THE HISTORY and regional characteristics of middle- and lower-class houses in England and Wales attracted little scholarly study before the Second World War. There were various descriptive accounts that emphasized the picturesque aspects of the country cottage, but only a few works that paid serious attention to plans and methods of construction, the most important being The Development of English Building Construction by C. F. Innocent (1916), The Evolution of the English House by S. O. Addy (I933), and The Welsh House by I. C. Peate (I940). In I95I, however, the first volume of Monmouthshire Houses by Sir Cyril Fox and Lord Raglan was published, volumes II and III following in 1953 and I954;1 these demonstrated the value of detailed comparative studies of large numbers of small houses as the basis for an analysis of the evolution of plans and structural techniques. Stimulated by these volumes, architects, archaeologists and social historians have subsequently produced a considerable number of books and papers on small houses, and it seems appropriate that an assessment of the geographical relevance of this work should now be made. The houses that have received most attention during this recent phase of study are those built in rural districts during the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Few earlier houses remain, while most town houses of the same period have been destroyed or extensively altered. The surviving pre-eighteenth-century rural houses were mostly erected as farmhouses at a time when vernacular influences were strong, so that, in addition to being built of local materials, they incorporate local traditions of construction, plan and finish. Vernacular traditions were not completely unchanging, and new ideas and techniques could be incorporated provided that they were few in number and harmonized with other elements.2 After the Civil War (I642-49), however, the new elements became too numerous and powerful to be absorbed, and vernacular traditions slowly receded into the background as new techniques, and particularly the Renaissance fashion for a balanced facade and plan, spread throughout the country. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century houses therefore show fewer regional differences and have received less attention in recent studies.