Heather De Silva, Jenny Smith and Jason Tranter outline a new study unit, planned jointly by their history and geography departments and designed specifically to meet the new requirements for local history required by England’s recently revised National Curriculum for history. They aimed to help pupils to capture a part of their local past in order to explore questions of identity. Developing a sense of identity, as well as acquiring a distanced understanding of how their own and others’ identities are formed, has always been an aspect of learning that history teachers have explored and debated. In the new National Curriculum it assumes new importance, for history’s concern with identity contributes to the completely new National Curriculum subject of citizenship. The unit is designed to develop critical, historical thinking in this area, and so to support citizenship directly. The authors see their unit as an interplay of depth and overview work, and, like Dale Banham, believe that through an extended, in-depth study pupils are better prepared to assimilate, to understand and to be motivated by wider historical changes. It is a contextualised enquiry, making use of ICT, strongly cross curricular in origin and in delivery (hence the considerable time they were able to devote to it) and culminating in extended writing. The significance of ‘the house’ in sparking pupils’ imagination was clearly crucial in these teachers’ planning. This strong and tangible image remained at the centre of the enquiry, intriguing and inspiring pupils more and more as they delved into its mysterious life.