What Did Tudor Houses Look Like?

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What Did Tudor Houses Look Like?

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Answer 1

The Tudor period refers to the period between 1485 and 1603 in relation to the history of England. This coincides with the rule of the Tudor dynasty in England whose first monarch was Henry VII (1457 - 1509). The houses that were lived in during this period varied largely with the class system of the time. The lower classes had very basic houses made from cheap materials whereas the rich Tudors had started building houses from brick and experimenting with glass for the first time.

However, the classic Tudor Houses that are remembered the most are the black-and-white, half-timbered buildings that were owned by the middle classes. These sturdy houses were built with a timber frame filled in with wattle and daub, which was a mix of wickerwork and plaster. The daub was usually then painted with lime-wash, making it white, and the wood was painted with black tar to prevent rotting giving the house the trademark look of a stereotypical Tudor house. Another characteristic, which makes a genuine Tudor house easy to spot from "mock-Tudor” homes of today, is the bent wooden beams. The beams would have been cut by hand and were very often warped in appearance as a result. Roofs were made from straw thatch generally apart from London were tiles were used because of the danger of fire.

Poor Tudor homes were a lot more primitive with most houses being made form a mixture of straw and mud or even animal dung. There would have been only one room in which the entire family would live. The floor would have been bare earth and the beds made from straw. A fire would have been the centerpiece of the house and all meals would have been prepared on this fire in the middle of the room. Most people at this time lived in this poverty and it is not surprising that the average life expectancy was around thirty years old.

Rich Tudors would have had houses made from hand made bricks and wealth was demonstrated by the extensive use of glass. The more glass used on your house the more money you had.

Answer 2

The Tudor period in the United Kingdom marks the beginning of large-scale building effort going toward private dwellings rather than religious buildings. With the exception of grand houses (or castles) for regional rulers, houses were rough cottages for workers of the land. But the religious upheavals of the time made the church unpopular, and the emerging merchant and gentry classes began to spend money on themselves.

The most obvious feature of a Tudor house is the exposed timber work, where the wooden skeleton of the house is visible while the gaps between timbers were filled in with brick, wattle-and-daub or flint, depending on the region and the cost. Brick was very expensive and not load-bearing, so was sometimes laid in a herringbone pattern.

Windows were tall and narrow and leaded with small clear panes, reflecting the difficulty of manufacturing, and therefore expense, of glass at the time. Arches over the windows were flatter than the pointed Gothic arches that preceded them. If the owner could afford it, the upper floors often protruded over the lower ones because houses in towns were sometimes taxed on the area of the ground floor. One further typical Tudor feature, again if the owner could afford it, were large ornate chimney stacks in brick, rather than the traditional hole in the middle of the roof, to funnel away the increased smoke that came from using coal rather than wood.