Researching our historic home

This week marked the first step into researching the history of our beautiful new home as I headed to the Record Office.

When we first moved here, the previous owners had (as well as leaving us a bottle of fizz and a card – how thoughtful!) kindly left us an old print of the cottage, dating from the early 1900’s.

The thing that really got me, though, was that the family in the picture, who once lived here, were also called the Lloyd Jones Family!

I don’t know how to track down the original photograph, but there are plenty of other things to look into at the Record Office, including census records, tithe maps, and parish records.

And what a place to visit too! Set in the medieval market town of Ruthin’s old Gaol, Denbighshire Records Office certainly gets you in the mood for history.

I started with the Census records, as by getting a Reader’s Card from the Record Office means you can use all of the resources for free, including their subscription to Ancestry.co.uk.

The first task was figuring out which parish we belonged to. Boundaries change a lot and, as we’re rural, we had to look at some older maps to work it out – thank goodness the staff at the Record Office were so knowledgeable and so very helpful and friendly. And even though I need Flintshire records, they have copies of them in Ruthin.

I was escorted to my own cell (yes, really) and had enough time to start looking through the census records for our area for our lovely farmhouse.

Before we moved in, we were told that it was originally a medieval farmhouse, and we live in what was the ‘Georgian extension’. What an extension!!

I can’t wait to find out more about the house and the people who have also lived here, and update you as I go. After all, the current ‘Lloyd Jones Family’ are only custodians of this building, until the next people arrive to add to this lovely historic house’s history.