'A fascinating window into the past': The homes revealing how Tudor people really lived

A favourite at this weekend's Oscars, Hamnet has brought Tudor architecture and interiors to the fore. And there are plenty of houses around the UK still showcasing 16th-Century living.

A domestic apothecary of dried herbs – rosemary, sage, mugwort, lavender and thyme – quivers prettily from the dark timber beams of a Tudor kitchen; grass is strewn across the floor, and a scarred, worn wooden table is home to a collection of earthenware bowls. This kitchen is not real but a set constructed for Hamnet, Chloe Zhao's 16th-Century drama – inspired by Shakespeare's family life in Tudor England, and based on Maggie O'Farrell's novel – which is one of the main contenders at this weekend's Oscars, with multiple nominations, including best picture, best director, and best actress.

The film's spare interiors and modest domestic world have resonated with audiences.  The simple aesthetics of this era in English interiors – when furniture, fabrics and architecture were hand-made, locally sourced and practical – reveal a lifestyle in contrast to the mass-produced reality of the 21st-Century. "People had far fewer belongings than today, and they were made to last," Lucy Armstrong-Blair, cultural heritage curator at the National Trust, tells the BBC.

Now a new book The House Rules showcases British period homes – among them Tudor and Jacobean – that have been lovingly restored and brought back to life by their owners or interior designers. The UK boasts the oldest housing stock in Europe, and its historic buildings include not just grand piles of the landowning nobility, but humble stone cottages and thatched and timber homes.

In the US, too, there are some fascinating examples of Jacobean-era homes, notably The Fairbanks House, built in 1637 in Dedham, Massachusetts and Gedney House , built in 1665 in Salem. Meanwhile, South Orange, New Jersey, has The Stone House, built in 1680, and the town's oldest surviving building. Interestingly, there was then in the late 19th and early 20th Century a surge of stunning Tudor Revival homes built in the town and its surrounding area.

In England, the homes of the Tudor and Elizabethan eras reflected the superstitious preoccupations of the time, and the Jacobean period that followed saw a surge in witch-hunting, propelled by King James's paranoia and obsessions. Many homes of these periods featured witch-repelling "marks", carved into hearths and doorways.

To step inside a Tudor home was to enter a world both practical and symbolic. Buildings were shaped by locally forested wood, often oak or elm – which was used to create sturdy timber frames – or stone, quarried locally. The walls were made from lime plaster mixed with horsehair, pressed onto wooden laths (strips) and sometimes adorned with painted textiles or decorative markings, as tapestries were too costly for the average Tudor.

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Many of these buildings, and their architectural details, survive to this day, altered, adapted and lived in centuries later. It is inside these dwellings that 16th- and 17th-Century history lives on.

Here are eight essential elements of the Tudor and Jacobean home that reveal how their inhabitants lived.

"The building should have a say in what's done to it – how and why," interior designer and author of The House Rules, Patrick Williams, tells the BBC. "That doesn't mean that a 16th-Century building,........

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