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About family homes

This page provides an introduction to the family homes profiles/reports.

What kind of "home"

The view of what forms a home today here in the 21st century, is very different from 100 years ago and yet again from 200 years ago. In the years up to the end of the 19thC, those that had not moved into the towns & cities to find work - would still be working on the land. Walter & Catherine Murray married in the 1840's and worked on farms for the rest pf their lives. This inevitably meant that they were itinerant workers.

Walter was a ploughman and no doubt Catherine and others all had to work on the farm to earn their stay there. Sometimes they may lodge a few years - but they were always moving on to somewhere else, usually nearby. Rarely are they in the same place from one census to the next. Both Walter and Catherine were still moving around like this when they died in their '80's.

That world was about to change forever .....

19th Century Family Homes 1800-1849

This period was one of unrest and social movement. People became anxious about new machinery [luddites] and peaceful protests demanding civil rights were met with state violence [Peterloo]. It was also a turning point in many ways: social, industrial - based on advancements in science & technology. This eventually helped improve the buildings people lived in.

At this time however most people lived in very poor conditions - based on local materials. That often meant wood, wattle & daub, rough stone walling. The start of this period was only 140 years on from the Great Fire of London.

The site of the original Eldinhope cottage, Yarrow valley - home to the Dalgliesh family of 8 in the 1840's and replaced by a more substantial cottage some years later [to the left here].

19th Century Family Homes 1850-1899

This period witnessed the mass exodus from rural farm to city with people seeking a better life than their parents. It did not always work out that way but there was no going back on the Industrial Revolution. Cities were comparatively tiny until ~1850 and then vast swaths of fields were turned over to building. The developments would include long terraces near the work eg mills and more substantial homes for the owmers - usually to the south west of the city to avoid air pollution.

Even in rural areas there was a lot of new building taking place the 2nd half of the 19thC. Examples include Baittens near Jedburgh or existing cottages replaced by more substantial structures eg Eldinhope in the Yarrow Valley.

For those who moved into towns - their accommodation would normally be small terrace dwellings [2 up and 2 down] - once they had got established. In some cases these may have been back to backs/dense courtyards eg Hardfield, Schofield Street in Heywood - where the Tetlow family lived in the 1820's. For some gas lighting was now available.

Baittens Cottages,Jedburgh built in 1878

20th Century Family Homes 1900-1949

This period included two world wars - both devastating in many ways - but also major drivers for social change.

The early 19th C saw builders consolidate the approach proven in the last half century. Some fine houses were built during this period. The semi-detached with space for a garage was born. It was a very desirable and commercially successful type of property.

Not all homes were still well built - materials varied and sanitation was still external well into this period for many new low cost builds.

"By the 1930s new homes in urban areas of Britain were being lit by electricity. It took time for the National Grid to roll out electricity to most of the country, but the number of homes wired up increased from 6% in 1919 to two thirds by the end of the 1930s" Science Museum

Communcations then improved though the adoption of radio sets and towards the end of the peiod for the well off: tv sets

845 Rochdale Road, Middleton - a good example of 1930's semi detached of substantial construction.

20th Century Family Homes 1950-1999

This period includes the massive post war house building programme, for both rent [largely through local authorites] or to buy for the lucky few.

By the late '60's city clearance schemes sprang up in most major cities -moving thousands of people out to relocation new build estates in other towns eg to Darn Hill in Heywood and Langey in Middleton from areas built in the late 19thC in Manchester . Sadly many of the "imaginative" inner-city replacement homes were lucky to see more than 20 years use [eg Hulme in Manchester].

Domestic appliances grew in number and buildings became wired for telephones and tv. Central heating was introduced - more significantly from the 1970's onwards.

28 Kirkstall Road, Middleton - a 1954 property in 2007 [originally council owned].

21st Century Family Homes 2000-date

Today homes come in all shapes and sizes - but the cost of home ownership is even more of a challenge. Land in the city is scarce and there is a drive to add more & more floors, smaller rooms while plots elsewhere are genrallly minimal.

New builds become "network - ready" and landlines fall out of use to mobile connections. Many people choose to stay where they are and renovate.