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House history

If you are interested in tracing the history of your house or another building or property then the Archive Service holds a vast array of documentary material which may be able to help. Many of these sources will be similar to those used in local history research but there may be others that are particularly relevant. We have a new user guide to researching the history of your house which details these sources in more detail. You can download this here.

Researching a building or property can be a daunting prospect and it is worth doing some basic reading about the most useful types of record you begin researching a particular building. Two helpful websites are:

www.house-detectives.co.uk/index.htm and

www.buildinghistory.org/

An added bonus for researching a house in Yorkshire is the relative ease of tracing the history of ownership of particular properties through the Yorkshire Ridings Deeds Registries. If you live within the area of the former county of the West Riding of Yorkshire, you will almost certainly want to make an appointment to use the West Riding Registry of Deeds.

For all other types of archival evidence, you will need to make an appointment to visit your local Archive Service office in Bradford, Calderdale (Halifax), Kirklees (Huddersfield), Leeds or Wakefield. Please contact us if you require help, or search our catalogue to find out more about what is available.

If you are not able to visit we can search our collections for you as part of our paid research service. Click Here for more information.