Reading the Regency

A Glossary of Property Terms - part 2

In poor housing, some upper storey windows were designed with the sash windows sliding side to side, instead of up and down. These were known as a Yorkshire sash, a low-cost alternative to the standard sash because the counterbalancing weights were not required.

Skylight - A window built into a roof, used to provide natural light over an internal staircase.

"Charlotte having received possession of her apartment, found amusement enough in standing at her ample Venetian window."
[Sandition, by Jane Austen]

Venetian Window - This was made up of three windows in a row. The middle one would be arched, and taller than the two flat-topped windows on either side. It was commonly used in the "Palladian" style of architecture.

Between 1696 and 1851, British properties were subject to a Window Tax, which was paid by the building's owner rather than their tenants. In 1798, the lowest rate of window tax in England was four shillings and sixpence a year, for a house with no more than six windows or lights, worth less than five pounds in rent a year. (if the rent was five pounds a year or more, the tax was six shillings) The tax rose on a sliding scale, depending on the number of windows, so a house with ten windows or lights would be taxed one pound and fourteen shillings, while eleven windows would cost two pounds and four shillings. A canny householder would often remove windows and block up the opening to save paying more tax than necessary.

If you were fortunate enough to live in a house with one hundred and eighty windows or lights, then you would have been charged £61 per year in tax in 1798. That might sound like a lot of windows, but the largest house in the country, Wentworth Woodhouse, in Yorkshire, had 365 rooms, and many of those rooms had more than one window.

The people who most suffered from this tax were the tenants of rented houses, when their landlords blocked up windows to avoid paying more tax than necessary. This meant the very poor were often living in rooms with no natural light or fresh air.

Exterior Features

"So she led the way to a little conservatory, and a little pinery, and a little grapery, and a little aviary, and a little pheasantry, and a little dairy for show, and a little cottage for ditto, with a grotto full of shells, and a little hermitage full of earwigs, and a little ruin full of looking-glass, 'to enlarge and multiply the effect of the Gothic.' 'But you could only put your head in, because it was just fresh painted..."
[Chapter 6, The Absentee, by Maria Edgeworth]

As well as the different types of rooms found inside a house, other buildings and features were often found outside or separate from the main house. How many outbuildings you had depended on the size and complexity of the house. In an estate agent's advertisement, they would frequently be lumped together as servants' offices.

Apiary - A beehive, or a collection of beehives. The cultivation of bees was considered a "rural amusement" but also provided wax for candles, as well as honey for both family use and as a valuable crop to sell or swap with neighbours:

"In favourable years, as for instance in 1809, a single stock of bees has been found, by judicious management in this respect, to produce twelve gallons, or ninety-six pounds of honey, making, at the moderate price of one shilling per pound, nearly a clear profit of five pounds sterling."
[A New System of Practical Economy by H. Colburn, pub. 1825]

Area - space outside a basement, below ground level, that allows light into windows and access to the basement rooms from the ground level, usually by means of steps. For safety and security, the area was surrounded by an iron fence and gate at the top of the stairs. The area provided separate access for servants and tradesmen. Although areas were commonly found outside townhouses, some country houses with basements also had them.