Introduction
Housing could be described as the architecture of ordinary life: ‘home’ touches all lives in some way, creeping from the personal into officialdom and public discourse. In the period from 1740, the locations, standards and style of housing inevitably changed and this chapter attempts to chart those changes. As a history of housing by its most inclusive definition – that is, social and so-called working-class housing, as well as housing for the middle classes; urban and rural, suburban and exurban housing – this chapter considers the physical frameworks for domestic life in Ireland over 270 years, effectively becoming a history of Ireland's ‘middle landscape’. Generally the study takes a formal approach – where built fabric becomes the text – and as such, it brings in research from historical and cultural geography; from architectural history; from folklore studies and archaeology; and from social and material culture history. A key source (and approach) is the Royal Irish Academy's 2011 annual proceedings, where the editors tackled a single theme for the first time, in this case ‘the domestic’, embracing an interdisciplinary narrative and an extensive chronology (from Neolithic settlements to Celtic Tiger house extensions). The other important single source was the multi-authored volume IV of Art and architecture of Ireland, entitled Architecture 1600–2000 where housing is considered not in opposition to the ‘Big House’ (see Chapter 10, above), but rather alongside that canon, and often, as its by-product. Volume IV's comprehensive approach, grappling with the built environment in all its complexities, not as a passive backdrop but as an active protagonist in social history, made for a pioneering inclusive architectural history of Ireland across centuries and borders, in which housing plays a central role.
Underpinning our present chapter is the reality that during the period, 1740–2016, housing became an important instrument in public health and social policy. By the 1920s when the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland were established, the provision of labourers’ cottages and better housing for city workers were seen as the means of counteracting social agitation and as a key tool in public health reform.