Daylight Robbery

Last year I started a project to photograph buildings with bricked up windows in Lewes. Then I discovered that photographer Andy Billman was doing the same thing in London, where there is obviously much more scope, and I kind of gave up. You can see some of the images from his exhibition ('Daylight Robbery') here. Now I've decided to start my little project again, it will be a good distraction for the winter. Here's the first image which is the top two floors of Lewes Museum in Castlegate. In most cases the windows were bricked up after 1696 when the notorious Window Tax was introduced in England on buildings with ten or more (later seven) windows. To avoid paying the tax people started bricking up their windows. Whether this is the origin of the phrase 'daylight robbery' is disputed.