A new report by specialist insurers Hiscox provides a fascinating snapshot of the way consumer taste has changed over the last 100 years. STEPHEN LEWIS reports

WHAT a difference a century makes.

Back in 1901, the discerning homeowner wanted his decor to reflect his taste no less than today. But in the closing days of the Victorian era, it was stuffed animals and other exotic finds brought back from Empire that demonstrated wealth and knowledge - and the fashion was for ornate gilded furniture and floral wallpaper.

Today, Changing Rooms and the like have created a nation obsessed with DIY - but the cluttered Victorian parlour has been replaced with cool, minimalist designs and acres of storage space to accommodate all those must-have consumer goods.

The electrical appliance was in its infancy back in 1901 - and found in only the most wealthy of homes.

There was no national power grid, so if you wanted electricity you needed your own generator, according to a new report by insurers Hiscox. Electric power was used mainly for lighting - but there were a few cutting edge appliances the well-off could collect to go one up on the Joneses.

They included the gramophone (hand-cranked or mechanical), just invented and enormously popular with the rich; the Kodak Brownie camera, the first aimed at a mass market; and the telephone.

By 1900 there was a thick telephone directory - but it reveals the telephone was almost exclusively for business use, with only a handful of private users.

It was all a far cry from today's world of mass communication, where the Internet has revolutionised information flow and two-thirds of the UK population are thought to own a mobile phone.

There were a fair few domestic appliances around for the novelty-loving Victorians at the dawn of the 20th century: Gadgets such as the first carpet sweepers imported from the U.S., an apple-peeling machine, the first hand-operated food mixer and the temperature-controlled spirit iron.

The upwardly-mobile Victorian, however, would have been green with envy if he or she had caught a glimpse of the modern-day kitchen, complete with fitted washing machine, tumble drier, fridge-freezer, microwave and dishwasher - not to mention a host of smaller gadgets from juicers and garlic squeezers to fried egg rings and electric nutcrackers.

At least the Victorian housewife wasn't short on advice on how to keep a decent household.

Where present-day "domestic goddesses" have Nigella Lawson to show them how it's done, the Victorians had Mrs Beeton - the "Nigella Lawson of her day" according to the Hiscox report.

Mrs Beeton may have been dead for more than 30 years by 1901 - but her Book Of Household Management, which advised on everything from how to deal with the servants to preparing an exotic meal and the etiquette of leaving calling cards, still ruled the roost.

She'd probably have been horrified by our appetite today for takeaways (spending has increased by 13 per cent in the last year alone, to more than £161 million a year) but the Victorians themselves weren't averse to food they could just open and eat. Tinned salmon imported from the U.S. and Canada was popular.

The combination of Empire and sophisticated shipping, in fact, meant the Victorian middle classes had access to a variety of exotic foods. But it was a case of the Empire coming to them rather than them going to the Empire.

Though the Empire was vast, the Victorians were by-and-large stay-at-homes. Only soldiers, writers, teachers, settlers, missionaries or very wealthy travellers ever visited it. "It was certainly not a place for holidays," says the Hiscox report, "and Queen Victoria never travelled outside Europe."

That's not to say the Victorians weren't as big on their annual holidays as we are today - simply that they chose different destinations.

The British seaside was the popular holiday spot back in 1901. The Victorians liked to make use of their first class railway system (accessible to all by law, and with an impressive 18,680 miles of track: trains were even believed to run on time) to go twice a year. Staithes, Torquay and Cornwall were the sophisticated resorts to visit - and performing hares, troops of white mice, Punch and Judy and minstrels were the entertainment of the day.

For the wealthier middle-classes, trains even made continental Europe accessible - with Boulogne, Dieppe and the French Riviera popular destinations.

Even they, however, could not have imagined anything like today's cut-price package holidays to everywhere from Turkey to the Maldives - and the idea of a short city-break in a foreign country would have been unknown.

Today, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, Rome and Stockholm are all ideal for a long weekend away.

The Victorians did have those railways, though. So not everything has changed for the better.