This guide describes some of the resources available at The Story for studying the history of your house in County Durham. 

Here are a few quick tips for getting started with researching the history of your house in County Durham. 

If you are trying to find out who lived in your house:

• Search census records from 1841 to 1921, as this will show everyone living at a given address. Search the census on popular family history websites such as Ancestry and Findmypast. Free access to FindMyPast is available in Search and Discover.
• Electoral registers from 1832 onwards list everyone entitled to vote at a given address. We currently have all registers for County Durham up to the most recent 2025 register.  Electoral registers between 1885 and 2002 are available digitally in Search and Discover area at The Story, with no need to book. You will need to book into our Collections Room to view any pre-1885 or post-2002 registers. You can book online here: Access our Collections - The Story. Please note that there are additional copying restrictions around the most recent electoral registers we hold.  No photographs may be taken, and notes must be taken by hand.
• Land tax assessments from 1759 to 1831 list landowners and occupiers in a given township. Addresses are rarely given, but the names are indexed and available to search in our online collections search.
• Historic trade directories often list businesses and property owners. A small number of trade directories are available in Search and Discover while our full collection is available to view in the Collections Room.

If you are trying to find out about the building of or alterations to your house:

• Use a variety of historic local maps held at The Story and online.  These include Ordnance Survey maps from the 1850s, estate, tithe and enclosure maps.  The accompanying apportionment book for tithe plans also lists the owner and occupier of each plot of land.
• See our  Building Control and Planning Consent Plans guide to find our more about how to find plans for buildings that have been built or redeveloped since 1858.
• Check our online collections search for information contained in architect company records.  

If you are trying to find out about the history of your local area more generally:

• See our Local history sources guide.

Our full House History guide below gives a comprehensive overview of our house history resources.

What you can find out about your house depends greatly on its age. Using maps can be a useful way to determine the rough history of a house. We recommend starting with a current map and working your way backwards so you can be sure you are looking in the right place, particularly in areas that have experienced a lot of development.

We hold a variety of maps and plans which might show details of houses:

• Digitised interactive map tables are available in Search and Discover, with no need to book. They allow you to overlay a current map with historic Ordnance Survey (OS) maps of the county from the 1850s to the present day.
• Interactive OS maps are also available online.  
• For houses built after 1939 the online maps portal includes large-scale [1:2500] OS National Grid Series plans and four series of twentieth century aerial photographs of the county.
• If the house was built before 1939 it should be possible to find it on one of the four editions of the OS County Series maps which we hold. The county was first surveyed at this scale between 1854 and 1857 with revisions taking place in 1894-1897, 1912-1919 and the late 1930s.
• Tithe plans. If your house pre-dates the first edition OS maps (c1850s) it may be possible to find it on a tithe plan. Tithe plans were created for most parish townships in the late 1830s and early 1840s. They show all fields and buildings and usually have attached a list of the owners and tenants (called the 'apportionment'). Unfortunately, The Story does not have a tithe plan for every parish but it is possible that a copy may be available elsewhere. Three copies of each tithe plan were made: the official copy was kept by the Tithe Commissioners, a second copy by the Diocesan Registrar and the final copy by the parish.  The Tithe Commissioners copies are now at The National Archives and the Diocesan Registrar copies are at Archives and Special Collections, Durham University.  The majority of the University tithe plans and apportionements have been digitised and are available online.
• While there are earlier maps of the places throughout the county these do not always show individual houses and, where they do, they are not always an accurate representation. You can search for earlier maps in our online collections search. Very few earlier town plans are held here except for a small number for Durham City.

Trade directories were published from the late eigtheenth century onwards and list the tradesmen and more important inhabitants of each settlement. Most trade directories are, however, selective in their lists and it is highly unlikely that all the inhabitants of a particular house will be shown. In addition, it is often difficult to identify the house that corresponds with the people listed, especially in smaller settlements.

The Story holds County Durham directories for the following years:

It also holds directories, including a street index, for Durham City, 1846-1915, 1931-1937, 1939 and 1951-1953.

There is a small number of duplicate trade directories in Search and Discover but the majority are available to view in the Collections Room by making an appointment:  Access our Collections - The Story.

Electoral registers list the names of all those in a property who are entitled to vote.  They are arranged house by house and street by street and are a useful source for confirming who was living at a property at any given date.

While electoral registers start in 1832, not all householders were entitled to vote until 1867. All men over 21 and women over 30 got the vote in 1918. All women over 21 were entitled to vote from 1928.

The Story holds electoral registers for County Durham from 1832 to the present day:

• Electoral registers from 1832 onwards list everyone entitled to vote at a given address. We currently have all registers up to the most recent 2025 register.
• Electoral registers between 1885 and 2002 are available digitally in Search and Discover, with no need to book.
• You will need to book into our Collections Room to view any older or more recent registers: Access our Collections - The Story. Please note that there are additional copying restrictions around the most recent electoral registers we hold: no photographss may be taken, and notes must be taken by hand.

If your house was built before 1921 you can find out details about its inhabitants by using the census enumerators’ returns for the 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911 and 1921 censuses.

The returns show all the people in each house on census night, their relationship to each other, their ages, marital status, sex and place of birth. Sometimes families can be traced in the same house for a number of different censuses, sometimes occupiers change between census years meaning it is not always possible, using census returns alone, to build up a continuous picture of the inhabitants of a house. The census, in combination with directories and electoral registers may, however, enable you to do this.

The census returns are closed to public inspection for a period of one hundred years, so this source can be used only for houses built before 1921.  Unfortunately, after this date, it is not possible to use the census for house history research.  The 1931 census returns were destroyed in a fire in 1942 and the 1941 census never took place due to the outbreak of the Second World War.

The easiest way to access census returns is online using popular family history websites such as Find My Past and Ancestry. Free access to FindMyPast is available in Search and Discover.

Rate books and valuation lists created by local authorites may also give some information on the inhabitants of each house.

• Before 1834 most property-holders were obliged to pay a rate to the parish for the upkeep of the poor. Accounts of rates paid were kept by the overseers of the poor of each parish, listing names and amounts paid.  These rate books are usually in Church of England parish records.  Check what we have for your area in our online collections search.
• During the nineteenth century the collection of the rate became the responsibility of the Boards of Guardians and ultimately this function passed to the district councils in 1925. Rate books survive for the following Board of Guardian areas:

• Check what we have for local authorities in our online collections search.
• More recent rate books do give the occupier and/or owner’s name, and the address of the property on which the rate was payable. We do not hold complete sets of rate books and valuation lists for the authorities in County Durham but there is good coverage for the current county area in the twentieth century.

A similar set of records is the Inland Revenue Valuation registers compiled in 1910. They include details of each property and names of each owner and occupier and a brief description of the property. We hold these records for some, but not all, of the civil parishes in the county. Similar records are found at The National Archives.