Hello Ostera,
First of all a warm welcome to our forum.

There are a lot of things that you can do to find out more about the house and it's previous occupants.
First of all I would go to the land records office, where you should find names of all owners, including dates.
Then I would start contacting the local historic societies.
Whist you are waiting for an answer from them, look up on the internet where you might find information about persons or certain occasions. Sometimes they are not in the same archive... I had that Problem before, that some information I needed was not in Plymouth, but in Exeter.
I recommend, that you write down the file numbers, this way you will save lots of time.
Then take your list, go to the archives and start digging. Make sure you don't get side tracked
Sounds like a lot of work? Well it is!

But also very interesting.
Hope I could help you with that.
Hella
P.s.: Once you are finished with it, and you don't really want to keep it after a couple of years (I mean, the house is not yours, so the report wouldn't really have an emotional value for you), you could put it all in a neat folder and donate it to the local historic society. I am sure they would be really pleased about it.
_________________
Lead Investigator & Researcher - Devon: arwen@ghostfinder.co.uk
"Dark the other side is!" ... "Oh, shut up, Yoda, and eat you toast!!!"