New Series - A House through Time

[Gan Yam]

I did wonder why they hadn’t checked the deeds. If the deeds don’t reflect the history of ownership of the house or land then surely anybody could choose any bit of land and build themselves a house.  I also thought that a £1000 seemed a high price.

[california dreamin]

I agree.  I thought the presenter went well off topic.  I also thought there was a lot of guess work.

For example why didn't he look at the Rate books and Poll Books?  Or even maps which would show the local area being developed.  How about fixtures and furnishings of the time.  They touched on that briefly but I thought the show could have let us see far more of the pattern books.

I think matey will be off to more far flung places next week - ! So much for Falkner Street 

[andrewalston]

I was rather surprised that the presenter and his experts didn't pick up on the actual ownership of the house

It is unlikely that the actual ownership would have added much to the story. The land appeared to have been owned by a Mr. Falkner prior to initial development. His heirs may still own it.
The "deeds" of a property only follow changes of ownership, whether of the land or of the buildings on it. They tell us nothing of the people who live in the property. Sometimes the names match up, but for any rented property there would be little in the way of a paper trail of occupancy there.

[andrewalston]

I agree.  I thought the presenter went well off topic.  I also thought there was a lot of guess work.

For example why didn't he look at the Rate books and Poll Books?  Or even maps which would show the local area being developed.  How about fixtures and furnishings of the time.  They touched on that briefly but I thought the show could have let us see far more of the pattern books.

I'm pretty sure that those books were consulted. How else would they know of James & Ann Orr, who had moved out by 1851?

The map of the site before development WAS shown. Remember that there was no requirement in those days to inform a "planning department" and give them detailed drawings of a forthcoming development. The next readily available map the street was probably the 1840s Ordnance Survey.

The programme was obviously not intended to be a history of interior decoration; that has been covered endlessly on TV and can be seen in museums around the country.

[andrewalston]

I caught part of the programme, and I wasn't impressed.
Eg there was a segment where they discovered that 2 little girls had been sent into an institution, (mother's fate unknown, father gone "to America"), and then they went off to USA to film battlefield sites. Seemingly without any evidence that the father ever fought there, I don't even think that they uncovered him on any passenger list either.

So the mother's fate was unknown. Do you know what happened to all your relatives who appeared in the 1861 census? The children were followed in the paper trail provided by the Liverpool workhouse and Kirkdale Industrial School. The evidence of their father's trip to America was certainly shown, along with first hand accounts of his service in the Union army.

People outside Lancashire might well not understand the significance of the American Civil War. Farm workers in Kent and Surrey may well not even have heard of the conflict. The population of Lancashire, being heavily dependant on cotton imported from the slave states, were left without income.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_Cotton_Famine

Surprisingly, the majority of the cotton workers supported the north rather than the Confederacy. It was more important to be against slavery than to eat.

As a result, Manchester has a Lincoln Square, with a statue of Abraham Lincoln.

[california dreamin]

The programme was obviously not intended to be a history of interior decoration; that has been covered endlessly on TV and can be seen in museums around the country.

Ouch  Andrew 
 
The programme is called "A House through Time" so  I certainly would be interested in everything to do with the house 

And, sorry but I disagree I DO think those farm workers out in Kent and far flung Surrey would understand the significance of cotton and the American Civil War.

[ThrelfallYorky]

... and often the documents which accrue with House and land sales can tell a great deal about the land, the building and the social life of its residents, as I mentioned when referring to my own parents' house, built c 1830. Each owner seemed to have added a great deal to the packet, there were death certificates, bills for repairs, wills and other things. My parents added their own information to that, when they sold it on in turn. It was a real history in a cardboard file.

[Jebber]

I also disagree that people outside Lancashire would be unlikely to be aware of the significance of the American Civil War, otherwise I would not have found some of my ancestors from Kent and Wiltshire involved in it.

I enjoyed the programme and will withhold criticism until I have seen the remaining two episodes.

[andrewalston]

I also disagree that people outside Lancashire would be unlikely to be aware of the significance of the American Civil War, otherwise I would not have found some of my ancestors from Kent and Wiltshire involved in it.

I enjoyed the programme and will withhold criticism until I have seen the remaining two episodes.

I'm afraid that the situation was certainly not understood outside Lancashire, and has been ignored in history books. For example, the BBC's timeline of Victorian Britain (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/timeline/victorianbritain_timeline_noflash.shtml) has only 3 events in first half of the 1860s - a Post Office Savings scheme, the death of Prince Albert, and the linking of education funding to test results. Another online timeline at https://timelines.ws/countries/GB_E_1860_1910.HTML tells a little of how the American Civil War impinged on the political classes, but nothing of the effects on Lancashire. These are typical of the attitudes of the vast majority of history books.

Ag Labs in the south of England still toiled in the fields and received the same wages as before. A few better-off chaps bought tickets to cross the Atlantic for the sake of adventure.

Lancashire starved.