No visible evidence of cracks inside, but wallpaper and filler can hide many sins. I agree that it's odd for the cracks to be so straight, so you may well be right about the rendering having been done piecewise. Thanks for the help!
I'm looking at buying a new house and have seen a three-storey one that I quite like but am concerned by the fact that it has long vertical cracks in its render running from the roofline all the way to the ground floor, hitting the corners of the windows on each floor. The house is on a...