Name: Dining rooms.
Age: Ancient Romans took meals in a room called a triclinium.
Appearance: A room with a big table in the middle, surrounded by chairs.
You mean a kitchen? No, a kitchen has a fridge and an oven. This doesn’t.
Like a conference room in an office? A little, but this room is in your house and it’s just for eating in.
What am I, royalty? Hardly. The dining room was a standard feature of a typical middle-class home.
When was all this? From Victorian times until quite recently.
Why did they decide they needed special dining rooms? Once upon a time, homes tended to have a single, all-purpose entertainment space, but as furnishings in the living room became more elaborate and upholstered, it was thought desirable to designate a separate space for eating.
I guess that makes sense. By the 20th century, dining rooms – once the preserve of the rich – were part of the architecture even in modest homes.
In that case, where did they all go? Most of them have been turned into something else. According to research by insurance provider Aviva, nearly a quarter of homeowners have repurposed their dining rooms.
Into what, exactly? Sometimes, people knock down a wall to make a bigger living room or a bigger kitchen. Others turn dining rooms into gyms or home offices.
Or panic rooms? Possibly. However personal the change, few people feel the need to maintain a separate room just to eat in occasionally.
And they don’t miss their dining rooms? The fashion for bigger kitchens has moved the social focus of mealtimes. These days, people tend to cook and eat their food in the same space.
Really? I eat in front of my computer, on the sofa. In many ways we’ve come full circle: back to spilling food on upholstery.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a regular house with a dining room. That’s because the shift started some time ago. In 2008, it was predicted that the dining room would be extinct by 2020. According to a study from the time, more than half a million homeowners had plans to renovate by knocking through their dining room in the following 12 months.
And all that knocking through just carried on. Indeed. The vogue for open-plan living has all but obliterated the very idea of rooms.
Do say: “As our lives and ways of interacting change, so the interiors of our homes change with them.”
Don’t say: “This used to be the dining room, but now it’s where three of my nine housemates sleep.”