Published: 12 January 2012
by DAN CARRIER

EVERY house has a story to tell. And now a new book by historian Trevor Yorke offers a guide of how you can turn detective to trace the history of the place you live in.

“We are a nation passionate about old houses,” he said.

“We stand in awe of the grandest, renovate the modest and admire the quaintest.

From rural cottages to urban terraces, our deep-rooted love affair with rusticated facades, traditional materials and structures that are contorted by age constantly draws our attention to period properties.”

Mr Yorke said the history of individual properties reflected the ambitions of past owners and tells story of the community around it.

Mr Yorke, who is also an illustrator specialising in architecture, first became interested in unravelling the secret histories of the homes we live in when he bought a new house.

“It simply looked odd,” he recalled.

“I knew a bit about architecture from years of illustrating buildings and it seemed to me that the roof was too shallow, the timbers too broad and the windows were all wrong for the size of the house.

“As it turned out, my suspicions were right – it was half of a much larger 16th-century farmhouse, the other half having been demolished in the 19th century and a row of workers’ cottages built in its place.”

The book helps us trace the reasons our homes were built where they were and in the style they were crafted in.

It is split into easy-to-understand chapters over the centuries, dealing with the pressure on developers to make money.

We are also treated to sections on materials and construction – how what lay beneath the earth in one area prompted homes to be built in one style compared to another, due to the availability of materials.

For example, the colour of the capital’s streets is provided by the classic London stock brick.

We have grey granites in Cornwall, rusty limestones in the Cotswolds, and gritty sandstones in the Pennines that contrast with black and white timber framing in Cheshire, weatherboarding in Kent and colourful mud walls in Devon.

“Even when these traditional local materials were superseded by brick in the 19th century the qualities of the clay used for bricks still coloured the finished product, from the yellows in London to the rich reds of Manchester,” writes Mr Yorke.

Then there are the fashions: windows, doors and other decorative detailing that give a street its character, and  a consideration of trends inside.

Finally, for the amateur historian, Mr Yorke looks at how to trace previous incumbents of your home.

Through census records we can now trace who lived where in Camden just before the First World War.

Victorian trade directories, available at the Camden Local Studies Archive, also offer an invaluable resource: as they can tell you if a business was run from your home, as well as providing names of previous tenants for further research, while other sources include electoral rolls.

• Tracing The History of Houses by Trevor Yorke. Countryside Books, £9.95