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    Tudor Houses Explained: Britain's Living History
    Tudor Houses Explained: Britain's Living History
    Tudor Houses Explained: Britain's Living History
    Ebook134 pages1 hour

    Tudor Houses Explained: Britain's Living History

    By Trevor Yorke

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    About this ebook

    The Tudor period was dominated by King Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I. The houses still standing from that time are typified by black and white timber framed buildings and rambling rows of quaint cottages around a village green. This book explains the rich range of domestic houses built during the era. There are five separate sections, which deal with social change; structure and materials; styles and dating details; interiors; and gardens and landscapes. There is also a quick reference guide to identify the use of Tudor styles in more recent times. This is an invaluable, well illustrated guide for anyone interested in the history of Britain’s domestic architecture.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCountryside Books
    Release dateApr 20, 2009
    ISBN9781846748677
    Tudor Houses Explained: Britain's Living History
    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.

    Read more from Trevor Yorke

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      Book preview

      Tudor Houses Explained - Trevor Yorke

      INDEX

      Introduction

      The commanding bulk of Henry VIII in his full regalia and Queen Elizabeth I with her fiery red hair and pasty white face are mighty figures that still retain our fascination over 400 years on. The Tudor period they reigned in began with the accession of Henry’s father in 1485 and lasted until the death of the queen in 1603, the latter half of which is commonly referred to as the Elizabethan Age. If the 16th century is dominated in people’s minds by these iconic characters, then they can be reminded of them by the houses that still stand in our towns and villages up to 500 years later. Black and white timber framed buildings jettying out between later bland structures and rambling rows of quaint cottages around a green are as much a distinctive image of England as the monarchs themselves.

      The range of houses built, however, is more diverse than would at first appear and the changes that occurred in the Tudor period more groundbreaking. At the beginning some were little different from their medieval predecessors while at the end there were notable examples that gave a taste of the century to come. Our familiar image of Tudor houses is also rather twisted by later changes made to them; many of those that still stand today appeared radically different inside and out when first built. This book sets out to explain these great changes in domestic architecture, with pictures, photos and diagrams highlighting the features and styles to help you recognise houses from this period. It also gives structural and layout clues that can help you strip away all those later changes and identify the real Tudor house beneath.

      The book is divided into six chapters, covering firstly the general changes in society and how they affected the housing in the period. The second chapter explains how the structure of the house took shape, the materials used and the type of features that would have been fitted. We next look at the styles of timber framed, brick and stone houses and the details that help us date them. The fourth chapter goes inside to describe the interior and some of the features from this period that can still be found, while the fifth explains how the area around the larger Tudor house may have appeared at the time. The final chapter discusses Tudor houses after 1603 – and what aspects of them you are likely to see today.

      The Explained series of books focuses upon structures that have survived. Tudor houses that are still standing tend, as you will discover, to be those built for the wealthier customers of the period, the homes of the mass of peasants having long since gone. As a result, this book will often refer to the largest houses as points of reference, in order to describe details on lesser buildings; they are covered in greater depth in The Country House Explained. Here we concentrate on what remains of old manor houses, jettied town houses, farmhouses and cottages.

      Trevor Yorke

      CHAPTER 1

      Tudor Housing

      TOWN AND VILLAGE

      FIG 1.1: THE SHAMBLES, YORK: This offers a rare impression of how many Tudor towns would have appeared, with narrow streets and overhanging buildings jostling for space. The Shambles contains houses from the 15th century onwards, with their lower storey used as shops – in this case they were originally butchers.

      Rarely has there been a time like the 16th century when one family so dominated events, their struggles to establish a dynasty changing the course of British history. Henry Tudor, his son and grandchildren took their largely faithful population on an economic and religious roller-coaster ride, destroying medieval establishments and customs but laying the seeds for the modern state. Power began to shift from the local gentry to a rapidly expanding court and its ministers, and they expressed their control in lavish and extravagant houses. Marriage guidance counsellors were also kept busy!

      When the first Tudor king, Henry VII (1485–1509) took the throne after defeating Richard III at Bosworth Field in 1485 he used marriage rather than war to secure his family’s hold on power and heal over wounds, a policy that helped leave a significant surplus in the treasury on his death. Unfortunately his son, the over indulgent Henry VIII (1509–1547), managed to spend it all despite sizeable windfalls from the sale of property after he had dissolved the monasteries in the late 1530s. His children, the Protestant Edward VI (1547–53) and Catholic Mary I (1553–1558), fought over the direction of Henry’s other legacy, the Church of England, before Elizabeth I (1558–1603) sought compromise to bring a tense peace to sectarian frictions. Aided by accomplished ministers, the economy recovered and the country basked in unprecedented national self-confidence, a glorious period that overshadowed her rather sour later years.

      FIG 1.2: HAMPTON COURT, SURREY: Cardinal Thomas Wolsey was Henry VIII’s ambitious Chancellor and Archbishop of York although it took him 15 years before he actually visited his minster! He had spent much of his efforts building himself a palace more glorious than any house of the monarch, probably a mistake as

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