Chesterton Humberts made a smart move when they hired an in-house historian to write about their most interesting properties – the amount of PR coverage alone has surely made it worth while.

However, Melanie Backe-Hansen hasn’t spent all of her time trawling through dusty archives. She’s also been busy online, writing a very engaging and well-designed blog – The House Historian – not to mention guest blogging over at Country Life.

She has a Twitter account too with 479 people following her posts on everything from Colebrooke Row, the street Boris Johnson now calls home, to a house in Mayfair associated with the ‘happy valley’ murders in colonial Kenya – the case that inspired the book, and later the film, White Mischief.

Being a bit of a history geek, I’m all for these archival anecdotes, but Chesterton Humberts say their clients are loving it too – buyers, because it helps bring the property to life, and vendors because they can see how it might help attract interest and viewings.

All very clever, and also rather apt. Chesterton, after all, have quite a historical pedigree of their own: founded way back in 1805 by the uncle of the writer GK Chesterton, they’re one the UK’s oldest estate agents.

Good to see that possessing deep historical roots doesn’t have to mean being stuck in the past.

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