The English House: A Broad Perspective
The three necessities for human survival are food, clothing and shelter. This course focuses on the latter and the important role the English house has played over the last 1,000 years.
That’s a lot of houses. While we must consider some examples in detail, the emphasis of the course is on the general principles that each represents in a sequence of comparative studies, concentrating on planning features.
This course examines three categories of homes, from large aristocratic “stately” homes, to farmhouses and cottages. Town houses constitute a quite different fourth category that we do not have time to consider at length; but since we are living in one of the oldest cities in England, we ought to know something about what we see every day.
The survival rate between categories is very uneven. Large aristocratic houses survive from the late eleventh century, and we can trace significant changes in each subsequent century. Medium-sized houses do not survive from before the mid-fourteenth century and really small houses are not found before the twentieth century. We need to ask why and what did the“‘lost” houses look like?
Houses are not merely shelters. Their external appearances are statements about the social and economic status of the occupants. We examine the social and economic structures of English society during these periods as well as the lifestyles of the occupants.
Course Requirements
Students are required to write one paper of 1,500 to 2,000 words and to deliver one oral presentation.
Tutor Biography
Robert Machin, M.A., formerly senior lecturer at the University of Bristol, Department for Continuing Education, earned his history degree from Merton College, University of Oxford. He has taught courses on OBSS for more than two decades and looks forward each July to returning to his old College.
Tutor Contact Details: bob@marciamachin.plus.com
Field trips
Three full-day field trips to the multi-period large house at Canons Ashby and the great courtyard house at Kirby (both in Northamptonshire); the reconstructed farmhouses at the Weald and Downland Museum of Buildings near Chichester; and the reconstructed farmhouses at The Welsh National Folk Museum, Cardiff.
Introductory Reading List
So many books are now out-of-print within a few years of publication that you need to visit a large library; use inter-library loan or buy second-hand copies; try “bookfinder” online.
There is an endless stream of books purporting to offer an introduction to the history of the English house. Most offer beautiful illustrations and a lightweight text. As a rough rule-of-thumb, if there are no plans or isometric drawings, you are not likely to learn much and such books should remain on the coffee table.
History is about what people thought and did in the past.
Most architectural historians have more limited objectives.
- Large houses (stately homes) are seen as expressions of “high culture”. They are “polite”/architect-designed houses. One must establish who designed them and how far they achieved the aesthetic ideals of their period.
- Medium & small houses (farmhouses & cottages) reflect the “low culture” of ordinary folk. Aesthetic considerations are restricted to their picturesque appearance. The serious study of “traditional/vernacular” architecture requires analysis of changes in structural details to establish typological sequences that only students of the subject understand.
Since our concern is why people in the past built and adapted houses in particular ways and how they lived in them, we only need consider a limited range of architectural history books.
Mark Girouard, Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History, (1978 & reprints) must come first—essential reading for large houses of every period.
David Durant, Living in the Past: An insider’s Social History of Historic Houses, (1988) approaches life in large houses in a different way.
Maurice Barley, Houses & History, (1986) tries to cover all sizes of houses at all periods—valiantly ambitious.
Edmund Gray, The British House: A Concise Architectural History, (1994) tackles everything below large house level—also ambitious and more successful.
From this point onwards, it’s restricted periods or categories of houses.
Jane Grenville, Medieval Housing, (1997) deals with all categories of houses from an archaeological viewpoint. A good introduction to many controversies but take the theory with a pinch of salt and don’t worry about Anglo-Saxon housing.
Antony Emery, Discovering Medieval Houses, (Shire Publications 2007)
deals only with large houses.
Christopher Dyer Standards of Living in the Late Middle Ages, (1985) is not an obvious book for our purposes but is more readable and informative than many others.
Moving beyond the medieval period, Girouard can be profitably expanded by Nicholas Cooper Houses of the Gentry, 1480- 1680, (1999)—architecture and history of the period that saw the greatest growth of gentry houses.
Ronald Brunskill has published several books on traditional/vernacular houses. Houses and Cottages of Britain: Origins and Development of Traditional Buildings, (1997) deals with regional plan types and many folk find his isometric drawings easier to understand than the usual ground floor plans. His Timber Building in Britain (1994) is also illustrated with clear drawings, though you don’t need to know about the subject in such depth.
Richard Harris Discovering Timber-Framed Buildings (1979 & reprints) is preferable for the novice clear, concise and totally reliable.
While on the subject of building materials, Alec Clifton-Taylor, The Pattern of English Building (1972 & reprints) is by far the best guide.
Antony Quiney Period Houses: A Guide to Authentic Architectural Features (1989) is useful reading on medium-sized houses of all periods.
James Ayres The Shell Book of the Home in Britain: Decoration, Design and Construction of Vernacular Interiors, 1500–1850 (1981)—updated at a far greater price by Yale (2003) with the title Domestic Interiors, 1500–1850—offers a different slant.
There will not be time to consider nineteenth and twentieth century housing in much detail but if you would like information about the houses we will see in the Oxford suburbs, these books provide an excellent background.
John Burnett A Social History of Housing, 1815–1985 (1985 & reprints) and still regularly cited in footnotes.
Stefan Muthesius The English Terraced House (1982) deals with urban housing for the masses.
Whilst the flight to the suburbs is well documented in Richard Russell Lawrence The Book of the Edwardian and Inter-War House (2009)—and covered more briefly by Trevor Yorke The 1930s House Explained (2006)
Credit and Enrollment Information
X413 History
(EDP 284182)