Model-based projections of energy demand are hardly ever confronted with observations. This shortfall threatens the credibility policy-makers might attach to integrated energy-economy models. One reason for it is the lack of historical data against which to calibrate models, a prerequisite for attempting to replicate past trends. In this paper, we (i) assemble piecemeal historical data to reconstruct the energy performance of the residential building stock of 1984 in France; (ii) calibrate Res-IRF, a bottom-up model of residential energy demand in France, against these data and run it to 2012. In a preliminary simulation that only considers the data that were known at the beginning of the simulated period, we find that the model accurately predicts energy consumption per m² aggregated over all dwelling types, with a Mean Absolute Percentage Error below 1.5% and 85% of the variance explained. These figures reach 0.5% and 96% when we consider the best-fit of 1,920 scenarios covering the uncertainty surrounding the parameters of the initial year. Energy demand is unevenly well replicated across fuels, which reveals some limitations in the ability of the model to capture politically-driven policies such as the expansion of the natural-gas distribution network. The overall results however build confidence in the general accuracy of the Res-IRF model. We discuss the directions for data collection which would ease comparison between simulations and observations in future hindcast experiments.