The previous residents were the ones who sold it to me and had lived here for 30 years. They were pretty weird and it was not a wholly pleasant transaction, but I see the husband on the train occasionally and we've chatted briefly. His main interest is in whether I'd found any Roman coins in the garden - he claims never to have done so, but it was an odd question to ask out of the blue and I did wave a metal detector about just in case. In the past he has also mentioned a supposed secret passage that he had failed to find: I've searched pretty hard for that and looked into most of the voids in the house, but if there was ever any truth to that I think it was just a flight of steps the cellar that has since been bricked up. There's one other wall I mean to look behind one day that might contain an old staircase - but I think the chances are very slim.

There's a woman who still lives on our road who owned the house for about 5 years before then. The house and garden were immaculate then (before being sorely neglected for the next 30 years by the Roman coin hunter) and I'm very curious to see photos because they did a lot of renovation work. However, to be honest she's been luke-warm about visiting or even discussing the house: her husband had a heart attack part way through the renovation and that's why they sold-up, so she might not want to think back on it now.

The family that owned the house before them (and did so going back a few generations before that) are still local. It's an old farmhouse and they worked it as a farm, before ultimately the land was sold off for development and they moved down the road to a different farm (taking the house's name with them). The last man to farm here was born in the room my daughter now sleeps in, and I know his granddaughter a bit. I've been in touch with her father (the farmer's son) and he gave me copies of some old photos, provided a bit of history, and also shared a photo of a painting he owns of my house.

The painting is something I covet like you can't imagine. It's one of a pair (I'm yet to see the second one). I would like to have them professionally photographed and reproduced so that I can have a copy, but the owner hasn't offered and I don't like to ask (they are very valuable, painted by a well-known artist, and I don't think they're known to the public - so asking to make a copy would be a big favour from someone they barely know).

What I would say is that some of the information I've been given by neighbours, amateur historians, and the previous owners has been contradictory. Even the date the house was built (literally carved into the chimney) is unclear, since I've found references pre-dating that. I wrote recently to the author of a book in which a picture of my house appears and questioned the date accompanying it (it was relevant to some current building work) and when he checked his notes even that was a few years out. I think you can piece together a good narrative of the history of a house, but the precise details are sometimes impossible to pin down. I quite like that - a bit of lore rather than hard facts. "No one really knows, but we think..." is a nice way to tell the story of a home!