WHY EVERYBODY STILL NEEDS GOOD NEIGHBOURS

ALMOST everyone has a neighbour and nearly everyone is a neighbour.
They fascinate and worry us in equal measure. Yet neighbours’ lives have become a lot less entwined over the past 700 years. Before the 18th century party walls were often thin and flimsy and conversations could easily be heard – holes and cracks afforded opportunities for spying.

In 1666 a woman doubting her neighbour’s fidelity peeped through the “wall betwixt them”. She saw the woman “in the very act of adultery, in a very beastly manner” and invited another couple in to watch with her.

Before the Victorian building boom urban houses were often split into apartments with families living on top of each other. Further subdivision was common with families sharing cooking and cleaning facilities. A person would often need to walk through a neighbour’s space to get to their own. Understanding their living circumstances and witnessing suffering often made them more forgiving of foibles and transgressions of the folk next door.

Relationships among the poor were founded on giving and receiving support. Items such as tools, pots and pans, food and even money were shared. Before the 20th century there was little state support to cope with old age, illness and unemployment; neighbours were the weft and warp of the welfare safety net. Thin walls and labyrinthine dwelling layouts meant that neighbours could easily annoy each other with noise, smells and dirt.

Trades such as dyeing, glue-making and tripe dressing were done at home. In the 1730s a distiller living on London’s Tottenham Court Road kept hundreds of pigs, the smell of which sickened his neighbours, tarnished their silverware and drove their servants away.