Reading the Regency

Property - The Cottage

"COTTAGE [In architecture] A mean or humble habitation, built with clay and thatched with straw. "The pride that apes humility" has converted the humble dwelling of the labourer into an absurd luxury, replete with folly and bad taste."
[A General and Bibliographical Dictionary of the Fine Arts, by James Elmes, pub 1826]

There were two very different kinds of cottage in Regency England. The first provided simple accommodation for the poor and working classes. The second was a style of house that offered gentlemen all the comfort that wealth could buy, but designed in an "ornamented" style.

Both types were called cottages, but they offered very different accommodation for their occupants.

The Worker's Cottage

"Oh! What a sweet little cottage there is among the trees--apple trees, too! It is the prettiest cottage!"

"You like it--you approve it as an object--it is enough. Henry, remember that Robinson is spoken to about it. The cottage remains."
[Chapter 26, Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen]

The cottage was traditionally a house for workers. They were small and often very basic. The smallest might be as simple as a one or two multi-purpose rooms, used for all eating, sleeping and living.

Working men could rarely afford to build their own houses. Their only choice of accommodation was to rent a cottage. Some of the cottages that existed during this period could have been more than a hundred years old, and many were in poor condition. In 1813, workers cottages in Argyle, Scotland, were described as "mean and wretched hovels". There were also not enough cottages for workers in areas where workers were needed, which meant that the poor quality accommodation was frequently overcrowded.

Landowners were therefore encouraged to build new cottages for their workers. The quality of the cottage depended on whether the landowner was considerate of his tenants, or just wanted to build something at little cost or effort to themselves. Some philanthropic landowners went beyond the absolute minimum, building good quality cottages in the belief that good accommodation would ensure healthy workers.

In a book, published in 1804, a minimum standard for a labourer's cottage was recommended:

The cottage should be dry and healthy, and the wooden floor should be suspended 16-18 inches above the earth. In older cottages, floors were often nothing more than hard-packed earth, or bricks laid directly onto the soil, which was often cold or damp.

Rooms should be no less than eight feet high. The walls should be thick enough to keep the cottage warm in winter and cool in summer. If made of stone it should be no less than sixteen inches wide, with windows facing east or south. North facing windows were described as "cold and cheerless".

A porch was suggested, to shield the door from the weather. A porch would also give the labourer somewhere to keep his tools. A separate shed could serve as a pantry, and a store for keeping fuel dry was also considered a good idea. They recommended a privy in the garden "for cleanliness and decency's sake".

Stairs leading to an upper floor, formed in the roof space, should not be less than three feet wide, with each tread no more than eighteen inches high nor less than nine inches deep.

The accommodation should be large enough for a family to occupy, ideally allowing separate sleeping rooms for parents, boys and girls:

"It is melancholy to see a man and his wife, and sometimes a dozen children, crowded together in the same room, nay often in the same bed; the horror is still heightened, and the inconveniency increased, at the time the woman is in child-bed, or in case of illness, or of death; indeed whilst the children are young, under nine years of age, there is not that offence to decency, if they sleep in the same room with their parents, or if the boys and girls sleep together, but after that age they should be kept apart."
[Georgical Essays, vol 6, by Alexander Hunter, pub 1804]