Top Tip - Old Maps

TJ27

Sorry if this has been posted before folks. There seem to be a few threads about surveying and doing your own survey work and such.

Whenever friends of mine ask my advice when buying houses, I always tell them to have a look at the old historical maps of the area.

You can usually have a look at the old County Series Ordnance Survey maps of the area in your main Library or in the County Archives. Some places will allow you to copy them, some won't.

There are usually 4 dates, ranging from about 1880, to about 1920, 1950 and 1970. Those are rough dates from memory, I'm sure they aren't very accurate!!

If you pinpoint your proposed purchase on a recent map, you can superimpose it on top of an old map. (You can hold copies of the two maps on top of each other at a window.) In this way you are able to see exactly what existed in the locality many years ago.

For example, a bank up the road from me suffered severe subsidence a few years ago. The insurers spent thousands of pounds conducting investigations. I showed them the maps which I had kept when I bought my house, which showed that the bank had been built right on the edge of an old clay pit. So I showed them that the front of the bank was built on solid ground, whereas the rear of the bank was built on made ground.

Surveyors don't do this but it can often be extremely useful. And the best thing about it is that it usually costs virtually nothing to do.

Also think about stuff like street names. Canal street might indicate that water could be a problem, orchard row might indicate that the place used to be covered by trees, etc.

I'm sure there are other top tips which people might like to share.