Back in 1995, it was mentioned that the main activity of the Upper Wharfedale Field Society Vernacular Buildings Group for some time to come would be to identify and record ‘new’ stone houses built by the Grassington Freeholders in the early 17th/ 18th century.

Recent work of the Upper Wharfedale group contributes to what might be known of this aspect of Grassington’s past and present. Surveys made by the group and various collected papers are being collated and, together with a report researched and written by John Wright, will be a source of information and interpretation of developments in Grassington relating to and arising from the period of ‘The Great Rebuilding’.
This is a précis of an article which precedes the completion of the report.

The Great Rebuilding

From a study of the archaeology and history of England we can read about the evolution of village dwellings: from the stone hut circles of the stone age, the timber huts and halls of the Dark Ages, the medieval long-house with man living cheek by jowl with the animals to the basic single-storey, timber-framed houses with walls of mud and stud or wattle and daub. None of those buildings was durable and they rapidly became what are best described as hovels. But today’s visitors to the smaller towns and villages of England cannot help noticing the large proportion of buildings that date back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries made of good, durable materials. These are still in use, suggesting that at this time the peasant farmers and husbandmen were re-housed in a ‘style that their forebears could never have dreamed about’. In his excellent book The Villages of England (Thames and Hudson 1992), Richard Muir reminds us that this change which took place during the period 1570-1640, named and identified by Professor W G Hoskins as ‘The Great Rebuilding’, was based on widespread aspirations for self-improvement and had its roots in the increased prosperity of the period.

Richard Muir graphically remarks that new dwellings ‘erupted like mushrooms in the autumn mists’ and, in 1550, contemporary observers noted that it was becoming apparent that our buildings that we have here in England of late days, (are) far more excessive than at any time before’.

In the West Riding, based on the evidence of date stones only:

• from 1600 to 1649, 208 new buildings were built;
• from 1650 to 1699, 299 new buildings were built;
• and from 1700 to 1750, 188 new buildings were built.
• Total: 695.

Like today, some people built unsuitable styles and in 1589 an Act was passed in an attempt to regulate the building standards: the requirements of this Act made it mandatory for new cottages to stand in at least 4 acres and for only one family to be in occupation! House building was a costly affair which consumed many years of savings. In 1670 the cost of building a two storey stone house was about £60, the equivalent of four years’ earnings of a skilled man. Nevertheless this remarkable boom in building, The Great Rebuilding, was not confined to the builders of large country houses: it was felt throughout society. The yeomen and the husbandmen were re-modelling or building new houses at the same time as the Lord in the Hall. The end of the Wars of the Roses meant that it was no longer necessary to build houses that were primarily defensive in character. The great feudal ‘tenants in chief’ were becoming courtiers tied to the Crown by a mutual self interest, coupled with a change in relationships with the peasants on their estates, as direct farming of the demesne was becoming less significant and the Lords’ income becoming largely determined by rents. This led inevitably to some lands being sold to the tenants, who were not content to remain living in the hovels that were in most cases only marginally better than the beast’s house. As soon as they had recovered from the buying of their land they took steps to better their domestic comfort by improving the sanitation, more light, better heating and rooms that provided a more private way of life — inevitably these rebuilt houses became status symbols. The great majority of these houses were built on existing sites and involved the renewal of old buildings rather than an original construction. The dissolution of the monasteries made a great number of potential building sites available: in addition to the monasteries themselves, there were large numbers of monastic manors, granges and other buildings. Most monastic buildings were used as quarries for ready dressed building stone.

Architects hardly existed in the 16th century. It was the Master Freemason and the Master Carpenter who designed and built the houses, but changing social conditions resulted in changes of design which became influenced by Renaissance ideas of decorative detail originating in Italy and France. This change in design had little effect on the houses built by the yeomen and husbandmen; but where the Lord retained a Hall and/ or Manor house in the villages, these were often re-styled in the new fashion.

Today in almost every region of England there are fine examples of Tudor or early Stuart houses and Grassington caught the ‘re-building’ fever too, along with the rest of the country; a look at the vernacular buildings in the area shows that most of them were built in the 17th century and a closer look shows that they were improved in the late 17th to early 18th centuries.

Author: John Wright

Selected from our archives by Phyllida

Content created by Keith P and enhanced with hand-written notes also taken from our archive.