Discovering Your Old House

Every house has a story to tell. In this completely new, enlarged and update edition of a popular title, David Iredale and John Barrett describe how, step by step, the history of your old (or not so old) house may be discovered. The life story of an old house is told by the stones, bricks, timber, titles and thatch that make up its walls, floors and roof. The authors describe how different structural techniques adopted by house-builders down the centuries may provide clues to the date of construction. An unfolding story of alteration, improvement, extension (and occasional dilapidation) may be read in the layout of rooms or the style of features, fixtures and fittings. The history of an old house is also discovered in manuscripts and printed books, in archives and public libraries. These crucial sources are described and explained with the help of apt quotations from old documents and reproductions of maps, plans and pictures. Separate chapters unravel the intracacies of old title deeds, place-names and on-site survey methods. The present-day householder is encouraged to discover more about the previous generations of owners and occupiers for whom the house was a home. The more ambitious researcher is helped towards an understanding of an old house in a wider context of regional history and national - even international - social, economic and architectural trends. About the authors: David Iredale is the author of Local History: Research and writing and the the prize-winning populat textbook Enjoying Archives. John Barrett has written an episodic history of Forres Moray, from the Neolithic to the nineteenth century and an edition of the memoirs of the Presbyterian preacher and traveller James Allen (1670-1740). They are both professional archivists whose lifetime experience of local records and historical fieldwork has been shared in published articles on prehistory, local history, archive administration and geneaology. Thet are co-authors of three other books in the Shire 'Discovering' series: Discovering Local History, Discoverong Old Handwriting, and Discovering Your Family Tree.