Researching heritage assets

Find out more about heritage assets in your area, by exploring the following:

Dorset Explorer provides existing information on Dorset’s historic environment. It includes designated assets such as:

• conservation areas
• Historic Environment Record (HER) entries

Heritage Gateway gives further information on HERs. It also allows online access to some of them.

National Heritage List for England information on designated heritage assets.

Dorset History Centre is an invaluable repository of information on the local area. They:

• have a searchable online catalogue for their archived resources
• can also provide information and help to research a particular area

Poole History online is a free online database. It contains photographs, documents and data about the local history of the area.

Extensive Urban Survey is a national project to survey England’s historic towns and cities including the:

• archaeology
• topography
• historic buildings

Dorset Historic Towns Survey covers 21 towns across Dorset. It includes information on their history and development. It also identifies some individual assets of heritage significance.

Vision of Britain Through Time takes a high-level look at places. It has:

• historic statistics for areas, such as:
  • population
  • election results
  • census reports
• historical maps
• travel writing

National Character Area profiles give an overview of the natural and built environment.

Victoria County History (VCH) is a project that aims to write the history of every county in England. It covers topics such as topography, landscape and the built environment.

Britain from the Air. Online access to aerial photographs of Britain from the 1940s to 2009

For war memorials, there are a lot of websites full of information about designated and non-designated war memorials across the country. Take a look at:

• The War Memorials Trust
• War Memorials Online
• Imperial War Museum

You could also try these social networks:

• Flickr
• Facebook History groups
• Instagram

This part of the research on your asset can be tricky; sometimes there is no definitive answer. Checking for an HER entry through Dorset Explorer or Heritage Gateway is a good place to start.

Historic OS maps can also help you narrow down date ranges for your asset. They can at least confirm that if it is pre-19th century in date. The National Library of Scotland has digitised a range of historic OS maps across England as well as Scotland which are free to view.

If your asset is a building, structure or landscape, then you may be able to estimate the date based on its type, detailing or layout. Find out more in our "Finding out about the significance of a heritage asset" section.

Historic England has produced selection guides for different types of heritage assets.

To go with the guides is a series of documents called Introduction to Heritage Assets. These provide more detailed information on specific types of heritage assets. Unlike the selection guides, they do not consider what makes an asset listable or not. Instead, they set out the current understanding of the asset type and its history.

If your asset has associative value with a particular person, find out about them in the: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Access to this database can usually be obtained with a valid local library card.

You can use the Historic England website to check if an asset is already designated as a:

• listed building
• scheduled monument
• registered park and garden

You can do this by searching an asset address or by using the map search function.