ABSTRACT
British housing history roughly mirrored her economic and political progress, starkly highlighting the social divisions as well as the wealth and the industry of the nation. Early growth in town-based crafts and trades, dating from Roman and early medieval times, encouraged villages and towns that stand today in much the same shape and with some of the same houses as they did 500 years ago. Britain’s housing heritage offered an easily replicated housing model to private builders, making two-up and two-down, single-family dwellings with pitched roofs the most common, most durable, and most lastingly popular form of housing.1
