House Design and Interior Arrangements

(16th-18th Century)  

Construction details

In May 1545, the Duke of Norfolk was carrying out a review of coastal defences between Great Yarmouth and Orford because of a perceived invasion threat from France. Having commented on the hostile landing capacity of both anchorage and beach at Lowestoft, as well as on the positioning of the three small gun batteries, he made the following remark concerning the place itself: “The town is as pretty a town as I know any few on the sea coasts, and as thrifty and honest people in the same, and right well builded.” – ref. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, vol. xx, i, no. 717. It is the final part of the statement which will form the starting-point of this chapter.

There are two houses still standing on the High Street in Lowestoft, at opposite ends, which were there when the Duke of Norfolk made his visit. Both of them are of high-quality construction, with framing that is impressive both in terms of the size of timber used and in its decorative nature. The buildings in question are Nos. 36 and 102-104. The jettied front of the former dates from the mid-late 15th century and there is high-quality structure of similar age to the rear. The latter, dating from c. 1520-30, has long been subdivided into three shops, but its former integrity and quality of construction are plain to see. If these two dwellings were typical of the standard of architecture at the time, then the town was certainly “well builded”. Most of the timber-framed houses surviving from Tudor times (either largely intact or radically altered) date from the second half of the 16th century, and also from the first part of the 17th. Altogether, there are twenty of them on the High Street, mainly on the eastern side, and most of them have long functioned as shops rather than private houses – and nearly all of them have later, 18th or 19th century façades. 

The size of timber used for beams and wall-posts in the best of the existing buildings is impressive, often being up to twelve inches square, with joists of six to eight inches width embellishing the ceilings. Some of the axial beams and cross-beams are decorated with scrolling vine-leaf and bunch-of-grape motifs, or with tear-drop quatrefoils – and the joists sometimes have similar decoration or are deeply roll-moulded. An authority on East Anglian timber-framed buildings (Alan Carter, of UEA) once remarked that the quality of construction observed in Lowestoft was superior to much of what he had recorded in Norwich, in the sense that the city’s houses were sometimes built to look good at first sight without always having the quality of timber and construction-methods to match – whereas what he had seen in Lowestoft was first-class, both in terms of the size and standard of oak used and in the artistry of the decoration. He based his comments on a scrutiny of Nos. 27, 36, 43-44 and 102-104 High Street.

Other evidence regarding the quality of houses on the High Street may be seen below ground level. No. 160 has a brick-and-limestone, vaulted cellar, dating from the first half of the 14th century, and there is another medieval vault on the opposite side of the road, a little further to the south, built largely in brick and dating from the 15th century. It is to be found beneath Nos. 41-42 High Street (the site of what was once the Swan Inn) and is not as lofty as the earlier one – but, the groined ceiling is impressive nevertheless. Other buildings in the area also have cellars, but while being of similar dimensions they have largely been reconstructed at some stage – mainly in the 19th century. Obviously, cellars were once a feature of many merchants’ houses and inns standing on the High Street and, on the evidence of the two early ones which have survived, no short cuts were taken with either materials or construction techniques. Surviving probate inventories only contain six references to cellars, but four of these relate to houses which stood on the east side of the High Street. However, caution has to be exercised regarding use of the word cellar, because it may not refer to a room below ground-level. In Norwich, for instance, it was sometimes used of a ground-floor storage space within a house or even outside in the yard.  

The principle adopted for building Lowestoft’s larger houses (and probably the smaller ones, too) was half-timbering, whereby ground-floor walls were constructed of rubble and brick and the upper storey was timber-framed, with the plate resting on the masonry and with stud-work walls infilled with either brickwork or wattle and daub. This type of construction became increasingly common in southern and eastern England from the late medieval period onwards, owing partly to shortages of suitable oak for sumptuous full-framing of the kind which became ever more fashionable as the 15th century advanced. A more economical use of timber, whereby it served constructional needs rather than made a visible declaration about the status of the householder, placed less strain on the available resources and in no way diminished the capacity for rich interior decoration. 

Lowestoft had between twenty and twenty-five acres of woodland in the parish at the time of the 1618 Manor Roll (only 1.5% of the total area), most of which seems to have been managed. It is not possible to estimate accurately the amount of timber this area would have produced for house-building, but it would have made a contribution – as, perhaps, would trees left standing in the hedgerows. However, these sources would not have been sufficient on their own and, with the additional need for good oak caused by shipbuilding, timber must have been brought in from outside sources – the estates at Somerleyton, Mutford, Reydon and Sotterley being likely contributors.

The framing of Lowestoft’s oldest houses is not visible externally today. Nor, in all likelihood, was it ever meant to be. The fashion throughout much of Suffolk and South Norfolk was for the exterior of timber-framed houses to be plastered over – unless faced with good-quality bricks or dressed flint. There is an excellent pen and wash drawing of Lowestoft High Street in 1784, by  local artist Richard Powles, which shows a number of the pre-Georgian houses visible having plastered exteriors. All the roofs, regardless of period, are tiled, though it is not possible to identify whether plain-tiles or pantiles were used. The latter type is the more likely, as it became an increasingly popular cladding from the middle of the 17th century onwards and can still be seen on many High Street roofs today. Influence from the Netherlands was a key factor in its use and it is perhaps significant that Charles I granted a patent in 1636 for the manufacture in England of “Flanders tyles”.

Contrary to popular belief, importation of pantiles into England (prior to manufacture in the country) was a specialist trade, not the result of their being used as ballast in ships. Originally, the roofs on the 16th and 17th century houses in Lowestoft would have been thatched, a fact which is discernible even now on those buildings which have a substantial distance (usually, at least twelve to fifteen inches) between the top edge of their gables and the roof-covering itself – this space having at one time been occupied by thatch. The conversion to roof-tiles in Lowestoft was probably aided by a fire which devastated the middle part of town on 10 March 1645, having started in fish-curing premises on the northern part of Whapload Road and moving southwards. Eighteen dwellings and twenty-one fish-houses were either damaged or destroyed, together with goods and fittings, and total damage was put at £10,297 2s 4d. The Lowestoft Town Book has a full account of the damage (Norfolk Record Office, PD 589/112, p. 70), together with the names of those people affected. While Edmund Gillingwater, in his published history of the town (1790), pp. 61-2, reproduces the information in tabulated form.

The right-hand side of the view of the High Street referred to in the previous paragraph but one shows the part of town mainly affected and, among the features detectable, is the re-styling of older houses in a classically influenced idiom. Four houses have shaped gables of the mid-17th century, with later façades added. Two others, in the left-hand half of the picture, have quoining around the first-floor windows, and there are further signs of upgrading carried out on other dwellings. Replacement of thatch by tiles did not usually necessitate radically altering the trussing of the timbers underneath. Inspection of seven surviving early roofs has revealed that all are of butt-purlin type, sometimes with added strength given by collars and wind-braces. The houses in question are Nos. 27, 35, 36, 43-44, 80, 102-104 & 148-149 High Street. The attic space of No. 36 is mainly covered in, allowing minimal inspection of the timbers. The trussing is probably of either crown-post or queen-post type.

Again, as with the framing in the rooms below, timber of good quality and size was used, and sound carpentering techniques are evident in the construction. Plentiful roof-space is a further feature, with at least one of the houses having staggered double purlins to accommodate the insertion of original dormers (which have since disappeared), while another of the buildings has ashlaring along the whole of its attic’s length, both sides, and on the evidence of a surviving inventory of 1684 was used as servants’ quarters and storage-area. No. 35 High Street, is the house which once had dormers in its roof, No. 80 that with the servants’ garret. The latter (often referred to as South Flint House) belonged to the Wilde family, leading merchants in the town, and the inventory cited is that of James Wilde who died in February 1684.

With the emphasis directed so far towards timber and carpentry, some attention needs to be given to the other main building material: brick. Until a new style in architecture (to be discussed later) began to manifest itself in the later 17th century, placing emphasis on bricks as a feature in their own right, much of the brickwork in Lowestoft’s houses may well have been rendered over. The sizes of brick used generally conform to the dimensions usual for the 16th and 17th centuries, being in the range of nine inches long (229mm), by four to four-and-a-half inches wide (102-114 mm), by two to two-and-a-half inches thick (51-63mm). In Lowestoft, a very attractive bond was formed by alternating bricks laid as headers (end-on) with two, three or even four flint cobbles – patterning which can still be seen in a few surviving stretches of boundary walls along certain of the scores, with a particularly good example being at the entrance to Wilde’s Score on the walling of 81-83 High Street.

Two surviving, older houses have squared and dressed flint covering their façades (Nos. 27 & 80 High Street) – an expensive cladding, which was meant to impress people at the time of its construction and still has the ability to make an impact today. Though the former (whose flintwork is less refined than that of the latter) has the visual effect compromised by the application of white masonry paint! Another (Nos. 102-104) has vertical studwork on its upper elevation, with herringbone brickwork between – a feature that may well have been intended to be seen originally, but which has for many years been hidden behind render. The decorative brickwork was exposed many years ago, when the plaster was removed from No. 103 prior to its being re-cladded and sealed. All three of these houses are of high quality, but may not be typical in their exterior embellishment.

Given that most of its surviving timber-framed houses date either from the second half of the 16th century or the beginning of the 17th, Lowestoft may be seen as being part of the so-called “Great Rebuilding”, which took place over much of lowland England from 1570-1640 and was originally noted by W.A. Hoskins during the 1950s.  A price of £6 per bay to build a house in Leicester during the 16th century was cited by him, though without comment on the standard of construction that such a sum purchased. By the middle of the 17th century, the cost of rebuilding a demolished farmhouse in Essex was in the region of £40, a figure that corresponds well with the price of a residence of similar size in Lowestoft. 

By an agreement made on 15 March 1678, Benjamin Whipp (thatcher) borrowed £45 from Ann Swift (widow of a fishermen) on the understanding that he would put into operation, on or before 24 June, the building of a house on the site of a dwelling which had recently been pulled down on the freehold land at the High Street’s northern end (now occupied by No. 167). No interest was to be charged on the loan, but Ann Swift was to have her place of residence in the northern end of the house during the term of her natural life. Her suite consisted of a parlour and a buttery, with a chamber above, a garret over the chamber and a place to store coal. She was also allowed the use of a well in the yard. No details are given concerning the number of rooms in Benjamin Whipp’s section of the house, but it must have been at least as large as that of his financier. The thatcher had no trouble repaying the loan within the stipulated six-year period and he sold the property for £50 to John Daynes (beer brewer) on 25 May 1687.

Plan-forms and types of dwelling       

The terminology used in describing Ann Swift’s quarters suggests a building of traditional nature. Inspection of the ten most unaltered High Street houses confirms that they were all of the inside-cross-passage/lobby-entry type, of three to four bays length and one cell depth. The houses in question are Nos. 27, 29-30, 31-32, 43-44, 75-76, 77-79, 80, 81-83, 102-104 and 148-149. Some of them stand full-fronted onto the roadway, others gable-end.  As such, they belong to the hall-parlour-kitchen and buttery family, with chambers above the ground-floor rooms, and with either end-stacks or off-centre stacks (the latter usually having the front doorway in alignment with it) to provide heating and cooking facilities – and sometimes, in the case of the bigger houses, with both types of hearth location. The fieldwork carried out is confirmed by a scrutiny of surviving probate inventories dating from the 16th and 17th centuries, in which seventeen out of a total of thirty-one suitable documents indicate the type of house described above. Other inventories seem to suggest two-bay, and even one-bay, versions of the cross-passage/lobby-entry model, but no surviving examples have as yet been identified. Layout drawings to illustrate this basic floor-plan, at both ground and first-floor levels, can easily be found on the Internet.

The buildings which remain above ground today usually stand facing the street, but two of them are placed end-on to it – the positioning probably being the result of the size of the plot. The two surviving houses in Lowestoft which stand end on to the roadway are Nos. 36 and 43-44 High Street. Each of these houses now has buildings adjoining on either side, but the side-passage which once gave access to it is still discernible. So is the internal arrangement of rooms. Probate inventories, in cases where they relate to a complete house, give a good idea of the number of rooms in existence at the time that the individual documents were drawn up and, while this does vary (especially where internal partitioning had obviously been carried out), broad classifications can be made for certain of the occupation groups in town. 

Merchants and the more substantial tradespeople seem to have had as many as twelve to fifteen rooms on occasions (including annexes and outhouses), but the usual number was in the range of six to ten. Craftsmen appear to have had from three to six on average, along with husbandmen, while mariners and fishermen had between three and eight depending on their degree of wealth and their status at sea. The analysis of the number of rooms present in houses is based on a study of 100 surviving probate inventories: fifteen for the period 1561-1600, twenty-one for 1601-1650, eighteen for 1651-1700 and forty-six for 1701-1730. Of this hundred, sixty-six relate to a complete building.

One feature concerning room layout and use in the pre-industrial houses of Lowestoft is the presence of attics in the larger buildings, and in some of the smaller ones. Contrary to what has been observed elsewhere, it was not unusual for dwellings to have a third, usable storey in the roof-space before the end of the 16th century – and, by the early years of the 18th, it had become common. The obvious presence of attics or garrets in houses on the High Street is shown in Richard Powles’s panoramic view of 1784, cited earlier in this article, and there are frequent references to them in probate inventories. Out of eighty-five documents which are suitable for analysis, covering the period 1561-1730, thirty-eight make reference to garrets. Fifteen of the100 surviving inventories contain no mention of rooms, which means that the deceased people were probably living in lodgings. There are also four wills, which do not have accompanying inventories, but which refer to garrets. 

The term vance roof (or vaunce roof) is used from time to time during the 16th and 17th centuries, but it disappears from the records after 1700 and the word garret is the only one encountered. Between 1700 and 1730, twenty-three of the thirty appropriate documents studied relate to houses which had garrets. This comes to a 64% proportion, which is in excess of that ascertained in Norwich – which formed just one feature of the survey of domestic buildings carried out there by the late Alan Carter and his team during 1971-8. The word vance/vaunce itself is an obsolete form of “advance” and it is possible to see how this was used in the sense of creating an extra room in a dwelling by utilising the roof-space.

This particular practice in Lowestoft houses may well have been the result of limited plot-size (caused by a progressive infill process of the town’s original layout as the population grew), with a consequential restraint on the ability to extend dwellings sideways. Even the large plots on the east side of the High Street were restricted in building potential, partly by the frontage already having been taken up by those houses which stood lengthways to the road (a majority) and partly by the terracing of the cliff preventing substantial rearward development. In King’s Lynn, there was a relative scarcity of attics among merchants’ houses sited along the river bank, because plentiful land to the rear allowed cross-wings to be built. The Lowestoft merchants living along the edge of the cliff had plots as long as any in King’s Lynn (if not longer); what they did not have was ground which was all on one level. Their houses could not always be extended in the usual L-shape to any great degree, because of the instability caused by building too close to the edge of the uppermost terrace and because the yard space at the back of the house was needed for storage and other domestic uses – and, in some cases, for activities connected with the occupant’s trade or occupation. 

Much has been said, thus far, about the traditional hall-parlour-kitchen type of house and its smaller variants. The surviving Lowestoft probate inventories also seem to suggest that a different model of dwelling was being built from the late 17th century onwards. There is one indication of it in a document of 1691 and eleven more from between 1700 and 1730. Using the terminology of the time, it may conveniently be described as a parlour-and-kitchen type, with service-rooms such as pantries and wash-houses annexed on the ground-floor to the rear of the two main rooms, both of which had chambers above. Though a necessary caveat to be made is that changes in word-usage may have to be considered, whereby rooms previously termed hallsbecame parlours, in order for the householder to keep abreast of fashionable terminology. The shape of the new type was far less elongated than the older one referred in the first sentence of this paragraph – and, in being of two rooms depth (instead of one), it has been referred to as the double pile (or cell) variety. It is possible that this new design of house was not always free-standing, but constructed as one of a pair, each integral with the other. Again, examples of its floor-plans are able to be accessed on the Internet.

An original example of the new form has not yet been positively identified in Lowestoft, but certain features of its construction were radical departures from the practice of the past. Firstly, there was less need for timber-framing, because internal, load-bearing walls made greater use of masonry and brickwork to take the strain. Secondly, the positioning of chimney-stacks tended to move to end-walls, which did away with the classic off-centre location – and this, in turn, influenced the positioning of stairs, which were no longer made to rely on the stack as main means of support. Finally, the exterior elevations made use of brick as a material in its own right, not something which merely served as the medium to support a plaster surface. The increase in brick-making capacity in Lowestoft, for the period 1700-1730, is a feature noted in parish register occupational references and the particular change in architectural style described here was probably a contributory factor. 

A further aspect of probate inventory material is the marked presence of wash-houses for the laundering of clothes and household linen after 1700. There are only two references to these before the 18th century – in 1682 and 1693 – and both facilities are noted in connection with older-style houses, one of which is still standing (Nos. 81-83 High Street). However, the number recorded between 1700 and 1730 is eighteen – out of a total number of thirty-six documents which refer to complete houses. This represents 50% of the whole – a proportion which is the same as that detected in the city of Norwich. The distribution is well spread across the occupation groups, if with an emphasis towards the wealthier end of the town’s population: four merchants, a brewer, a grocer, a victualler, four mariners, a butcher, two fishermen, a carpenter, a carter, a husbandman and a labourer. With regard to the type of dwelling having a wash-house as part of its facilities, a majority seem to have been of the double pile variety, but also detectable are those of the older, traditional form. In most cases (if not all), it appears that the room in question was independent of the main structure.  

This need not be surprising since, with usable space being an important consideration in houses of all kinds, one means of creating it was by the construction of ancillary buildings to the rear of the main one. These may have been either annexed to it or free-standing, but the utility afforded was the same. Another type of extra domestic area detectable in the inventories was the back-house – a classic lean-to addition well known throughout the whole of East Anglia. This one-storey addition butted up to the rear wall of the house and provided space for the storage of all kinds of domestic artefacts associated mainly with the kitchen, as well as for washing and brewing activities. The first step on the employment ladder for many a young East Anglian male entering domestic service was as backhouse boy – engaged in menial, but necessary, tasks associated with this particular building. 

Another structure which stood free of the main house, somewhere to the rear, was the privy. Probate documents indicate that houses had them, though the references are few in number (four only in the 132 wills which have survived for the period 1700-1730, and none earlier). Not surprisingly, none of the surviving probate inventories mentions privies because there would have been no contents worth appraising! Three of the wills cited – those of Coe Arnold (brewer – 18 March 1721), John French Snr. (fisherman – 6 May1725) and Thomas Utting (grocer – 2 June 1722) – refer to privies because each testator was dividing real estate among his children and the facility was to be shared by them once the messuage had been split up. 

Two other references to the building occur in manorial minutes of the late 17th century. At the leet court of 1680, Jabez Aldred and John Marshall were each fined 6d for depositing sewage from their latrines in Swan Score (later, Mariners Score) while at a court baron of March 1690, John Hayle (grocer) purchased a small piece of land from his next-door neighbour, Matthew Fisher, for the purpose of building a necessary house to the rear of his own residence. Hayle lived on the east side of the High Street, at the top of Lion Score (the site today of Nos. 51 and 51a) in what John Tanner was to describe in his listing of 1725 as “one house divided into several tenements”, but which had once been an inn called The Lion. The word “several” is not to be taken in the way we use it today, because in the earlier decades of the 18th century it meant “separate”. And, as for Lion Score itself, it was later to become known as Crown Score.             

Room use, interior décor and household contents

The statement made earlier of what the houses in pre-industrial Lowestoft were like, in terms of plan-form and the number of rooms, says little about the comforts with which the inhabitants sought to cheer their lives. Any attempt to depict aspects of domestic life, based on probate material, can only give a partial picture simply because wills were made by people who had something to bequeath and because inventories of goods reflect some degree of worldly wealth. The general assumption that only the more prosperous members of village communities made wills has been called into question. But even though this impression is incorrect (in towns, as well as villages), and people of lesser substance did formally declare their intentions concerning the disposal of property, the genuinely poor did not. 

Thus, with estimates of the proportion of poor people in urban populations during the 17th century reputedly lying somewhere between 25% and 50%, it can be seen that information concerning the interior arrangements and embellishment of houses will not incorporate the life-style of a substantial minority of town-dwellers. Lowestoft had 45.5% exemptions from payment in the defective 1674 Hearth Tax return and while the proportion should be lower than this (in view of the number of townspeople known to be missing from the printed form of the document in Suffolk Green Books, vol. xi, pp. 197-9 – 1905), it still leaves a considerable number of residents who probably did not have the financial capacity to make wills.

The 507 wills, covering the period 1560-1730, used for various purposes throughout the whole of the study of Lowestoft during the Early Modern period, represent a good cross-section of the population above the poorer element. There is one surviving Lowestoft will made by a so-called poor man. Thomas Youngman bears no such title in the document, but his burial entry in the parish register, 22 September 1577, classifies him so. He left a house and a yard, together with certain movable goods, and a cow. Thus, there would seem to be some question of interpretation here regarding the phrase “poor man". Together with the hundred probate inventories which remain (fifty-two of which accompany a will), they give an interesting picture of the way that people decorated, furnished and appointed their houses. The inventories contain more information than wills, usually naming all the rooms in a house and listing the contents. Four surviving documents relate to a house which is still standing: Roger Hill, merchant (16 September 1588), Richard Mighells, merchant (19 November 1590), Elizabeth Pacey, merchant’s widow (18 August 1682) and James Wilde, merchant (14 March 1684). The buildings are the present-day Nos. 31-32, 27, 81-83 and 80 High Street.

One feature to emerge over the whole of the time-span is one which has been observed elsewhere: the way in which houses improved their amenity in terms of heating capacity and the use of window glass, curtains, soft furnishings and consumer products. The influence of women in this improvement of living conditions is probably crucial (particularly in the wealthier levels of society), as they sought to express themselves in the purchase of goods that brought attractiveness and style to their home environments. This writer draws back from terming the lives of married women “a sub-culture”, but there is evidence to suggest that they were able to project themselves in a male-dominated world by the purchase of consumer goods which improved their homes.

Halls and parlours

Until the beginning of the 18th century, most of the houses in Lowestoft had a hall downstairs and, in the great majority of cases, it constituted the main living-room in both large and small dwellings – sometimes with an element of prestige about it in the former, with good-quality furniture and decorative objects on view. The word had its origins in the medieval, open-plan house and it retained its use through the cross-passage and lobby-entry phases of architectural development right down to the emergence of the double-pile model in the late 17th/early 18th centuries. Nowhere in Lowestoft did the hall ever become just the main entry to a house and nothing more. It was always important as a functional living-space, serving various purposes, and in all but one case (out of forty-four dwellings which are recorded as having halls) it had a hearth. Cooking and eating often took place there, even into the 18th century, and sleeping was another regular use – though one which noticeably diminished after 1700.

The parlour was common to both the more substantial cross-passage type of house and to the newer double-pile variety. It was a ground-floor room, usually with a fire-place (often sharing the stack with the hall, on a back-to-back basis in the older type of dwelling) and with varying roles to fulfil. One of them was to provide sleeping accommodation, a role that seems to have been important up to about the middle of the 17th century and which then diminished. This characteristic has been observed in Norwich, as has the fact that cooking seems never to have been an important use in the existence of a parlour (only three instances of this are detectable in thirty-four relevant Lowestoft inventories). 

Progressively, throughout the 17th century, it is clear that the room became important as one in which to sit and, by the early years of the 18th, that was probably its primary function – again, a feature that is detectable in houses in Norwich. The interpretation of the term “sitting” offered here is one that has a social meaning attached to it. In other words, the inventories consulted had to suggest that there was some kind of communal aspect to the activity. A single chair listed in the contents of a parlour was not construed as “sitting” in a social (or sociable!) sense. Two or three chairs, or more, were taken to imply that people sat down together for at least some of their available leisure time. 

Kitchens and butteries

During the later 16th century, and throughout the 17th, it seems that kitchens were a room associated with the bigger houses in Lowestoft. The number of inventories consulted is not large, but twelve of the sixteen dwellings which are specified as having kitchens consisted of seven rooms or more. The first thirty years of the 18th century show the kitchen to have been a space of considerable importance, with twenty-two of the thirty-two buildings recorded as possessing one. At this time, it can be seen to have been present in both large and medium-sized cross-passage/lobby-entry dwellings and also in the newer double-pile type. 

The dominant use of the room, throughout the whole period of study, was preparation and cooking of food – and also the eating of it, from the late 17th century onwards. It never seems to have served as a living or sleeping room, devoid of cooking facilities, as was sometimes the case in Norwich. Only one example is to be found of a bed located in the kitchen (that of Richard Ward, labourer and woolcomber, in March 1729), and the room was obviously the main downstairs space in a six-roomed dwelling, with cooking, eating and sitting taking place, and with the pantry being used for storage and the wash-house for brewing. Another obvious aspect of kitchen use, during the years after 1700, is its function as a sitting-room – probably because it was heated and because tables and chairs were present as a result of its being used for eating. 

Ten of the sixteen houses recorded in 16th and 17th century inventories as having kitchens are also found to have had kitchen chambers above them – which suggests a room with load-bearing walls within the main fabric of the building. The other six, which do not have specific mention of a chamber above, may have had kitchens which were additional service rooms annexed to the rear of the main house. During the first thirty years of the 18th century, seventeen of the twenty-two houses with kitchens also had chambers above them – which, again, suggests a room fully integrated within the house. 

Butteries survived in the older type of house in Lowestoft well into the 18th century – unlike Norwich, where they had almost disappeared by the early 1700s. They seem to have been situated next to either the hall or parlour, and they functioned largely as storage areas for domestic utensils of all kinds – especially those connected with the preparation and cooking of food. The buttery was originally used, in the medieval period, for the storage of drink. The word derives from the Latin botaria, meaning a bottle or cask. There are only two examples in Lowestoft of a buttery having a fireplace and being used for cooking (out of a total of thirty-two houses recorded) and they both occur in the later years of the 16th century. In the case of Thomas Eache (cordwainer,1590), his house is seen to have had three butteries, so there is obviously a matter of interpretation required here. The house inhabited by Richard Wells (merchant, 1587) is unequivocal, however, in having only one buttery, and it was undeniably the room where cooking was done. One interesting feature of the inventory is that the contents of the two downstairs living-rooms give no indication of where the food was eaten, there being no mention of tables.

Of those houses which had butteries, only one late 16th century dwelling is specified as having a chamber above it – that of William Rogers, goldsmith (30 April 1595) – whereas in Norwich the proportion was 25%. However, most of the butteries which are not designated as having a chamber above were still probably incorporated within the main structure of the house. The inventories seem to suggest that they were adjacent to one of the larger downstairs spaces (hall, parlour or kitchen), so if there was a room above, it was likely to be called “hall chamber”, “parlour chamber” or “kitchen chamber” by association with the more important room on the ground-floor.

Service rooms 

There are only two examples of a scullery to be found in the Lowestoft probate inventories, dating from 1717 (25 February) and 1730 (21 August) respectively: Leake Bitson, merchant, and William Colman, fisherman. This is a low rate of adoption compared with Norwich, where the scullery has been identified as taking over some of the functions of the buttery and where it was quite common. Pantries, on the other hand, were a feature of some of the Lowestoft houses (the larger ones mainly) from the last quarter of the 17th century – though this may well have been the result of a change in the naming of rooms as much as any evolution taking place in the design of houses. Whatever its origins (either linguistically or architecturally), the pantry was invariably used to store household utensils. It also stored food as well, but few specific items other than cured herrings and dried cod are referred to in the inventories – perhaps because of the perishability and lack of long-term value of other commodities. 

Both back-houses and wash-houses have been referred to earlier in this article, the former being very much a feature of larger houses during the late 16th and the 17th centuries, while the latter seem to have been a mainly 18th century development. Both were used for storage of all kinds of domestic utensils and equipment, as well as for brewing. Interestingly, very few of the fifteen wash-houses recorded for the period 1700-1730 give any hint of their designated function on the evidence of contents, though it is possible that the tubs and coppers mentioned in connection with brewing might also have been used for the boiling of clothes and household linen. However, there is no indication that any of the wash-houses (or back-houses, for that matter) had fireplaces and flues, because none of them has fire-irons of any kind listed in connection with it – a feature that contrasts strongly with Norwich, where a high proportion of the wash-houses had heating. Of course, it is possible that this lack of equipment is purely the result of chance or that it was kept somewhere else nearby and brought into the room as and when needed.

Low rooms

The term low room, as used in the Lowestoft probate inventories, indicates a ground-floor living-space of some kind. It is met with particularly during the 18th century (there are also three instances of it between 1600 and 1649) when, in four cases of the eight times it occurs, it obviously refers to the main living area in the house. The other four combine the functions of sleeping, sitting and storage, in different combinations, while the three earlier examples are just as varied, with one case where the room was even used as a study. This particular reference relates to the house of John Gleason, the vicar (2 July 1610). Most houses associated with the term had three to six rooms, but there is a single case of one that had eleven (Robart Ward, merchant, 3 January 1604). 

Other inventories, which are not complete or which itemise the goods of someone living in part of a house, also use the term. It seems almost as if it was applied in situations where the normal terminology of “hall” and “parlour” was not deemed appropriate. It has nothing to do with the foibles of a single person who was drawing up the documents, because the ones in question were written by a number of different people. A clue to the physical structure of low rooms is perhaps to be found in an architect’s plan of what is now No. 79, High Street. The drawing was made during the mid/late 1960s and shows a cross-wing (since demolished) projecting eastwards into the yard. The ground-floor room is plainly shown to be partly below ground level – a feature that would certainly fit in with the term “low room” itself. This writer was shown the drawing, referred to, by the late John French as part of a discussion during the early 2000s on both Nos. 77-79 and No. 80 High Street – he being the owner of these properties at the time.

Chambers

In Lowestoft, the word chamber refers almost exclusively to a room on the first floor – a feature noted also in London during the 17th century. The rooms above ground-floor level, while having sleeping as their primary function, were also utilised for the storage of household goods – especially items of linenware and other fabrics. They were often heated in the larger houses from the 1580s onwards, with either the one above the hall or above the parlour being favoured – though, occasionally, both rooms had fireplaces. Such an arrangement was not difficult to make with a chimney stack running through the room from the ground-storey level beneath. The presence of a chimneysweep in Lowestoft at this time – Wyllyam Garret (identified in his wife’s burial entry of 6 May 1580) – suggests that there were a sufficient number of flues in the better-quality houses to enable him to make at least a partial living from keeping them clean. 

By the 18th century, a number of the medium-sized houses in town (three to six rooms) also boasted the comfort of a heated bedchamber, but the inhabitants were all people who were reasonably well off. Best endowed of all the houses, in terms of upstairs rooms with heating, were those of Elizabeth Pacy (merchant’s widow) and James Wilde (merchant). Each of them had three of its chambers equipped with hearths by the years 1682 and 1684 respectively, making use of two stacks: an off-centre one and another on the end of the building. Both dwellings (which stood next to each other) have survived until the present day and are now known as Nos. 80 and 81-83, High Street. As was the case in Norwich also, Lowestoft houses showed an increasing tendency for the first-floor rooms to be used for sitting. This is particularly detectable from the second half of the 17th century onwards, and by the 18th the practice was well established. Out of the thirty-two houses for which inventories exist between 1700 and 1730, twenty-eight show at least one upstairs room being used for sitting.

Garrets

The third storey in Lowestoft houses has already been discussed as a feature of the plan-form and not much needs to be said about the rooms which occupied the roof-space – other than the fact that they were customarily used for sleeping and/or storage. No specific evidence of their being occupied by servants in the larger houses has come to light (in other words, there are no references to “servants’ attics” or the like), but that was probably one of their functions if the presence of trendle beds (small, movable and single-person) may be taken as an indicator. They may also have been useful for providing accommodation in families where three generations were living under one roof, or in cases where a house had been subdivided. 

Closets

The first reference to a closet is to be found on 11 June 1674, in the inventory of Ann Hunt (gentleman’s widow), and it shows that the facility was located in the hall chamber. Other townspeople’s inventories show them to have been present in their houses during the last quarter of the 17th century and, as the 18th century progressed, they became more common. They were customarily used to store pewter and earthenware vessels of one kind or another, whether they were situated upstairs or down, and there are also references to napery, linen and clothes being kept within them, as well as various pieces of furniture and other household goods. There are sixteen references to them in all and, perhaps not surprisingly, they tended to be located in the houses of the wealthier members of society.

CREDIT: David Butcher