bars on windows

[charlie-ia]

are there any reasons (other than to stop burgulars) why a house would have bars on the windows?
upstairs and down, on the front, but not the back (may have been on the rear in the past, hard to tell)

we dont think the house has been used as a loonybin

yet

 

[Nemesis]

If a room was used as a nursery then bars were often added ( to prevent the offspring escaping... or an accident). However, yes to prevent burglary may well have been a reason.

We have bars on the outside of out pantry window.

 

[charlie-ia]

i was hoping for something exiting, like to stop tax inspectors or marauding zuluz. oh well. nevermind

 

[Flyfisher]

Sadly, nothing can stop the taxman

 

[Penners]

We have bars on the outside of out pantry window.

To protect your plum jam from marauding Picts and Scots?

 

[Nemesis]

Well you have to wonder... the Border Reivers should have been long defunct but...

 

[Penners]

A Reiver trail probably went right through your pantry. If you're lucky, a big butch Reiver, magnificent in his helmet and black chain mail, will ride by looking for defenceless women.

Ah - I've just spotted the flaw in that plotline. Defenceless.....

 

[worms]

With regard to the pantry, was it always a pantry? I thought it was once common to have bars on the maid's window to keep her in at night/prevent her having visitors. In some houses the maid's room was the most convenient room to use as a pantry once you no longer had a maid.

 

[R King]

Our house used to have bars on the windows as it was once used as a sessions court when the railways were being built.

 

[Nemesis]

Ours is a pantry/cold store, and built I think as such.

 

[middi]

Iron bars, regardless where they are on entrances, are there to stop unwanted people and bigger animals going in or out. ( the taxman falls in one of these categories).

 

[Penners]

once you no longer had a maid.

You mean some people don't have a maid??

I never knew such poverty existed.