Genealogy Chat

Hi everyone A few weeks ago I found the house where my ancestors lived 140 years ago. Ever since I've had this 'pie in the sky' dream that when I win the lottery I'll buy it! Has anyone bought a house because it was once occupied by their ancestors, or have moved into a house and since discovered that it was once the home of their ancestors. Just interested. Rachel

Hi there, I haven't done that, though as a child I always wanted to live in my Grandparents' village and hoped I could buy (or inherit) their house with it's long garden... but I think I wanted my nostalgia more than the house! Couldn't imagine living there now - it's in the middle of nowhere and they sold 100 feet of their garden and there's another house built on the land so the memories are all that's left! On a slightly different thread the house we live in now is no. 33, and a few years ago I met (at a jumble sale at the local church) a lady who lives at no. 39. She told me she was born and brought up in the house I live in and she got married to the son who lived at no. 39, they lived there with his parents until they died, then he inherited the house, then he died and she inherited the house. She has grown up daughters and has just had a massive house conversion and they are now back living with her having been living elsewhere for however many years! I'm just about to move house and it's strange to think that we'd have just passed each other for years in the street if we hadn't got talking at that jumble sale! Abi

YES after my Mum died in 1980, OUR family home that had been lived in since 1912 was then vacated. IT was a rented house.always had been ,but was OUR house. It was owned then by a housing associaton & a few months later i saw it up for sale. I longed to be able to buy it as didnt like the idea of strangers living in it. Totally impractical .its a four story victorian house with six bedrooms two reception rooms two kitchens & a scullery plus two rooms in the basement we called the anti rooms. Hubby & me were in our thirties with one child. Shirley

What a wonderful thing to do if you could manage it. I think that I might be just a little bit worried that the rellies might come back and try to join me though!! Some of the houses that I have found have been rather too grand for me to even think of buying. Others were probably Victorian slums and have been pulled down.

Thanks for your replies. It's good to know that I'm not the only sentimental one around here! To me houses are more than bricks and mortar - they hold the memories of lives now passed. We have our memories too - I often remember fondly the times spent at my grandparents home as a child. Rachel

This isn't QUITE the same but -- three years ago at a wake after a Naval funeral an English woman was 'sent out' to talk to the other English women who were outside (me included). This, I must say, in Canberra Australia. I had never seen the woman before and have not seen her since. She started talking about going back to England but how she wouldn't be able to afford to buy the sort of house she would want -close to the sea in Cornwall. I said that if I went to live in Cornwall I would settle for my 'dream cottage' built by my 2xgt grandmother's brother [and still lived in by two of his grandchildren!]. I said it was in a tiny little hamlet and she wouldn't even have heard of it. Not only HAD she heard of it, but her brother in law and his wife live over the hedge and 'give eye to' the two now very elderly rellies. Small world? You bet!!! I still get goosepimples when I think about the odds of that happening. 'Victoria

I went to check out an ancestor's address in London, only to discover it had been demolished and I was standing in front of the London Metropolitan Archives which had been built on the site!

Going through the 1891 census a couple of years ago, i came across the street were i lived with my parents as a child. found the number of the house and guess what my paternal grandma and her family were living there. She was 8.I wasn't even looking for that family at the time. Gill

What an interesting thread! I found the house where my great grandfather was born is now a listed building. It's a beautifully maintained Georgian townhouse on Richmond Green and probably worth a small fortune, but when my gt grandfather lived there it was a lodging house. The family later moved to Vestry Cottage, the Old Burying Ground, Richmond. Cottage no longer there, but the burying ground is! nell

Not lived in or bought but - a while ago managed to track down my great grandparents home, a small holding in Huntingdonshire, intended to visit the area over Xmas and as it is up a small country lane, thought I'd better contact them first. Managed to find their name and wrote to them asking if it would be OK to take some pics and got back a whole portfolio, plans for their proposed renovation of the main cottage and an invite whenever I want to go up there!!!! Unfortunately weather wasn't good enough over Xmas, but am hoping to go up in the next few weeks. Regards Looby

I have photgraphs and a large, framed estate plan of the huge house built by my husband's GGG Grandfather outside Paris. It is still being lived in by family members.How it survived through two wars is unbelieveable. I would dearly have loved to have lived there. We also have drawings and paintings done around the place by gg and g grandmothers.

I'm planning a trip to Plymouth in 2 weeks time to visit my grandparents' house in the district of Plymstock where I spent many happy school holidays. I just hope that over the decades it has not changed too much. I wonder if standing at the driveway entrance of their house whether or not I will be tempted to knock on the door and ask to look around and to see the back garden where my grandfather's workshed and fish pond stood. I'd better take some photos and old addressed envelopes to prove my credentials. Regards, Andy www.familytreediscovery.net