Using a Directory for Research

The later directories for larger towns usually have a street by street listing of residents, plus an alphabetical listing, and also a classified trades directory.

Some examples are shown here from a Nottingham directory of 1902.

Total page size with the graphics 1.2Mb. They may take a little while to display fully.

Let's look for my great grandfather William Neep. He worked at the goods depot of the Midland Railway in Nottingham.

First we look at the alphabetical listing if people, and we find not only William, at 115 Kirke White Street West, M.R. goods foreman, but also a Mrs Mary Neep who ran apartments at 19 Lake Street, and Arthurn Neep, a traveller, of 37 Balfour Road, Radford. I wonder who they are?

Having found William in the alphabetical directory, we canb now look for him in the street directory, to see who his neighbours were.

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This is part of the street directory for Kirke White Street West. Note how every household is listed, with the exception of no. 119, which was probably empty at the time. (We are just looking at one side of the road here).

It doesn't show wives or children of course, just the householder. This example explodes the myth that directories only contained businesses, or that people had to pay to be included in the directories. They didn't.

At a glance we can see that William Neep lived in the section of Kirke White Street between Mayfield Grove and Queen's Walk, and just seven houses down from the Great Central Railway viaduct. Beyond the viaduct was the butcher's shop run by Thomas Whitby, and just over the road from the junction with Mayfield Grove was the Wesleyan Chapel. We are starting to build a mental picture of what the street was like.

William would not have had to go far to have his hair cut at the "salon" of Mr James Richard Beech.

Just down the road is the Great Central Railway Goods Warehouses (The Midland Railway Goods Depot, where William worked, was just a few streets away).

At the end of the section of road, on the corner of Queen's Walk was the policeman's lodge, occupied by Thomas Asher, and a letterbox, interestingly cleared at remarkably regular intervals during the day.

We have built up a rather nice cameo of the street where William Neep lived at the time.

A full page of a street directory looks like this. Note how road crossings are shown, and also features such as chapels and schools. Even post boxes. Just about every house is listed, with the head of household and his or her occupation.

William Neep worked very close to where he lived, and it wasn't that far to walk into the centre of Nottingham, but if he had wanted to use public transport, either an omnibus or a tram, then here is the timetable from the directory:

Bear in mind that the year is 1902. These would have been horse drawn omnibuses, but we can see that by this time we had electric trams. A frequency of a tram every five minutes would be the envy of Nottingham people today waiting for a bus!

Ironically, just over 100 years later (in 2004), Nottingham is digging up its streets to re-install its tram tracks for a new transport system.

If your ancestor had a trade, then he would also appear in the Classified Trades Directory section of the book.

A typical page looks something like this:

And finally, a couple of the advertisements from the directory, one for a lace manufacturer, and another, a general advertisement for adhesive paste.

Images and examples for this page are taken from the C.N. Wright's 1902 Directory of Nottingham, from the CD produced by Parish Chest

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