‘Phlogiston’ is an interesting, if obsolete, word. Of Greek origin, it referred to the ‘fire-making’ quality thought to be present in, among other things, the ashes gathered by London dustmen. In the mid-18th century these ashes were mixed with earth and even ‘excrements taken out of the necessary houses’ to create the vast numbers of bricks needed for the explosion of house-building taking place at the time in London and elsewhere.
The dramatic rise in building is pivotal to this densely detailed observation of the British obsession with their ‘home’ and ‘comfort’ which, we’re told, Robert Southey describes as particularly English and untranslatable.
The first third of this trivia-packed and fascinating miscellany sets the scene for the ‘haves’, living in castles, stately homes or Vince Cable’s ‘mansions’, and the ‘have nots’, occupying cottages, with less of the romantic and more of the squalid.
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