There are many archives across Europe with boxes upon boxes of old documents, 100's of years old, that nobody simply has had time to look at. If it weren't for a 'History of the Law in the Southern Netherlands' course I took as part of my law degree (and frankly, I took it because the schedule fit better around my job than other courses), I would never even have known about the archive near me. The professor took us there one day, we signed in, got given some latex gloves and were each handed a box of documents from the medieval archives of the city (by one of the librarians). They were all old court cases, and the assignment was basically to look through them for a case that looked interesting, try to read it, and write a report on the judicial organization and procedural rules in it.

Anyway, to get to your point: yes it's awesome reading these old accounts of seemingly mundane things, so many years ago, sometimes references places or houses that still exist. I don't think I could ever be a historian and do it for years on end, but just sniffing around a bit (and in a repurposed medieval church, with the complete surroundings just breathing that 'The name of the Rose' feeling, in my case) is, in a way, intellectually exhilarating (who would have thought anyone would ever describe reading 500 year old court cases 'exhilarating'...).