ABSTRACT

This book is an attempt to look at a group of traditional houses, and at the women and men who built them and lived in them. It tries to study and tease out the cultural meanings embodied and expressed by architecture, and to relate traditional houses to the values, beliefs and social and economic practices of their builders and users. Since there has been little experience of such an approach in English studies of traditional architecture, it cannot be but a limited attempt: a sketch delineating only the roughest outlines. But these outlines, however rough, are very clear. I shall argue that the structure and layout of domestic architecture relate not only to functional and economic considerations, but also to the cultural and mental life of its users. Indeed, I shall go further and attempt to demonstrate that it is not possible to distinguish these two aspects when considering the craft tradition governing the layout of traditional houses. If this proposition is at all accurate, it has an exciting implication. Study and analysis of traditional houses becomes not just an exercise in classification, but a study and analysis in its turn of traditional cultural beliefs and social practices, and an understanding of their wider historical context.