Q&A
Why did medieval houses overhang?
• SHORT ANSWER
It’s not overhanging, it’s ‘jettying’ – and it was an effective method to make some extra room
• LONG ANSWER
The skill of making each floor of a building bigger on the way up was not the preserve of medieval architects, but Tudor and colonial American builders too. Beautiful examples survive to this day on the Shambles in York. This technique, jettying, was to squeeze out extra metres of floor space. If houses were jettied and leaned over enough, neighbours from across the narrow streets could shake hands out the top-floor windows. The practice ended after the Great Fire of London in 1666, however, when it was realised that tightly packed buildings weren’t the safest when it came to town planning.