would appear the stair well hasn’t had any railings for at least the last two sales. All odd stuff which make me want to find out a bit more about the history.

All ready found an online OS map which shows where bombs landed in the blitz and now I know you can see that house opposite is different

This website has some incredible shots of where I live, including a holiday park at the end of the road which I had no idea existed. Hopefully it has some shots of your area.
Britain from Above

Start with your local authority archive service (often known as County Record Offices). The National Archives have an interactive map and you can filter it by ‘local’.

I bought an 18th century building a few years back, it was a repo and the modern deeds were just a soulless sheet of A4!

I researched previous transactions and managed to find the solicitor who had the original deeds bundle in storage. I explained the situation and they said they were happy to let me have them. I took a couple of nice bottles for their trouble.

They turned out to be the most fascinating historical record – they listed previous owners, their occupations, children… You could link instance when the property changed hands to events – such as the death of a child resulting in convictions for drunkenness and the subsequent loss or sale of the property.

To quote STW parlance but without the slightest hint of glibness, it really brought the place alive for me!

I’m lucky in that the village has an online historical archive of photos, so anyone can search for their property or add photos of their own.

My local town also has a very active facebook group called “Preston Past & Present” – your area might have something similar – where local historians share photos and info. It’s fascinating!

Somebody (probably on here) posted this link before

http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16&lat=51.4468&lon=-0.3283&layers=175&b=1

I used it to work out the manor grounds our 1930s house was built on, and why all the street names have a Portuguese reference.

Interesting project. My Mum and her gentleman friend lived for a time in an old thatched cottage, probably Tudor, in rural Wilts and he calculated that around 600 people could have lived in the house.

My Mum and her gentleman friend lived for a time in an old thatched cottage, probably Tudor, in rural Wilts and he calculated that around 600 people could have lived in the house.

The house must be huuuuge.

Some awesome resources posted above!
I’ve always wanted to find out the history of my area.
Although my house is only 20 years old, it’s built on an old railway station and the entire railway line has now disappeared! That’s Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway that closed in 1964. The photos and maps online are incredible to see. I could spend weeks pouring over them.

Aerofilms photo collection…

http://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/

plus the whole of the UK was photographed from the air by the RAF, starting 1946. I think they are aavailable, records centre in Swindon?

https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/

http://www.pastscape.org/

http://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/gateway/

https://canmore.org.uk/

And yes, slowoldgit they are here in Swindon

ask the people who used to live there?

Strip all the layer of wallpaper back one by one. If you find the words ‘get out’ or similar written on the walls in blood, then you can be reasonably sure that some nefarious activity has taken place at some time. You should also probably move out ASAP.

I have a desire to paint something sinister on the walls of our house prior to any wallcoverings going up, but suspect Mrs Feet would not be too agreeable.

When I was fitting a kitchen in my first house, I thought it would be amusing to form the packing tape/polythene into a baby-sized mummy and hide it under a dustsheet in the corner void.

I’ve often wondered if anyone ever found it!

In my defense, I was young and foolish…