When Christopher Foyle, chairman of the eponymous London bookseller, bought a 12th-century abbey in Essex six years ago, he knew that it had a colourful history.

Founded by an order of White Canons in 1180, Beeleigh Abbey, a few miles from Maldon, has had a saint’s heart buried at its high altar, been a place of royal pilgrimage, and was owned at one time by Sir John Gates, a supporter of Lady Jane Grey, England’s teenage queen of nine days beheaded by Mary Tudor. Gates was also beheaded; his ghost supposedly haunts his old home.

Since Foyle, 63, moved there with his wife, Catherine, 47, and three daughters, his fascination with it (and the significant restoration of the Grade I-listed, six-bedroom property that it required) has led him to trace its past still further — and the finds have been remarkable.

An archeological dig found a medieval-hall house and a 16th-century brick clamp in surrounding fields, while the timbers of the barrel-vaulted ceiling in the library (once the canons’ dormitory) have been tree-ring dated to 1513-1514.

He has also discovered that, during the 19th century, the house briefly tumbled down the social ladder.

“I dug out the census records and they show it was in multiple occupancy between 1841 and 1871,” says Foyle. The occupants were probably farm labourers. “Another thing we found is that from 1892 to December 1911, a retired Indian colonial-service engineer, lived here — he was a great rose fancier.”

Funds permitting, Foyle plans more archeological work, as well as trawling through records offices for information about the abbey. For, like more and more people these days, he is fascinated by the history of his home.

The past decade has seen a huge upsurge in ancestral research, largely due to the growing number of genealogy sites on the internet, such as www.familysearch.org, www.ancestry.co.uk and www.genesreunited.com. Inevitably, though, once people have have learnt about their ancestors, they also want to know about where — and how — they lived.

House-history research consultancies charge anything from £150 to trace the background of your home. Traditionally, their clients have been owners of large country houses. But that doesn’t mean more humble dwellings don’t have an intriguing past, so why not investigate it yourself? Most of the resources needed are to be found locally.

If you live in an abbey, of course, it is fairly likely that tales will emerge, but a home does not have to be a grand one to come with an interesting story.
Derek Baker’s home in north London, for example, is a modest Georgian townhouse in Albion Road, Stoke Newington, an area that is on the up, but for the past few decades has been a bit shabby.

“My father bought it around the time that I was born, and we moved here when I was about 10 years old,” says Baker.

A keen local historian, the 70-year-old decided to trace its past, and discovered that it was built in 1825 by Thomas Cubitt, one of England’s first speculative builders, on the site of a former farm once owned by Henrietta, Countess of Bath, a notable 18th-century heiress.

Now No 246 Albion Road, it started off life as No 1 Albion Road East, an eight-room, three-storey home in the first of several rows of smart, middle-class terraces built by Cubitt.

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