Heritage Information Leaflet 1.11

How to Research the History of your House

There are many resources available to help you discover the history and date of construction of your house. The amount of research that you can do is only limited by your ability to think laterally about possible sources of information. Those listed below are just a beginning.

But be warned. The majority of homes do not have a great deal of information recorded about them. Hence it is always worth contacting previous owners for their knowledge and any photos, plans, advertising brochures or other documents they may have.

Sources for Dating

Even if your home has escaped notice in any of the other sources which are mentioned below, there are three types of record which will help you to at least establish an approximate date of construction.

Certificates of Title indicate ownership of the land, not the existence of structures on it, but used in conjunction with other sources can help to narrow down a date range. Starting with your current Certificate of Title, you can trace back through the previous Titles for the property to find the names of earlier owners. This task may also give clues as to when the house was constructed: a real estate agent may sell one or more allotments to individual owners, suggesting a construction date after this time, or a change of land owner and their subsequent appearance in a South Australian Directory street listing may suggest an approximate date. The Lands Titles Office (LTO) is located at 101 Grenfell Street, Adelaide. Andrew Peake's Sources for South Australian History (2nd edition 1998) gives advice on how to research at the LTO in the chapter titled Land Records.

South Australian Directories are useful for listing occupiers of buildings and residents of localities. Often called Almanacs in the early years, they began publication in 1839 and ceased in 1973, when Sands & McDougall Pty Ltd was the publisher. They evolved to contain an alphabetical listing of the State's residents and their addresses as well as street by street listings of buildings and their principal tenants in the metropolitan area. Prior to 1872 listing of individual localities can be erratic. The best guide is the unpublished Mayo index mentioned below. From 1872 until 1883 the directories only contained an alphabetical State-wide listing of residents, excepting for the City of Adelaide, which has a street by street listing from 1873. From 1884 the street by street listing was extended to major suburbs and steadily evolved to cover the metropolitan area. If you have trouble finding a locality Andrew Peake's Sources for South Australian History (2nd edition 1998) has a chapter on Place Names which includes a list of superseded place and suburb names with their current equivalents.

Remember however that the Directories record occupiers, not owners as the lands titles do, and they are not completely reliable. Omissions occur, the reliability of the annual updating is not known, and neither is whether the information was all gathered in the year of publication. In addition, for the period prior to house numbering, you must work back from when numbers started and use adjoining houses and ratebooks to help track the house you are interested in. This requires special care, as sometimes houses temporarily 'disappear' from the directories when they are unoccupied.

The directories and almanacs are held by the State Library and State Records and those for 1839-1934 are available on microfiche. The State Library and State Records each have copies of MP Mayo's typescript 'Index to Miscellaneous Information and Advertisements contained in South Australian Almanacs and Directories 1839 to 1872', which helps you discover when the residents of a locality are listed separately from the alphabetical listing of the entire State. The Library has also published Colonial Residents of South Australia 1839-1848, a consolidated index on microfiche to residents listed in the directories.

Council assessment (rate) books may provide descriptions of the house and when compared over time can indicate that a structure has been erected through an increase in the rateable value of formerly unoccupied land. If rate books have survived they are usually held by either the relevant Council or State Records. A Peake's Sources for South Australian History (2nd edition 1998) lists those held by the latter agency.

Other Sources

The State Library of South Australia holds local histories, photographs, family history material, architectural style manuals, heritage surveys, magazines, journals and newspapers which may all be useful to you.

Local Histories will give at least a general background of the history of the area in which your house is located and may occasionally have some information on the house itself.

Local History Collections may be held by historical societies or museums or in the local library or council office. Information may include land ownership and subdivision details, along with photographs and general historical information.

Council Records, notably assessment (rate) books, often give descriptions and valuations of buildings. Councils may also have information regarding the date of construction and subsequent alterations and additions to a house, especially after 1923 when a new Building Act was proclaimed.

State Government archives are managed by State Records. If your house was once owned or managed by a Government agency, they may hold some information in Government Record Groups and Series (GRG and GRS). State Records also holds records of many local councils.

Maps and aerial photographs are held by various agencies and may reveal the early settlement of your area, suggesting a construction date for your house. On some more detailed maps your house may actually appear as a 'dot'. The old Fullers maps held at the Lands Titles Office give information relating to the subdivision of the Adelaide metropolitan area. Official aerial photography generally only dates from the late 1940s.

Heritage Surveys will be useful for finding information about more notable houses and there are regional and/or local surveys for most of the settled areas of the State. A list is available on the Heritage Branch web site.

Further Reading

Elliott, J Our Home in Australia: a description of cottage life in 1860. Sydney, 1984.

Persse, JN & Rose, DM House Styles in Adelaide: a pictorial history. Adelaide, 1993 edition.

Peake, AG Sources for South Australian History. 2nd edition, Adelaide, 1998.

Pikusa, S The Adelaide House 1836 to 1901: the evolution of principal dwelling types. Netley, 1986.

The Heritage Branch's Information Leaflet 1.10 South Australian Architecture: A Reading List contains a more extensive list than the above and the State Library's South Australiana Source Sheet on Buildings an even fuller one.

Useful Web Sites

Ian Evans World of Old Houses contains a wealth of material.

The South Australian Genealogy and Heraldry Society produces some very useful publications and has a very wide range of resources in its Library if you need to track a specific owner.

The State Library of South Australia catalogues and databases can be searched on-line.

The Historical Society of South Australia publishes a newsletter and a journal and organises meetings and field trips which provide a good introduction to South Australian history.

Acknowledgement: A useful source of ideas for this information sheet was Don Watson's article 'Dating Your House' in the National Trust of Queensland's Journal vol 3 no 1 February 1978, pp 19-26.