Many Bedford Park houses have been home to fascinating inhabitants including artists and poets. Anyone wanting to find out more about who lived in their home has a wealth of sources:
- Log books, distributed to every listed house by the Bedford Park Society
- Colin Tom’s Researching London’s Houses, published by Historic Publications, gives a clear guide through the capital’s many archives where you will find sources such as maps and plans, local government record, title deeds, fire insurance records, rather and tax documentation
- Mainly About Bedford Park People by Lawrence Duttson, updated in 2015 by Christina Speight, lists alphabetically well-known personalities from Victorian times to the present day
- National census records, now available online for the years 1881, 1891, 1901 and 1911
- Annual electoral registers from the late 19th century to the present day
- Council rate books record occupants of a property, and can be a useful guide to the date of its construction. Ealing Council’s records have not survived, but Hounslow’s collection includes rate books for the Chiswick part of Bedford Park,
- Annual street directories are available from the 19th century, up to World War II but name only the householder. A single, very useful, street directory was published in the short-lived Bedford Park Gazette in October 1883
- The local history sections of the Chiswick and Ealing libraries are the main repositories, holding many of the sources mentioned here, although Chiswick is generally richer in Bedford Park material
- House deeds are now routinely destroyed and held digitally. So if you have original deeds, keep hold of them
- Records are now held by the Land Registry, which can be accessed online
- Often called the 20th century Domesday book, the 1911 Valuation was instigated by Lloyd George to calculate a land tax. Many of the surveyors’ detailed maps, plans and field books are held at The National Archives at Kew, while records for the Ealing part of Bedford Park are held at Ealing Library
- Finally, because Bedford Park includes several prestigious properties, early drawings were published in The Building News. When Maurice B Adams (one the suburb’s later architects) edited this publication there were frequent mentions of the estate.