The housing history of Holderness in the 20th century follows trends in rural areas that impacted in similar areas across the country. In 1900 rural workers housing was broadly of two types – estate cottages , that is cottages built at the expense of the principal landowner in a parish and in a style that met with his approval, and – speculative cottages built in ‘open villages’ where the pattern of land ownership was much more varied and where cottages might be built by a local builder or built for a private landlord with some capital by a local builder. In either case the cottages were lived-in by tenants and rents could vary considerably depending on local circumstances. The freedom to exercise commercial speculation in ‘open villages’ resulted in them usually having a larger population than ‘closed’ or estate villages and as, despite the agricultural depression of the late 19th century, much farmwork was still labour intensive farm workers from open villages often ‘commuted’, usually on foot. In 1900 there were no council houses in rural East Yorkshire or, to the best of my knowledge, in north Lindsey.
Housing reform was perceived as one aspect of the great ‘public health reform’ debate of Victorian England and by 1900 two aspects of worker’s housing in rural areas were seen as critical – poor quality housing and insufficient housing, both seen as factors which had led to the migration of working class people from rural to urban areas.
The first landmark national legislation to try and tackle these problems was the 1890 Housing of the Working Classes Act. The Act applied to rural sanitary districts and, although adoptive, gave rural district councils the option to provide ‘accommodation for the housing of the working classes’. My M.Phil. thesis dealt with this issue with Skirlaugh Rural District Council as one of two case studies, in particular for this current line of thought Chapter 3 – see this on page three of this website.