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If walls could speak, what would they say? It's a question that crosses the mind of every period home buyer. The older the property, the stronger the desire to delve into its past. Did it once play host to legendary dinner parties? Who were the former occupants, and were they happy there? More importantly, were they famous? Unless the former inhabitants are in the ultra-famous, former-prime-minister league, the answers are usually less than forthcoming. Neighbourhood hearsay is intriguing, but often inaccurate - and although amateur local historians are useful their knowledge of individual properties can be sketchy.

Sensing a growing demand among buyers for a home that is a piece of history as well as a nice place to live, one London estate agent now employs the professional historian Melanie Backe-Hansen to research house histories. “Chesterton was trying to find ways to improve its services and came up with the idea of looking at the history of areas and houses to help sell properties,” she explains. Backe-Hansen believes it to be an original way of generating interest in a house sale. “If I discover something unique or unusual in the property it can help with the sale. Probably the most profitable is discovering someone famous has lived there.”

Recently, for example, a threebedroom terraced house in Leytonstone, East London, received an offer of more than £1 million from one interested buyer - four times more than other similar properties in the area. Why such an inflated price? It was discovered that the house had been David Beckham's first home.

Backe-Hansen has just finished researching Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, in particular the history of No 4 More's Garden, which is for sale with Chesterton for £3.45 million. So why did she pick this precise area? “Probably because of the diversity of the place,” she says.

The riverside at Chelsea has long been a desirable place to live but over the past 500 years it has changed dramatically. One of the earliest properties on the site of Cheyne Walk was Henry VIII's new manor house - sometimes called Chelsea Palace - built as a wedding present for Catherine Parr in the 1540s. Another was a palace built for Sir Thomas More in 1520; the area soon became known as “the village of palaces”. By the 1700s the palaces were beginning to disappear and the village of Chelsea became a well-established and thriving local community by the bank of the Thames with taverns every 80 yards between Battersea Bridge and the Royal Hospital.

In 1717 Sir Hans Sloane leased land for development from what had been the garden of Henry VIII's manor house, and so began Cheyne Walk.

The construction of the embankment of Chelsea Reach along to Battersea Bridge began in 1871, and altered the village identity. The old wharves and waterfront taverns closed, leading to thecreation of the Chelsea that we know today.

Each era has added its architectural style to Cheyne Walk. More's Garden was a late contribution to this illustrious street. The Edwardian mansion block is in the former gardens of Sir Thomas More's Beaufort House. Most of the palace and its land were redeveloped in the late 19th century but by the turn of the 20th century the corner of Beaufort Street still lay empty.

The first plans for the new mansion block are dated October 1902 and building began the following year. An original sales brochure from 1903 shows that the building, now with the name of More's Garden, had the most up-to-date features, including “hot water from a supply boiler in the basement ... tenants will thus be saved the expense of kitchen fires at all seasons and also the extra work entailed on domestics”. There was electric lighting throughout the building (when many still relied on gas) and an electric passenger lift. An optional extra was a telephone that allowed tenants “to communicate with any part of town”.

The building was completed in 1904 and first listed on the electoral roll the year after. An advertisement in The Times in July 1905 shows that the flats were ready for rent from £180 to £220 a year and the first tenant, John Sidney Sherwood, moved into No 4 More's Garden in 1906.

In 1908 Nos2-5 More's Garden were taken over by “The University and City Association of London” (UCA). At the time there was a campaign for the relocation and preservation of the medieval Crosby Hall, initially built in Bishopsgate in 1466. The UCA was able to move the Hall to the corner of Danvers Street and aimed to establish an academic college there. It opened rooms within More's Garden in December 1907 as its official halls of residence. The UCA planned to establish a college environment similar to Oxford or Cambridge by the banks of the river with Crosby Hall as the centrepiece. These bold plans were never achieved, primarily because the outbreak of the First World War took away funding and focus. During the war students departed and the flats became available to private tenants.

In 1916 Bernard Holland moved into No4 and remained there for 20 years. In 1937 it was occupied by Guy Chamberlin and his wife, Geraldine, but they did not stay long past the start of the Second World War. By 1948 it had become the home of Stephen Ian Fairbairn - remembered for transforming rowing training techniques at Jesus College, Cambridge, as well as at Eton and the Thames Rowing Club. He continued to live there until the 1960s, when he married for the third time, in 1966, to Margaret MacDonald. He died in 1968 but his wife stayed on in the flat until the early years of this century.

The apartment is now up for sale. When viewing the property potential buyers can imagine students working away on essays at the turn of the last century or the bleaker years of the world wars. Perhaps in 50 years the future owners might reminisce about Christmas 2008, when the family sat around the television playing Guitar Hero on the Wii while Dad battled with instructions for his new iPhone.

Chesterton: 020-7589 5211, chesterton.co.uk

How to turn detective

1 Visit your local history archives (usually the main borough or county library). Here you will find electoral registers, maps and local history books. They may also hold deeds, newspaper cuttings, estate agent brochures and photographs.

2 Look at the physical features of your house. Recognising the style of architecture will help to narrow your search. Try the dating tool at bricksandbrass.co.uk

3 Check that house numbers and street names have not changed.

4 Maps can give an estimated date for the construction of your house. Ordnance Survey maps, published from 1854 onwards, are very detailed. Also check parish maps, estate maps, the Charles Booth poverty map (booth.lse.ac.uk) or historic maps of London (motco.com)

5 Census records, electoral registers and rate books are excellent ways to trace the social history of your house.

6 Search the Times Archive, which goes back to 1785. Go to: www.timesonline.co.uk/archive

7 Other excellent internet sites are nationalarchives.gov.uk, cityoflondon.gov.uk/lma and british-history.ac.uk

8 Consult your local planning department. It may hold records and information on alterations and changes to your house since the 1900s.

9 Lastly, be patient. You may not find the information you want immediately. If you find yourself at a dead end, go back to information of which you are certain and try a different route.

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