ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a comparative study of two types of building development in different parts of Britain and Ireland as an example of how domestic building may be used to enhance the study of society and the economy in the seventeenth century. In the 1950s W. G. Hoskins noted that there was 'a revolution in the housing of a considerable part of the population' of England during the period 1570 to 1640, but especially concentrated in the period 1575-1625: this he named 'the great rebuilding'. The comparative history of the British Isles in the seventeenth century has largely been restricted to 'the British problem' of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in the 1640s and 1650s – the politics of the English Civil War and the simultaneous conflicts in Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Interest in the English country house has developed far beyond simple accounts of life in the country house or architectural descriptions.
