Nowadays, there are so many different houses that are available to rent or buy. Depending on your financial possibilities and personal taste, you can choose everything, from the colour of the roof to the form of the entrance door knob. And if you have concrete imaginations, you can even build the house of your dreams. But how was the evolution of houses, and what can the way a house was built tell us about the period of human history?
Houses from prehistoric times
Humans who lived during the Ice Age were used to living in cages or under mammoth-skin tents. In order to stabilise the tent, they used mammoth bones.
After the end of the Ice Age (8,000 BC), the humans who lived in the Middle East started to farm. With his new skill, they were able to produce bricks that were sundried. These were used to build houses. All throughout the world, the farming culture spread, and in 4,000 BC, it also arrived on the European continent. This was when people eventually stopped living in the tents and the first houses got built.
Houses from ancient times
In Sumer (located in today’s Iraq), the first civilizations were established. In these societies, there was a gap between the rich people, who lived in luxuriously large houses with two stories, and the poor people, who lived in rather simple sheds.
Houses in the Middle Ages
Poor people who lived in medieval times could not afford fancy buildings made from stones. They mostly lived in wooden cabins that were not equipped with a chimney or something similar. The furniture was very spatanic, and they used stools or benches to sit on because chairs were very expensive. The peasants slept not on pillows but simply on straw. Furthermore, they had to live together in the house with their animals since they did not have enough space for a separate room or stall.
The wealthy people of the Middle Ages started by building houses of wood, later on, they built stone houses and castles. In the times of the Saxons, a wealthy man lived together with his entire household in one spacious hall made of stone. However, there was already a bit of room segregation since the lord had the comfort of some privacy by sleeping in a bed that was surrounded by curtains that hid him from the view of the other people. With time, very rich people could afford the luxurious expense of a chimney or a fireplace, and in 1180, people started to put glasses into the walls, which became affordable for the wide middle class between the 13th and 14th centuries.
Houses in the 16th century
In the 16th century, it was still common to have one big main hall. Also, chimneys and fireplaces were a luxurious expense, and only a small minority of society could afford them. Anyway, it got more common to rebuild a house that was stabilized by a timber frame and fill it up with brick or stone walls. For wealthier people, it also became more common to divide their house into more than one room and to build more-storied houses.
Houses in the 17th century
In the late 17th century, stone and brick houses became affordable for not only the upper class but also the middle and lower classes, so almost no one lived in wooden houses anymore. This raised the standard of the people’s life quality a lot because they did not need to sleep anymore in the wooden houses that were often wet because of the rain and cold in the winters. Also, chimneys became more common in the lower social classes.
Houses in the 18th century
In the 18th century, it was very common for craftspeople to live in 2 or 3 rooms that were only poorly equipped with furniture and very spatanic. The majority of society lived like this, actually. For the lowest social classes, it was also not unusual to live in only one room or chamber. A small percentage of the wealthy society was in a luxurious position to let new houses be built for them. These were typically very big and were characterised by the neoclassical architecture style of the prestigious Robert Adam, who is known as one of the best architects of the 18th century.
Houses in the 19th century
At the beginning of the 19th century, members of the poorer population of Great Britain lived under the worst conditions in so-called “back-to-backs.” This means that the backs of the houses were touching. The situation was even worse for the people who had to live in cellar buildings that were often very humid and therefore infested by mold. In the course of the century, the houses of the working class improved a lot. There were certain laws passed that banned the cellar buildings, and it was also forbidden to build new back-to-backs. Furthermore, there were fixed rules that determined the distance that the buildings needed to have, as well as the room and window sizes.
Houses in the 20th century
In the 20th century, it was common to change the way of cooking from a stove that was fired with coal to a gas cooker. Also, most people from the working class had two rooms on the first floor. The room in the front was mostly thought to display the family’s best possessions and furniture. The room in the back was meant for cooking and was the one in which the family spent their spare time. Contrary to the 19th century, in the 20th century, it became more common to buy houses instead of renting them. More households also got warmed up by central heating systems and double-glazed windows.
Sources:
https://localhistories.org/a-history-of-houses/