Are valuation rolls useful sources of information for family history?

If your prime interest is in obtaining dates of birth, marriage and death for ancestors, valuation rolls will not be much use. If you are ‘putting flesh on the bones’ of your family tree, valuation rolls might be useful, as they contain information about individuals such as whether they owned or rented their houses, what their occupations were, and what sort of house and neighbourhood they lived in (by comparing the address and its occupants with others nearby). However, research in valuation rolls can be time-consuming and may simply confirm information about an individual you already know from other sources. There is, however, one use which valuation rolls can be put to with good effect in family history, and that is to identify the nature of a building recorded on a birth or marriage certificate. For example, the marriage or birth certificate might simply state an address, which the valuation roll might confirm was a hotel, church, private house, hospital or poorhouse.