entrance to the church, a small tower with an open decorated spire, was
placed at the end of the avenue of approach; _a_ _a_, are the schools,
which have immediate access to the space before the altar; _b_ _b_, the
rooms for the teachers or priests, had staircases on each side leading
to rooms above. These buildings were kept low, so that as much light as
possible should enter from the window above the altar. An elevation of
the front of the chapel is given in our first illustration. The section
looks towards the chancel, showing the chancel arch and pulpit in front,
the altar, and the decorated window over it; the latter contains a large
cross formed of white embossed glass, on a richly coloured glass ground.
Above is the elevation of the porch, proposed to have been placed at the
entrance of the avenue of approach.
[Illustration: Porch in the High street.]
[Illustration]
_DESIGN No. 20._
DESIGN FOR A BATH HOUSE, AND SUMMER ROOM.
[Illustration: Perspective view.]
This design was made for a building intended to occupy a prominent
position in a park in Kent; it would have commanded an extensive view
over the Weald and surrounding country. The lower ragstone foundation
already existed, being portions of an ancient building which had
formerly stood there, and this held a fine spring of pure cold water,
which runs down into a lake at a lower level in the park. Occupying a
position in which it could be well seen, it was desirable that the
building should form a picturesque object, and to effect this the Old
English style of wooden architecture was chosen.
[Illustration: One-pair plan. Ground-floor plan.]
The view shows the back and side of the building, with the entrances,
these being here less exposed to the weather than if they had been in
front facing the open country. The ground-floor plan shows the cold bath
with a small dressing-room; the bath was octangular in form, and
fifteen feet in diameter. A small iron circular staircase led to the
upper room; this was eighteen feet in diameter, with a domed ceiling,
the sides of the room having iron
[Illustration: Side elevation.]
casemented windows, and over them a bold ornamented plaster frieze; the
fire-place was adorned with oak carving. The fine prospect from the
windows of the Weald, and the lake and park scenery in front, would
have made this an extremely pleasant room.
[Illustration: Section.]
The lower story of the building above the ancient ragstone foundation
was of brick, nine inches in thickness, with quarters on the outside,
brick-nogged; carved oak inch plank was then to be screwed to this
quartering, and the inner spaces filled with cement; this it was
proposed to dust with small bits of coloured
[Illustration: Entrance.]
glass. The building was intended to be strongly constructed, as it was
to stand on an elevated site in the most exposed situation in the park.
The entrance, of which an elevation is given above, had two carved oak
columns, having iron rings fixed to them. A small shield of arms was
above the entrance; the whole of the oak was to be stained and
varnished. A portion of the exterior is given on a larger scale. The
upper story was in quartering, brick-nogged, faced externally with
carved oak planks and plaster, and plastered inside as below. The small
plan, _a_, in the illustration, shows this; _b_ is an elevation of one
of the carved oak trusses, and these were carried right round the
structure.
[Illustration: Portion of exterior.]
An elevation of one of the small gables is shown in the next cut with
its richly carved barge-board, and turned pendants and finials.
The plan of the iron casements is given, p. 220; _a_ is the frame fixed
to the wood quartering, _b_ the loose frame fixed to receive the loose
frame, _c d_ is the glass, and _e_ the hinge and staple; a
representation of the small turn-buckle is shown, and lastly the plan
of the flooring over the bath; the joists, each 9 inches by 4 inches,
and 9 inches by 2½ inches, were strapped down
[Illustration: Elevation of one of the small gables.]
[Illustration: Plan of iron casement.]
eight or nine inches into the wall, where necessary.
[Illustration: Turn-buckle.]
[Illustration]
_DESIGN No. 21._
DESIGN FOR A SMALL COUNTRY VILLA.
[Illustration: Perspective view.]
This mansion was erected in Devonshire, for a gentleman having a
numerous family. It consisted of three floors:--a basement story, ground
[Illustration: Ground plan.]
floor, first floor, and attic. The picturesque style of the time of
Henry VII. was adopted, and the construction
[Illustration: Plan of first floor.]
was of brick with stone ashlar facings for the walls. The decorated
portions were of stone; but red
[Illustration: The attic floor.]
brick and stone, or red brick alone, would have been equally
appropriate. The red brick with compo-dressing
[Illustration: Basement plan.]
and enrichments would have been the cheapest. Considerable attention was
given to obtain a picturesque character for the building, and the
chimneys were so placed as to obtain one. The height to the top of gable
was 38 feet 6 inches. The ground floor, given on page 223, contained two
rooms, _A_ and _B_, each 28 feet by 16 feet, without the bay. The porch
was enclosed from the hall.
[Illustration: View of entrance porch.]
The upper floor had five rooms, intended merely as sleeping apartments.
All had fireplaces except the centre front one, and that is shown
supplied with a flue pedestal, a contrivance by which an upper room
[Illustration: The front elevation.]
can be warmed by one of the fireplaces in a lower room, which prevents
waste of heat. The attic floor had two good-sized rooms without
fireplaces, for the servants.
[Illustration: The side elevation.]
The basement floor had good accommodation. One large room, that marked
_n_, was for the housekeeper, with space for a bed. It could be used as
a private breakfast or dining-room; _b_ is the kitchen, 20 feet by 15
feet 6 inches, with a large space in the bay. The scullery _g_ adjoined
the kitchen; _h_ is the larder, _q_ the wine cellar, _i_ the beer, and
_l_ the coal cellars.
[Illustration: Transverse section.]
Another design for the porch is given on page 225; this is of a more
decorative character than that seen in the view. It had on it the shield
of arms of the proprietor. It was to be constructed entirely of stone,
the portion above the archway being richly carved. The front and side
elevations of the exterior of the building, of which representations are
given, show the extreme simplicity of the design.
The transverse section (page 228) shows the interior; this is taken
through the kitchen and scullery in the basement, looking towards the
fireplace and through the living rooms and attic above.
[Illustration: Plan of additional offices.]
This design has, with various alterations, been adopted in several
places for different parties, stripped entirely of its ornamental
character, and merely having four walls and an overhanging roof, in
plain cottage style. It forms the cheapest model that can be given for a
villa. One was erected a few years back that cost considerably less than
eight hundred pounds. It had the basement floor but no attic, the upper
rooms being heightened by having an open collar-beam roof. One addition
made to it when it had no basement was in extensive external offices, as
[Illustration: Elevation and section of external balustrade and angle
buttress.]
seen in plan on page 229: _f_, the kitchen, is 18 feet square, with its
scullery _g_, 18 feet by 10 feet; _h_ is the larder, 9 feet 9 inches
square, and _k_ the dairy, of the same size, with a northern aspect. The
two small rooms by the side, one marked _n_, were intended for a study
or school-room, and a footman’s or butler’s pantry, with a separate
entrance and an outlet from the house into the garden; the servants’
closet, and boot and knife cleaning place, were at a little distance
away, together with the place for coals and wood. Some details of the
exterior on a larger scale are given above.
* * * * *
The vignette shows the best proportion that can be given to stairs
intended for a public building; the rise of each step being 6 inches,
the tread 13 inches. In private dwellings the tread is made smaller by
half an inch. When the rise can be made 5¾ inches only, much greater
ease can be obtained in the ascent.
[Illustration]
_DESIGN No. 22._
A VILLA IN THE OLD ENGLISH WOODEN STYLE.
[Illustration: Perspective view, garden side.]
This structure was intended to bear the resemblance, as near as
possible, of a first-class old English half-timbered house, the
post-and-pan dwelling of our forefathers, which seems to have been an
especial favourite throughout the country. It was easily constructed at
a time when timber, chiefly chestnut, was far more plentiful than at the
present day. Such were the most picturesque of all our domestic
buildings; the timber cottage, with its projecting windows, and highly
ornamented barge-boards, is found in every village. The large houses in
Cheshire and Shropshire, which still remain, prove that such
constructions are as lasting as brick and stone, provided the timber is
felled at the proper time, and thoroughly seasoned before it is made use
of. Houses of this kind have been seen to rock and bend in severe
storms, while adjoining buildings, comparatively strong erections, have
been blown down, this was known to have been the case with Park Hall,
near Oswestry in Shropshire. Such buildings were called by different
names, as will be shortly described in detail, according to the
materials of which they were composed.
The design afforded on page 234 was taken from an elevation given in
“John Thorpe’s Sketch Book,” one of the richest illustrations of wooden
architecture. It was to have been erected in a Kentish village, with
[Illustration: Front elevation.]
its front towards the road, on high ground, the road looking down to a
wide extent of open country. The garden side of the house commanded a
fine prospect. Advantage was taken of the steep descent of the ground to
build the kitchen and scullery, with a day room for the children, apart
from the main building.
The plan of the basement is given on p. 236; _a_ is the kitchen, 18 feet
square, the scullery _b_, was at the side, and the larder, _c_, at its
side; _d_ is the place for coals, a passage _e_, leads to the day room,
_f_, for the children; _g_ is either the cook’s room, or a sleeping room
for a man servant; _h_ is the passage up to the house, _i_ is the dry
larder, _j_ is the butler’s pantry, with a strong room for holding
plate; this was intended to be a sleeping room. _k_ is the wine cellar,
_l_ the back staircase which went from the lower floor to the attic, _m_
is the principal staircase, and _n_ a place for stores. The roof of this
lower building was to be formed with flat-girders, and brick and tile in
cement, making a terrace-walk above; the chimneys were taken up from the
lower building to the higher one, as shown in the side elevation by the
dotted lines. The kitchen, and the whole of the basement, was to be
paved with the best Seyssel asphalte. It is laid on a solid foundation,
on a thickness of ground lime. The objection to the black and British
asphalte for the interior of rooms, is that a fine dust rises from it,
which in sweeping, affects the eyes of the occupants of the apartments.
[Illustration: Basement plan.]
The plan of the building was not intended to be in the old style, but to
be arranged, as far as possible, according to modern notions, without
any great hall, or stone screen within it. A noble stone porch was
[Illustration: The ground plan.]
placed in front, resembling slightly an ancient archway. The hall is 20
feet in length by 12 feet in breadth. The breakfast and eating rooms,
_b_ and _c_, 20 feet square, are on each side; both have bay
[Illustration: The first floor.]
windows, with an exterior colonnade and terrace. The drawing-room, _d_,
and the library _e_, are each 18 feet square; both have bay windows, and
the angular window peculiar to the Elizabethan architecture. These
windows open on to the terrace. _f_ is the
[Illustration: The attic floor.]
gentleman’s dressing-room, _g_ is the principal staircase containing the
servants’ staircase, _h_, within it; _o_ is the lift. At the back of the
building is a colonnade commanding a view of the country, and beneath
is the terrace, with its balustrading and steps to the garden.
The one pair floor contains only four large bed-rooms _a_, _a_, and two
dressing-rooms _b_, _b_. One dressing-room, that in front, could have
been converted into a pleasant morning room; each of the two principal
bedrooms in the front could easily have been formed into two; a small
dressing-room taken out of each. Terraces were in front of these two
rooms, the small circular bow-window opening on to them; the principal
staircase only led to this floor. The servants’ staircase led to the
attics.
This floor contained three large servants’ rooms, with two small octagon
rooms. It was proposed to form the front rooms into one, with a circular
roof, covered with scroll work and flowers, in the form of a
garden-bower, similar to the gallery ceiling at Burton Agnes in
Yorkshire. In this ceiling there are about a dozen varieties of flowers
and bunches of leaves, which were placed in a scroll-stem in various
positions so as to vary the pattern. The flowers and leaves could have
been painted in their natural colours. These rooms, however, could not
be spared, so it was proposed to turn the two octagon rooms into what
may be termed garden-bower rooms, and to attempt growing dwarf
fruit-trees in them, as practised in Germany. The roofs of these rooms
were to be constructed in iron and glass, and covered internally with
wire trellis-work, the warming to be effected with flue pedestals, two
in each room, one taking the kitchen flue and the other house flues, the
corresponding pedestal in the other room to have the remaining flues in
that side of the building. The illustration on page 242 shows a plan and
section of one of these rooms.
The tower in the centre of the back front contained a cistern for the
supply of the house; the closets beneath could have Moule’s earth system
applied to them, the earth to be brought up by the lift _o_, dried in
the bower rooms, and deposited in an enclosure in the tower room from
which it could descend to the closets.
It may be here remarked that the closets throughout the whole of these
designs are in such a position that the dry-earth system could be easily
applied to each. In cottages that have the flues in an external wall,
and where this system is introduced, the earth deposit should be placed
against the flue, and the closet adjoining.
The lift _o_, shown in the plans, connects every floor with the
basement; it permits coals and other heavy articles to be lifted up,
receives the speaking tubes leading to the basement and children’s
day-room, and any bell wires that may be required.
[Illustration: Plan and section of garden bower-rooms.]
[Illustration: Side front.]
[Illustration: Section through lower part of building.]
The first elevation given shows the front of the building, having a
length of 87 feet. Although the structure was to be an imitation wooden
house, the timber was merely intended to be an appendage to the
brickwork. The exterior walls were to have been two bricks and a half
thick on the ground-floor, two bricks above. The wooden posts and pans
were let into the external half brick, and well built in, the ornamental
woodwork in inch oak screwed to the wood-quartering, the space between
them filled with plaster, with an ornamental pattern-stamp on it, and
the columns and entablature were of oak.
The next elevation given is that of the side front, with its gable, in
the centre of which is a small circular window, opening on to a terrace
over the colonnade; the scroll at the side is a construction to permit
the flues from the lower portion of the basement to ascend the tower
walls; flue sweeping doors could be placed there. A section of the lower
part of the building is given, taken through the centre of the house,
showing the principal staircase and the external steps to garden. The
perspective view shows the garden front.
Wooden houses were once the chief kind of construction in England. The
great fire of London would not have been so serious in its results if
such constructions had not been almost universal.
In many parts of England these houses have other designations. There is
a mode of building peculiar to each, and adapted to the kind of material
that the districts offer. In Cambridgeshire, for instance, many of the
houses are formed entirely of “Clunch,” a kind of indurated chalk marl,
of which there are extensive quarries at Roach, near Burwell. Others are
of gault, a local term for the blue clay which lies below the gravel of
Cambridgeshire, and forms the immediate substratum in the low ground
about it. This is beaten up with chopped straw, then formed into blocks
of large size, and dried by the sun. A writer in the “Cambridge
Portfolio,” in his remarks on what he terms the inferior style of
domestic architecture, says: “Many of these houses have the lower floor
formed of stone or clunch, in which a framework of wood is raised,
consisting of studs and wall-plates with strong posts at intervals and
some cross pieces as a tie. The joists of the upper floor are laid in
the wall-plates, and project about a foot or eighteen inches beyond the
wall beneath. The smaller timbers have tenons which are fitted into
mortices in the larger, and secured by wooden pins. The interstices are
filled either with durable boarding, double lath and plaster, clunch or
bricks, laid level or obliquely. The better houses of this description
have gables, with ornamented barge-boards with hip-kobs and corbels or
brackets, more or less carved, under the ends of the principal timbers
of the upper floors.”
The barge-board is sometimes called berge-board, verge-board,
parge-board. It was a board fixed to the ends of the gables of timber
houses, to hide those of the projecting timbers of the roof, and throw
off the wet. They were generally richly carved and very ornamental.
Occasionally some of these of the date of the 14th century are met with;
those of the 15th and 16th, many of the Elizabethan character, are very
common. We have few of the better class of these half-timbered houses,
in which the decorative labour of our ancestors was most conspicuous,
remaining in our towns and cities; but in Edinburgh, York, Chester, and
Newcastle there are still a sufficient number of specimens to prove the
truth of these remarks. In the towns of Normandy and the Netherlands
numerous buildings, and indeed whole streets, may be seen which still
exhibit the perfect counterpart of our old Cheapside, as it appeared
before the great fire. Troyes, the capital of Champagne, still retains
its ancient buildings, and the chestnut-timber houses of Caen, which
were raised, or restored, during the period in the 15th century when it
was in the hands of the English, show us what our cities once were, and,
of course, the extent of our improvements. London formerly possessed the
richest examples. At the corner of Chancery Lane, in Fleet Street,
there once stood a five-storied house in timber, each story projecting;
the whole of the timber and the gables being richly carved. In this
house once lived the celebrated Isaac Walton.
The other most common application of this kind of house is
“half-timbered.” In some counties the woodwork is not in patterns. It
appears that when a greater degree of elegance was required the uprights
and beams were carved, or the houses were pargetted, that is, coated
thickly with plaster, in which embossed or indented ornaments were used.
This kind is very common in nearly all the English counties. The origin
of the word _parget_ appears to be doubtful. We find _parget_,
substantive, and _pargetting_, _pergetting_, and _pergining_, verb, in
old writings, of various kinds of plaster work, used inside and outside
of houses, particularly about the time of Elizabeth; the word _parget_
was used as far back as 1450.
The half-timbered houses generally had the woodwork (studs and posts)
painted black or tarred, with the intermediate spaces of brickwork
whitewashed. Many of these houses have been plastered over in modern
days. In London several of them have been refronted, and we lose sight
of the woodwork, and imagine we see fresh-built houses.
In some parts of the country we see numbers of cottages built of mud
mixed with chopped “haum.” This is commonly barley stubble. The word
appears of foreign derivation; in High and Low German, Dutch, Danish,
Swedish, halm; Ang.-Sax., healm; Icelandic, halmr, stubble.
The haum is used to give the mud strength. These houses, previously
described in connexion with concrete erections, were built about a yard
in height at a time; each part was allowed to dry before further
addition was made. The openings for windows and doors were cut when the
wall became firmer; the walls were then smoothed off a little, and
whitewashed. These houses are said to be very strong, and to last for
many years. In the Midland Counties they seldom exceed one story in
height, but in Devon, Somersetshire, and Hampshire, this composition is
a common material for gentlemen’s houses two and three stories in
height. It is there called _cob_, the derivation of which word remains
in obscurity, unless it is a short term for _cobble_, or a coarse clumsy
performance. A cob-wall was one composed of straw and clay beaten up
together.
In Kent, the half-timbered houses are called wood-noggin houses, because
the pieces of timber were called wood-nogs. Nog is properly a wooden
brick, which is inserted into walls to hold the joiners’ work; nogging
is the term for the brick-filling partitions between the quartering.
Sometimes, but very rarely, there is no projection of the upper story
over the lower one. These openings in the windows are common, and all
have richly carved barge-boards.
In some of the Kentish villages there are several noggin houses
plastered over, with a ground in which flowers and patterns are worked
in another colour. Some have a red ground and white flowers, others a
black ground and white flowers. The wooden frame is always built on a
substructure of brick or stone, called the “under-pinning.” Numbers of
the houses in Kent are covered at the sides with weather tiles; here the
brickwork is carried up to the first floor, in which the wooden
framework is placed, and laths nailed across, in which the tiles are
hung; the shape of the tile varies. Some are diamond-shape, and others
finish with circular ends.
In Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, and Gloucestershire, we meet with
half-timbered houses, which are there called brick pane houses, but very
few of them are worked in patterns.