OTHER RECORDS

Lots of other records may be able to help you trace a house history or it's occupants. Building  plans, insurance records, local and country histories are just some of the items that you can find .

Building Plans

Since the middle years of the 19th century, local councils took advantage of new powers available to them to require developers to submit plans for approval before building could take place. 

Not all these plans survive and it varies greatly from area to area. Some plans remain with council planning departments or borough engineers, and many have been lost or destroyed over the years. 

Local record offices have collections of plans, or microfilm copies of them which can provide exceptionally good evidence of how nineteenth century buildings might have looked when new.

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The Scottish Valuation Rolls

 Are available on SotlandsPeople

This is an index of names/addresses of every kind of property that was assessed in 1885, 1895, 1905, 1915 and 1920 as having a rateable value.
You should find the names of owners, tenants and occupiers of each property and in many cases, occupations are also listed.
www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk

List of Scheduled Buildings

If the house has been listed scheduled for preservation, its architecture and approximate age will be briefly noted in the Statutory List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest which is issued by the Department of the Environment. See our help pages for more detais of where to veiw these records.

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Sales Particualars

​Estate or Land Agents produced a catalogue or printed leaflet with details of the houses they were selling. Sometimes these find their way into local archives and could be listed under the name of the agent or the solicitor who conveyed the sale. The problem is that the names of these firms will have most likely changed over the years so you may have to look in contemporary directories and list the local agents before you start.
Most of these will be in Country Records Offices but The National Archive also holds a collection that were used in the Supreme Court by solicitors

County, Town and Villages

Most towns and many villages have written histories
and these can be found in local studies collections
​in libraries in the local studies area. 

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