The English cottage is an icon of our times.

Whether a harmonious blend of timber frame and thatch or golden Cotswold stone, it symbolises country life at its most seductive and offers a chance to return to a rural Eden that was lost at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

The picture of cottage life is an attractive and enduring one, fascinating writers and artists for the last two hundred years.

But the reality of life in an English country cottage was far from idyllic for the medieval farmer.

From the home of the feudal farmer to the holiday retreat of the bourgeois in the twentieth century, the author traces the history of the cottage, exploring how them came to be built, the materials used to build them, and how their appearance was affected by social forces and changing trends.

The author concentrates of the inhabitants of the cottage, how they spent their time, how they were treated, what they ate and where they slept, and how they decorated and furnished their homes.

‘Life in the English Country Cottage’ is a history of both the myth and the reality of life for the majority of the population over the last seven centuries.

‘Adrian Tinniswood is a masterly writer of history with a gift for slamming his readers into the thick of the action.’ Jason Goodwin, Literary Review

‘one of our foremost historians and biographers’ National Trust Magazine

“Adrian Tinniswood’s Life in the English Country Cottage is a worthy homage… Lavishly presented and imaginatively researched, it explores the reality of life behind those idyllic exteriors…” - The Independent

“Tinniswood manages to make these people real” The Sunday Times

Adrian Tinniswood is an architectural historian, teacher and writer, as well as a consultant to the National Trust. He lives in an Arts and Crafts cottage near Bath.

Endeavour Press is the UK’s leading independent publisher of digital books.