Living from Home: Older people looking beyond

the house.

Dr. Ian Ewart is a Research Fellow in the School of

Construction Management and Engineering at the University of

Reading. After a career in engineering, he switched to

anthropology to pursue interests in material culture studies.

He graduated with a DPhil from the University of Oxford, in

2012 with a thesis on the Anthropology of Engineering.

Contact: i.j.ewart@reading.ac.uk

Dr Rachael Luck is an architect, design researcher and

lecturer in the School of Construction Management and

Engineering at the University of Reading. Rachael is an

editorial board member for Design Studies, with editorial input

into the book About: designing, what goes on in design team meetings

(Taylor and Francis, 2009).

Contact: r.a.c.luck@reading.ac.uk

School of Construction Management and Engineering

University of Reading

Whiteknights

PO Box 219

Reading

RG6 6AW

Living from Home: Older People Looking Beyond

the House.

Abstract

This paper puts forward the view that the meaning of home is

not necessarily contained by the walls of the house. An

important aspect of ‘homeliness’ is the capacity for the home

to act as somewhere you leave, and not only somewhere to

reside. As a result of conversations with a group of older

people, based on their own priorities and in their own words,

we describe some of their perceptions of the home. This

includes a view that the home loses its significance as a

personal statement, or a reflection of identity, and becomes

more important as a place for envisioning and planning

activities outside the immediate confines of the house. With

the onset of old age and its consequent limitations in loss of

mobility and energy, the difficulties of going beyond the

doorstep become more apparent. Despite this, our participants

were determined to maintain social and environmental contacts,

switching their perspective away from the interior of the home

and to the world outside.

Introduction

Research into the meaning of home among the elderly has tended

to seek how and why a house becomes a home (Rowles 1983;

Oswald and Wahl 2005; Oswald et al. 2006; Dahlin-Ivanoff et

al. 2007) or considered person-environment relations with the

home as a special and usually central place (Manzo 2003;

Easthope 2004; Peace et al. 2011). As the reduced mobility

that comes with increasing age restricts elderly occupants

more and more to a life indoors, there is an implicit

assumption that this raises the significance of the interior

space. Following on from this, it is natural to investigate

the interior as the place where elderly people focus their

attentions, at the expense of the external environment, which

becomes increasingly difficult to access. As most authors

acknowledge however, the link between home and environment is

complex and individually contextualised, so that the dichotomy

of inside:outside correlating easily with for example

home:neighbourhood, is likely to be contestable (Manzo 2003).

Indeed, the boundaries of the home are usually defined by the

physical structure, despite the fact that it is widely

accepted that the meaning of home has a psychological and

emotional component, which is not spatially limited (see for

example Peace et al. 2011, figure 3, p. 752).

This paper puts forward the view that rather than seeing the

home as a physically bounded space, within which a series of

behaviours and emotions are enacted, the relationship between

house and home should be dispensed with, and we should instead

focus on the ongoing and contingent process of feeling at

home, wherever that may be. Adopting this perspective opens up

alternative senses of meaning, such as the theme of this

paper, which is that that there are times when the physical

boundaries of the house do not feel ‘homely’, so that

imagining or actually leaving the house can be a homely

practice. Home, in other words, is not just a destination, but

can include acts of departure.

This observation comes from conversations with a group of

older people about their perceptions of home and home life. It

was significantly noticeable that the participants in our

study group did not always see the home as a place that they

felt drawn to; instead there was a common feeling that the

sensation of being inside was less relevant to homeliness than

the experience of leaving the house to go elsewhere. For our

participants, as the restrictions associated with ageing come

into play, many of the concepts of home as a safe haven and

private space (Dahlin-Ivanoff et al. 2007) are overturned as

the occupants lose control over the physical and symbolic

aspects that create a home. They are left instead with a place

that forms the base from which they conduct their life,

switching perspectives from the outside-in to the inside-out.

What we aim to demonstrate therefore in this paper, is that in

some circumstances at least, the sense of being at home

includes a perception of the physical structure as being a

place to go from, instead of a place to go to.

Methodology

This is an output of ‘The Living Futures’ research, within the

Participatory Design project at the University of Reading,

which investigated perceptions of home and expectations from

living environments for a group of people over the age of 60.

A deliberate orientation was to better understand older

people’s lived experiences through their own accounts,

including their everyday difficulties and pleasures.

Perceptions of home and its relationship to routine activities

were brought into focus through the expression of personal

views on their home life now, and thoughts as they look to the

future. To investigate this we adopted an ethnographic

approach with the intention of gathering a rich suite of data

from a small number of participants, in ways that overcome

some of the inherent difficulties of undertaking traditional

participant-observation studies inside the home. In

particular, since our aim was to investigate the views of

older people, the imposition of a researcher in their home

brought out a number of issues. In general, physical frailty

and the potential drain on emotional reserves caused by

lengthy conversations meant that we needed to make individual

visits relatively short. On the other hand, in many cases

hectic lives and the consequent need for periods of rest meant

that it was sometimes difficult to fix convenient times to

visit. This was complicated by our desire to ensure that the

direction of the conversations, beyond the general theme of

‘everyday life at home’, was largely dictated by the

participants themselves.

Our research group consisted of six people: four individuals

(three female, one male) and one married couple, aged between

68 and 89, all of whom were white and British. They lived in

ordinary houses, as opposed to sheltered or assisted

accommodation, in suburban areas close to large towns or

cities. The physical structures were relatively similar,

having two or three bedrooms and one or two bathrooms, most

commonly a downstairs cloakroom and separate bathroom. One was

a detached bungalow, and the remainder were semi-detached or

detached houses, all with relatively large gardens. They had

all lived in the same house for a considerable period of time,

at least 10 and up to 65 years, and with one exception

considered the house to be the family home, usually where they

had spent the majority of their married life, or where their

children had been raised. The exception was a planned move

some ten years previously, to somewhere considered more

conducive to old age, with easier access to local amenities.

Despite their age, our group lived largely independently with

little formal assistance. Many had quite close contact with

family members, especially children, who provided informal

care, which in some instances was reciprocated by helping with

grandchildren. It was only the eldest, a lady aged 89, who had

substantial assistance with everyday activities, including

regular visits from her two daughters (both in their late

60s), a daily home-help, and close contact with immediate

neighbours.

To overcome the difficulties of extended visits, we drew

inspiration from the Cultural Probe method (Gaver et al.

1999), in which packages were left with a group of older

participants, containing items such as postcards, maps, a

camera, and a series of questions, with a request to post

their responses back to the research team. This introduced the

notion of playfulness as an important form of motivation, and

also explicitly recognised the generational gap between

researchers and respondents, prioritizing respectfulness as a

significant driver for achieving meaningful responses. For our

project we could benefit from two key aspects. First,

responses are not immediate, thereby allowing time for

reflection as well as the freedom to answer when convenient.

Second, by keeping the nature of the requests ambiguous, it

gives participants more responsibility for the direction of

their responses: “We wanted to lead a discussion within the

groups toward unexpected ideas, but we didn’t want to dominate

it” (Gaver et al. 1999:22).

As part of a sequence of short visits (usually 1-2 hours),

each person was given a series of questions and a disposable

camera, usually on the second visit, with a request to answer

each question with four images that in some way reflected

their response. The questions were deliberately ambiguous and

open-ended, including for example ‘What would you like to be

able to do that you can’t?’ and ‘What is important for the

future?’ We were careful to point out to that we were

interested in whatever they thought was important, and as far

as possible avoided directing their thought process in any

particular direction. During that and subsequent visits, our

purpose was to engage in conversations with the participants

on whatever topics came to mind, sometimes covering the

subjects of home and daily routines.

Once the cameras were returned, the resulting photographs were

used in a reverse-elicitation exercise during a follow-up

visit, when the pictures were revealed and used as the basis

for a more structured discussion. Unlike other visits, when

notes were taken, the elicitation exercise was recorded and

transcribed. The photographic prompt method proved beneficial

for other, unexpected reasons. First, since it caused the

participants to engage with the research exercise for longer,

there was an inclination for reflection and deeper

consideration, something commented on by several participants.

Second and perhaps more specific to this demographic, the

images acted as reminders - countering the effects of delay

and the wide-ranging nature of subsequent discussions.

Finally, the resultant images varied from hasty snapshots to

carefully constructed assemblages of objects, all of which

provide additional data to the transcribed recordings

(excerpts of which are included in the text below), and are

used as the illustrations here. Taken as a whole, this allowed

us to gather a holistic set of data with a broad set of

comments and insights, providing a more complete picture of

everyday experiences than targeted semi-structured interviews

alone.

The Home-Environment

The meaning of ‘home’ has come under considerable scrutiny,

based on the realisation that the building itself is more than

simply a container for possessions, or a stage for the

performance of everyday tasks. Beyond the material and

behavioural, the home is associated with unusually significant

psychological meanings that accumulate over time (Rowles

1983). This puts the elderly in a position of particular

interest, since by definition they have had more time for that

process to come into effect. Not only by virtue of having been

alive for longer, but also since there is a tendency for older

people to have lived for longer in one house, as was the case

in our study.

Assuming a correlation between the physical structure of the

house and a series of emotive responses to the world displayed

within that building forms the starting point for one strand

of research into the meaning of home for the elderly. Oswald

et al. (2006) for example, produce an empirical model of

perceived housing that includes measures of housing

(satisfaction, usability and control) a well as the meaning of

home. This separates the physical domains from the

psychological in the terminology: housing is emotionally

neutral, whereas home refers to the personal cognitive

aspects. By focusing their attention on the house as a

physically bounded entity, concepts of the home are also

limited by consequence – only 8 of the 50 questions listed

(2006: 193-194) make any reference to the world outside the

home, and those that do include for example gardens and

balconies. In bringing together literature in environmental

psychology and environmental gerontology Oswald and Wahl

(2005) demonstrate the persistence of this tendency. Their

summary divides the meaning of home into three key themes:

physical, social and personal that are again dominated and

limited by the house as the container for the home. However

the authors point out that in the light of new patterns of

mobility, the context of the environment must “embrace an

empirical linking of meanings for an array of spaces radiating

away from the dwelling: from favourite objects, to favourite

places at home, to the home itself, to specific outdoor

settings in the immediate neighbourhood, and to larger scale

settings including the community and region” (2005:37). This

moves closer to our position, but still does not explicitly

link the concept of home with the environment beyond the

house.

Not all places of significance are within the home (Manzo

2003; Easthope 2004), any more than all memories or all

cherished possessions are inside the home. Significance,

memory and objects can all be diminished or lost over time,

replaced by others without regard for their location - inside

or outside. It seems reasonable then to suggest that if the

meaning of home exists in its concept as a special place, or a

repository for valuable memories and belongings, then there is

a wider environmental context to be considered. Peace et al.

(2011) touch on this in developing Lawton’s concept of the

person-environment system, beyond the micro-environment of the

dwelling to include a macro-environment of the community in

the context of the fit between environment and capabilities as

these change with ageing. Their model of physical, social and

psychological interactions overlaps the micro-environment and

coincides with the outer bounds of the macro-environment

(2011: 752). The implication is that complex interactions

happen inside the micro-environment, and beyond that are

affects which influence how an older person copes with the

dynamic external macro-environment as they adapt to their own

physical limitations. Once again, implicit in this approach is

the significance of the physical limits of the house acting as

a coincident boundary to the home as a special place.

Peace et al. use the word ‘dwelling’ (e.g. 2011: 735) as one

way to describe the micro-environment, the same word used in

phenomenological discussions of the relationship between home

and environment. As opposed to Peace et al. who talk of

dwelling as a noun, drawing on Ingold (2000: 172-188, where he

develops Heidegger’s notion of dwelling) we want to think

instead of dwelling as a verb. Ingold describes two

alternative views of the concept of inhabiting the world – the

building perspective and the dwelling perspective. In the

former, more conventional view, the world is constructed

architecturally before it is inhabited cognitively. Houses are

built according to plans, spaces are organised before they are

then occupied and become ‘lived-in’. Houses provide the space

for certain activities, which gradually accumulate meaning

until they become homes. The contrary perspective notes that

there is more to dwelling than simply occupying a building.

Dwelling, as the full range of experiences with the lived

environment, encompasses all those activities that give life

its meaning, an ongoing process of construction, including the

literal act of constructing of the house. The implication for

the meaning of home is that the house is part of the

environment which is being continually created through daily

performances. Rather than building being necessary for us to

begin dwelling, it is the human capacity to be able to dwell

that allows and encourages us to build: “Building then, is a

process that is continually going on, for as long as people

dwell in an environment” (Ingold 2000:188). Living ‘at home’

must be seen as a creative process, individually attuned and

ever-changing and most importantly inseparable from wider

environmental relations.

Relinquishing Control

As Manzo noted (2003), there are meanings of home that are not

altogether positive. This may range from serious incidents of

domestic abuse, to the frustrations of unsuitable

accommodation (Imrie 2004) and the more mundane experiences of

boredom or sadness. In the context of older people, the

experience of home tends to change over time as physical

frailty and illness increase. This requires interventions by a

range of formal and informal carers, and typically a lack of

energy and reduced financial means results in a deterioration

in the state of the domestic space. The home becomes a place

where the elderly occupants have less control over its

appearance and unfamiliar visitors become more common.

I mean, I must say, one thing I don’t do now, I don’t tend to climb up outside in the

garden when there’s no one around, because it’s a big garden and if people don’t

know, especially between the two sunrooms, if they’re not in there, I could fall and

no one would know.

(Alice, aged 68, living alone in a quiet cul de sac)

Alice (participants are anonymized) has a fairly large, wrap-

around garden, which she keeps well tended. She made no

particular comments about her health, and leads an active life

as a leading light in the local branch of the ‘University of

the Third Age’ – a national network of elderly people engaged

in self-directed learning. Despite this, she makes particular

allowance for activities that she now considers risky. Her

perception of the garden has evolved from being a place for

simple pleasures to now include an element of danger. Being

conscious of the potential risks, such as the likelihood and

consequences of falling in the garden, leads to changes in

behaviour and strategies for coping (Porter 1994), including,

as in this instance, increased reliance on outside help.

I mean, I’m here, and if I need help I can get it from David, or even from Di, you

know...

[Di’s Dave’s wife. Yeah, and Darren. And there’s Jim over the road, that nice young

man over there]

Jim?

[Yeah, over the road there]

Oh, Mrs Mack’s husband.

[No, he’s dead]

Yeah, I know he’s dead.

[No, Jim’s the young man that lives in their house now]

Oh, yeah, but they’re friendly with Dave…

(Conversation between Jill, a widow aged 89, and her daughter aged 69, who was

visiting from Ireland. Her second daughter lives locally. Jill was the participant who

was most frail, and needed significant help to be able to continue living in her own

home.)

An increasing awareness of the home environment as a place of

greater danger inevitably leads to some loss of control.

Adaptive behaviour can mitigate and delay the degree to which

control is relinquished (Peace et al. 2011); several

participants had for example altered their gardens over the

years to allow them to carry on enjoying the space. An example

is Mabel and Jack, married and aged 79 and 83 respectively,

who had first made their garden simpler, requiring less

maintenance, then increased access by altering the paths, and

most recently set up a number of bird tables near their dining

room window. Jack was still able to mow the lawn, but was now

finding this something of a struggle.

For Jill, as well as the good-will of her neighbours, and the

regular contact of her two daughters, she also depended on a

daily home visit to provide her with a hot meal and a short

period of company.

[Victoria heats up your dinners in the microwave, doesn’t she?]

Oh yes, she does, I mean, she comes in she just switches that on and puts the food in

there, you know.

(Jill, 89, again talking with her daughter)

This increased traffic of visitors into Jill’s home was not

uncommon. The extent to which she was in control of her home

space is debateable, and can be seen in the light of her

increased frailty. In a study of very old Swedish people,

Dahlin-Ivanoff et al. comment that “When older people

experience the onset of functional limitations, they can lose

their home as a private territory – it turns into a working

place where many persons come and go” (2007:26). In many cases

this requires the home to be opened up to visitors whose

positions are neither friend nor invited guest, but instead an

enforced social contact as a means of coping with the

difficulties of living at home.

As with the home-help, who each evening ‘cooks’ a meal, and in

other cases we heard about, the chiropodist, hairdresser,

health visitor and so on, these are not necessarily intrusive,

but represent an active strategy. Although Dahlin-Ivanoff et

al. (2007) describe this process as one where privacy is lost

through encroaching healthcare needs, another view, as put to

us, is that as long as these visits can be controlled, then

they are welcomed. Family members, especially children,

neighbours and friends all formed part of the flow of

visitors, so that the loss of privacy is not necessarily seen

as a negative effect of ageing, rather it is accepted as part

of the social process that feeds into life changes happening

around this time. However, encouraging or accepting visitors

brings with it the risk of losing control, which seemed to be

a more significant concern for our participants than changes

to the nature of privacy. Whilst privacy within the home was

accepted as being compromised, loss of control and increasing

dependency seemed to be either resented, or accepted

grudgingly.

And what else have we got? Well, we’ve got a house which is private and individual,

and we’ve got good neighbours. This chap here, we don’t see at all. And we’re

behind very high hedges, but he’s a very nice chap, all the same.

(Mabel, aged 78, living with her husband Jack aged 80. Their concept of ‘good

neighbours’ meant limited contact, but available in an emergency)

Thus there is a growing paradox: wanting to retain the home as

a private space, whilst accepting the need for a greater

degree of intrusion. This is a tricky balance to achieve, and

one with which all our participants continually wrestled.

Wanting to remain on good terms with a neighbour for mutual

reassurance, but at the same time not wanting to be forced

into false companionship; welcoming health and care services

in to the home, but not for too long (the same was true of the

researchers in this project); keeping the children close, but

not so close that authority and control are lost, and so on.

Losing Identity

[Are you bothered about things like this - where they put the new wires in, and the

wall hasn’t been painted?]

No, I’m not concerned about it, as long as it’s working, the switch is working and the

lights are working, I’m not really all that bothered.

(Jill, aged 89, in conversation with a researcher. The issue of the undecorated wall

was not commented on by Jill until it was raised by the researcher)

Our participants described loss of mobility in various ways.

The most common were deteriorations in strength and

flexibility, affecting their ability to perform once simple

tasks, but also an awareness of limited energy. This was

described as being like a battery running out of charge, which

either required ‘recharging’ during the day, or adopting

energy-saving policies. This made them alter their priorities

as to how to apportion the limited energy they had. Ordinary

domestic practices become less important, as did the need to

follow fashions, or ‘create an impression’ (Sparke 2010) as

far as their home was concerned. That is not to say that our

participants were less conscious of their interior, indeed

there was no appreciable lack of domesticity in the people we

visited, they were simply less concerned by it. There was a

recognition that maintaining the interior as a measure of

personal standards was no longer necessary or relevant. Life’s

concerns moved away from the opinions and pressures of others

to the need for greater self-interest. This change in focus

happened because a new perspective on their own mortality led

them to see it as unimportant.

I want time and I don’t want to waste it on all this stuff ... it’s boring. I mean ... I

intend to have another 30 years, but the thing is I think it puts stuff into perspective

when you get older and I actually don’t want to go round and dust again and clean

up again.

(Lily, aged 72, living alone in a 1970’s semi. She was stoic about her arthritis, which

seemed to have made very little difference to her very active lifestyle. She had for

example recently bought a games console and regularly played the boxing game on

it.)

Figure 1: The burden of domestic practices (photograph by

Lily)

For Lily, to use up some of her energy on cleaning would have

meant sacrificing other activities. She was a member of the

local amateur dramatic society, and occasionally looked after

her grandchildren. It was particularly difficult to organise

time for visits with her and during visits we were frequently

interrupted by the telephone or knocks at the door. However,

our recorded interview during the photographic elicitation

exercise was one of the longest, lasting over two hours. She

had also given considerable thought to her responses, such as

the picture above. This was one of her answers to the question

‘What would you like to be able to do that you can’t ?’ Having

selected a number of objects that related to cleaning, she

added the clock to represent the time it took (and produced a

similar picture based on gardening). Her concern was not

simply with issues of health, or the state of her house, which

incidentally was kept perfectly well, but rather on limited

energy and the time it took to recover.

Associated with these new domestic priorities, is the shift

away from seeing the home as a reflection of identity, and the

need to continually recreate identity. Other authors have

described the power of the interior to act as a reflection of

identity (e.g. Olesen 2010; Friedman 2010), and the

intentional attempts occupants made to create an impression,

or in Friedman’s terms an ‘atmosphere’.

You know, yes, it would be lovely to have a newly fitted kitchen. It would be

wonderful to have a newly fitted bathroom, but I don’t hanker after it in the least.

And, in fact, I think it would be very silly because whoever buys this house is going to

knock it to pieces.

(Mabel, aged 79, married to Jack aged 83, in discussing the ways that their home

suited their lifestyle.)

The concept of the home as the space inside the house which

has been made special in part because of its ability to

reflect and represent personal standing and values is

seriously undermined by comments such as this. As mentioned

above, for many of our participants the house in which they

lived was a long-term abode, and had been the scene of a

number of life-changes. In later life, partly due to physical

constraints, but also because of a more relaxed attitude to

outsiders’ judgement, any problems with the house were

tolerated since they were no longer seen as important. Whether

it was particularly clean, well decorated or had a new kitchen

bore little relation to their perception of themselves. The

most commonly used phrase was ‘it doesn’t bother me’,

suggesting that the way that the home looked did not correlate

in any meaningful way to the self-identity of the occupants.

I could take [my possessions] with me to the next house almost exactly ... I could

almost exactly reproduce it, the last house I lived in, the one I’m living in now

[laughs], and the one that I’m going to live in, in the future.

(Mabel, 79, quoting a recently deceased friend of hers)

Mabel and Jack were always quite willing to talk about death.

They seemed to have it in their minds that they would both die

at more or less the same time, and that this would be the last

place they lived. They never raised the topic assisted living,

apart from when describing their role as carers to a disabled

friend who had moved with them from East Anglia some 20 years

previously, and their conversations with her about what things

were important. In common with most of the participants, the

role of possessions was less significant than we had expected.

They described with great humour how they saw their children

looking at things in their house with misty-eyed reverence,

whilst they saw them in a far more prosaic way. Alice (the

lady mentioned above who was concerned about climbing in her

garden), complained about the work needed to keep on dusting

all of her ‘knick-knacks’ and that she felt her house was

becoming a repository for things that her children thought

were important, with her as curator. Surprisingly, there were

very few occasions when any of our participants used a

personal possession in our conversations, and nor were there

any personal objects in the photographic responses to our

questions. Talking to this group of older people gave the

impression that the space inside the house was losing its

relationship to the significant aspects of their lives.

Beyond the Home

As seen by our respondents, the home was characterised by

lifestyle changes imposed by the restrictions of ageing.

Issues of privacy, risk and aesthetics come to the fore,

changing the concept of home from a place of personal choice

to one in which the inhabitants were encouraged or even forced

to remain inside. This created a fundamentally different view

of the world, one in which the perspective was switched away

from the interior, which was losing its capacity to provide

choices, and towards the view outside the house, which offered

significant opportunities to enhance their lives and maintain

social and environmental relations. The physical structure of

the home lost its significance through mechanisms such as

those described above, and instead the home became a place

from which the occupants made plans to escape. We have

described elsewhere (reference here) how escape can be

facilitated by the use of technological ‘portal’ objects that

allowed those within the house to connect with the world

outside in virtual way, and suggest here that the act of

dwelling is a more fitting way of considering the

relationships people have with a homely environment. The older

people we talked to were explicit about their desire to

maintain a relationship with the world beyond the doorstep,

but also very aware about the problems associated with

accessing it in a meaningful way. For them, the notion of home

included the need to maintain their engagement with the

environment, seen as a dynamic concept, which they actively

shaped (Manzo 2003).

Oh, yes, I can still get around a bit, but it’s getting more painful all the time, you

know, I’m sure I need a hip replacement or something like that. Yeah, and arthritic,

you know, just one of those things. Nothing ever gets better, does it, and it just gets

a bit worse ...

(Lily, aged 72, when discussing the importance of her participation in amateur

dramatics)

Figure 2: Arthritic joints: a barrier to engagement with the

world

(slightly out of focus photograph by Lily)

The degree to which the older occupants in our study

interacted with the world outside was determined primarily by

the extent of their physical deterioration. The ability to

move around in a safe and controlled manner was essentially

the limiting factor in how and whether to leave the home. They

became increasingly aware of the importance of basic actions

such as observation, walking and carrying, and of their

vulnerability as those skills were reduced or lost. Mabel and

Jack were long-time fans of angling, and described an episode

when Mabel was walking along a river-bank during which she

lost balance and was unable to prevent herself stumbling into

the river while Jack, sitting down fishing, watched on

helpless. This led to an explicit realisation of some of her

physical limits, and led her to question the wisdom of, for

example, crossing the road.

...we don’t have a lot of traffic, only in the morning and in the evening. But even so, I

don’t think an old person, even as old as me, I’m not very good at mobility and, I’m

not very good at balancing and walking, so I would hesitate to walk across the road

to talk to somebody. I might get stuck halfway…

(Mabel, aged 79, reflecting on the changing status of everyday obstacles such as the

road, and how that affected what she could do outside)

Difficulties such as balancing, or even walking safely,

exaggerate the physical barriers that are present in the

outside world. As mobility is reduced, barriers decrease in

size and increase in number. Crossing a busy road is something

that many would find challenging, it is not something

restricted to older people: it applies equally to for example

children, someone with an injury, mothers with pushchairs and

so on. However, the range of hazards experienced by our

participants, as elderly people, was frequently commented

upon:

The footpaths, over the years, have been broken by the weight of vehicles on them

and, you know, could be quite dangerous, but it has to get quite bad or someone

has to fall over and hurt themselves before anything’s done about it.

(Roy, aged 82, a retired engineer. In our conversations he was always keen to share

practical comments and suggestions for coping with reduced mobility)

In this case, cars parked on the footpath had caused the slabs

to distort and crack, creating a trip hazard, but also the

cars blocking the pavement meant that pedestrians had to walk

around them onto the grass, which was a surface more likely to

cause a slip or fall. Simple inconveniences became substantial

risks, and acted to deter the older people from venturing out

of their home. The proliferation of barriers in the outside

world means that the development of social relations is driven

by new mechanisms. In particular the need for the home to be a

place from which the older person can access those in their

social group, either being able to visit locally or virtually,

or allowing access to the home for people who visit. The home

becomes a base, the place from which life is organised and not

necessarily the place that reflects personality. That concept

has been diluted and dissipated so that the home is seen as a

place from which to look out, rather than hankering after

development and change in constant pursuit of renewed meaning,

such as that described by Cieraad (2010) for younger adults.

For our participants, the consequence of reduced mobility and

increasingly numerous barriers was that their experience of

the world was mediated by framing devices. ‘Framing’ is meant

here in a fairly literal way, since the difficulties of

getting out of the home mean that vistas are experienced

through the window or via a screen. These things are

necessarily restrictive, and alter the experience of the world

as a fully immersive encounter. This is an obvious point, but

it is important to treat it seriously, since it was seen as

such by our participants.

And, you know, sometimes I look out of the window at night and I say to you, don’t I,

“God, can’t somebody have a row [laughter]? Can’t we have to ring the Police or

something?” Something exciting.

(Mabel, discussing with her husband Jack the frustrations of reduced contact with

the world outside)

Figure 3: The world outside ‘framed’ (photograph by Alice)

Despite the fact that they are more confined to their home, in

many ways they find the inside a difficult environment and

seek to maintain an engagement with the outside world, more so

than spending their time and energy on the interior. Their

perspective was definitely looking outside, rather than

reflecting on what is inside. The difficulties inherent in

ageing were seen as part of the continual process of adapting

to the circumstances of living; as the home become more

restrictive, and more containing, relations outside the home

become the target of deliberate and considered actions. One of

the primary aims of the older people in our study was to

maintain social and environmental contact, usually requiring

planning, relying on public transport, and switching their

focus to more local amenities. Whilst information technologies

mean that contact with people can be continued in a different

form, the experience of the outside world is inherently and

necessarily one that depends on actually leaving the house.

I mean, I’ve got a friend down in Wales that I go and stay with and, I mean, yeah,

but I couldn’t do all of that by train, I know, but then there’s people, like I’ve got a

friend at Melksham in Wiltshire, which is much more difficult to get to…

(Alice, aged 69, when talking about the responsibilities of owning a dog)

Whereas at present Alice is able to drive, and bring along her

little dog too, she was already conscious of the future, and

wary of the difficulties she would encounter in keeping in

touch with distant friends. This was of considerable

importance to her and formed part of her routine activities,

along with visiting her son and grandchildren in Scotland at

regular intervals. Her life was punctuated with these planned

journeys away from the home, dates in the past and future that

helped to structure her life over the medium term. She had

recently returned from Scotland and instead of driving with an

overnight stop, she had for the first time flown. She was,

however, determined to work out ways that she could continue

to make these visits, and maintain friendships so that they

would reciprocate by making the journey to visit her.

Figure 4: Journey planning (photograph by Alice)

For Jill, aged 89, these were problems that over the last few

years had effectively reduced the extent of her environment to

the garden and local shops. Even then, there were problems:

the garden patio became slippery when wet and made it risky to

walk on, and in common with Ray, above, she had trouble

walking to the local shop as the pavements were cracked and

blocked with cars. She found it difficult to get out of the

house, but that made her all the more determined to work out

ways of doing so.

I wish I was less dependent on the two girls, you know, I think to me self, oh, yeah, I

could get in the car and drive off, but I have to more or less depend on you and Bren

[her daughters].

(Jill, discussing how she did her shopping)

The issue of dependence played on the minds of some of our

participants with a certain amount of resentment: a conflict

of wanting to get out of the home whilst at the same time

realizing that the ability to do so unassisted was

compromised. A common strategy for reluctantly coping with the

need for greater assistance, was by trying to use closer local

amenities. To be able to keep a dog as a companion for

example, Alice required access to nearby suitable green spaces

within the urban environment, so that she could exercise it.

The same was said of a number of different facilities and

activities, including healthcare, shopping, social meeting

places such as the library and so on.

Figure 5: The increasing importance of local amenities

(Photograph by Lily)

Despite the difficulties of getting out of the house, it

remained an important focus for all of our participants, to

the extent that they gave considerable thought to ways they

could periodically leave home as an aspect of remaining in

their own home in the longer term. They talked at some length

about the ways in which they had to plan their journeys,

including decisions between public transport and driving,

fitting in with the daily routine, levels of energy and

health, whether and when a local alternative was available and

so on. The simple pleasures experienced when leaving the house

belies the extensive efforts needed to achieve them. Going

beyond the home requires considerable commitment, such as

maintaining relationships and organizing travel, in the face

of a growing range of physical obstacles. Even if the time

spent outside was limited, this is not a true reflection of

the determination and conscious efforts continually expended.

It is all the more remarkable then, that this formed such an

important part of the routine of life for this group of older

people, and such an important topic of conversation.

The key message of this paper has been to suggest the need to

literally re-orient our perspective: Home as a point of

departure, as much as a destination. In the words of Hazel

Easthope, discussing the relevance of concepts of ‘place’ for

housing research, homes can be understood as “particular nodal

points within a complex web of social interactions which

stretch around the world” (2004:129). We would extend this to

suggest that the meaning of home is tied up in the complex

relations that are generated by people engaging with their

dynamic environment. Most importantly, this does not bind the

home to the structure of a house, since the physical, social

and psychological relations that come about in person-

environment systems (Peace et al 2011) continue outside the

walls and beyond the doorstep.

These examples show that older people make considered

decisions about how they can continue to interact with their

social and environmental world. Interest in the home as a

destination wanes – there is less concern with the way it

looks, or what people think about it; an acceptance that the

personal and private nature of the interior is diluted as

various people come inside; a sense that the house no longer

holds romantic or emotive associations, and loses its

significance as a reflection of the future. It becomes

redundant as a place for measuring meaning, and reverts to an

impersonal shell, gradually stripped of its occupants’

identity. In particular circumstances such as those described

here, attention shifts away from the interior and focuses

instead on the world outside. But imbuing it with a sense of

purpose and meaning that suggests that what is considered

homely includes aspects of what is outside the house. Denying

the coincidence of boundaries between house-walls and home-

meanings and accepting that what is meaningful depends on an

ongoing development of environmental relations, promises to

open up new and interesting avenues of research.

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