At the end of a day of record-breaking temperatures in the county, we were delighted to welcome back Gill Blanchard for our latest monthly meeting.

Gill is a professional house historian, genealogist, tutor and author of several books, including the excellent ‘Tracing Your House History’.  A regular contributor to Family Tree magazine, she has appeared on the TV Series Who Do You Think You Are?, as well as having conducted behind the scenes research for the programme.

Gill opened her comprehensive presentation with a personal view that researching the history of a property is a perfect ‘micro-history’ project, bringing together family, local and social history in one place.  She also made the point that experienced family historians will already be familiar with many of the records used to trace the history of a house.  However, she was also quick to suggest that it may be necessary to recruit specialist skills, particularly if knowledge of a property’s architecture is required.

She then went on to talk through a broad range of potentially productive records, including Ordnance Survey Maps, Tithe Apportionments and Maps, the 1910 ‘Lloyd George Domesday Survey’, the National Farm Survey of 1941-1943, Title Deeds, Sales Particulars, Wills and Census Returns.

Gill’s talk also included a number of ‘golden rules’ to be borne in mind when starting out on a property history project.  These can be summarised as follows:

- Don’t begin with too many pre-conceptions based on family stories or rumour
- Fix landmarks in the area surrounding a property of interest by reference to modern and historic maps.
- If you are researching your own property and cannot locate original title deeds, it is always worth having a word with neighbours, as it is possible they hold Deeds that may shed light on the origins of your home and/or the land upon which it was built.
- Much of the archived material relevant to property research is held in local archives, so make a point of searching their online catalogues.
- Detailed estate maps often capture details of properties and ownership beyond the main buildings depicted.
- Some of the more specialist record sets are now available online, e.g. the subscription service provided by the Genealogist now includes Tithe Maps and Apportionments and the Lloyd George Domesday Survey.

Chris Broom

Paid-up members should have received a file of Gill's presentation slides,
attached to Maggie Strutt's email of 11/8/22 at 13:35.

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INTERESTED IN THE HISTORY OF YOUR HOUSE?  

Join us for our July meeting and hear what Gill Blanchard has to say.  Discover the main resources to find out where your ancestors lived, and trace the history of your own home.  Find out which documents can be used to build a picture of what homes looked like in the past, inside and out.  Discover how to find out who lived in a building at different points in time, and when, how and why it was built.

Gill at her last talk to us in June 2017

Gill Blanchard is a professional house historian, genealogist, tutor and author of several books, including "Tracing Your House History".  She has a series on ‘Tracing a House History’ in Family Tree Magazine, and has appeared in the TV series "Who Do You Think You Are?", as well as researched behind the scenes for the programme.

This event is free to members ‘attending’ over Zoom, and is also available to non-members at a cost of £3.00.  If you wish to ‘attend’ please register via https://avsfhg.org.uk/book/ (our «Book for our next Zoom talk» page), and you'll be sent joining instructions.  However, at a cost of £6.00 for a full year’s membership, why not consider signing up with this growing band of family history enthusiasts now?

Further Programme:  Traditionally, we don't hold talks during the August holiday period, but our Autumn programme is in preparation.