How to Research the History of your House
The library has various resources that can help you research the history of your house.
Unless your house is a particularly notable one, you are unlikely to find a reference to it in any history book. However, such books can be useful for setting the scene in which your suburb and street developed. The following are some suggestions:
- The Shaping of Hornsby Shire
- Pioneers of Hornsby Shire
- Houses of Hornsby Shire, Volumes 1 & 2
- Federation Hornsby
- ABC of Epping
- Beecroft and Cheltenham: Shaping of a Sydney Community
- Street Names of Pennant Hills
- Wahroonga: Our Home
If the history of your house cannot be found in a book, you will need to piece together the story yourself from existing primary sources which were not designed for later researchers and are often not comprehensive or easy to understand.
Rate Books
The main primary source held at the library is the microfilm reels of the Hornsby Shire Council’s rate books. They are held in the Local Studies Office and are available to researchers on request. It is recommended that you make an appointment with a Local Studies librarian (call 9847 6807) before starting your research.
Covering three year intervals, the rate books begin in 1907, the year after Hornsby Shire Council was founded, and end in 1980. For most of the period, they are organised by riding (A, B, or C), which roughly coincide with today’s wards, and then alphabetically by street. The records before 1930 are handwritten and are not always in order.
The rate books list the ratepayers, i.e. the owners, who are not necessarily the residents. They record “improvements” (houses, sheds, tennis courts etc). This can be used to roughly date the age of the house. The rate books will also detail the original size of the property and include information about subdivisions. They will sometimes record the house’s name.
Sands Sydney Directory
Sands Directory was a postal directory that was published up to 1933. It includes lists of who was living in a particular street in a given year. A microfiche copy is held in the Family History Collection. (Ancestry.com, which is available on the library computers, has the index of people’s names, but does not have the listing by street.) Sands can be used to supplement the information in the rate books because it records the residents, not the owners, and because it is often easier to follow than the early rate books. It also often provides the name of the house, local street numbers only being recorded from 1931. Hornsby appears from 1903 onwards, and other local suburbs are added progressively, sometimes listed individually and sometimes under “Hornsby Shire”.
Building Application Book
Development and building applications provide the most basic evidence of property development within an area. Some books generally contain written design specifications as well as maps and plans relating to proposed property developments, including demolitions. They can contain applications for buildings, garages, fences, alterations and additions to structures. There a microfilm copy of Hornsby Shire Council’s Building Application Book covering the period 1911 – 1923 available from the Local Studies Office.
Parish maps
Parish maps can often provide the name of the original owner of the land on which the house was built, the size of the original block, the date that it was granted by or purchased from the Crown. The Local Studies Collection has a series of maps for the local area. Copies are also are available online at www.lpi.nsw.gov.au.
Subdivision Maps
Real estate agents’ subdivision posters were created when the original estates were subdivided. They show the size and location of individual lots and sometimes indicate the presence of existing houses. Cross-referencing with the rate books can help identify your property in the early days when there were no street numbers. The Local Studies Collection has a selection of local subdivision posters in hard copy and on microfilm.
Deposited Plans (DPs), which are lodged for every subdivision, can be purchased from the Land Titles Office.
Electoral Rolls
Electoral rolls can be useful for establishing where a person lived over a period of time and when they moved into a particular property. This information is available via Ancestry.com.
Photographs
You may be able to identify your property from old photographs. Hornsby Shire Library has an online collection of historical photographs.
External Sources
Another avenue for researching the history of a house is a land title search via the Land Titles Office. This will reveal the history of the ownership and subdivision of the land. It will not tell you if there was a house built there at the time.
There can also be clues at the house itself. For example, some old taps are inscribed with the date on which water was connected. This information can also be found in a series of maps held at State Records titled Metropolitan Water Sewerage and Drainage Board Detail Sheets.
