Hearth tax significant proportion of householders were not liable to pay at all. The hearth tax was much resented because it often entailed inspection of the interior of dwellings by the sub-collectors and petty constables, who had legal authority to enter every property to check on the number of hearths. Some people stopped up their chimneys so that the tax was not due on them, but where this was discovered by the assessors the tax was doubled. On 31 July 1684, a fire in Churchill, Oxfordshire, destroyed 20 houses and many other buildings, and killed four people. It was apparently caused by
The English House The English House The English House is a book of design and architectural history written by German architect Hermann Muthesius and published in 1904. Its three volumes provide a record of the revival of English domestic architecture during the later part of the nineteenth century. The main themes he discusses are history, form and decor. A single-volume edited English language translation was published in 1979. The first full English translation was not for over a century, in 2007. In Part I, Muthesius discusses the individuals involved in the parallel development of architecture and the Arts and Crafts Movement. Muthesius argues