How Barclay Price researched his street

Barclay writes: ‘My wife and I moved to Edinburgh from London 23 years ago and bought a basement flat in Albany Street. Friends who came to stay often asked: ‘Do you know who lived in the house in the past?’ We knew almost nothing of the house’s 200-year history and so, when I retired, I set out to see what I could discover. Lacking any experience of historical research, my first attempts yielded little of note, but eventually, fascinating accounts of past residents emerged. Spurred on by those, and with my research skills improving, I kept going until I had unearthed details of all the street’s past residents.

‘Remarkably, almost all of the information was found through computer searches. Thanks to the relatively recent digitisation of material and powerful web searching, much historical research is now open to all without leaving home.

‘I have created a web guide detailing the resources and methods that I found useful. While this is particularly relevant to researching properties in Edinburgh’s New Town, it may provide useful pointers to others looking to research the past of their house or street: https://sites. google.com/site/newtownresearch/home