A Brief History of the Sash Window
Sash windows are one of the most recognisable types of windows in England, dating from the time just after the great fire of London in 1666, yet little is known about their history. The birth of the sash windows had little to do with fashion. Rather, they were the response to a rather practical problem. Back in the seventeenth century, the streets of London were narrow. Adjacent houses were often just a few feet away from each other in the crowded city centre, meaning that a regular, outward-opening window risked knocking into the houses on the opposite. Sash windows solved this problem by allowing their owners to slide them up rather than open them out, both saving space and avoiding arguments with the neighbours. Though many people believe that sash windows were an imported design from the emerging British empire, they were not. In fact, they were exports to the