Ideas of house and home play a subtle game of semantics but their distinctions are important useful exercises to think about. We could go as far as to establish the house as the physical construction, the ‘bricks and mortar’ of a dwelling; of floors, walls, ceilings, windows and doors. The home then, is defined as something more immaterial, more personal and influenced by its inhabitant more overtly. In this context, it is tied up with how we decorate its interior, how we furnish it or the everyday practices that unfold inside of it; washing, cooking, cleaning and sleeping.

For anthropologist Mary Douglas, the home was a space that had qualities of familiarity and a sense of control to it but was not stable physically. In her 1991 essay The Idea of A Home: A Kind of Space, Douglas wrote that the “Home is located in a space, but it is not necessarily a fixed space.”

Our ideas of home can then be seen as being constructed from both the physical and the  immaterial - moving with us as we move. At any one time, it holds attachment and memories as well as its own physical history. It might also be full possessions and domestic artefacts as accumulations of a life.

The English House: Structure and Approach

For Dan Cruickshank and his new book The English House, British domestic architecture has a much richer history than the physical construction presented to us at face value. His focus holds both house and home in equal measure. We are reminded the house can be a status symbol, a typology ripe with innovation and invention but also that it plays an essential role in our everyday lives; for shelter, security, and comfort.