British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

usage, a lumber room is a

room In a building or large vehicle, like a ship, a room is any enclosed space within a number of walls to which entry is possible only via a door or other dividing structure that connects it to either a passageway, another room, or the outdoors, that ...

in a house used primarily for storing unused furniture. British

stately homes An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a town house. This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these peopl ...

often had more furniture than could be used at one time, and storing the furniture for future use was more common than selling or discarding it. The first reference to the phrase "lumber room" in the

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a co ...

is the 1740 novel ''Pamela''. Subsequent references can be found in '' A Christmas Carol'' by

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...

, Arthur Conan Doyle's 1891 Sherlock Holmes short story "

The Five Orange Pips "The Five Orange Pips", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the fifth of the twelve stories in ''The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes''. The story was first published in ''The Strand Magazine'' in Nov ...

", and ''

The Fellowship of the Ring ''The Fellowship of the Ring'' is the first of three volumes of the epic novel ''The Lord of the Rings'' by the English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It is followed by '' The Two Towers'' and ''The Return of the King''. It takes place in the ficti ...

'' by J.R.R. Tolkien. A lumber room is described in detail in

Saki Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 – 14 November 1916), better known by the pen name Saki and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirize Edwardian society and cultu ...

's short story "The Lumber Room": The OED mentions in the verb "lumbering" that it first meant to obstruct with pieces of wood to make things from, and then shifted to general obstruction, hence furniture fit the later meaning.

References

Rooms {{room-stub