You'll notice that one thing I touched on in the articles about the council was their part in regulating and providing housing. I thought it might be valuable to look back again and see how the Old Barlickers managed to put a roof over their heads.
Even the nomadic Stone Age people 10,000 years ago needed shelter at night. The most common response to this is the use of caves and whilst that certainly did happen, we are a bit short of caves round here! I have long held the view that our resourceful ancestors were adept at making rough shelters out of whatever was available. You can easily imagine a rough structure of dead boughs covered with leafy branches, heather or even turf. One thing is certain, even in the middle of summer they would need shelter. As the culture of cultivation grew around 3,000 years BC settlement became common and more permanent structures of timber and local vegetation were built, often reinforced at the base by the use of loose rock laid on the ground. The one thing that is common right up to the 17th century is that the poorer you were, the more likely this was to be self-built. Even the better off had to employ local carpenters and labour because until the Dissolution of the Monasteries between 1536 and 1541 by Henry VIII the masons were all employed either by the Crown for palaces and fortifications or in church building. From the mid 16th century we start to see itinerant masons passing their skills on to local labourers and building in stone became more common even in the meaner self builds. There was no such thing as planning, hamlets developed organically because it was sensible to build close to neighbours for mutual support and defence. You can find local examples like the settlement at the bottom of Esp Lane which still has the original holding pattern
As the population increased more housing was needed but the problem became one of finding a site to build. A common practice on the edge of town was to encroach on the Waste, the common lands of the Parish. We know that this happened because we have records of fines in the Manorial Court for doing so. Significantly, no houses were destroyed as the Court recognised the need for them. Instead the fine was imposed annually and this developed into what we now know as leasehold property where a landlord owns the site and charges an annual fee. We know that there were enclosures of the waste in the 16th century to provide more arable land to feed the growing population and this no doubt included organised 'encroachment' to provide much needed building plots.
This was the state of affairs until the late 17th century when population rose even more as the textile trades developed. This was the start of an ever-growing need for housing and the authorities and local entrepreneurs reacted to address the problem.
An early permanent shelter probably looked like this, the earliest would have been round.
