9 - Houses, housing, and health

Summary

This chapter is concerned not only with the study of the physical characteristics, ownership, and occupation of individual houses, but also with the investigation of housing generally in local communities, including housing density, typology of houses for different social groups, and aspects of the provision and financing of housing particularly in modern times. Some attention is also given to sources for the study of some aspects of health, especially in the nineteenth century when the housing and health of the multiplying population were often considered to go hand in hand.

BUILDINGS IN GENERAL

A great deal of research has been undertaken on notable buildings in most localities. Castles, moated sites of castles and homesteads, abbeys, stately homes, town walls, churches and cathedrals, and so on, are likely to have been examined by experts. It is not intended to deal with buildings of this kindliere. Attention may, however, be drawn to the guides issued by H.M.S.O., and to a number of other works. Other key works deal both with well-known buildings and with others less well known, but which are all of architectural or historical interest. Mention must be made of Sir Nikolaus Pevsner's county volumes constituting the Buildings of England series. The investigator should know, too, of the topographically arranged ‘Provisional List of Buildings of Architectural or Historic Interest for Consideration in connection with the Provisions of Section 30 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947’.