Carole Matthews is one of the bestselling women's fiction writers around. General Non-Fiction
Synopsis
Life was not all roses round the door and patchwork quilts in the cottages of yesteryear. In reality, they were smoky, damp and draughty, and living in them could involve candle-lit treks to an outside privy, sharing a bedroom with perhaps ten other people, or bleaching linen with a mixture of hen manure and urine. So how did a one-room hovel become today's desirable country cottage? Valerie Porter charts the gradual improvements: a chimney to capture the smoke, a ladder up to a sleeping loft, earthen floors giving way to boards, and homemade rushlights replaced first by paraffin lamps and then electric light. This down-to-earth account reveals what life was really like for the cottage dweller.Latest Additions
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