← HistoryExtra podcast
HistoryExtra podcast
The history of British homes: everything you wanted to know
00:51:06
From the window tax and deadly gas irons to history's worst furnishing trends, Deborah Sugg Ryan delves into the history of British homes
Loading summary
Transcript65 lines
- [00:00]
Shopify Advertiser
When you think about super successful businesses that are selling through the roof like Heinz or Mattel, you think about a great product, a cool brand and brilliant marketing. But there's a secret the business behind the business making selling simple for them and buying simple for their customers. For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout as Heinz and Mattel. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com promo all lowercase go to shopify.com promo to upgr package you're selling today. Shopify.com promo today at T Mobile I'm.
- [00:39]
T-Mobile Host
Joined by a special co anchor.
- [00:41]
Snoop Dogg
What up everybody? It's your boy. Big Snoop deal.
- [00:42]
T-Mobile Host
Double G Snoop where can people go to find great deals?
- [00:46]
Snoop Dogg
Head to T mobile.com and get four iPhone 16s with Apple Intelligence on us plus four lines for 25 bucks.
- [00:52]
T-Mobile Host
That's quite a deal Snoop and when you switch to T Mobile you can save versus the other big guys. Comparable plans plus streaming respect.
- [00:59]
Snoop Dogg
We up out of here.
- [01:01]
T-Mobile Host
See how you can save on wireless and streaming versus the other big guys. AT T Mobile Apple Intelligence requires iOS 18.1 or later.
- [01:08]
McAfee Advertiser
Your data is like gold to hackers. They'll sell it to the highest bidder. Are you protected? McAfee helps shield you blocking suspicious texts, malicious emails and fraudulent websites. McAfee Secure VPN lets you browse safely and its AI powered tech scam detector spots threats instantly. You'll also get up to $2 million of award winning antivirus and identity theft protection, all for just $39.99 for your first year. Visit McAfee.com, cancel anytime terms apply.
- [01:37]
Samsung Advertiser
I can say to my new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra hey, find a keto friendly restaurant nearby and text it to Beth and Steve. And it does without me lifting a finger so I can get in more squats anywhere I can. 1, 2, 3.
- [01:52]
T-Mobile Host
Will that be cash or credit? Credit 4 Galaxy S25 Ultra the AI companion that does the heavy lifting. So you can do you get yours@samsung.com compatible with select apps. Requires Google Gemini account. Results may vary based on input. Check responses for accuracy.
- [02:11]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
Welcome to the History Extra podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. What was history's worst furnishing Trend? Why in 1953 were you more likely to own a television than than a fridge? And how could you learn more about the history of your own house? Well, for today's everything you want to know episode, I'm putting your questions on the history of homes in Britain to Deborah Sugg Ryan, a professor of design history. Deborah is also a series consultant and presenter on BBC2's A House Through Time, each series of which traces the story of one single house and its residents down the centuries. It's wonderful to have you on the History Extra podcast, Deborah, and I'm super excited to talk all about the history of the British home with you. This is something that I personally am really fascinated by. So we've got a lot to cover and not a lot of time to cover it in. Let's start with a big question about why we're here. Why is it interesting to look at how people's homes have changed over time? What can it reveal?
- [03:25]
Samsung Advertiser
Yeah, well, I'm a design historian, so what I am really interested in is the design and what's called the material culture of the home. So all the stuff, not just how we decorate our homes and how they change, but the stuff we fill them with as well. And that says a lot about us and our identity. And I have got this particular kind of emphasis in the research I've done on how ordinary people live as well. I'm not just interested in elites. Elites are much more interested in the working classes and the kind of aspirational lower middle classes. So our homes are a really good kind of lens to do with our tastes, our aspirations, our dreams, our desires.
- [04:16]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
And hopefully we'll be revealing some of that in our conversation. We've got a question in from one of our listeners, James, who's asked about the concept of home ownership and when it began in Britain. He's also said, are the British more obsessed with this idea of owning our own homes than other nations?
- [04:34]
Samsung Advertiser
I mean, to answer the second part first, yes, I think the British are peculiarly obsessed with home ownership. I mean, I think the thing that is so fascinating about this story is that prior to the Victorian era, most houses were owned by the gentry or wealthy landowners. And although after the Industrial Revolution, ownership spread across the middle classes, owner occupation was not the norm. It was quite common among the middle classes to, if you did own a property, to rent it out and rent the one you lived in. So it's a completely different kind of idea behind home ownership and without the kind of stigma of renting that developed later on. And so, to give you some statistics, at the outbreak of the First World War, 90% of our housing stock was rented out by private landlords and less than 1% was municipally owned. So for the vast majority of people, the biggest fixed charge in their weekly budget was Rent and all that changes. After the First World War. Some listeners might have heard of the phrase homes fit for heroes. There was this idea that after the sacrifices of the First World War, one of the things that had been found is that poor housing conditions had led to terrible. So there were men who couldn't go into active service because they had these kind of diseases associated with poverty and bad living conditions. But there was also an idea of homes fit for heroines as well, and about the kind of sacrifices women had made on the home front as well. So you have an enormous house building campaign in the interwar years. So nearly 4 million houses were built in the interwar years. Of those getting on for 3 million were built by privates builders and about 1.1 million by local authorities. So you have this kind of huge change in the housing stock. And another thing that actually doesn't get talked about as much is about 1.1 million houses that have previously been privately rented moved into owner occupation as well. So you are talking about a huge rise in living conditions. There was also some post war legislation, the Addison act, which drew on something called the Tudor Waters Report, which laid some kind of standards for house building for the local authority housing. And interestingly, it meant that those private house builders had to build to at least the same standards and compete. So you get this huge growth in house building that is really enabled by some standardised building techniques that had been used during the war. So by 1929 you've got more than doubling of owner occupied housing, nearly 21%. And the mid-1930s became the most favorable period in history to buy a house. And a number of things aided this. Cheaper mortgages. There had been a building society movement, but that really took off interestingly with mortgages. Some local authorities even lent people the deposit to buy a house. And what happened as well is you've got this idea of a growing kind of better off working class and lower middle class, but people with quite modest incomes begin to to be able to afford to buy a house. And one of the things that happens in kind of mid to late 30s is that as house builders exhaust house purchases, they build smaller and smaller and smaller houses to capture the kind of cheaper end of the market. And in fact I used to own a house just like this in Wolverker. My first house in Wolverket in North Oxford was one of these very typical small interwar semi detached houses, three bedrooms with a reasonably sized garden. So by the outbreak of the Second World War, you've got home ownership at about 32%. So that's more than trebling. Quite extraordinary since the outbreak of the First World War. And then what happens is after the Second World War you've got a similar impetus to build more housing and particularly to build council housing. So in the 50s you had 250,000 council houses being built a year. And in the 60s you've got about 400,000 houses a year being built. I mean, very topical for some of the debates we're having at the moment. And of course the new towns as well in the 60s. So by the end of the 60s, Britain had as many owner occupiers as renters. But a lot of those renters were not renting privately, they were renting public housing. And that I think is a big difference.
- [09:35]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
I think you've given us a fantastic overview there of the massive kind of structural changes in house ownership and house building. So I'll move now to a question from Suzanne, who's asked whether British people have always wanted to live in houses rather than flats. This is interesting. I think in this country there is definitely some kind of cultural cachet about owning a house rather than owning a flat. Do you think that's fair?
- [10:02]
Samsung Advertiser
Yeah, I think what there are, there are regional variations. And so if we start thinking about the different nations, of course we've got this tradition of tenements in Scotland, particularly in Edinburgh and Glasgow. And the idea of the tenement goes right back to the 17th century onwards. I visited a couple of years ago, Gladstone's land in Edinburgh, which I really recommend, a tenement house open to the public that takes you through the tenement house in different periods in time. For American listeners, tenement doesn't have the pejorative term it does in the us. It simply really uses a term to describe apartment houses. But you've also got working class tenements that sprung up after the Industrial revolution to house those industrial workers. So they were not such good housing and some fell into slums. So there was that big kind of post war demolishment of slums. But of course, some tenements buildings in Glasgow and Edinburgh are still highly desirable. And of course this is quite different to the kind of British post war high rise flat. They've got a very poor reputation in some quarters, but actually some of them were very well built and planned. I think the issue is, and amenities and landscaping and how they sit in the landscape, access to green space. I think there are these kind of regional variations and then, you know, then there's the whole kind of stigma of the post War High rise.
- [11:47]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
I wonder if we could go back a little bit in time to look at the Georgian and Victorian eras. What were some of the key architectural styles and how did they change?
- [11:56]
Samsung Advertiser
Yeah, well, if we think of the typical large Georgian house, very symmetrical, with this kind of very heightened sense of space and light, arranged over three or four stories, often in cities, not usually with a private garden, but built around a garden square. And that idea of light is really aided by large sash windows. They tend to get smaller at the top because you've got the servants living at the top of the house, so they're grander downstairs. And they tend to be brick or stone in the earlier period and later on stucco, this sort of rendered interior, and you have this sort of hipped roof that's not too high pitched. And then internally in the early Georgian period, they're simpler and they get more ornate as the 18th century goes on. So you start getting the ceiling roses and the cornicing and the decoration. Something that's really interesting is the internal layout. It's often very symmetrical with the front door in the middle. And one of the things that we've come across a lot when I've worked on a house through time, because we've had a lot of houses in our five series that started in the Georgian period and often the main formal reception entertaining rooms are upstairs, not on the ground floor. And that takes some getting used to. So the hall is often very ornate and there's staircase takes up a lot of space because what you're doing is you're impressing your visitors. So then you get a change. In the Victorian period, obviously we've got massively increasing population with industrialization and increased house building and the expansion of the middle classes. And so lots of Victorian houses are smaller, in some cases very small, less grand, built in terraces, often on very narrow streets, and tend to be asymmetrical rather than symmetrical. But you do get in the kind of better off housing, more decoration, increasing decoration, all sorts of different influences. And then of course as well you get some very bad quality housing. I mean, the back to back arrangement of houses in cities. And some listeners may have visited the Birmingham back to Backs, which I really recommend, really, really, really interesting National Trust display there. And so there were some real scandals about houses being built with no garden and without proper sanitation. And then the other thing that's quite common to both the Georgian Victorian period, in larger houses with servants, the kitchen away from where the family lived, you know, there was a terrible fear about fire, but often in the basement and of course, that's all about different in working class houses where the kitchen in the typical two up, two down, the kitchen is a kind of combined kitchen living room where the family spent most of their day.
- [15:04]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
A very quick point on those big Georgian windows that you mentioned, Alice. Al has asked about window tacks. What was it and why was it introduced?
- [15:14]
Samsung Advertiser
Yeah, you might have seen bricked up windows in houses and thought this is really strange. What's this about? Well, the window tacks was levied on homeowners between 1696 and 1851. So it was in place for really quite a long time. And it was in place of income tax. The idea was that the more windows a home had, the bigger it was and the richer the owner was. So to avoid paying higher taxes, some homeowners bricked up windows to reduce the amount of tax that they had to pay. And rather than reinstate windows after the tax was lifted, some houses just stayed the same. So that's why you still see those bricked up windows.
- [15:57]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
Fantastic. It's sitting there in the dark just to avoid the tax. You mentioned servants. So when did residences go from being largely shared by various people? So whether that is servants, whether that's different families all kind of living in one tenement or different generations perhaps of extended family to places that were intended for just one nuclear family.
- [16:18]
Samsung Advertiser
So many people lived in houses in multiple occupation, obviously if you were in middle class, had servants and then lots of working class people lived in and even middle class people lived in houses that were multiply occupied. But it's really this interwar period of building these small three bedroom, semi detached houses. And there's an interesting kind of chicken and egg thing here because I think one of the important things about this is reduced family size. Maristopes access to contraceptive methods, whatever they are, to be able to control family size. And there's lots of evidence from historians who've studied population that women, you know, one of the reasons women sought to reduce family size was to improve their standard of living. So the smaller family becomes this kind of ideal. And it's really interesting the way the housing stock of the kind of typical three bedroom, semi kind of reflects this family of two or three children. You've got some moves towards it pre First World War, but it really solidifies in that interwar period. And the other thing to say about servants as well is there was a big servant crisis after the First World War known as the servant problem. It started before the war, but it really gathered pace because lots of the women who'd been servants because remember most families just had one servant who'd maybe be a maid of all work who had a pret miserable existence. And in the First World War they did war work, they maybe worked in munitions factories and they did not want to go back into domestic service. So it's not that domestic servants completely declined, but you tended to get a move towards servants coming daily rather than living in. So there are these kind of economic reasons as well that hit the middle classes because the servant problem also becomes a way to sort of as well mask the fact that you might have been hit by terrible post First World War inflation as well and can no longer afford a live in servant. So again, it's a slightly complicated picture.
- [18:29]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
So to stay with this idea of the three bed semi and the white picket fence, can you tell us a bit about the rise of suburbanism in Britain? Obviously in America this is really associated with the 1950s. Is that the case here?
- [18:43]
Samsung Advertiser
No, I mean what's interesting is this kind of population shift from historic core cities or rural areas into suburbs with lower density housing with a distinct character goes as far back as the medieval period. Although what happens is some of what originally thought of as suburbs get absorbed into town and city centres. So that sort of suburbanization spreading out. However, I think one of the key things in Britain is the development of suburbs in the 19th century when people are able to travel for work via public transport. So the railways are really important and in London of course the underground as well, particularly again in the interwar period. And then later on of course bicycles, incredibly important way of people getting to work. But really this idea that you were healthier and happier in the suburb really took hold from about 1840 and again linked to that idea of the self contained family home and the idea of the garden, the detached villa and the naturalistic setting in a winding tree lined road with a large garden. And then you know, the other big influence is the garden city and all of that influences interwar housing estates, both public and private as well. So that garden city arts and crafts ideal is really important in Britain as well.
- [20:15]
T-Mobile Host
I was never really a runner. The way I see running is a gift, especially when you have stage four cancer. I'm Ann. I'm running the Boston Marathon presented by bank of America. I run for Dana Farber Cancer Institute to give people like me a chance to thrive and learn life even with cancer.
- [20:34]
Snoop Dogg
Join bank of America in helping Anne's cause. Give if you can@b of a.com supportan what would you like the power to do references to charitable organizations is not endorsement by bank of America Corporation. Copyright 2025.
- [20:48]
Samsung Advertiser
You don't wake up dreaming of McDonald's fries. You wake up dreaming of McDonald's hash browns. McDonald's breakfast comes first.
- [21:00]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
I'm ready for my life to change.
- [21:03]
T-Mobile Host
ABC Sundays, American Idol is all new. Give it your all.
- [21:07]
Samsung Advertiser
Good luck. Come out with a golden ticket. Let's hear it.
- [21:10]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
This is a man's world.
- [21:13]
Samsung Advertiser
I've never seen anything like it.
- [21:15]
T-Mobile Host
And a new chapter begins. We're going to Hollywood. Carrie Underwood joins Lionel Richie, Luke Bryant and Ryan Seacrest on American idol news Sundays, 8, 7 Central on ABC and Stream on Hulu.
- [21:30]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
Just quickly, what exactly was a garden city?
- [21:33]
Samsung Advertiser
Yeah, well, a garden city, the idea of a garden city is that you bring nature and green space into the city, but that it's a proper community as well that has amenities. Whereas of course, bad suburban development doesn't have any of that. It just has houses and it doesn't have those other kind of community amenities and is less focused on the kind of integration of green space.
- [21:59]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
It's an interesting example of people really thinking about how homes and housing stocks could transform people's lives more generally. And this is something that I wanted to ask you about. What have been some of the biggest underlying theories or ideas that have transformed approaches to domestic architecture, housing and design?
- [22:19]
Samsung Advertiser
I think certainly the idea of the garden city is one of the kind of biggest ideals and the Arts and Crafts movement. And some of that harks back to this kind of idea of the English cottage, because that's really had a kind of hold on our domestic design as well. That even though actually lots of cottages in rural areas were pretty miserable and damp and vermin infested and poorly built, but that kind of romantic sized cottage ideal. And gardens are incredibly important in that. And an idea of the vernacular as well, of the local, I think has been really important in Britain too. You know that you're using local materials, you're using local brick, for example, or local stone to build in. And that actually fed into council housing was really important actually in some of the post war council housing. But then I think we've been left west influenced by the modern movement in design in Britain. We've got pockets of modernist housing. So if we think of the typical sort of flat roofed house on simple lines, influenced by architects like Le Corbusier, they have tended to be for wealthy clients, or you do have some interesting developments by the seaside. So you get those kind of experiments in design. And what we've Tended to have is what would have been called at the time modern or modernistic. The term used now is art deco with a more kind of decorative aspect. So I think they've been some of the biggest theories. And then more recently, I think we've really had this interest in open plan. And for American and some European listeners, Open plan has a kind of longer history. But you know, you only have to watch a home makeover program to see the mania for knocking down walls and creating huge spaces, particularly open plan kitchen, living spaces and moving away from those sort of small rooms, the typical two reception room, kitchen. But opening everything up, that's definitely a kind of trend that's really held sway for about 30 years now.
- [24:44]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
Well, let's talk about the kitchen in particular in a bit more detail because I know that this is something you have researched and written a lot. What era saw some of the biggest changes and developments in kitchens in Britain?
- [24:57]
Samsung Advertiser
If we come in again into the 20th century, one of the things that kind of was dominant for a long time was the cooking range. So the cooking range powered by coal that you were cooking on, but it was heating the house as well, heating the water for the house. And I think the big changes are actually power are the availability of electricity and gas. Cause they really transform the kitchen. And gas. Electric cookers are available from the 20s, but gas really takes off because of the invention of the regulo thermostat in 1923. So the small gas cooker completely changes the way in which you use the kitchen because it's cleaner and easier. But they also have to have organizations to educate women in how to use them. Exhibitions, demonstrations are really important and household manuals, magazines in their adoption. So I think it's power. Power for appliances is a slightly different thing because although they were available often you had to plug an appliance into an electric light fitting. You didn't have sockets. When I bought my first house in 1995, which had never changed since it was built, it had one electric socket in the whole house. And the lady in her 90s was still living like that. And one of the things that held back the adoption of electric appliances in Britain was until the establishment of the national grid In the mid-30s, you had regional variations in the electricity voltage supply. So you could buy an iron in Manchester, and if you move to Birmingham, I mean, top of my head, it might not work. But the most popular small appliances were irons, irons and curling tongs. And although things like electrical food mixers were available, they were expensive and they didn't really take off. And then the other big change in the kitchen is server is the decline of servants. And also in the interval period and beyond this idea of this kind of modern housewife in the domain of the kitchen, with the kind of all mod cons as a sort of ideal. Very influenced by the movies, later by television and advertising and magazines.
- [27:17]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
Well, homes have for a lot of history been very gendered spaces. As you kind of alluded to there. We've got this idea of the modern housewife being really significant. Have changes in the way that homes have been designed resulted in changes in the lives of women in particular?
- [27:36]
Samsung Advertiser
I think it's a really, really interesting question because one of the. I'm writing a book on the history of the kitchen at the moment. And one of the things I've been trying to unpick is the development of the fitted kitchen. And the kind of off repeated thing is the first fitted kitchen was the Frankfurt kitchen in 1920, designed by Greta Sheep Lahosky. In fact, there were other versions of fitted kitchens before then, earlier in the 20s. But what you have there is this kind of galley kitchen that positions the housewife as a sort of worker in the kitchen. And that kitchen is occupied by one person. It's quite difficult to occupy it by more than one. And the architect intended for women to be able to do their work as efficiently as possible because she envisaged this a woman who went out to work. But when historians have done work interviewing people who lived with these kinds of kitchens, women with children said it was really difficult to keep an eye on children when they were working in the kitchen because there wasn't enough space. And interestingly, there's a brilliant example in Finland where this kind of kitchen was adopted in social housing. And if you were a working class family, maybe the only bit of furniture you owned was a kitchen table that passed through your family and was a really important possession. So people were trying to kind of squeeze them into these kitchens and there was that still a kind of desire to eat in the kitchen. So it's that separation of cooking and cleaning up and eating. And I think that debate still rages actually about do we have this small kitchen that you can shut the door on, or do we want a larger, more sort of social. But what about the mess and the smell? So often that's one of the things the kitchen does, is it does position women as this kind of worker in the kitchen historically. And you know, the other thing that's quite interesting is the serving hatch. That this idea of the housewife servicing.
- [29:44]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
The family sequin run on Instagram has asked about the history behind some of our most ubiquitous household appliances. Are there any that have particularly interesting stories behind them?
- [29:55]
Samsung Advertiser
One of the things I mentioned already was in the UK they are really held back by this problem with electricity supply and voltages. So they do not take off in the same way that they do in Europe and in the US in particular, I think listeners might be surprised that only 2% of the British population owned a refrigerator in 1948. 2%. In 1959 it was 15%. In 1970, it was still only 58%. So refrigerators had been around for a long time, but most people were using a larder or even keeping things on the window ledge or some kind of cold box. And one of the things about this kind of adoption is that if you have some money in your household budget available to spend on something other than necessities, often it is men who control ultimately the purse strings. And so they are more likely to invest in a radio and later a television. So, you know, you are at the point, at the time of the Coronation when TV ownership really starts taking off. You are more likely to own a television than a fridge because why would you buy these labor saving appliances? To make life easier? When you have women's free labor, it's a bad about the value placed on women's labor and men's leisure. So something gendered about that. I would argue that the appliance that's made the most impact is the washing machine. I mean, laundry was awful. If you read diaries and you read these eyewitness accounts of how utterly arduous and grim laundry day was, I think more than any other appliance for me it's the washing machine. And they didn't become common in the UK until the 50s. They have a longer history. The first English patent for one was in the late 17th century and the first domestic washing machine was available in 1937. But again, ownership was slow. So in 1970 it was still only 65%. It's nearly 100% now. But I would argue, you know, that's the most kind of transformational of all appliances.
- [32:17]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
And, well, next time I'm moaning about loading and unloading my washing machine, I will remember that I'm actually very lucky to have it. What are some maybe weird or perhaps misjudged design innovations or, you know, must have homewares that haven't stood the test of time.
- [32:36]
Samsung Advertiser
I think the one that terrifies me the most is the gas powered iron with liquid fuel. That's absolutely terrifying. And they were available in the late 20s and 30s. Ironing, you know, was really hard with. If you've ever lifted a flat iron, they are really heavy and you had to heat them up on the range or in an open fire. You know, it's no wonder that of all the small electrical appliances, electric irons were the fastest to take off because ironing was such a kind of arduous task. But the idea of a gas powered iron, I think is utterly, utterly terrifying. But the other one, which I think is a lot of fun is the teas made. The electric tease made again, the first patent was in 1902, but they really took off in the 30s with the Goblin Tees made that combined with an alarm clock and later on in the 60s and 70s with a clock radio. So it made your tea, I mean, often not very good tea. And I have had one in the past because I like to try these out. And there's a fantastic episode of Mr. Bean with a kind of misfiring teas made. So they don't make very good tea. That's, I think, the problem with them.
- [33:58]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
Are there any other elements of house design maybe, that it's good to have left in the past?
- [34:04]
Samsung Advertiser
Yeah, I think there are a lot of gadgets that end up at the back of the kitchen drawer in the garage or in the attic because they're difficult to clean. Often a real floor is something. It has this kind of promise to change your life, but it just does one task, a thing that has disappeared from our houses is if you think of the mobile phone and how it's changed our houses and how many tasks we can do on our mobile phone that used to be done by separate things. But of course, if we think of the fixed line telephone, lots of us would have grown up in a house with a phone with its own telephone table, maybe in a hall. My mother put a lock on the rotary dial of our phone and we had an egg timer by it. So we had to, because phone calls were very expensive, we had to ask for the key and she set the timer and then she came. So the telephone table, or sometimes known as a golf gossip bench. I think that's really interesting. It's a piece of furniture that has disappeared and sometimes I see them popping up in social media completely misdescribed because I think for a younger generation used to the mobile phone, it's an extraordinary change that you no longer have this fixed telephone in a place. I mean, my mother put ours in the Coldest place in the house to try and dissuade teenage children from spending too long on it.
- [35:25]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
Love that I grew up in the era of changing rooms and bodge it yourself DIY efforts, but EE has asked when DIY and interior design became seen as, you know, a hobby, something that anyone could do.
- [35:38]
Samsung Advertiser
Yeah, I think it's really interesting because there are different definitions, you know, that it can be creative, it can be a hobby, it can be lifestyle, but it can also be thought of sort of as maintenance and essential tasks. And there are ideas of amateur and professional and it's often thought to have originated in the 50s, but. But it does go back earlier. There is evidence from the 18th century of some DIY tasks, particularly hobbies and handicrafts, being seen as leisure. And of course it's very class based. It's a necessity depending on how well off you are. And there are some pursuits like wallpapering that have always been associated with women as well. You get household advice manuals teaching women how to wallpaper. But really again, it's this kind of post First World War, it starts taking off in the interwar years and gets promoted by things like the ideal home exhibition, BBC radio, homemaking manuals and magazines, Woman's Hour, interestingly, after the Second World War promotes DIY for women a lot. There are other radio programmes and then on television there's Barry bucknell, who was Mr. DIY on TV, telling you how to modernize your Victorian house by putting nice bits of ply over your old fashioned paneled doors and blocking up your fireplaces. So the stereotype is its 50s, but it does go back further.
- [37:12]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
We've got an amazing question now from Max Quigley on Instagram who asked when did garden gnomes first appear? And I wonder if we could just widen this out a bit to when gardening became a hobby as well.
- [37:23]
Samsung Advertiser
Yeah, I mean I think gardening really became a popular hobby with the growth of the middle classes in the 19th century and that kind of Victorian housing, suburban housing ideal of the well trimmed lawn with mast or carpet bedding and rock gardens as well are very popular. And then you also in the early 20th century have the fashion for cottage gardens and roses gardens. And of course when you start building suburban estates with gardens, it opens gardening out. Garden gnomes are really fascinating, generally thought to have originated in Switzerland and Germany in the late 18th century. And they're kind of conflated with pre existing stories about dwarves, but also sort of fairies and sprites. But you've got a Dresden bench company producing small ceramic statues in the 1840s and they spread across Germany and into France. If you have seen the current Monty Don series on British gardens, which I think is wonderful, he went off to Lamport hall and met Lampy the gnome who's insured for a million pounds. And he was brought back by Sir Charles Isham and installed in this extraordinary room rock garden at Lamport Hall. He's the only one who survived because apparently his daughter hated the gnomes so much, when she took over the house, she used to invite people to shoot them. So he had loads of them all over this massive rock garden. But there was also some gardens open to the public by someone called Sir Frank Crisp in a bit later on up to the First World War. And then really it's Disney, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs being released in the 30s that has a big impact. The Ideal Home exhibition has an exhibit of the cottage with the dwarves. So they take off in the 30s. One of the most famous manufacturers was Prime Minister John Major's father was a manufacturer of garden gnomes. And you start getting these kind of humorous gnomes in the 70s. And then certainly as well, you get the kind of gnome press in the 80s and 90s, you know, the kidnapping of gnomes and sending postcards on behalf of gnomes. I did have a friend at university who did that, so it's more a kind of ironic sort of kitsch thing now.
- [39:46]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
Well, there you go, Max, you asked about gnomes and Deborah delivered. Amazing. So this might be an impossible question, but if you had to choose one thing, what do you think is the biggest way that British homes have changed over the last 200 years?
- [40:01]
Samsung Advertiser
I think it's got to be technology, it's got to be electricity and gas and the kind of technologies that they enabled towards a cleaner, more efficient home, a warmer home, a more mechanized home. And of course now we talk about smart homes and the Internet of things, but without electricity, you would have have none of that. So that in terms of technology and then, you know, it's gender which is tied with the loss of servants, women going out to work. So as a kind of social change, it's this sort of intermeshing of the two for me.
- [40:44]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
You mentioned to me earlier, before we started recording, that you have actually renovated six different historic houses yourself. What do you think that that practical experience has taught you about home history?
- [40:57]
Samsung Advertiser
For me, it's been a really hands on experience. The oldest house I renovated was a house in Penryn in Cornwall, where it had started as a medieval cottage on a burgage strip made of cob and then it got extended in the 18th century into a Georgian three story townhouse. So from the front it looked like a Georgian townhouse with a granite frontage. And then you walk through this square Georgian reception room into the original medieval cottage. And it was a complete kind of weird intermeshing. And I am just about to buy a mid century modern 1960s house and I've owned different things in between and I think one of the things for me is seeing the kind of traces of how rooms have changed. So in our house in Cornwall you can actually see where the original open fire had been when we took off modern plaster because we had terrible problems with damp. We uncovered both original fireplaces once where it'd been an open fire and then where there'd been a Cornish range. So that that kind of fabric of the house showed you that. And when I'm doing the work I do on House Through Time as consultant historian behind the scenes, it's very much focused on thinking about the story, the building. So I'm always looking for those kind of traces of doors that have been blocked up, thinking about how the fabric of the building was made and the changing kind of footprint and the changing use of rooms. So you learn a lot from just seeing the kind of fabric of the building?
- [42:37]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
Yeah, absolutely. I'm about to start a renovation on my own house, so you've inspired me there at least I might learn something. What is your own favourite era of house design, Deborah, and what would you nominate as history's worst home furnishing trend?
- [42:53]
Samsung Advertiser
Well, I am a real fan of the mid century period and you know, it's a slightly odd term, mid century modern because a bit like Art deco, it's a bit vague and it tends to be used to cover everything from 1945 to about 1970. So I've been looking for a very long time for a house from this period. I particularly like the later sort of 60s going into 70s period. So I've collected Scandinavian furniture for a long time and some British furniture from that period. So finally, I hope in a few months time I'm moving to a house that is really worthy of it. And then in terms of the worst sort of furnishing trend, I would say the bathroom carpet is probably one of the worst. Why? Why, why? I did some work last year on bathroom trends that ended up going completely viral about the return of the avocado bathroom and the fact that colored sweets have started being manufactured again. But looking at those 70s bathrooms with not just shag pile carpet, but sometimes going up the side of a sunken bath is never a good look.
- [44:15]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
Yeah, I mean, I have a yellow bathroom suite at the moment, so I'm all on board with the whole trend.
- [44:21]
Samsung Advertiser
Hold on to it. They're becoming very collectible and fetching quite high prices now.
- [44:26]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
Well, it may be leaking, but at least it's aspirations. And finally, Deborah, for anyone who's listened to this and they're interested in finding out a bit more about their own house's history or the history of the house they grew up in, what would you recommend as a place to start?
- [44:42]
Samsung Advertiser
Well, so if you, if you own your home, start with your deeds. If you don't have them in your possession, you can often get hold of them at some local archives or planning office, I think as well. Looking for, for building permissions, lots of local authorities have digitized all of that, so sometimes you find drawings and sometimes actually later additions like extensions that need permission. You often find out quite a bit about the history. And then there's examining the fabric of the house. Postcards, maps, National Library of Scotland, fantastic digitised maps, free access. So that's all good in terms of, of design, in terms of doing the house history and who lived there. The place I always, always star is the 1939 register. I mean, it was like a sort of super census taken at the outbreak of the war, because it's much easier to go recently and work backwards. One of the things you have to be really careful of is that houses often changed dress, house numbers often changed and often houses had names before they had numbers. So start with 39 and work back through the census. Even if you live in a newer house, you can find interesting things with maps. I think local newspapers, British newspaper archive is fantastic. The house I live in at the moment, which is an 1860s Victorian house, I was able to find out through a newspaper search that the house had operated as a very small school at one point, which I just was not excited. And I also found out because through the rates books, the owners of my house also own the house next door, which they let out. And really, really unusually, the house I live in at the moment was inherited by a woman who never married. Really fascinating story. That sort of confounded my expectations in a way. There are many, many sources, but National Archives has a great guide to getting you started on your house history, which you can find online.
- [46:44]
Deborah Sugg Ryan
That was Professor Deborah Sugg Ryan. Deborah is a series consultant and presenter on BBC Two's A House Through Time. Series four and five of A House Through Time are available now on BBC iPlayer. Deborah's also the author of Ideal Homes Uncovering the History and Design of the Inter War House. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Jack Bateman.
- [47:14]
Snoop Dogg
This episode is brought to you by State Farm. You might say all kinds of stuff when things go wrong, but these are the words you really need to remember. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. They've got options to fit your unique insurance needs, meaning you can talk to your agent to choose the coverage you need, have coverage options to protect the things you value most, file a claim right on the State Farm mobile app, and even reach a real person when you need to talk to someone. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is.
- [47:42]
TurboTax Advertiser
There this is a message from sponsor Intuit TurboTax Taxes was getting frustrated by your forms. Now Taxes is uploading your forms with a Snap and a TurboTax expert will do your taxes for you. One who's backed by the latest tech which cross checks millions of data points for absolute accuracy. All of which makes it easy for you to get the most money back guaranteed. Get an Expert now@turbotax.com, only available with TurboTax Live full service. Seek guaranteed details@turbotax.com guarantees.