Anyone who wants to find out about the history of their house - of their
home - needs to read this compact, practical handbook. Whether you live
in a manor house or on a planned estate, in a laborer's cottage, a tied
house, a Victorian terrace, a twentieth-century council house or a
converted warehouse - this is the book for you. In a series of concise,
information-filled chapters, Gill Blanchard shows you how to trace the
history of your house or flat, how to gain an insight into the lives of
the people who lived in it before you, and how to fit it into the wider
history of your neighborhood.
A wealth of historical evidence is available in libraries, archives and
record offices, in books and online, and this is the ideal introduction
to it. Gill Blanchard explores these resources in depth, explains their
significance and directs the researcher to the most relevant, and
revealing, aspects of them. She makes the research process
understandable, accessible and fun, and in the process, she demystifies
the sometimes-obscure language and layout of the documents that
researchers will come up against.