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Post by ayatollah on Aug 7, 2023 1:30:57 GMT
When I was in London in 1996 a tour guide pointed to a house with a few bricked up windows and explained to us about a tax on windows from 300 years earlier. He said people had bricked them up to avoid taxation, and that was the reason these were all over the city.
But I've always wondered if they were really common. I wouldn't imagine after 3 centuries there'd be many surviving houses.
I looked for more bricked up windows but didn't see a one
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Post by Flying Monkeys on Aug 7, 2023 3:36:23 GMT
Okay.
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Post by PaulsLaugh on Aug 7, 2023 8:28:26 GMT
That was shitty.
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Post by yggdrasil on Aug 7, 2023 9:03:29 GMT
With the money you need to buy property in London you'd easily afford to re open or install extra windows over the last few hundred years.
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Post by mowlick on Aug 7, 2023 9:20:24 GMT
The tax was real enough and was an early form of wealth tax. The British were never very fond of paying taxes (you could stretch a point and say that was why Charles I got his head chopped off), so counting a taxpayer's windows was a lot less trouble than asking him to fill out an SA100.
However,
(a) the tax was abolished two hundred years ago so you don't see a lot of the properties with bricked up windows because they have either fallen or been knocked down.
(b) a lot of the bricked up windows were added for dramatic effect because in the 18th century builders had a thing about symmetry and so the windows were never actually meant to serve as windows.
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Post by Nogbad on Aug 7, 2023 10:30:43 GMT
They're very prevalent in Edinburgh, particularly in the 18th century parts of the New Town.
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Post by Carl LaFong on Aug 7, 2023 11:45:41 GMT
I never open my curtains but they refuse to give me a tax rebate.
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