Hunting for history among your own bricks and mortar can illuminate more than you'd expect

Families come and families go but houses, in one shape or another, go on forever. That, at least, is what Eneclann, a company newly in the business of researching house histories, has discovered. "The great thing about a house history is that it stays in the same place," says director Mark Tottenham, "unlike families, who are always on the move."

Using a range of historical documents, well-mixed with research initiative, luck and enthusiasm, Eneclann's team are coming up with the stories of the builders, owners, occupiers, rents payable and development fates of houses going back to the early 1700s.

So far Mark Tottenham's point about dwellings, at least, being static is well proven.

Researching Rathsallagh House, on the western flank of the Wicklow mountains, they discovered the site has been continuously occupied for 3,000 eventful, and in some centuries turbulent, years. Closer to town they found that an 1840s house in Ballsbridge (still there and intact) had as its first and long-time tenant the Victorian polymath Rev William Haughton, to whom we're indebted for "Haughton's Drop", a humane method of execution. The Rev Haughton's yearly rent was £59.17s. 6d.

Then there's the Eneclann-unearthed story of a Monkstown house. Still there, naturally, and intact, it was built in the 1830s and rented to Ninian Niven, the country's "court gardener" of the time.

Niven, who moved in on November 22nd 1838, paid an annual rent of £60 (€76) as well as a payment of £200 (€254) for the sale of the lease. Then, as now it seems, you paid for living on the coast and by a rail line.

New they might be to the business of house histories but Eneclann are learning fast. Their pedigree helps.

An award-winning Trinity College campus company set up by history graduates of the college in l997, they have since been working away at historical and genealogical research for a worldwide clientele. Their emphasis until recently was on family and genealogy - researching house histories is one of a few diversifications.

The first of two Eneclann CD-ROMs (an Index of Irish Wills 1484 to 1858 and one on The William Smith O'Brien Petition 1849) are held in the National Archives. Others will undoubtedly follow.

The company also offers historical consultancy to companies, schools and local authorities and an archives and records management service.

House Histories at Eneclann is in the care of Mark Tottenham and historical research consultant, Fiona Fitzsimons. They're confident the new service will be welcomed by owners of period houses as well as by people looking for restoration grants or tax relief on the upkeep of historic homes. People with an old houses and an interest in history have already sought out the service.

A house history could make a gift with a difference - though an expensive one since an examination of "all the basic sources and other material available" can cost £950 (€1,206).

Mark Tottenham says this price was arrived at after market research. Their work on the Ballsbridge house (which amounts to about 40 fully-bound, information-packed pages) cost £3,000 (€3,809).

"When we did some marketing and mentioned this price people gulped, so we worked out the £950 (€1,206) deal," Tottenham explains.

"If we come to a dead end halfway through a project we drop the price. If there's more and the client wants to go further we can do that too."

So, how do they do it and where do they research? The basic tools are land valuation records, legal documents relating to the building, census returns, street directories and estate records. Only it's not as simple as that.

"Things are not bad up to the 1850s when there's Griffith's Valuation to rely on. This is a survey of the whole of Ireland by Sir Richard Griffiths which covers pretty much all the property in the country," Tottenham explains. "Griffiths is not so useful for Dublin though, where people lived mostly on a weekly rental basis. Still, there's a householder index for the l851 Census which is helpful."

There are also deeds, company documents, wills and house mentions in a variety of documents to go through. Researching the 19th century can be difficult. All census reports from 1821 to 1861 were destroyed in the Four Courts bombardment in l922.

Those carried out in 1871, 1881 and 1891 were destroyed by the government of the day for reasons of confidentiality. The first real census which is of help was carried out in l901. Street directories such as Thom's are used, as are estate records, the National Archives, the archives of the Irish Architectural Society, the Irish Builder periodical and early photographs. All this as well as the instinct and expertise of the individual researcher.

Eneclann are excited by what they do and it shows. Fiona Fitzsimons is enthusiastically involved with an old house near Youghal, Co Cork.

"The client wanted to know about the woman who'd owned the house and she, and the house, proved fascinating. It was originally built by a property developer in the l870s, along with a mirror image house. The woman it was left to in this century had been orphaned between l910 and 1920 and became a nurse in World War II.

"We find that the genealogy, family and house research disciplines cross-over and give us lots of additional information."

Then there's the saga of that country house in Rathsallagh, Co Wicklow.

"This was slightly different," Fiona Fitzsimons explains, "since we do something different when it's for commercial purposes.

"We give the information in a punchy, tightly-packed format. It's the same if people need the history for heritage council grants or plaques or a promotion.

"Researching Rathsallagh, we found a long history of settlement and archaeological evidence to show that it's been continuously occupied for at least 3,000 years.

"Christianity found a home there as early as the fifth century and it was first recorded when it was listed as a grange, or farm, attached to the Abbey of Glendalough in 1172."

There's a lot more between then and the time the O'Flynn family bought Rathsallagh House and demesne in l979. But then, there's a lot more to most houses, as Eneclann is discovering.

Eneclann can be contacted at (01) 671 03 38 or consulted their website at www.enneclann.ie/house-history.htm