ABSTRACT
The number of labourers required to work the land was reduced through new efficiencies in farming and a significant part of the rural population was necessarily displaced through the amalgamation of smallholdings into large single tenant farms. Addressed to 'gentlemen of property', Habitations of the Labourer, published in 1781 by John Wood the Younger, was the first architectural treatise and pattern book to address the dwelling of the rural labourer. The neoclassical cottages in Habitations of the Labourer were designed to sit within a rationalised landscape of agricultural improvement. Simple neoclassical cottages were widely built by improving landowners or tenant farmers to provide suitable housing wherever permanent labour forces were required as part of wider improvements. It was also the case that, although unpublished as folios of plans, British architects routinely designed labourers cottages as part of planned model villages related to wider agricultural improvements.
