When were house windows first use?

Answer 1

Windows in houses and other buildings have been used ever since ancient times, in the Babylonian, Assyrian and Pharonic Egyptian Empires, although in those days they were simply open gaps that were covered with either fabric curtains or shutters at night. Even the Romans, who used glassware a lot in tableware, never used glass in their windows as they had not mastered the technique of rolling it to make window panes.

The Bronze and Iron Age tribes of Europe did not have windows in their residential huts at all, though they did have small openings in their 'moot halls' to allow light in.

Glass first began to be used in windows in late Anglo-Saxon times, mostly in churches, but these could only be constructed using small pieces of glass held together in a framework of lead. This is why stained-glass windows in Mediaeval cathedrals and churches are made up of small pieces with leaden supports in between. During this era, glass in windows was reserved for ecclesiastical use in monasteries, abbeys and churches- even the wealthy upper classes living in castles or fortified manors had open windows that were sealed with wooden shutters at night.

The technique of making plate-glass windows by rolling molten glass into flat pieces was not developed until the latter years of King Henry VIII's reign (i.e. 1540's), but it was only the nobility and extremely wealthy who could afford to have these installed- many continued to use the old-style lattice windows, and plate-glass continued to be unusual up until the end of the 17th Century. It was only from around the time of the architect Sir Christopher Wren that plate glass came into widespread use.