Hello everyone, A couple of years ago we had a very interesting discussion on the list about how to convert the list of rooms in a 17C inventory into a conjectural plan of the house it related to. The inventory (or maybe there were two of them) came from a village close to Weston on Trent in southeast Derbyshire. I have just come across a booklet entitled 'Houses and Everyday Life in Weston on Trent', written by Barbara Hutton and published by the Weston on Trent Local History Society in 1994. It describes the surviving old buildings there in some detail, with a number of floor plans and architectural drawings, and relates some of them to inventories of their contents - the list member whose ancestors' inventories we were discussing (unfortunately I've forgotten who it was) would probably find it very interesting, if he could get hold of a copy of it, as Weston on Trent and his ancestors' village would have shared the same building tradition. Regards, Matt Tompkins

Have you looked at "Vernacular Archictecture" by R.W. Brunskill, p. 1978? It used to be considered the "bible" of the subject. From what I can tell of inventories, you have to follow the assessors around in your mind's eye as they go from room to room. If you are lucky, the rooms are named but, if not, you may, with practice, be able to guess at which room is which according to its contents. One thing to remember is that the simpler houses in the 17th century seldom had staircases. The upper floor(s) were accessed by ladders, often not described as such. Audrey ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tompkins, M.L.L." <mllt1@leicester.ac.uk> To: <OLD-ENGLISH-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, April 20, 2009 9:45 AM Subject: [OEL] Vernacular houses in SE Derbys > Hello everyone, > > A couple of years ago we had a very interesting discussion on the list > about how to convert the list of rooms in a 17C inventory into a > conjectural plan of the house it related to. The inventory (or maybe > there were two of them) came from a village close to Weston on Trent in > southeast Derbyshire. I have just come across a booklet entitled 'Houses > and Everyday Life in Weston on Trent', written by Barbara Hutton and > published by the Weston on Trent Local History Society in 1994. It > describes the surviving old buildings there in some detail, with a number > of floor plans and architectural drawings, and relates some of them to > inventories of their contents - the list member whose ancestors' > inventories we were discussing (unfortunately I've forgotten who it was) > would probably find it very interesting, if he could get hold of a copy of > it, as Weston on Trent and his ancestors' village would have shared the > same building tradition. > > Regards, > > Matt Tompkins > > > > ==================================== > WEB PAGE: http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~oel/ > ARCHIVES: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index?list=OLD-ENGLISH > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > OLD-ENGLISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message >