Hidden House History

6. Ancestry

You can often discover details of the identity and occupations of previous residents of your house by visiting www.ancestry.co.uk. Ancestry and Hidden House History can offer you a special 30-day free trial, just type in promotion code HHH when you register your details.

Although you can still search Ancestry.co.uk without registering you will find that your searches are restricted and unfortunately you will not be able to view any census returns, therefore we advise you to utilise our 30-day free trial in order to access all relevant material.

Censuses are carried out every ten years but are not viewable to the public for 100 years, so if your house was built after 1901 then Ancestry’s census information will be of limited use. However you can still use the site to search the family history of your home’s former residents or to search nearby older houses to get an idea of the people who used to live in your hamlet, village, town or city.

Searching Ancestry

There are three ways of searching Ancestry.co.uk: by name, by address and by searching the census manually.

1. Search by Name: Ancestry.co.uk is an excellent resource for searching family history records. Your own house details and title deeds should outline who previously owned your home and this is a great way of beginning the search into its history.

Select a census and use the search facility to input as much information as you can about the previous residents.

If you do not have the full name of any previous residents of your house then you can still search the censuses. If your house is old enough, then the 1881 census allows you to search by address.

2. Search by Address: Using the 1881 census, the search by address facility should provide you with the names of those people who lived in your house in 1881. Residents often stayed in houses for a long time, they may well have been there ten years either side of 1881, so it’s worth searching their names in both the 1871 and 1891 censuses as well.

Select the 1881 census and input your road address, you can try and input your road name and number or just your road name.

If you do happen to know who lived in your house previously then input their information as well; this is a quick and easy way of finding your relevant census information.

3. Search Manually: (Step by Step Guide) If your house had not been built in 1881, or does not come up in that census, you can still search through other censuses without using the standard search box.

Use www.visionofbritain.org.uk to identify your parish and www.old-maps.co.uk to aid you while you search the census and follow the following steps to search each census.

Please note that it is only possible to search the census this way if you are registered and logged in.

A. Select Your Census
Ancestry.co.uk contains censuses from 1841 – 1901. Select the census from the homepage, which can be found beneath the search box.

B. Select Your Location by County
This option can be found below the search box and is listed in alphabetical order. This page also gives you detailed information on the census.

C. Select Your Civil Parish www.visionofbritain.org.uk should have provided you with this information, however, if it has not, try contacting your local council or archive office. Your civil parish is similar to the area covered by the initial part of your postcode e.g. W12, TW2 or BS9 and is likely to be the name of your town or village e.g. Twickenham, Watford or West Teignmouth

D. Select Your Enumeration District
Your enumeration district could be likened to the second part of your postcode in that it covers a smaller area within the civil parish.

You will notice that your enumeration districts are listed and numbered. Before viewing each district make sure you “View Description of Enumeration District”. This will describe the area that particular enumeration district covers, an example passage of this is as follows

“All that part of Twickenham containing the south side of Church beginning at Church Row, Bell Lane, Church Alley, School Alley, and Water Side, including the Eel Pie House”

Read each description until you have found the one that describes your area. This is where having a map from the period in which the census was conducted will be helpful in identifying nearby farms, schools, churches and pubs.

E. Browse the Census Return
Once you have found your relevant enumeration district you will need to select the district number and this will bring up all copies of the census for that area.

Use the “zoom” button to enlarge the view and help you read it, and the “next” buttons to go through the census page by page. You can also skip through pages by entering the page number you wish to move forward to.

You should continue to search your relevant censuses in Ancestry.co.uk in this way until you have gained as much information as you need. Don’t forget to investigate the other resources that Ancestry contains to help you with your Hidden House History search.