The W G Hoskins Lecture 1994

‘W. G. Hoskins and the Great Rebuilding of England’ presented by Dr. Malcolm Airs

The fifth Hoskins lecture

7 May 1994

The fifth W.G. Hoskins lecture, ‘W. G. . Hoskins and the Great Rebuilding of England’ was delivered by Dr Malcolm Airs, whose credentials were most fitting for the occasion as he confessed to having been ‘profoundly influenced’ by Hoskins, his supervisor at Oxford. The lecture provided a discussion of the ideas and concepts first introduced by Hoskins in his 1953 Past and Present article, ‘The rebuilding of rural England, 1570- 1640′. Dr Airs argued that this article had a seminal influence on research into vernacular buildings, coming at a time when such work, and local history more generally, was far from being a respectable discipline. Hoskins maintained that for the period between the reign of Elizabeth I and the outbreak of the Civil War – and more particularly between 1575 and 1625 – abundant and inescapable evidence of modernisation, rebuilding and increased furnishings and household equipment pointed to a revolution in civil building. Rising food prices were of particular benefit to freeholders, who began investing their new reserves of money in building work and furnishings. Greater privacy and comfort also resulted in falling mortality; but continued rebuilding, stimulated by the population expansion, in turn brought about congestion and a consequent rise in mortality levels.

Dr Airs praised the article by Hoskins for the characteristic breadth of analysis which it displayed in forming a national theory against which regional studies could be tested. Hoskins hoped that the article would stimulate documentary research and encourage fieldwork which would make sense of the documents (as he did himself when attempting to place houses in a human and social framework in Fieldwork in Local History). Dr Airs surveyed much that has been writen in contribution to the debate on ‘the great rebuilding’ and maintained that while the chronology of changes unearthed by local studies has become much more complex, the basic hypothesis remains generally intact. It is, for example, possible to maintain that the distinction between early, timber, undated buildings and later, stone, dated buildings corresponds generally with a lowland/upland divide. He also argued that the message of the original paper had often been distorted: Hoskins emphasised that the universal adoption of the closed chimney stack and the abolition of the great hall were significant changes behind a shift from medieval to modern living styles; his emphasis was not on the number of houses, but on their form and the manner of living inside them. The idea of the old accommodating the new was evidenced by the insertion of new brick chimneys into existing buildings. The enclosed fireplace had been common for the nobility from at least the fourteenth century; the availability of brick in small units for transport and the ease with which it could be inserted liberated the typical farmhouse from the pattern imposed by the open hearth and also provided a symbolic means of displaying status. The changes in domestic arrangement and the new opportunities they gave were amply illustrated; for example decorative staircases and towers, sequences of interconnecting rooms, separate kitchen areas, individual furnishings, wall paintings, paneling, plaster ceilings and glazed windows. The distinctiveness of local architecture was similarly illustrated; the lowlands were characterised by the typical house design of a child’s imagination, that of the central lobby and central chimney stack (four chimneys back-to-back) with staircase behind. By contrast, the upland region was more conservative, retaining the through-passage while the hall, containing the staircase, also remained dominant here since it permitted access upstairs to be monitored. These two types merged in the symmetrical house in which the chimneys were associated with the entrance and Dr Airs argued that the triumph of symmetry heralded the end of the vernacular.

Following some stimulating questions and further debate, attention was turned to events at Marc Fitch House and the now famous tea and book sale.

From an original report by Kate Parkin.