Thursday 21 April 2011

Identifying 'lost' nineteenth-century London streets

I have made further progress with my current genealogical research project, mainly in connection with pinpointing exactly where the various branches of my client’s family lived in East London in the mid- and late nineteenth century. I have been surprised at how difficult this has been, even with numerous London street directories from the time readily to hand: I wonder if there is a handy and comprehensive modern volume recording the changes to London’s street names, dates of clearance and demolition, and also wartime destruction? Eventually, I managed to find what I was looking for by poring over the 1867–70 OS maps at the London Metropolitan Archives with a magnifying glass; not a frivolous exercise by any means, as one can distinguish the various buildings where my client’s family lived, and copies of the relevant sections of these maps will hopefully make the walking tour I am planning for him that much easier to organise.

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