Talk:Tudor period

I'm sorry but this reads like it was written by a child paraphrasing from a playschool textbook. Shouldn't we try overhauling it? I'm definitely willing to give it a go

-- I agree. Is this article a piss-take??— Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.197.231 (talk) 17:23, May 12, 2007 (UTC) --Particuarly poor is the bit about health. It seems to conflate life expectancy at birth with how long an adult could expect to live. Wilhelm Ritter 23:30, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I am interested to find more information about how the poor lived during this time. We've all seen grand tudor mansions. What were the poor likely to live in? Unfinished stone? Finished stone? Wood? Adobe? ;) Thatched roof? Shingles?

By its very nature the way of life of the poor is not well substantiated in any period. It can only be generalised at best, through its remaining plain artefacts which were in everyday use, and which tend to resemble those of the poor from other periods more closely than they do the fashionable objects of the rich of their own period. The property of the poor was rarely traced and recorded, nor preserved by the very reason of their ordinariness, whereas the objects in the great houses of the nobility, etc., would always be more closely guarded and maintained for posterity.

The fashions of clothes do vary with time, of course, if slashed shirts and doublets were in fashion then clothes similar in cut but made of far coarser materials would be worn by the poor, which again can only very generally be described, while those of nobility would be written about and even painted by the artists of the day.

The way of life of the illiterate poor would be passed down through oral traditions rather than the literary records left behind by the educated rich of any period.

It is for these reasons, that the lives of the poor during the Tudor period might resemble the lives of the poor of other periods, and could only be generalised in their descripton. A poor Tudor family would probably resemble a poor family from Dickens's times rather than that of a rich Tudor family. The lives of the poor of any periods can only be described in the most generalised terms.

The architecture of the Tudor cottage which was the dwelling of the commoners does reflect that of the trends of the time, which I copied from Tudor Style architecture:

Tudor style buildings have six distinctive features -

• Decorative half-timbering
• Steeply pitched roof
• Prominent cross gables
• Tall, narrow windows
• Small window panes
• Large chimneys, often topped with decorative chimney pots

I am not sure whether any Wikipedia article gives details of what the wages a working person in Tudor times were, at any rate I wasn't able to find anything to that effect.

I do hope it does give you some idea of the difficulties of hunting down details pertaining to the common people of the Tudor period. Dieter Simon 00:13, 31 July 2006 (UTC)