30 May 2020
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Not sure which street you should research? Adèle Emms shares her tips for choosing the road that's right for you.
#StoryOfOurStreet is challenging anyone from anywhere in the world to explore the story of your street. Find out more here.
We're inviting you to research either your own road or perhaps a street where an ancestor lived, using maps, photos, oral history interviews and clues from your walks around the area to chart your street's history.
Here, Adèle has some advice on picking a street to research.
Where?
Unless you have a lot of time, choose a relatively short road with only a few houses! In a long road, limit yourself to a section between two side roads or just one side.
When?
The road should be old enough to be interesting with potential for historical research.
A road built post 1960 won’t reveal much – but it’s always fascinating to learn how the land was used before development.
Those millions of semi-detacheds built between the wars in every village, town and city are approaching their first century.
Who?
The first occupiers of my Edwardian Street ranged in age from late 60s to babies and a handful had live-in servants. It saw the burgeoning female suffrage campaign; its young men marched into two world wars and some names are carved on our local war memorial. Streets founded from the Georgian and Victorian periods cover even more social history. The changing economics, politics and development is as intriguing as
the residents.
Pick an era...
Limit yourself to an era; for instance, the end of WW2 for a largely Georgian street. 1990 for a street built after the 1919 Housing (Addison) Act promising to provide Homes for Heroes for soldiers returning from WW1. Sticking to the stop date is a rule I find challenging to obey…
Find more about Adèle's work on her blog.
And to find out more about your street history, receive a FREE copy of Pen & Sword's Tracing your house history book when you subscribe to Family Tree magazine today. Click here to claim this offer today (click 12 issues).