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 candlelit treks to an outside privy, sharing a bedroom with perhaps ten other people, or bleaching linen with a mixture of hen manure and urine The author charts the gradual improvements a chimney, a ladder up to the sleeping loft, earthen floors giving way to boards, and homemade rushlights replaced first by paraffin lamps and then electric light