The first census to report on how well people were housed was that of 1891, but the only
statistics gathered were on the number of rooms and the number of people in each household.
From 1951 onwards, more questions were asked about 'amenities', meaning specific facilities
that households either possessed or had shared access to.
One interesting measure of progress is the change in the amenities covered by the census. In 1951, these were piped water, a cooking stove, a kitchen sink, a 'water closet' meaning a flush toilet, and a 'fixed bath', as distinct from a tin bath hung on the wall between uses. In 2001, the list of key amenities was shorter: central heating, and 'sole use of bath/shower and toilet'. Differences in what information was recorded by each census complicate comparisons over time, and none of our three measures are entirely consistent.
Our detailed statistics are held in structures called nCubes, which you can think of as tables with one dimension, or with two ... or with twenty. Their dimensions are defined by the variables each nCube combines, and each variable is made up of categories. These nCubes are available at national level for this theme:
|Available nCubes||Period covered||Variables
(number of categories)
|Total Households||1931 to 2001||
|Housing Density, redistricted||1931 to 2001||
Persons per Room
|Housing Amenity, redistricted||1951 to 2001||
Housing amenities, simplified