Using census to pinpoint a location
 

I have batted this back at enquirers plenty of times, telling them to read the enumeration district description, note the main streets, side streets, pubs, compare it with trade directories, look at maps etc.

Usually, you can follow the enumerator round.

Today, I have been trying to pinpoint a local farm. In the 1840s, it was pretty isolated, the next building on the census a mile away in the valley. By 1851, the railway had brought neighbours a whole half mile closer. By 1861, large villas were starting to appear. In 1871 it is described as a cottage and in 1881 it has been rebuilt in a different parish. Thereafter it has a new lease of life, long term tenants, lots of very obvious employees, and more properties creeping up the hill towards it.

Rural Surrey is poor farming land, the villages tended to be small. Looking at the "neighbours" they were probably people you only saw in church or at the market.

Has anyone else done this sort of exercise? It has completely turned my notions upside down, as the neighbours came from north, west, south and very much further south. (A large physical barrier cuts off those neighbours to the east!)

I have done something like that, comparing the neighbours in one street - my Bishop family lived int he same house from 1841 to 1871, so it was interesting to see the neighbours changing, and the town growing around them.

Long before Ancestry had the census on-line, I transcribed a couple of districts in Martock, Somerset in 1841 from microfilm. Up and down the streets and lanes - you could see how families lived next door to each other, children next to elderly parents etc. If you read the description at the beginning of each district, you can work out how the streets fit together and where the EDs stopped and started. In 1841, I don't think the enumerator put the street name on each page, so you had to read the description to work out which way he was going.


When we were in Harrow-on-the-hill in 2018, I used landmarks in the census, like the pubs, the church and the Harrow School, to wander along the street and figure out where the Cole ancestors lived - I don't think many of the buildings are the same, but it was nice to see how close they lived to the school, and the pub where we stayed.

Best Mate and I have taken her cousins round London like that. You get a much better idea of how things happened once you can walk the routes they must have followed - and London has retained a lot of the original streets.

Marquette, my great-aunt lived at Martock with her first husband, then with her second in a house right by the church where the lane runs.

I think we parked outside that house when we visited Martock in 2018. Its a lovely church and we spent quite a while there. Like many places, parking was extremely limited but we did drive around the town and tried to cover the main places I wanted to look at.

If you can't actually walk round in person, you can do a virtual tour on google.

I am lucky in that some of my ancestors and ex's came from/lived in London and some of the buildings are still there. The house my great-grandfather was born in is now a listed building!