Housing The Poor c.1670-1870 by Dr Joseph Harley

Dr Joseph Harley is a Senior Lecturer in History at Anglia Ruskin University and an expert in the history of poverty, welfare, material culture and domestic life. His most recent publications include Objects of Poverty: Material Culture in Britain from 1700 (2025) and At Home with the Poor: Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in England, c. 1650-1850

It has almost universally been argued that the homes of the poor prior to the twentieth century were of the lowest quality, being overcrowded, unsanitary, comfortless, vulnerable to the elements and insecure. Joseph will test these ideas through the use of pauper inventories, and the remarkable archive of pastor Richard Cobbold, who painted and described the homes of the poor in his village of Wortham, Suffolk. Space was at a premium and so people would use the same rooms for a range of purposes such as sleep, work and cooking. Nonetheless, it is clear that the poor took pride in their homes and worked hard to keep them as well turned-out as they could be, despite being impoverished.