Cottage

In modern usage, a cottage is usually a modest, often cosy dwelling, typically in a rural or semi-rural location and not necessarily in England.

In England the term holiday cottage now denotes a specialised form of residential let property, attracting various tax benefits to the owner.

In certain countries (e.g. Nordics, Baltics, and Russia) the term "cottage" has local synonyms: In Finnish mökki, in Estonian suvila, in Latvian vasarnīca, in Livonian sõvvõkuodā, in Swedish stuga, in Norwegian hytte (from the German word Hütte), in Czech or Slovak chata or chalupa, in Russian дача (dacha).

The word originally referred to a humble rural detached dwelling of a cotter, a semi-independent resident of a manor who had certain residential rights from the lord of the manor, and who in the social hierarchy was a grade above the slave (mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086), who had no right of tenure and worked full-time to the orders of the lord.

[4] The cottage had a small amount of surrounding agricultural land, perhaps two or three acres, from which the resident gained his livelihood and sustenance.

[4] The Welsh Tŷ unnos or "house in a night", was built by squatters on a plot of land defined by the throw of an axe from each corner of the property.

Older, pre-Victorian cottages tend to have restricted height, and often have construction timber exposed, sometimes intruding into the living space.

Older cottages are typically modest, often semi-detached or terraced, with only four basic rooms ("two up, two down"), although subsequent modifications can create more spacious accommodation.

A labourer's or fisherman's one-roomed house, often attached to a larger property, is a particular type of cottage and is called a penty.

They are used as a place to spend holidays with friends and family; common activities include swimming, canoeing, waterskiing, fishing, hiking, and sailing.

Comprising about a third of the stations built in the United States in those years, cottage-patterned facilities evoked a picturesque homeyness and were easier to gain approval for than the more stylized or attention-grabbing designs also commonly used at the dawn of the automobile era.

[11] In Australia, the term "cabin" or "shack" is commonly used for a small dwelling, the former more often for a place of residence or tourist accommodation and the latter for a simple recreational shelter, typically not continuously occupied.

The term cottage usually refers to historic smaller residential buildings, commonly stone or brick, typically from Georgian or Victorian.

Prices vary a lot depending on location; a modern seaside house near Stockholm may cost 100 times as much as a simple cottage in the inner regions of northern Sweden.

Until the end of World War II, only a small wealthy Swedish elite could afford vacation houses—often both a large seaside house and a hunting cabin up north.

During the rapid urbanisation in the 1950s and 1960s, many families were able to retain their old farmhouses, village cottages, and fisherman cabins and convert them into vacation houses.

In addition, economic growth made it possible even for low-income families to buy small lots in the countryside where they could erect simple houses.

So it is legitimate to talk about the appearance of the term "Russian cottage" – a house, comparable in size to a British villa or even a mansion, and includes a corresponding piece of land.

Most cottages in the Western Cape area of South Africa have thatched roofs and stone or adobe walls which were traditionally whitewashed.