Both the house and the household have been subjects of growing interest amongst historians of pre-industrial society, but mostly in isolation from each other. Studies of social structure conventionally treat the household as an entity independent of its physical surroundings. Ten years ago, Peter Laslett bewailed the fact that ‘we know little in general about the effects of buildings on the structure of domestic groups’, and this statement still appears to be valid; while on the other side of the Channel it has been echoed by Jean-Pierre Bardet:
Information on the material environment, undoubtedly important, is diffused to serve the perspectives of a wide variety of studies: the history of architecture, urbanism, geography, sociology etc.