ABSTRACT
Most middle-class housing was rented; much of it was attached to the enterprise. The inherent anti-urbanism of middle-class culture was reflected in the quintessential image of early nineteenth-century desirable housing, the white cottage with thatched roof and porch embowered with honeysuckle and roses. As a middle-aged Colchester spinster noted bitterly, living in lodgings meant never being able to impress a personality on surroundings, intrusions of privacy, restrictions on hospitality and sudden notices to quit. The expansion of middle-class housing, whether though the conversion of existing buildings or the building of new structures, provided a source of lucrative investment and made fortunes for local families. Improvements in cast iron and the removal of the tax on glass had encouraged the growing of exotics in the conservatories of the wealthy, a fashion followed in the modest middle-class greenhouse. Within the middle-class rubric, maintaining privacy and the hallmark of respectability presented logistical problems when households were large, especially with numerous young children.
