IN 1604 THE COURT of the KIng’s Bench made a judgement in the case of Peter Semayne v Richard Gresham. It was a trial during which Peter Semayne was suing his tenant Richard Gresham for an outstanding debt. The Court found against Semayne on several counts, one of which was: “It is not a felony for a man to defend his house to the death.” In 1605, the lawyer and politician Edward Coke (1552-1634) summarised the case in the fifth volume of his “Reports”. Amongst his conclusions about this case, he wrote:

“… the house of every one is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defence against injury and violence, as for his repose …”

And by the eighteenth century, the words “An Englishman’s home is his castle” had come to encapsulate what had been decided in law during the trial mentioned above.

Visitors to the British seaside cannot miss seeing rows of single storey beach huts close to the beach. Holidaymakers and local inhabitants hire or purchase these tiny huts to store their deckchairs; bathing equipment; simple cooking equipment; and other items to make spending a day at the beach enjoyable. Each hut is its owner’s or tenant’s small dwelling by the beach. However, as we learned during a visit to Minnis Bay in Kent, nobody can spend the night in a beach hut. They have to be vacated and locked up at the end of the day. Seeing people using these small structures, I felt that they regarded their huts as extensions of their homes, but unlike their actual dwellings, these temporary homes cannot be regarded as their castles.