Summary:This paper traces the history of the debate over the ‘Great Rebuilding’of rural England, argued by W. G. Hoskins to date between 1570 and 1640. It examines Hoskins’original thesis and subsequent revisions by R. Machin and C. Currie from both an empirical and an historiographical point of view. It is argued that the rise and fall of the ‘Great Rebuilding’thesis was partly due to wider intellectual currents in the study of early modern history and vernacular architectural studies. In conclusion, an alternative approach is sketched to rethinking the Great Rebuilding in cultural rather than econo