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    Tracing the History of Houses
    Tracing the History of Houses
    Tracing the History of Houses
    Ebook241 pages1 hour

    Tracing the History of Houses

    By Trevor Yorke

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    About this ebook

    All houses have a history to tell and the fascination with period properties is not confined to country houses with grand estates. Whether town, mansion or country cottage, old houses are equally worthy of pride and interest in their past.Tracing the History of Houses shows how to obtain an approximate dating of a house from the physical and visual evidence, including its location, the materials used in construction, and styles, both exterior and interior. It also shows how to spot changes that have taken place to windows and doors, as well as more substantial extensions and alterations in older properties.The second section in the book lists the various sources of information which can help with dating the age of a house, as well as learning about those who may have lived in it. There is also a time chart with illustrations of key changes to house styles, a list of useful websites and a detailed glossary.Filled with illustrations in both colour and black and white, this is an invaluable guide that will be equally useful at home and in the car.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCountryside Books
    Release dateSep 5, 2011
    ISBN9781846749001
    Tracing the History of Houses
    Author

    Trevor Yorke

    Trevor Yorke is a professional author and artist who has studied and written about various aspects of England's architectural and industrial heritage. He has produced many illustrated books that introduce the reader to these topics and writes articles and reviews for various magazines. He lives in the UK.

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      Book preview

      Tracing the History of Houses - Trevor Yorke

      PREFACE

      Tracing the History of a House

      The English house comes in all manner of shapes and sizes. From Georgian terraces towering four or five storeys over urban pavements to humble thatched cottages rambling down village lanes. There are stout, square farmhouses standing proudly in the centre of their fields and tiny two-up, two-downs squeezed within monotonous rows of Victorian streets. Some display the latest styles while others imitate the past. Some 1930s’ estates will have flat-roofed, white-rendered, modern houses for the more adventurous resident, next to ones with mock timber-framing, bay windows and herringbone brickwork, creating a more reassuring, traditional façade.

      This variety of form is further enhanced by the great diversity of building materials found within our relatively small island. Grey granites in Cornwall, rusty limestones in the Cotswolds, and gritty sandstones in the Pennines contrast with black and white timber-framing in Cheshire, white weatherboarding in Kent and colourful mud walls in Devon. Even when these traditional, local materials (referred to as vernacular) were superseded by brick during the 19th century, the qualities of the clay used for the bricks still coloured the finished product, from the yellows in London to the rich reds in Manchester. The properties of the different stones, bricks and timber also help shape the building, in some cases determining the form of the structure, thickness of the walls and size of openings within them, while the pitch of the roof (how steep or shallow it is) relates to the wide variety of coverings which have been used in the past.

      Further confusion is created by many houses being deceptive; some copying past styles with a cladding of rustic features disguising its modern structure, while others were designed to make the building appear to be of better quality than it was. Regency brick terraces were clad with a render known as stucco which, when scoured and coloured, appeared like fashionable Bath or Portland stone, despite the walls beneath being of a much cheaper material and dubious construction – this is the time when the phrase jerry building was first coined (from a nautical term for temporary rigging). In the late Victorian period the revival by the Arts and Crafts movement, where traditional methods and materials were used, inspired speculative builders (those who speculated by building first and then selling or renting the property afterwards) to cover their standard terraces and semis with all manner of traditional finishes to imitate them.

      FIG 0.1: A map of England showing the distinctive regional building materials which are characteristic of certain areas.

      This wide selection of forms, materials and our habit of jumbling it up by reviving past styles can make it difficult to identify the date when a house was built. However, underneath this apparent confusion there are plans and structural types which were common in a certain period, regulations which changed the appearance of buildings for a known length of time and styles and decorative details which can be pinpointed to a particular date. We are also fortunate enough in this country that the lack of warfare and revolution on our soil has resulted in the preservation of government, ecclesiastic, manorial and estate documentation which can be invaluable for research. Some of the documentation can help turn an approximate dating from the visual evidence into a definite one and uncover names of past residents and owners (before the First World War most houses were rented out by the owner who may never have lived in the building itself).

      Whether the house you are interested in is ancient or modern, grand or humble, urban or rural, it will still have a history to unfold. Do not think because it is a small, plain property or it was built in the last hundred years that it is not worth investigating. There is as much fascinating evidence to be uncovered from a post-war prefab about life in 1940s’ Britain as can be discovered about a timber-framed house from the Tudor Age. This book treats all periods and types of houses with equal respect and will enlighten the reader in the important aspects which help date most houses which can be seen today.

      BEFORE YOU START

      The following chapters are laid out in a sequence which makes a logical introduction to tracing the history of a house, starting with visual evidence in the first section and then documentation in the second. Before starting research on a property, however, it is important to consider a few suggestions on the methods used and your initial approach to the task:

      1. Work from the whole to the part. Firstly, try to find out about the town or village in which the house is set, and then work down to more specific information about the street and the buildings themselves. It is all too easy to assume the building is of a certain date because of a decorative detail or to focus upon a known previous owner without first stepping back and looking at the overall picture.

      2. Keep a record of everything you find. Don’t discard any facts, names or details you collect. Even if you only do a basic search at this stage, you might find the facts useful if you go back to the project later. Stand back every so often and put any new information into place. Perhaps make a chart of occupants like a family tree or list information found by date. It’s amazing how many times this sort of organising suddenly links pieces of the puzzle together or highlights something worthy of more research.

      3. Do not set yourself a timescale. You might discover all you want within a few weeks of research but if you get hooked or the mystery deepens, months can turn into years, a time well worth the wait, especially if you have that eureka moment when you find a dusty old document that puts the last piece of the jigsaw into place.

      4. Find out first what research has already been carried out on the property. Ask neighbours and previous owners if they know anything regarding the history of the house. Local history groups or libraries may also be aware of work carried out while solicitors or estate agents who have handled the sale of the property, will often have some knowledge of its past. Should you find work has been carried out then do not let it put you off your own research, you may be able to go further back in time or discover more; although the previous research can help save time by highlighting useful sources and revealing previous names of the house or occupants. When approaching some of the above people, always be polite and remember your requests will not be their top priority. Emails and letters (with a stamped addressed envelope) may be the best first approach.

      5. Draw up a plan of the house with measurements. It does not have to be to scale, although this helps, but it is important to record the overall dimensions of the building, the size of rooms and details such as the thickness of walls. It can also be beneficial to know dimensions of the plot and the acreage if it is rural. This plan will be useful to help you evaluate the evidence you find when searching through documents, as the house may only be identifiable by size and position rather than name.

      6. Make a photographic record of the house. It is crucial at this early stage to look at the house in detail inside and out, taking time to notice any signs of blocked up openings, changes in stone, brickwork, timber and any decorative details, odd gaps or features. Take photographs of all elevations (especially sides and the rear where the least change is likely to have happened), the inside of rooms and any of the details which may be of interest. It is also important to explore and record what you find inside the loft as this can often help date a building and identify whether the property has been altered or extended. Keep copies of these photographs as they will be useful when comparing with other properties, showing them to an expert in the field and researching away from home.

      FIG 0.2: It can be important to measure the house and record it on a plan since the area of the property, width of frontage and size of rooms may help to identify your house in old documents where its name is often not mentioned.

      By using the photographs and plan of the house, the next task should be to try to date the building from the physical evidence you have recorded. The following chapters give an outline of how the structure, style and interior details may have changed through time. This will help you to recognise the sequence of construction (even houses only a hundred years old may have been extended and altered a number of times) and thus arrive at an approximate period in which the original structure was built.

      FIG 0.3: Above are photos of some of the features which are worth noting when studying your own house. Look for changes in brickwork (left), blocked doors (centre) and altered roof lines (right).

      SECTION I

      HISTORY

      AND

      DEVELOPMENT

      CHAPTER 1

      A Brief History of Housing

      To understand how the property in which you are interested may have originally appeared and the status of its early occupants, it is first important to understand how housing has developed.

      Medieval and Tudor Housing

      In most parts of the country, ordinary houses built before the 17th century were comprised of only one room in which to eat and sleep and, depending on access to good building practices and materials, may have stood for only a generation or two. What we regard today as a quaint cottage would have been a large, desirable property in medieval and Tudor times, its two storeys standing proudly over the humble hovels around it.

      Most houses in this period would have been built by commissioning a carpenter or builder to erect the property to rough specifications (if the skills to do so did not exist within the family). The original layout and size of the house would have reflected the desires, demands and status of its first occupants, while its structure would have been vernacular, formed from materials sourced locally and methods passed down from older generations. It was only from the late 17th century onwards that it became common for builders to speculate, usually erecting a small number of houses in the latest style to pass onto a landlord, or find tenants themselves, before moving on to the next project.

      FIG 1.1: Most urban terraces from the mid-17th century were erected by speculative builders, small-scale companies constructing only a short row of houses at a time (note these terraces built in pairs). With the direct contact between builder and occupant now being lost, the standard could drop and corners were cut as the tenant was unlikely to see it being built. This problem was made worse in earlier examples since the lease for the land was very short and so there was little incentive for houses to be built to last.

      A notable change in the quality and size of houses occurred as the population started to grow and incomes increased during the Tudor period. Beginning in the south-east in the late 16th century and spreading slowly across the country until the late 18th century, this ‘Great Rebuilding’ as it is now termed, resulted in better quality, permanent housing for an increasing number of farmers, merchants and skilled workers. It can be important to know your local history if you think the house you are researching is of this antiquity as it is likely that it will date to the rebuilding in your area which varied depending upon industry, trade and agricultural improvement. For instance, parts of Suffolk and the Cotswolds, which became prosperous with the wool trade, had new two-storey houses built as early as the late 1400s while the Pennine district of Lancashire only started the process in the late 1700s as the cotton industry expanded.

      Rebuilding can also be dated to the aftermath of a major fire, a blight which affected many towns and cities in the past, devastating the largely timber-built housing. The most famous was the Great Fire of London of 1666 which is important not only for the vast scale of the destruction but also

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