The way we lived then

THIS is yet another of those number narratives—histories of the nation seen through a numerical prism—such as Steven Parissien’s recent Building Britannia: A History of Britain in Twenty-Five Buildings (including one featured here) or Catherine Clarke’s current A History of England in Twenty-Five Poems (Books, September 3).

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The English House: A History in Eight Buildings Dan Cruickshank (Hutchinson Heinemann, £26)

The author takes eight buildings to tease out the history of how we have lived, from the early 18th century up to the 1920s, exploring themes of technical innovation, how houses have been used, the relationship between builders and owners and the meanings conveyed by the styles chosen.

Those who make regular artistic pilgrimages to Chichester in West Sussex to see Simon Martin's brilliant exhibitions at Pallant House will be familiar with the Georgian house that forms part of the gallery, but probably not the interesting story of its owners and construction. Unsurprisingly, given Dan Cruickshank’s conservation background in London's East End in the 1970s, a ‘home for immigrants’ in Spitalfields features at 19, Princelet Street. At the other end of the time frame, aircraft and locomotive model enthusiasts may have heard of the model engineer Wenman Joseph Bassett-Lowke, although I suspect few have visited his fascinating 78, Derngate in the heart of Northampton, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, or have seen his Modernist New Ways on the Wellingborough Road, also in Northampton.

Set chronologically in between is the National Trust's Cragside, Richard Norman Shaw's extraordinary, eclectic, electrically lit house, which the author presses into service for a discussion of the mid-century dilemma of architectural style: Gothic Revival, ‘Old English’ and Art-and-Crafts. What is less expected on the list, but pertinent to the book's analysis, is an 18th-century connoisseurs’ house in Hull, a Regency banking house in Liverpool, two-up, two-down houses in Liverpool's inner-city Toxteth area and council flats at the 1890s Boundary Estate in Shoreditch, east London.