Cathy and I are very excited to be featured in this week’s Elsevier Weekblad (September 28 issue, page 28) under the title: Genealogy for Buildings! I am particularly chuffed, being half Dutch myself!
GENEALOGY FOR BUILDINGS
By Patrick van Ijzendoorn - UK & Ireland correspondent for Dutch national newspaper, De Volkskrant, and Elsevier Weekblad
When Lynne Caulfield bought the Low House last year, she wanted to know everything about the history of this age-old farmhouse in the English village of Ivinghoe. It was not easy - Google and the municipal archives did not take this amateur historian a step further forwards. “Coincidentally, one day a brochure fell on the doormat”, she says, “from Benchmark House Histories, a company that helps homeowners with historical property research: genealogy for buildings”.
“It is a growth market”, says Anglo-Dutch photographer Carol Fulton, who collaborates with historian and genealogist Cathy Soughton. On request, the two make books about the history of a particular house. "We have been doing this for nine years and we are seeing more and more interest. Some people just want to know everything about their house, others think it is an original birthday gift for their partner. It can also increase the value of a house to sell. "
“A customer was seeking”, says home detective Soughton,”a historical explanation for paranormal appearances in his home. Another knew she lived in what was once the home of Churchill's wife and wanted more information. Sometimes the two make unexpected discoveries. Fulton: "In a bedroom of a holiday home we were investigating, it turned out that a suicide had been committed. At the client's request, we omitted that fact from the book."
It was a great revelation for Caulfield: "Carol and Cathy discovered that my house was originally the home and workplace of a cartwright, then it was a rectory, a cane maker’s home and, in Victorian days, a tailor lived there. The latter also explained the atypical bay window, probably built to advertise. Old masters have also lived there, we now know, and a cabbage dealer. The house has come alive, you can feel the presence of the earlier residents."
It has not stopped with a coffee table book. A sign with ‘Wheelwrights House’ has recently been added to the facade.
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