Leave it to the British to have over a hundred years of good data to show how the number of rooms in homes has changed over time. “How many rooms in your home” has been a census question in the UK since 1871. In medieval times, many Europeans cooked, ate, slept and socialised in one big room. By the start of the 21st Century, the average British home had 5.34 rooms, according to 2001 Census figures. says Lucy Worsley, curator of Historic Royal Palaces: “We’ve passed the peak of the proliferation and specialisation of rooms which happened in the Victorian age: billiard rooms, morning rooms, parlours, studies. It was a use of space that’s no longer affordable. The trend now is like a return to medieval living. I live in an open-plan flat with one central space. I use it for cooking, for eating, for watching TV – the modern equivalent of storytelling by the fire – and guests sleep on my sofa.”
