From the early 1500s brick began to be used by the wealthy to build houses. Ralph Sadlier, a court official and Henry VIII's ambassador to Scotland built Sutton House in Homerton in 1535. Sutton House is still standing today and is now a museum. It is a very impressive house now but it would have seemed magnificent to ordinary people in Tudor times with its brick walls, huge hall and wood panelled rooms.

It was during this time that glass emerged as a material for domestic buildings. It was still very expensive though and difficult to produce in large pieces so windows were made from many small panes of glass held together in a grid or lattice pattern. They were usually casement windows so air could be let in and rubbish etc could be thrown out.

Hoxton, just outside the north east city wall, was still countryside at this time and as it was away from the dirt, noise and disease but close enough to the city for business and leisure pursuits it was the perfect place for the gentry to live. Over twenty grand houses were built on Hoxton Street during this time, and surrounded by fields and trees it must have been very pleasant.

Balmes House, built around 1540 to the west of Kingsland road, was another grand home. By the time of the Stuart period it belonged to Sir Whitmore and is mentioned in Pepys' diary in 12th May 1667, "... to Sir G Whitmore's house, where we light and walked over the fields to Kingsland and back again, a walk I think I have not taken these twenty years but puts me in mind of my boy's time, when I boarded at Kingsland and used to shoot with my bow and arrow in those fields."

Of course most people did not live in great houses like these. In the country people still lived in wattle and daub houses with thatch roofs like they had for hundreds of years. Although sometimes now they had an upstairs and were a bit bigger they still could not afford bricks and tiles and glass in the windows. Inside most peasants' homes were as spartan as on the outside. Aside from cooking implements and matting to sleep on there would have been very little else, if anything.