Agnes Allen won the annual Carnegie Medal recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject.

[3] Agnes Allen attributes the inspiration for this book to her young son's curiosity about the old Elizabethan houses in the Oxfordshire village where they lived in the summer of 1943.

"[7] Other chapters describe homes of different periods, including Iron Age roundhouses, mediaeval manors, Tudor mansions, later country houses and terraced houses, and, bringing it up to date, the blocks of flats and suburban homes of the post-war period.

They are mainly simplified sketches of typical exteriors and interiors which complement the text and form an integral part of the book.

[2] The premier award for British children's books has honoured only a handful of nonfiction works and not many sequels.

"[4] Its educational merit was stressed: "Any parent, relative or friend wishing to stimulate the historical sense of a young person, could not do better - if he can bear to part with the book himself - than to make a gift of it.