The Gazetteers Department

ACCORDING TO THE 1951 CENSUS, there were 188,431 occupied houses in the district (67.42 per sq. mile), 147,780 in the rural area (51.21 per sq. mile), and 40,651 in the urban area (245.25 per sq. mile). The 188,431 occupied houses accommodated 234,761 households [A house for census purposes meant " a dwelling with a separate main entrance ". Thus more than one household might be found in the same census house.]. This gave an average of 1.25 households for each occupied house, 1.22 in the rural area and 1.34 in the urban area.

Houses in cities have generally roofs of tiles, and so have a few, owned by well-to-do people, in some of the larger villages. Houses in rural areas in the rainy-west are generally thatched and in the dry east flat roofed. Town houses are generally built with burnt brick; most rural houses are built of stone or sun-dried brick and mud, mortar-pointed mud, or mortar. Window and door frames, door panels, and window shutters are generally made of babhul, mango, or jambhul, sometimes of umbar, and in the houses of the rich, of teak. Bamboo and teak rafters are largely used.

The houses in the district may be arranged under two divisions, immovable and movable. The immovable houses may be divided into four classes. Those with tiled roofs and walls of fire-baked bricks or dressed black stone; those with tiled roofs and walls of sun-bricks or mud and stones; those with flat earth or tiled roofs and generally walls of unburnt brick; and those with thatched roofs and wattled or grass walls. The movable dwellings belong to wandering tribes who carry them with them. They are of two kinds small tents or pals either of coarse cotton or wool and small huts of bamboo or date matting.

Mansions belonging to the old aristocracy and constructed in the old style are generally two-storeyed (dumajli) and are built round quadrangles with stone or burnt-brick walls, tiled roofs and verandas. They contain broad osari (lobbies) for large dinner parties, an office room, three or more sleeping-rooms, rooms for keeping clothes and ornaments, a central storeroom, a kitchen and a god-room. In the rear of the house are a cattle-shed and a bathing-room; A privy is located in a distant corner either in front or behind according to convenience of the building. In the rear yard are flower and plantain trees with a tulas (holy basil) bush in a masonry pillar post. In the spacious yards of some of the old mansions there used to be rooms for fifty to eighty servants and retainers. The fronts of most such houses were ornamented with carved wood, and on the front walls were drawn in gaudy colours pictures of gods, goddesses, heroes and wild beasts, with alternate bands of white and red to scare the cholera spirit. Some of them have an entrance door which is often spacious and imposing and furnished with a small room called devadi for guards or watchmen, and some had a pen in a yard in which was a cattle-shed and a stable for horses. Buildings like these were owned mostly by inamdars (holders of public grants) and jagirdars (land proprietors), now almost an extinct class. Several of them have been transformed into structures to suit modern conditions.

In first class buildings of the new type there is a generous use of steel and cement, the storeys are often three, and open courtyards, where they exist, are comparatively small. In new areas developed under the town planning schemes, there are rows of small bungalows with small open spaces on all sides.

The more modest houses are generally one-storeyed, with walls of fire-baked or unbaked bricks and tiled or flat floors; they contain three or four rooms. In towns they are more roomy and showy, and when held by shop-keepers and craftsmen the verandas are made into shops or work-rooms. In rural places the house consists of a front veranda and a central room, with three or four other rooms, one of which is always set apart for cooking. If there is a room in the veranda, the owner of the house makes it his office and place of business. As a rule, the central room is used for dining and worshipping the house gods. Houses of this class have generally a cattle-shed either in front or behind them.

Houses occupied by husbandmen in villages are one-storeyed with unburnt brick walls, flat earth or tiled or thatched roof and two rooms. They have also large cattle-sheds. Single-roomed thatched huts with mud or mud-wattled reed millet or cotton stalk walls, roofed by a bamboo frame covered with grass and palas leaves are generally owned by poorer landholders, field labourers and Harijans and are found chiefly in villages in the hilly parts of the district in the rainy-west. Houses having dhabis or flat roofs are found in the dry-east.

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