How the Black Death prompted a building boomIt used to be thought that only high-class houses had survived from the Medieval period. Once it was believed that Medieval peasant houses were so miserable and insubstantial that no housing from this stratum of society could possibly have survived the 500 years or so that separate us from the Middle Ages. This kind of circular argument, whereby if it survived it could not be a peasant house because peasant houses did not survive, has now been comprehensively undermined by a study initiated by the late Bob Laxton and continued by Nat Alcock, Robert Howard, Dan Miles, and Cliff Litton. But can we really claim that these buildings are vernacular, and do they justify the term ‘peasant house’? In other words, these may not be the houses of the very poorest peasants, but they are of peasant status, nonetheless.