I have a couple of questions about the Quay House, the smallest house in the world (according to the Guinness Book of World Records, for one). However, I’ve done some searches, and I can’t come up with anything on the Net about it except for short little blurbs that repeat the same thing over and over. Can anyone provide some info for me? Thanks!
Hong Kong condos, anyone?
My copy of the Guiness book is somewhat antiquated, but it does reference a house at The Quay, Conwy as the smallest house (i.e. not the Quay House - is this the one you mean?).
This site calls it the smallest house in Britain. There is a photograph and a telephone number which may put you in touch with someone who can answer your questions.
This site (and others) claim that the smallest house in the world is in Amsterdam (based on frontage, I believe that the actual building is wedge-shaped). It gives the frontage as 1.4 metres (smaller than The Quay at 1.82 metres, but larger than 50 Stuart Street, Millport which has 1.19 metres).
I quess it all depends on the criteria used (floor space, frontage, volume,…etc.) and how you define a house or residence. Do tents count if they are permanently occupied?
We have a charity telethon in the UK called Comic Relief (or Red Nose Day) which has raised GBP45m so far this year. Part of the program is devoted to showing how previous donations have been spent, and they featured a cheap (GBP100) permanent building (concrete floor slab, tin roof, one room) designd to provide accomodation in deprived areas. That house looked smaller than Quay House and the Amsterdam site.
I always thought Y Bwthyn Bach was the smallest house in the world. It probably doesn’t count because it’s not intended for people to live in, just for children to play in. It is fully furnished (down to a real working kitchen) though, so someone very short could live there. It’s so cute, here’s a picture:
http://www.thamesweb.co.uk/windsor/royal_lodge/royal_lodge.html
Wow, I had no idea that there were several claims to the title of “smallest house”!!
This certainly does open a whole can of worms.
Define “house”.
Is the smallest room in the smallest house the mushroom?
I am tempted to ask you if you are a real fun guy, but that would be wrong…
To blazes with Hong Kong apartments…how about Capsule Hotels?
Or, speaking of capsules this baby might be a condender, if spacecraft count. And never-built ones, at that.
Ranchoth
(Maybe a window would help…)
Yeah
Well, I can’t find a cite, but I read somewhere (in a not-necessarily reliable place, prob’ly), that really small houses were once built in the O’l West™.
The focus then was on encouraging emmigration from the east to the west. Encouragement was made in the distribution of free farm land, with the caveat that a house be built on the land. (So someone’ll be bound to live there, see?). But the legal specifications were something like “12 x 12 house”, where units were neglected. So in order to save time and grab a bunch of land, people applied for a whole bunch and slapped 12"x12" houses down.
This might not count as a “house” under Guinness def’n, but it’s all I’ve got. 
Thank you everyone for all the info you’ve given me! I had no idea that there were this many small dwellings! Now I’ll probably be googling for the next week or so trying to get all the info I can on all of these
I live in Phoenix, AZ, and out northeast of the city is a wonderful place called the Boyce-Thompson arboretum. On my first foray out there many moons ago, I was floored to discover a tiny early settler’s house built up against a hillside. It contained two very small, narrow rooms, a tiny fireplace and no windows. Perhaps no more than 11’X10’. Rocks and mud, with a dirt floor. There would barely have been room for a cot in the “bedroom.” It looked like there had been a fire inside it long ago. But they have preserved it well for visitors to see there. Fascinating!! But hard to believe anyone could actually live there, let alone a family.