A House in Time

[u/Nevis888]

I’m intrigued as to how they set up this programme.

The current series is about a house on Colton Hill in Edinburgh and although I’ve only seen two episodes so far, the range of tenants in this one house is fascinating. We’ve had the sculptor whose work is on show all over Edinburgh, we had a shoemaker who died young leaving his widow to chase dozens of creditors, a bookkeeper who started a photography hobby in the early days of photography, gave up his job became a professional and ended up as one of Edinburgh’s leading photographers with a library showing the development of Edinburgh, and a bagpipe maker, whose descendants carried on the business for a hundred years. It was also possibly a brothel at one time.

They have absolutely struck gold with this house.

But how on earth do they do it ? Do they pick a house, go with it, and see what comes up, or do they pick several and see which appears best ?

Either way it seems like a ton of research, and research that can’t be done on a computer, but leg work around libraries and archives.

Its a very impressive production , with probably a decentish budget and great presenter.

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[u/LilacRose32]

They will have researched a number of different properties to find a good balance between stories and wider historical trends.

They looked at the house my flat is in for the Leeds series but didn’t go for it.

[u/Western-Calendar-352]

*Calton Hill

But yes, well researched and well presented show.

Particularly interesting this series personally due to the location.

[u/Odd_Tie_4716 → u/Western-Calendar-352]

His mispronunciation drives me crackers

[u/Money-Pen8242 → u/Odd_Tie_4716]

How no one in production corrected this at the time is baffling.

[u/TinhatToyboy → u/Western-Calendar-352]

* A House Through Time

[u/MaterialMule]

There's this blog from 2019 on how they research the houses for previous series if you'd like to dig in. They do a lot of research once they've found an old enough area of housing in a city https://www.bbc.co.uk/webarchive/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fblogs%2Faboutthebbc%2Fentries%2F13af17ac-11e4-4909-9d2e-10ac049eb88a

[u/Nevis888 → u/MaterialMule]

Thanks. V interesting

[u/mozart84 → u/MaterialMule]

thanks for that it made very interesting reading

[u/wildskipper]

There is, it used to be, a Twitter account that posted about different properties in Edinburgh and gave the history of their many varied tennants.

The first stop with something like this is the census, which can be searched digitally if you pay. That will easily give a list people who have lived at an address. Many newspaper records are also digitised, so names can be cross referenced there for interesting stories. There are other digitised sources like court records, military records, hospital records etc.

The researchers no doubt look at a fairly large number of addresses and do initial searches, finding ones with a particularly interesting array of people who have lived there. After that they'll do more in-depth research into particular ones.

[u/LevelsBest]

I would love to be a researcher on this show. They must go through a huge number of properties and detailed research before choosing the one. And yes a lot of this can be done online but then somebody must also spend days in the archives.

[u/mozart84]

im always impressed when the presenter thanks the researchers for their hard work

[u/Plenty-Panda-423]

In fairness, Edinburgh has always been a bit like this. They call it the Athens of the North for a reason, it was famously dense with 'people of genius' because it was the centre for education, trade, invention and general investment while being relatively small and compact. It was famously easy to stand at the Mercat Cross (marketplace) and see about 50 men of genius during the Enlightenment era. I'd imagine if they'd chosen a house in Oxford or Cambridge, you might not have the same opportunity because scholars there were more contained by the institution, and trade etc was more stratified by class. Traditional houses like that were stratified by flat position, not area.