Glazing of any kind for a normal home was unusual until the reign of Elizabeth 1, when glass became cheaper than it had been during the Medieval era.

 

Elizabethan windows were usually divided into several small 'lights' and seldom had more than one opening casement. The opening casements of the late 16th and early 17th centuries were small and partial - it was only later that casements began to take up the full height of the window.

 

Box sash windows have been in use in this country since around 1690, and became popular in the early Georgian period. Their design was improved after the 1860s, when the ability to make larger sheets of glass encouraged Victorian glazers to remove glazing bars. However, glazing bars again became fashionable at the beginning of the 20th century.

 

Casement windows, less costly than box the complicated designs of sash windows, continued to be used in farmhouses and other buildings throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Set flush within their frames, they used slim, moulded glazing bars and single glazing.

 

Metal windows with leaded lights, and multi-paned casement windows were fashionable in the Edwardian period; they were in fact intended to be evocative of the earlier Tudor period.