The House Detective: Meet the woman investigating the strange history of our homes

Ever wondered about your home’s previous owners? Marianne Taylor does, and has made it her career to find out as the founder of The House Detective.

Since 2013, Taylor has been investigating the history behind numerous Queensland homes, uncovering their architectural heritage and the stories of former occupants.

Taylor’s interest in investigating began at an early age when she hoped to become a forensic scientist. Eventually studying chemistry, Taylor later pursued a new career at the Environmental Protection Agency (the Queensland government department previously in charge of managing heritage places), then Queensland Rail before setting out to start The House Detective.

It is Taylor’s belief that every home has a story worth telling.

When engaged by a client, she starts by purchasing the property’s historical titles detailing the former owners and how the land has been subdivided over time. Using a range of online and printed resources (such as Trove, library archives, electoral rolls), Taylor then researches the home’s original residents including details such as their occupations, criminal history and family members.

“One of my favourite stories was a lady who got married quite young and it didn’t work out because he turned out to be a bit of a drunk who just wanted to live off her money. She eventually left him, went back to live with her parents and basically pretended it never happened,” Taylor says.

“She then found herself pregnant to a new male friend and they had a hasty marriage, but [she] was charged with bigamy because they discovered she had another husband!”

There’s also be a number of physical discoveries Taylor has made when visiting in her clients’ homes, such as uncovering a well underneath a house and discovering original copper boilers used to wash laundry.

Taylor takes on properties from grand 1800s mansions to humble post-war homes in her work, with newer homes surprisingly being the most challenging to investigate.

“Houses built after around 1950 are actually more difficult to research because a lot of the information isn’t archived yet,” she says. “Also because some of the people who owned the homes are still alive, you can’t access those records.”

Photos are another challenging resource to uncover and are usually only available for particularly grand homes.

Fortunately for Queensland home owners, however, many properties were photographed in the late 1960s and 1970s by Frank and Eunice Corley, who travelled around the state photographing houses. The images were recently digitised with some currently on display in a free State Library of Queensland exhibition closing July 14.

Taylor charges about $2100 for her basic research package, which includes a hardcover coffee table book with the research report and any images. She also takes on smaller jobs on request such as investigating the original names of properties for curious home owners.