Tracing the history of your house need not be a daunting experience.
The following is suggested as an initial approach to the task.
Don't expect to complete this in an afternoon! You'll be doing your own primary research, which will be fascinating, engrossing and sometimes frustrating. It may also be time-consuming, but you'll find the process is a rewarding one.
Start by doing a little background reading, then use primary sources such as Council rate books and postal directories to discover the story of your house. Remember that making systematic notes as you go will save time in the long run.
Ian Evan's World of Old Houses a guide to caring for and restoring your old house.
Be aware that some of the books listed are available only for reference within libraries. Books which are available for loan can be sent to any of our libraries for you to pick up.
Conservation studies were published by all the councils now covered by Melbourne and Yarra during the late seventies and eighties. Conservation studies are essentially surveys of historic sites, with brief histories of significant buildings, often including houses. You may be very lucky, and find a listing for your house. Check the library catalogue for the conservation study for your area, or ask library staff.
More recently, the City of Yarra published the five-volume City of Yarra Heritage Review (Allom Lovell & associates, 1998). This draws on work done by the conservation studies, but also includes buildings not previously identified.
The two major primary sources we have in our libraries are Post Office directories, and Council rate books. These are available at Fitzroy, North Melbourne and Richmond Libraries (note that City of Collingwood rate books are held at the Fitzroy library, and Carlton rate books are held at the North Melbourne Library).
These books have been copied on to microfiche and microfilm, and can be read on machines in the libraries. If you've never used microfiche or film before, don't worry - the machine is basically a form of slide viewer, and staff are happy to show you how it works.
These were equivalent to present-day phone books, with the advantage that they have a sequence of addresses, as well as names. They are useful for finding who lived at your address, and building up a picture of the street.
The major (though not sole) publisher of post office directories was Sands and MacDougall, so you'll often hear them referred to as 'Sands and MacDougall directories'. Richmond, North Melbourne and Fitzroy libraries hold microfiche copies of the Victorian directories, with a date range from 1839 to 1940.
The first rule for working with this kind of source material is to go backwards from what you know. For example, if you know for certain a house existed in 1940, go backwards from there. Aim to find out when a house first appears on a particular site. To ascertain the location, you may need to piece together information such as the neighbors or landmarks etc, as street numbers are not always given, and the numbering may have changed. Street names themselves change too, which can cause confusion. However the directories will often mention the change and the following books may help:
These books were used to record Council rates collection. They include information about the owner and the occupier of a property, brief description (such as 'wood house 3 rooms' or 'vacant land'), and the valuation.
The rate books are set out by ward, then by street. Maps are available for checking the ward, as boundaries and names have changed over the years. There is a street index at the beginning of each ward listing, which will tell you what page to look for. (If for any reason you don't already know the address of the property, you'll need to check this in the postal directories first.)
As mentioned before, it is a good idea to start with what you definitely know, and work backwards. For example if you think your four-roomed brick house was built c. 1915 - 1920, start in say 1930, then work backwards to find the first reference which matches your house. You may find that the record for 1916 reads "house brick 4 rms", the record for 1915 reads "house wood 3 rms" (and if you go back even further, the record for 1870 reads "vacant land"). You can then be fairly certain that your house was built c. 1915-16. It can be a good idea to note the valuations for each year you check, as variations could indicate alterations to the building.
If there are no street numbers at all, you'll need to do some educated guess work. Your house may be the fourth property after an intersection for example, which is something you can follow back, especially if you build up a picture of who lived in the house in question, and the neighbouring houses and landmarks. Do remember that the sizes of blocks of land may change over the years. Inner-city areas were often sub-divided, and what one year may have been a single rateable property, may become three properties in a subsequent year.
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