A Home with a History: unpicking the mysteries of Britain’s most beautiful buildings

The romantics among us may picture bustle-skirted women sewing on nursing chairs, or hear the squeak of spatted shoes on the polished parquet. But who really lived in your house before you? What did they do? How did they change it – for better or for worse? Britain’s rich and ancient history doubtless means that your home has stories to tell. What they look like remains to be seen.

So how does one go about finding them? These are the questions professional photographer and designer Carol Fulton realised people were asking themselves when, in 2010, she founded Benchmark House Histories. A professional genealogist and qualified house historian, I – Cathy Soughton – joined the business in 2014. Together we research and document – both visually and verbally – the surprising and special histories of houses around the country, producing them as bespoke hardback books.

In the intervening years, we’ve had the privilege of exploring almost every kind of home you can imagine – from old pubs and schools to cottages and castles, by way of onetime mills and former vicarages. Our first project, Chilham Castle, a Jacobean manor with a Norman keep near Canterbury, was a real treat. Overlooking the keep, dating from 1174, the handsome hexagonal manor completed in 1616 formed the focus of our enquiries. Set within landscape shaped by Thomas Heron and Capability Brown, this distinguished site provided rich pickings for us as incorrigibly curious house historians.

What comes across our desk is wide reaching and our remit is varied. At the moment, we’re working on a 16^th-century mansion in Kent and an Edwardian home belonging to a famous face, thanks to a commission from a television production company. All our projects have the same goal in mind – and the same end result. We want to provide the current inhabitants with a tangible sense of history and heritage, connecting them to those that have come before. We do so by providing them with a detailed written account of their house, charting its development from construction onwards. A whole cast of characters – the myriad former occupants – play their part, as do scans of archival documents, old maps, historic photographs and newspaper articles. On occasion we’re afforded a proper glimpse of Britain’s decorative history, unearthing scraps of 18th-century wallpaper designs, for instance. The resulting books and wall prints we produce are visually sumptuous, factually substantial and, we hope, rather special.

Many people ask us to photograph the house as it stands today. It’s perhaps unsurprising that they want to entwine the house’s present with its past, to further enrich the tapestry. The future of these places is also considered; providing provenance to a place can add real value to a house – especially if, as often happens, intrigue is uncovered. Many of our clients commission us ahead of putting their homes on the market.

We have made some extraordinary discoveries along the way. When we start a job, we always tell the owners to expect the unexpected. We’ve come across tales of fortunes lost and found, for instance – a recent project revealed how one wealthy Roman Catholic owner ended his days in a debtors’ prison. Stories of family disputes that ended up in Chancery – shades of Dickens’ Bleak House – are more commonplace than one might think. On occasion, we’ve been asked to investigate somewhat stranger goings on. One case in particular stands out: at this house, a gas- and fire-proof strong room had been installed in the cellars. Nobody could work out what on earth it had been for. We dug around, however, and discovered that it had been built to protect the family in the event of a German invasion during World War II.

Ghosts, of course, make an appearance – though we haven’t seen one… yet! But the supernatural looms large in English architecture. It’s wonderful when we come across witch marks, a form of ancient graffiti found carved into stone lintels or wooden beams. These totemic symbols were thought to protect inhabitants from malevolent spirits. Happily, they seem to have worked…

This job feels like a great privilege. We are afforded intimacy with both people and places, between which the emotional bonds are strong. Home is such an important feeling, so finding out more about these house’s histories often intensifies the emotion for those that spend their days there. To play a part in that is an extraordinary pleasure.

Further reading

Benchmark House Histories

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