Genealogy Chat

Have many people managed to find the buildings that are former family homes/workplaces?Are they 'grand' places or somewhere you would rather not be?A large part of my family lived and worked in the Steep Hill/High St/Bailgate part of Lincoln.Save for new shopfronts the buildings remain pretty much as they were (and no renumbering to worry about either).Glen

Well Glen, as you know I wasnt aware I moved to my rellies homeground 20 odd years ago - the small town is still very ancient in most places so when I walk along the roads and look at the market cross and go to the abbey, I know all my ancestors have walked the same roads, seen the same buildings - its brilliant. If I go to the abbey I walk down the aisle that my ancestors did when they married. If I sit on the pews in the little country church 3 miles away I know I am sitting in the same place and looking at the same stained windows and carved decorations as them. Fabulozo or what?

Hi Heather I was doing just the same a few weeks ago,when i moved i didn't know that my other line had come from these parts. Spooky isn't it,i worked 30 yards from the church where g g/m got married for four years,then moved to where my other g g/m had her children and died.Now i often visit the church where she is buried and wander along the beach where she went with her hubby (the coastguard chap). I found out yesterday that the first house i bought was the very same building that a great uncle lived in during 1901.A very small world. Glen

The descriptions of the damp, insanitary hovels, with a ladder up to the sleeping area, where most of my ancestors would have lived in Edgefield, Norfolk mean that they scarcely needed to be demolished: they would have fallen down at a touch! One of my Edmund Skillings did move to Dragaway, however, and I've visited his cottage. Even have a photo. The agressively modern wallpaper made it impossible to visualise the place as it had once been, though. The only reason I got in was because it was reputedly haunted, by a man in a Norfolk jacket.

I have the odd Norfolk rellie or twenty.Never have managed to get that way since starting this though. The biggest dissapointment with the Lincoln branch is that photographs are so difficult to take,there are so many tourist attractions in the area that you can never get a picture without a crowd of people in the way,and the other half isn't mad keen on traipsing around when the shops are shut!! Glen

The best bit of luck I had with this was when I visited a Somerset village where my g-grandfather lived. We couldn't find the house, so asked at the local paper shop if they had heard of it's name. They said No, but another customer said, ''I remember that name''....the house is the third one up the lane, but it hasn't been called that for years......we went and looked and sure enough there was a small name plate on the garden gate confirming the old name. Next bit of luck was that it was obvious the builders were in, so we asked them where the owners were?? They said they were away on holiday. We showed the builders photos we had of part of the house (c 1920's) and they said, ''Oh, that's round the back''......come in!! So we got to look all round, both inside and out - far more than we would ever had seen if the owners had been there rather than the builders!! Merry

I hope you guys realize how lucky you are. When you are somewhere like Australia, unless you are Aboriginal, you can only go back a little way. Well 1788, but that's not far in the scheme of things. Last week I found my great, great grandfather's grave. It was the second oldest in the cemetery and he died in 1868. He was born in Cabrach parish, Scotland. I also found the church my other great great grandfather built in a Queensland country town. It was the first Weslyan church in the district and was built in 1873. He was a stone mason from Devon. It is heritage listed so can't be pulled down, so that is something.

Glen, Ive said it before and I will say it again, all the experiences Ive had since starting this lark really makes me think we have inherited memory and that we feel safe in certain places cos our ancestors have lived there and that memory is in our genes/cells. Im sure it must be so, I remember just 'knowing' this place was home when we first drove into it and we bought a house that very day after months and months of searching places and them not feeling right. When I go to the church up the way where my lot who could afford headstones (though tarty daughter) are buried, you cannot imagine how my racing thoughts - normal for me unfortunately - just calm immediately and I feel safe. Ive had an email from the church warden from the church this morning, asking me to pop down as they have a stone mason working there and asked if I wanted to chat him up to do the repair on one of my ancestors headstones.

The house my gt grandfather John David Robert Smoothy was born in is now a listed building and beautifully maintained, on The Green at Richmond, Surrey. I've also seen the house (ordinary terrace) in which another gt grandfather, Charles Williams died in 1924. I know its the original as the date is inscribed on it. A lot of places have been rebuilt etc, but often the road is the same, even if the name has been changed - you can still picture the layout. Some relatives ran pubs and pictures of the pubs are on the internet. Sadly the place where my gt grandparents Thomas and Emma lived and had 3 children (2 of whom died in infancy) is now underneath the new Arsenal stadium. Some sites need more imagination than others! nell

We were lucky and found my hubby's GG or GGG Grandfathers house in Dulverton. It's now an art gallery so we were able to go in and have a look around at the size of the place. It was a great feeling.

We went upto suffolk last year and a lady showed us around the village, my gg grandperants cottage was still there, also some of the track that they worked on. Karen.

I must agree with Heather. I was born on the Wirral, went to Chester Teacher Training College in the '70's. I shared a house near the college with 5 other girls. [My dad thought that his family came from the Chester area but didn't know for sure.] I have since found out that several rellies once lived in the same area as the college. In fact I probably walked past one of the houses regularly on my way into the city! Spooky, or what! I am going to spend my next visit to England taking foto's of them,.

If you google the Crown pulic house in Kelston Somerset you will find where my great grandparents lived. The website even has a picture of one of the bedrooms. Incidently I can recommend it if you are in the area and want a drink. Not sure about the bit about the lounge table being used as the local mortuary - too much information I remember eating off it when I was a girl.

Actually Nell, thats interesting as my GGFx2 was the licensee of the Rose and Crown Tavern in Richmond. Its still there - have a google to see it - gorgeous place, apparently part of the manor there centuries back - Ive seen old photos of it with the stables still next to it for coaching I guess. It was also apparently a meeting place of London's 'beautiful people' at that time, all the poets and artists and they were taken in the back door to avoid the early Victorian paperazzi which seems to have consisted of sketch artists!

Glen One of my most treasured photos was sent to me by someone I don't even know. I knew the address for my great and 2x great grandparents and that the property had remained in the family until my (batchelor) great uncle died in 1979. I managed to track down the name of the present owners and wrote to them, giving the history of the house as I knew it and asking if they would mind, when I was up that way, if I took some photos - it is up a deserted farm track and wouldn't be easy to photograph inconspicuously. By return of post I received a whole pile of pictures of the house - how it had been when they bought it, the work they had done to 'restore' it - they have taken it almost identically back to how it would have been in 1900 (apart from the electric and running water LOLOLOL) and a note to say I would be more than welcome to give them a ring and go and have a look anytime I want. I haven't managed to get there yet, but I will. I stick to my motto - It always pays to ask nicely, the worst anyone can do is say 'no' - and in this case I have some priceless - to me - pictures that I wouldn't ordinarily have got. Looby PS - the local 'hostelery' which is where I would stay if I went up was once run by a sister of my 2x great grandfather

There are some interesting places in Australia too, though, Elizabeth. I've just found out that an ancestor of mine was a silver miner who worked in what is now a ghost town, part of which has been renovated for the few tourists who get out that way.

I bought a postcard on Ebay of the row of houses where my maternal grandmother was born. It turns out she had written it to her aunt in 1910 when she was 12 and had put ' I'm sending you this because you can see our house on it'! Spooky or what?! Jack

Jack That IS spooky, but you must have been really chuffed to get that! I recently visited Botley in Hants where my 4 x ggrandparents ran the Catherine Wheel Inn during the nineteenth century. I had emailed the Botley Local History society in advance of my visit & was told that the inn had been converted to a bakery & subsequently 2 small shops with flats over now called Catherine Wheel Mews. We went into one of the shops & the woman who ran it was unaware of the history of the place but was very interested when I told her why we were there! You could still see on the outside that the original building was old & it was great to be able to stand in the actual building. Much to my shame, I didn't buy anything! Angela

I must really get some pictures of the Berwick area,the quayside and the town hall etc,if i ever get the plot numbers for my two dear departed baby great uncles (probably unmarked i would think) maybe they will be more of a reason to get there a little more often. Glen

I must have been realy lucky, because I have found quite a number of roads and houses that my relatives lived in. Many of the houses were miners cottages, and have been gentrified & extended. The same applies to the houses in Hammersmith that my grandmother and her parents lived in. I hit pay dirt at the Lila Huset local studies library in Hammersmith. I expressed an interest in the road they had lived in, and they refered me to a lady who was writing a history of that very road. She knew of my family (not personally - she wasn't that old) and she showed me lots of maps of the area, and explained a lot about the demographics of the place - occupations etc. She also referred me to the Booth website which mentions many London streets. The entry for Cardross Street mentions the many dirty faces of children at the upstairs windows! One of those dirty faces could have been my gt gt something or other! Shivery feeling...... Jacquie