While many medieval buildings were built with defence in mind, the stability of the Tudor era was reflected in more outward-looking buildings. Grand houses were built to display the wealth and status of the householder and often designed in a symmetrical pattern, with ‘E’ and ‘H’ shapes being particularly popular. This increased prosperity trickled down the social scale, with Tudor farmers, artisans and trades people now able to afford to build more sophisticated timber-framed homes. For the poor, still living in rural thatched huts with one or two rooms, building a home was a family effort, but those with money could employ masons and carpenters for their build.

 

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The houses and buildings of ordinary people were typically timber framed. The frame was usually filled with wattle and daub but occasionally with brick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Smaller Tudor-style houses display the following characteristics:

• Simpler square or rectangular floor plans in market towns or cities

• Steeply pitched roof, with thatching or tiles of slate or more rarely clay (London did not ban thatched roofs within the city until the 1660s after the Great Fire of London.)

• Tall, narrow doors and windows

• Small diamond-shaped window panes, typically with lead casings to hold them together

• Dormer windows, late in the period

• Flagstone or dirt floors rather than all stone and wood

• Half-timbers make of oak, with wattle and daub walls painted white

• Jettied top floor to increase interior space;[12] very common in market town high streets and larger cities like London

• Extremely narrow to nonexistent space between buildings in towns

• Inglenook fireplaces. Open floor fireplaces were a feature during the time of Henry VII but had declined in use by the 1560s for all but the poor as the growing middle classes were becoming more able to build them into their homes. Fireplace would be approximately 138 cm (4.5 ft) wide × 91 cm (3 ft) tall × at least 100 cm (3.3 ft) deep. The largest fireplace – in the kitchen – had a hook nailed into the wall for hanging a cooking cauldron rather than the tripod of an open plan. Many chimneys were coated with lime or plaster inside to the misfortune of the owner: when heated these would decompose and thus the very first fire codes were implemented during the reign of Elizabeth I, as many lost their homes because of faulty installation.

• Little landscaping behind the home, but rather small herb gardens.

 

Until late in the Tudor era, most of the poor lived in one room. At night the work table would be folded or dismantled and stashed where the straw filled sacks, whether “singles” or a family mattress, had been stored all day. The single room was now a bedchamber. As for comfort, that was an inconceivable luxury. For instance, a small log would serve as a pillow until needed in the fireplace. Pillows were reserved for women in childbirth.