diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 6e12875f45989..176b1826b3719 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -29,6 +29,7 @@ The format is based on [Keep a Changelog](http://keepachangelog.com/en/1.0.0/).
 ### Fixed
 
 - Fixed bug related to type cheking of `ReduceLROnPlateau` lr schedulers([#1114](https://github.com/PyTorchLightning/pytorch-lightning/issues/1114))
+- Fixed a bug to ensure lightning checkpoints to be backward compatible ([#1132](https://github.com/PyTorchLightning/pytorch-lightning/pull/1132))
 
 ## [0.7.1] - 2020-03-07
 
diff --git a/pytorch_lightning/core/lightning.py b/pytorch_lightning/core/lightning.py
index 9542783d38679..d5b408423dce1 100644
--- a/pytorch_lightning/core/lightning.py
+++ b/pytorch_lightning/core/lightning.py
@@ -1396,7 +1396,7 @@ def _load_model_state(cls, checkpoint: Dict[str, Any]) -> 'LightningModule':
 
         if cls_takes_hparams:
             if ckpt_hparams is not None:
-                is_namespace = checkpoint.get('hparams_type') == 'namespace'
+                is_namespace = checkpoint.get('hparams_type', 'namespace') == 'namespace'
                 hparams = Namespace(**ckpt_hparams) if is_namespace else ckpt_hparams
             else:
                 warnings.warn(