The prospect from Rugman's Row: the Row House in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century London

Abstract

Study of the development of the town house in London has focused mainly on the period following the Great Fire, and only latterly for the first time on the medieval period. The differences between building practice and concepts in London before and after the Fire have been over emphasized, obscuring a pattern of evolution and continuity in which phenomena generally taken to be of the mid- or later seventeenth century have rather earlier origins. Timber-framed row houses built in the last decade of the sixteenth century conformed to a well established medieval pattern. The first brick row houses of the early seventeenth century, including some of back to back plan, were part of this same tradition. The emphasis on improvement characteristic of many later building promotions was already evident in early seventeenth-century estate management. The term ‘terrace’ has been misused, giving the mistaken impression that the brick houses of post-Fire London were somehow a new phenomena. The large scale speculative building of row houses in post-Fire London had antecedents not only in the 1620s onwards, but in the sixteenth and earlier centuries.

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