Matthew Johnson, professor of archeology at the University of Southampton, can always be counted on for fresh perspectives on familiar subjects. In this case he also addresses a new audience: new at least for most academic archaeologists. English Houses attempts the fine balance between writing both for specialists and for those members of the public who pay “casual visits to the countryside … (and) who want to know more about old houses” (2). As he writes engagingly in the first person and sometimes even autobiographically, Johnson rehearses some basic elements of vernacular building and provides quick surveys of the contextual geographic, social, and political factors informing the conception and construction of houses. But he also undertakes, with as little jargon as possible, a more sophisticated, highly historiographical, and even theoretically informed account of such issues as, for example, the agency of material objects and the materialization of social life in the construction and operation of residential spaces, and the ideas of, for example, Bourdieu on habitus and Foucault on the archaeology of documents.

The tonic note in all this is the way in which buildings have “materialized” the lives of their builders and inhabitants at particular times and in specific regions of England. Such an aim requires Johnson to discuss the interiors of houses as well as the more widely studied exteriors. Especially during what he identifies as the housing boom era of ca. 1430–90 in the southeast and East Anglia, for example, he tells us that the open hall continued its central place to reflect the patriarchal household culture of the day. This pertained until the pivotal era beginning in the 1530s and 1540s and principally in Midland England in which halls were ceiled over, chimney stacks replaced open hearths, and the subdivision of rooms ensured the segregation of space and greater privacy within the household. By the eighteenth century the vernacular traditions in which these developments unfolded became subsumed into the more polite and formal Georgian idiom, at least among those who could afford its requirements.

Throughout this narrative Johnson challenges a number of old chestnuts: for example, that vernacular building was purely functional and never decorative; that people usually built in imitation of their betters; that vernacular architecture remained static in appearance over time; that houses were strictly domestic and not public or occupational spaces. While he is not the first to puncture most of these balloons, he skillfully integrates his critique into the broader narrative. His discussions, in chapters 3 and 4, relating medieval house types to their ambient landscapes and societies accomplish this integration particularly well. His efforts to link state building and architectural developments under the Tudors in chapter 6 and his discussion of the relationship between the vernacular and the Georgian in chapter 8 remain slightly sketchier and less persuasive.

Does he succeed in writing for two audiences? Well, mostly. Countryside ramblers will find themselves differently and more broadly informed by Johnson than by Shell Guides or Pevsner volumes; they will find the photographs (fifteen in color) well matched to the text; they will have a good read; most will find the book’s modest price well within their means. Many will skip the more specialized bits or make little use of the extensive bibliography. Historians will appreciate the skillful summary of trends in the development of rural housing over a five-century era and the manner in which Johnson integrates myriad obscure, local studies in specialized journals into a wider and well-conceptualized narrative. They will appreciate the strong historiographic framework of the whole and the respect he extends to such pioneers as, for example, Mercer, Barley, and Hoskins even as he refines their interpretations. However, they may grow impatient with the rehearsing of basic information and the overly reductionist accounts of contextual factors to the building itself. Then there are some obvious gaps in the story, some of them acknowledged in the rather confessional nature of the closing pages. The discussion pertains exclusively to rural rather than urban houses and almost exclusively to the housing of the gentry and yeomanry rather than other sorts of people. It says too little about the builders themselves and about their facility in adapting to new requirements and materials. There are also some surprising omissions of secondary literature: Paul Hunneyball’s 2004 work on the adaptation of Palladian principles in the Hertfordshire countryside; Michael McKeon’s 2005 work, among others, on domestic life and private versus public residential space; and several key works on building developments in the Restoration era would certainly have bolstered the rather sketchy discussion of the Georgian in chapter 8.

Such crotchets aside, works of this sort, reaching out from the jargon-prone academic writing to a wider public, are much to be encouraged. Both Johnson and his publisher must be commended for this honest, candid, attractively packaged, and useful effort.