53 /
HOUSES
AND
GARDENS
LJJ
HOUSES
AND
GARDENS
BY M. H. BAILLIE SCOTT
MCMVI
LONDON PUBLISHED BY
GEORGE NEWNES LIMITED
SOUTHAMPTON ST. STRAND
NA
11 10
LIBRARY
73728!
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
7*9
PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE <&•• Co. LIMITE
AT THE BALLANTYNE PRESS LONDON
CONTENTS
PACE
INTRODUCTION i
CHAPTER ONE
HOUSES AS THEY ARE AND AS THEY MIGHT BE 5
CHAPTER TWO
SOME FORMS OF PLAN H
CHAPTER THREE
THE HALL 17
CHAPTER FOUR
THE DINING-ROOM ... -20
CHAPTER FIVE
THE DRAWING-ROOM • 23
CHAPTER SIX
THE STUDY • 2*
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE CHILDREN'S ROOMS • ^5
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE KITCHEN AND OFFICES ... -27
CHAPTER NINE
THE BEDROOMS 29
CHAPTER TEN
THE BATHROOM .... 30
v
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ELEVEN PAGE
THE MUSIC ROOM 32
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE BILLIARD ROOM -32
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE GARDEN ROOM .... 34
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE STAIRCASE 35
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ACCOMMODATION FOR FAMILY PETS 36
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SOCIAL FUNCTIONS AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON PLANNING 37
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE SOUL OF THE HOUSE 38
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
FURNISHING 40
CHAPTER NINETEEN
DECORATION 45
CHAPTER TWENTY
MOTTOES FOR THE HOUSE 47
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
COLOUR • 49
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
PICTURES 5I
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
THE FIREPLACE AND ITS TREATMENT 54
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
DOORS 6o
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
CEILINGS
• * * • \J Jf
vi
CONTENTS
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX PAGE
WINDOWS 66
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
WALL TREATMENT 69
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
THICKNESS OF WALLS AND INTERNAL PARTITIONS . . 73
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
THE FLOOR AND ITS TREATMENT ... . . 74
CHAPTER THIRTY
CARPETS AND RUGS 76
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
THE HOUSE IN RELATION TO ITS SITE 77
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
THE GARDEN 81
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
WAYS AND MEANS 86
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
MAKING THE BEST OF IT . . 91
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
THE TERRACE HOUSE ... 97
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
COTTAGES • ioi
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
SEMI-DETACHED HOUSES • 106
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
THE HOLIDAY HOUSE ... 108
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
FLATS "3
CHAPTER FORTY
CO-OPERATIVE HOUSES -
vii
COLOURED PLATES
PAGE
LE NID Frmtupicct
A ROADSIDE HOUSE— THE HALL . . .... 19
FALKEWOOD— THE DINING HALL 20
FALKEWOOD— THE DRAWING-ROOM 23
HOUSE IN POLAND— BEDROOM 29
TERRACE HOUSE— THE LIVING HALL 97
TERRACE HOUSE— VIEW OF PERGOLA 100
INTERIOR OF A FLAT • "3
TRECOURT— VIEW FROM SOUTH-EAST . . ... 146
ROSECOURT— THE PERGOLA .157
WHITE NIGHTS— HALL .161
HEATHER COTTAGE— VIEW FROM WEST . .195
HEATHER COTTAGE— VIEW FROM NORTH-EAST . . .196
HEATHER COTTAGE— THE HALL 19?
EVERDENE— THE INNER COURT FROM ENTRANCE . . .197
EVERDENE— VIEW FROM SOUTH-WEST, i98
EVERDENE— VIEW FROM SOUTH-EAST . . .198
Vlll
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
MUSIC ROOM • Fac;»g 32
DESIGN FOR STENCILLING .... • » 46
THE TERRACE HOUSE (A)
Ground Plan .... • Facing 98
First Floor Plan ... „ 98
THE TERRACE HOUSE (B)
View from South • Follow ag 98
Ground Floor Plan and First Floor Plan . • » 98
View from North .... • Facing 99
ROW OF COTTAGES (J)
Exterior .....••• »
Plans .... . „ 102
ROW OF COTTAGES (B)
Exterior Following 102
Ground Floor Plan . . » I02
First Floor Plan ... • » IO2
FALKEWOOD LODGE
Exterior .... . „ 102
Ground First Floor . . » I02
First Floor Plan .... .» IO2
ELMWOOD COTTAGES, GARDEN CITY
Exterior' • F'eiV IO3
Plans • » I03
The Kitchen .... ,,104
A PAIR OF CHEAP COTTAGES
View from Road .- . » IO5
Plans '. • » I05
ix
ILLUSTRATIONS
SEMI-DETACHED HOUSES
View from North-west . .106
Plan . . • '°7
HOLIDAY HOUSES
Elevations and Plans ... • facing no
The House with the Purple Shutters . . . Following 110
Plan .,,110
Interior of Living Room » I1D
SPRINGCOT
View from Road •>•> IIQ
View from Kitchen Garden .... •>•> IJO
The Corridor . „ no
Plans • » II0
The Hall • Fac;»g 1 1 1
FLATS
Plans .... . . . „ 114
View of Entrance ... . . . . „ 115
CO-OPERATIVE HOUSES
Plans „ "6
Entrance Front ,,117
The Dining Hall ... „ 117
A HOUSE AND GARDEN IN SWITZERLAND
Ground Floor Plan 123
Attic and Roof Plan 1 24
First Floor Plan 124
Basement Plan 124
Garden Front . . . . . . . . . . .125
End Elevation . . . . . . . . . . .126
Entrance Front . . . . . . . . . . .126
Garden Front . . . . . . . . . . .126
Entrance Court and Vista ......... 127
View of Flower Garden from Steps ..'.... 127
A HOUSE IN AMERICA
First Floor Plan . . . . . . . . . . .129
Attics 129
Basement . . . . . . . . . . . .129
Ground Floor Plan 129
x
ILLUSTRATIONS
PACK
A HOUSE AND GARDEN, POLAND
Part of Garden Showing Three Radiating Vistas 132
The Hall .... . 133
The Studio . . • . . . . . . . . .134
First Floor Plan 135
Ground Floor Plan . . . . . . . . .135
Part of Garden . . . . . . . . . . .136
LE NID .......... See Fr/mtiifitce
FINDON
Entrance Front . . . . . . . . . . .142
Garden Front 142
Ground Floor Plan 143
First Floor Plan 143
Garden Plan • X43
The Dining Hall 144
The Drawing-room Fireplace ........ 145
The Staircase 145
TRECOURT
Entrance Front ........ .148
Ground Floor Plan • H9
First Floor Plan . . 149
TREVISTA
View from Road • J53
Bird's-Eye View of Garden ... . 153
The Hall • '54
First Floor Plan . 155
Ground Floor Plan 155
ROSE COURT
The Hall . • 158
Ground Floor Plan 159
First Floor Plan *59
Garden Plan ...... -159
View from North . . .... .160
View from South-west ..... • . . 160
xi
ILLUSTRATIONS
WHITE NIGHTS PAGE
View from Road 162
Ground Floor Plan .162
First Floor Plan .162
THE CLOISTERS
Garden Front ... ... .164
Entrance Front ..... . ... 165
Ground Floor Plan . . 166
First Floor Plan 166
BLACKWELL
The Entrance Hall 168
View from South-west ..... . 168
Ground Floor Plan . . . . . . . . . .169
. First Floor Plan 169
The Hall 170
The Drawing-room . . . . . . . . . 171
The Drawing-room Ingle . . . . . . . . 171
The Dining-room . . . . . . . . . .172
The Upper Corridor . . . . . . . . . • . 172
A HOUSE FOR AN ART LOVER
North Elevation . ..... . . . 174
South Elevation . . . . . . . . . . .174
First Floor Plan 175
Ground Floor Plan 175
The Hall 176
The Dining-room . . . . . . . . . .177
The Music Room 177
Ladies' Room . .178
Plan of Bathroom 178
Parents' Bedroom . . . . . . . . . . .179
Section of Bathroom . . . . . . . . . .179
The Play Room 180
The Study 180
THE HAVEN
Garden Front 182
Entrance Front 182
xii
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE HAVEN— (continutd) PAGE
Ground Floor Plan 183
First Floor Plan 183
Billiard Room . . . . . . . . . . .184
The Inner Court 1 84
The Dining Hall 185
BEXTON CROFT
View from Drive . . . . . . . . . .187
The Dining-room . . . . . . . . . .187
The Porch and Corridor 188
The Hall .188
The South Gallery . . . . . . . . . .189
Ground Floor Plan . . . . . . . . . .190
First Floor Plan . . . . . . . . . .190
THE FIVE GABLES
View from South . . . . . . . . . .192
The Hall 192
The Drawing-room . . . . . . . . . 193
The Dining-room .......... 193
Ground Floor Plan . . . . . . . . . .194
First Floor Plan 194
HEATHER COTTAGE
Garden Plan . . . . . . . . . . .196
Ground Floor Plan . . . . . . . . . .196
First Floor Plan . . . . . . . . . . .196
EVERDENE
The Hall . 198
Ground Floor Plan . . . . . . . . . .198
First Floor Plan 198
Garden Plan 199
LINGFIELD
Garden Plan
Ground Floor Plan
First Floor Plan
201
201
201
xni
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE WHITE HOUSE PAQ«
The North Front . . -203
The South Front ... .203
The Hall . • 2O*
The Entrance Gate • 204-
The Drawing-room
The Dining-room
Ground Floor Plan . .206
First Floor Plan . • 2°6
THE CROSSWAYS
The Hall .... • 2o8
Ground Floor Plan ... • 208
First Floor Plan • 208
HALCYON COTTAGE
Elevation to Road ... .210
First Floor Plan ... .210
Attic and Roof Plan ... .210
Ground Floor Plan .... .210
Elevation to Garden . . • 210
Side Elevation .... .210
The Living Room . .210
FALKEWOOD
Garden Plan .212
Ground Floor Plan (Stable) .... .212
First Floor Plan (Stable) • 212
Ground Floor Plan -213
First Floor Plan .213
AN OLD HOUSE REMODELLED
The Hall 215
Dining-room . . . . . . . . . . .215
View from Gate . . . . . . . . . . .216
View from Lawn . . . . . . . . . .216
DANESTREAM
View from North-east . . . . . . . . . .218
View from South-west . . . . . . . . . .218
The Drawing-room . . . . . . . . . .219
xiv
ILLUSTRATIONS
DANESTREAM— (continue*/) ,AGE
The Corridor . 219
Garden Plan ........... 220
Ground Floor Plan .......... 220
First Floor Plan ........... 220
A STONE HOUSE
The Garden Front .......... 222
The Entrance Front 222
SANDFORD COTTAGE
View from North .......... 224
The Hall Fireside 224
Ground Floor Plan .......... 225
First Floor Plan 225
A ROADSIDE HOUSE
View from Road . . . . . . . . . . .227
Ground Floor Plan .......... 227
First Floor Plan ........... 227
ST. MARY'S
The Entrance Front .......... 229
Ground Floor Plan .......... 229
First Floor Plan 229
THE GARTH
View from Entrance Court 231
The Garden Front 232
The Hall . 232
The Dining-room .......... 233
The Library ........... 233
Ground Floor Plan ... 234
First Floor Plan .......... 234
FURNISHED ROOMS AT DARMSTADT AND MANNHEIM
Dining-room Darmstadt ....... 237
Sitting-room Fireplace „ 237
Sitting-room „ ....... 238
Furniture in Sitting-room „ 238
Sitting-room „ ....... 239
xv
ILLUSTRATIONS
FURNISHED ROOMS— (continued) PAGE
Boudoir and Music Room (Mannheim) ....... 240
Bay in Music Room „ ....... 241
Fireplace in Boudoir ,, ....... 241
Music Room „ ....... 242
FURNITURE
" Blue Bell " Bedstead 243
Inlaid Sideboard ......... . . 243
" Daffodil " Dresser ... 244
" Rose " Dressing-Table 245
" Rose " Bedstead 245
Inlaid Chair ........... 246
Arm Chair ........... 246
Inlaid Secretaire ........... 247
" Carnation Lily, Lily Rose " Cabinet ....... 247
The thanks of the author are due to Mr. C. Holme, Mr. Alex.
Kock, and fftfr. J. T. White for allowing the use of illustrations
which have appeared in the " Studio" " Inner Dekoration " and
" A Book oj Furniture " and to Mr. H. Hulme and IMr.
A. E. Beresford for assistance in the preparation of plans.
XVI
INTRODUCTION
NE of the most prominent features in the literature of the
last few years has been the garden book, and so numerous
have these publications become that every one may learn
how a garden should be formed and how maintained. All
the gardens described in these books are necessarily attached
to houses, and the house as an appendage to the garden meets with a
certain degree of attention ; but the problems involved in house-building,
furnishing, and decoration have hardly been treated with the considera-
tion they seem to deserve. If this increased study of gardening is but
the prelude to the consideration of the house, it may be taken as an
augury from which much may be hoped. For just as one finds that
the buildings of an agricultural community are generally well conceived,
so the kindly influence of the garden may lead to the realisation of
houses which may possess some of the kind of beauty which flowers
and trees have. For the building and adornment of the house is
surely the most important as well as the most human expression of
the Art of man. We are apt to consider it in these utilitarian days as
a trite formula — a matter of drains, wall-papers, and bay-windows — and
we are apt to forget the possibilities of beauty which lie in mere building
— possibilities which do not necessarily demand great expenditure for their
development, but which may be realised in the simplest cottage. Those who
dwell amidst the vulgar and impossible artistry of modern villadom may visit
now and then some ancient village, and in the cottages and farm-houses
there be conscious of a beauty which makes their own homes appear a trivial
and frivolous affair ; but such beauty is generally held to be incompatible
with modern ideas of comfort and sanitation, and the lack of real comeliness
in a modern house is often held to be a necessary concession to practical
demands.
And so the art of building as practised in modern times is not so much
an Art as a disease. In the early stages of the Victorian era it took the
form of a pallid leprosy. Nowadays, it has become a scarlet fever of red
brick, and has achieved a development of spurious Art expressed in attempts
to achieve the picturesque, which in its smirking self-consciousness has made
the earlier candid ugliness appear an almost welcome alternative. There is
no town or village but is being gradually disfigured by this plague of modern
building, and one has almost forgotten that houses have been and may yet
be an added beauty rather than a disfigurement to the land. And in
matters of furniture and decoration one finds the same spurious art on all
sides, so that the modern house of the average citizen has reached a stage of
degradation which might be a subject for ironic laughter if it were not for
the pity of it. The serene and earnest beauty of the old house is every-
where being replaced by a superficial smartness posing as art. It is difficult
to know where to turn to escape from this oppressive nightmare of hideous
building. Here and there one may find houses built and furnished with
sincerity, but these are comparatively so few that they appear but as drops in
HOUSES AND GARDENS
the ocean. It is doubtful whether education will provide relief, for it is
mainly the modern Board-school which provides the most convincing object-
lesson of the degree of depravity of which building is capable. Nor is
it possible to hope for much from the Church, where building activities have
recently been mainly concerned with the disfigurement of the ancient glories
of its buildings and in the construction of elaborate and unconvincing
forgeries of an obsolete art.
It might be supposed at least that all this ugly building would be
attended with some compensation of a practical kind, and that the modern
villa would £t least possess utilitarian qualifications. But here again one
finds that so far from being in any way adapted to the real requirements
of its occupants, it is designed in accordance with a tradition which is based
on the life and habits of the occupants of a mansion. The best part of its
limited space is set apart to impress the neighbours, and the family is confined
in some plastered rectangular cell which is already crowded with unnecessary
and pretentious furniture.
But enough has been said, perhaps, to show that there is an urgent need
for reform in the plan of the average modern house, and, apart from artistic
considerations, it is at least desirable that it should be rationally designed.
It has often been urged that a house should express and conform to the
special needs of those for whom it is built. But while this is certainly
desirable it may be questioned whether houses of special type should be
extensively built. A house has to meet the requirements of many occupants,
and it seems reasonable that one should bear in mind in its construction as to
how far it is adapted for general demands.
In the design of houses for various clients of moderate means, I have
been led to conclude that it is possible to deduce a normal plan which meets
the requirements of the average family, and that variants from this constant
type of plan are to be found rather in appendages to the plan than in
any essential modification of its central features. Instead of a conception of
the house which presupposes the collocation of a number of compartments
which in the smaller houses become each too small for comfort, it is
suggested that the house rationally planned should primarily consist of
at least one good-sized apartment, which, containing no furniture but that
which is really required, leaves an ample floor space at the disposal of
its occupants.
The private apartments for the individual members of the family may
then be considered as subsidiary to the central dominating room, and in
some cases some of these may take the form of recesses in it. In cases
where limited means demand a smaller type of house this should still consist
of its central ample floor space, and restrictions should be met by giving
up secondary rooms, while the bedrooms should constitute the private
apartments of the various members of the family group. In this
way even_ the labourer's cottage still retains its hall, which has now
become kitchen, dining-room and parlour. In thus aiming at realising
completely a simple type of plan rather than in striving to attain a
2
HOUSES AND GARDENS
cheapened version of a more complex design is salvation to be found for
the small householder.
That the principles of house planning thus briefly suggested, and which
are further developed and exemplified in the following pages, are something
more than impracticable dreams, may be partly shown by the evidence of
those who have built houses designed on these lines, many of which are
illustrated and described here.
Since January 1895, when I first illustrated in the Studio a scheme for a
house, I have been flattered by many realisations of my plans for houses in
various parts of the world. While some have had the justice to realise that
an artist should be given the opportunity of developing his own conceptions,
others less scrupulous have consigned the matter to other hands, and the
plans have suffered much from unsympathetic treatment in this way. So
much depends on the careful working out of the details to meet each
particular case, so much in the choice of materials and in adaptations to
local conditions, that a plan realised in this way must necessarily differ
widely from the original conception ; and inasmuch as it is not the reputable
architect who is willing to appropriate the plans of his contemporaries, these
houses have been for the most part merely caricatures, which have done
much to bring undeserved discredit on the principles they profess to follow.
So much has been ably written on the subject of the Garden, that I have
confined my remarks here chiefly to a few broad principles with a special
reference to the economic question. To those who wish to study the
subject I would recommend a careful perusal of Miss Jekyll's books
which may be taken as an infallible guide.
In the chapter " on making the best of it," I have endeavoured to
show how a suburban house may be mitigated by judicious treatment.
The man who lives at St. Mildred's or The Pines might, after re-christen-
ing his house more appropriately as "The Crime," seek to reduce its
pernicious influences by some such means as I have endeavoured to describe.
In the design of the modern flat I have tried to show how the same prin-
ciples advocated in the plan of the ordinary house are applicable.
In the discussion of the terrace house it is shown, I think conclusively,
that the universal standard plan is based on irrational fallacies, rather
than on real requirements, and that the question of varying aspect alone
demands a corresponding variation in planning.
In the consideration of cottages it is urged that their cheapness should
only be such as may be consistent with comeliness and comfort, and that the
plan should be the outcome of actual requirements based on the habits of
life of their occupants.
Some types of holiday houses are illustrated, and it is suggested that in
such buildings a greater fancifulness is admissible than in houses for every
day occupation.
It has always seemed to me impossible to consider the matter of furniture
and decoration apart from house building with which they are so intimately
related, and the architect who attempts to achieve a satisfactory interior
3
HOUSES AND GARDENS
must necessarily to some extent control these important factors. While in
the space at my disposal I have been unable to deal with these matters in
detail, I have endeavoured to indicate a few guiding principles.
In conclusion, it may be well for me to anticipate certain criticisms by
stating that I profess no expert knowledge in the arts of literature or illus-
tration. It is my business to design houses and their appointments, and
the work of preparing this book has been done in leisure moments snatched
from the time which must be devoted to the labours of the architect. It is
my hope that this may afford some excuse for the manifold shortcomings
of a work which necessarily constitutes a very limited and inadequate treat-
ment of a subject of such illimitable scope.
CHAPTER ONE
HOUSES AS THEY ARE AND AS THEY
MIGHT BE
HE popular conception of the artistic house is that it is a fancy
dwelling in which the claims of Art override practical require-
ments. It is often held to represent indulgence in the aesthetic
faculties which can only be obtained at the expense of material
comforts. Like those early prints which were sold at " a penny
plain and tuppence coloured," houses are broadly divisible, it may be supposed,
into two classes — the plain and every-day house, unattractive and practically
useful, which may be obtained for a penny or its equivalent ; and the Art
house, which is only for those who can afford the luxuries of life, and who,
living amidst the coloured glories of the tuppenny house, cheerfully accept these
beauties in exchange for mere material advantages, or as a costly addition to these.
That such a conception is not without a basis in facts must be admitted,
and the demand for spurious Art, which the little knowledge of modern Art
education so readily inculcates, is met on all sides by those who cater to the
wants and the whims of the public.
The house which, for want of a better word, we must continue to differ-
entiate from the ordinary house as " artistic," bases its claims not on its frillings
and on its adornments, but on the very essence of its structure. The claims
of common-sense are paramount in its plan, and its apartments are arranged
to secure comfortable habitation for its inmates, and to reduce labour in service
or cleaning to a minimum. No dusty carpets cover its floors. Its windows
are not cloaked with elaborate curtains and blinds. Its apartments are not
crowded with useless and unlovely furniture. It aims at fulfilling no popular
conception of what a house should be, follows no fashion, and apes not its
neighbour mansion. If restricted resources necessitate that it should be small,
there is yet no sense of cramped accommodation, because restrictions have
been met by frank concessions. It is a roomy and commodious cottage, not a
mansion in miniature, while under more generous conditions it attains the true
dignity of the country house, and does not ape the cottage.
In its construction the exposure of every feature of the building is not
necessarily involved, and though the structure indeed largely contributes to the
beauty of the house, it is often obscured to meet practical requirements, or to
supply surfaces for plain spaces of pure colour or thoughtfully conceived
decoration. The furniture, too, reveals little trace of conscious effort. It
does not pose or smirk or in any way insist on our attention to its artistic
perfections, but is modest and serviceable, and rests its chief claim for exist-
ence on the possession of those qualities. It is fitted for its purpose, and is
not necessarily made of expensive or highly-finished materials. In such a
realisation of a house, that same reasonableness which is claimed as a basis of
the whole fabric forbids the attempt to achieve many of the beauties which
belonged to the houses of the past. Old work is, indeed, carefully studied,
and the principles which governed it followed. Old models are often taken
HOUSES AND GARDENS
for the features of the house and its furniture, but these are necessarily changed
and modified to meet modern conditions and limitations. The Art of the
people which flourished in the past is now extinct, and so we can no longer
enrich our houses and furniture with carving and painting. The wit and fancy
of the old workman which found such a field for its display in the woodwork
of old houses is no longer available ; and only those who can afford to employ
the few surviving artist craftsmen, or those incapable of discerning the gulf
fixed between the old work and the new, may dare to decorate their houses in
this way. In the meantime, and until Art again revives, whitewash represents
a temporary expedient which has much to recommend it, and " when in doubt,
whitewash " might well be taken as a maxim to be followed in the decoration
of the modern house.
Before proceeding to consider the possibilities of the house as it might be,
it may be well to glance for a moment at the house as it is. Every one who
has experienced the disappointments of a search for a dwelling will probably
willingly concede that the average modern house is not remarkable for con-
venience or beauty, and under the conditions which govern its production it is
not strange that this should be so.
The majority of small houses especially are designed and built by men who
have no knowledge or skill in planning, and whose notions and habits ot
thought are entirely commercial. The higher skill has been mainly employed
on the larger houses, and the small ones have been consigned to the jerry-
builder, who has built them as we see them, so that one is led almost to forget
that a small house can be made both comfortable and comely, and that in its
expression of modest homeliness and simplicity it may often put to shame the
pretensions of its larger neighbours.
Not alone, however, it must be confessed, is the builder to blame for the
demerits of the small house. It may be said that he is the wise man who
builds houses for fools to live in, and too often the occupier of a small
house is in love with its very defects. He admires the front elevation with its
bay window and the leaded glazing in the front door, and hangs his pictures
and arranges his furniture with a touching assurance that all this is as it
should be, while his wife receives her friends in her little drawing-room with
a rooted conviction as to its undoubted elegance. Or again, it would appear
that the modern householder, like the hermit crab, is the outcome of a series
of concessions, and has finally become adapted to a dwelling designed less
with a view to his comfort than to the profit of its possessor. But still there
is a section of householders who have no illusions as to the beauty of their
dwellings, and who cannot reconcile themselves to their defects, and this class,
it may be hoped, is a growing one.
There is yet, however, a further stumbling-block to be found in the blind,
irrational following of tradition in house-planning. The modern cottage
almost invariably strives to include within its restricted space the features of
the mansion. So it misses the excellence within its easy reach in its futile
attempt to ape its larger neighbours, and, like the dog in the fable, is left
bereft of the substance while it grasps at the shadow. This method of house-
6
HOUSES AND GARDENS
building is still further encouraged by the commercial classification of houses
in the market. There is the house with two reception-rooms, and next above
it in the scale of excellence the house with three reception-rooms. A bay-
window is a further asset ; and so houses are valued, not in relation to the skill
and thought displayed in their planning, but by the degree in which their
interior has been subdivided into rectangular compartments, and again by
the number of excrescences in the shape of bay windows, Sec., which they
possess.
Houses which might have been much more reasonably and economically
built as a terrace are thus placed a yard or two apart in order that they may
be described as detached ; and the space in the plan, which might have been
devoted to a much-needed pantry or added to the dining-room, is partitioned
off to form the third sitting-room, which will raise the house a step in the
house agent's scale of excellence.
While urging that improvement in the plan of the modern house, and the
small house especially, must chiefly consist in the converse of this commer-
cial evolution, and that conventional ideas must be sacrificed to secure at least
one room of reasonable size, I do not advocate the pushing this principle too
far. In a neurotic age it will not be wise to try and emulate the simplicity of
the earliest types of plan, where all the various functions of the domestic life
were discharged in one apartment ; and the desk for the student, the grand
piano and the cooking-range are necessarily incompatible occupants of the
most commodious "house place;" and when used simultaneously one may
well imagine that the view from the open gallery, which overlooks and in over-
looking destroys the privacy of the whole, would not be entirely harmonious.
The whole problem of the modern house is thus necessarily an attempt to secure
those opposing qualities of privacy and spaciousness, and the plans illustrated
show various methods in which this has been more or less successfully
achieved.
It must not, however, be too hastily assumed that a rational reform in the
planning of houses will be readily welcomed by the occupants of the modern .
villa, for no subject is so surrounded by every kind of cant and illusion. Those
who exclaim against the restrictions and inconveniences of the modern house
would be the first to object to the sacrifice of its imaginary qualifications for the
real comforts of life. The greater part of the inconvenience and discomfort
of the modern house is due partly, it is true, to the ignorance of its builders,
but mainly to the prejudices and conventional standard of its occupants. The
small house is regarded not as a roomy cottage but as a mansion in miniature.
Like the immortal Mrs. Wilfer, its occupants are anxious that we should believe
that though they live in a small house, " male domestics are no rareties to
them ; " and so we find the modern house, with its tissue of pretentious
absurdities and inconveniences, chiefly explained, inasmuch as it is the exponent
of the ideals of its occupants, who have set the possession of that gorgeous male
domestic as a sort of counsel of perfection, an impossible and long hoped-for
ideal to which all must be sacrificed.
And so the drawing-room is made worthy of his presence by imitations of
7
HOUSES AND GARDENS
French furniture, and the dining-room is duly enriched with its appointed
carved and fumigated oak. The shadow of the flunkey broods over the whole
establishment.
The man who is sincere enough to see the unworthiness of such ideas, and
who is wise enough to regard the small house as a large cottage rather than a
restricted mansion, will demand planning and furniture on totally opposite
principles to those usually followed. He has no wish to emulate his neigh-
bours in the matter of fashionable furnishings and methods of life. He has a
settled conviction that the simplest form of life is the worthiest and most
reasonable, and that true progress lies not in multiplying and complicating the
appointments of the house, but in reducing them to the lowest effective limit.
He does not consider the house to be a place for the display of furniture and
bric-a-brac, but primarily a home for human beings, planned for their comfort,
convenience, and pleasure. He demands in the planning of his house, besides
practical comforts, that kind of beauty which is inherent in the structure,
which depends largely on proportion, and does not require furniture for effect.
And so in the broad simple spaces of his roomy cottage he disposes his few
belongings. He has no wish to reproduce the departed glories of any of the
popular styles. These fantastic and histrionic revivals find no place in his
home. He is content with simple and straightforward joiner work. Neither
is he anxious to cover every square inch of his walls and ceilings with pattern,
and he is quite unimpressed by the wares of the trade decorator, with his
embossing and stamping and gilding. These things are familiar to him in the
houses of his friends, in his club and his hotel, and at home he would have rest.
Not that he has entirely abjured decoration in his home, but it must be for him
not the seductive cleverness of the trade artist, but the best product of the heart
and brain ; something, too, individual and peculiar. In the meantime, white-
wash will do well enough.
For the rest, he has an eye for detail, and as far as possible he tries to
secure good and thoughtful design, not only in his house but in all its appoint-
ments, and so his knives and forks, his china and glass, all bear the impress of
thought and feeling in design and manufacture. Nor does he stop here. The
very simplicity and unpretentiousness of his surroundings are eloquent in
suggestions for the ritual of his daily life, and just as he does not wish to
imitate the mansion in his modest dwelling, so is he less willing to ape the
habits of its occupants. When he asks a friend to dinner, he does not seek to
impress his guests by the multitude of his courses or the magnificence of his
plate. He may indeed be quietly proud of the homely beauty of his sur-
roundings, but it is a pride which is based not on their costliness, not on their
price in the market, but rather on such qualities as fitness for their uses and
beauty of line, colour, or texture.
In the furnishing of his house he has been careful to exclude all but the
absolutely essential. He does not buy a table because he thinks it will " look
well " standing in a bay window, and then proceed to find some ornament
which will " look well " standing on the table. He might as reasonably first
buy a mouse-trap on aesthetic grounds, and then a supply of mice to enable it
8
HOUSES AND GARDENS
to fulfil its functions. He knows better than to occupy valuable space with
unnecessary articles of furniture, and is not without experience, perhaps of
that strange and dreadful tyranny which these mere inarticulate objects are
capable of exercising over their so-called possessors, now become their slaves.
But here he touches on the confines of a great cult, a religion whose votaries
are to be found in almost every family. These household gods are enshrined
in rooms willingly given up for their occupation and sacred to their
worship. They have no use, they have no beauty even. They are gods,
and it remains but to worship them, keep them clean and hidden from the
vulgar gaze. From this idolatry the modern householder must be set free
before it becomes possible to achieve domestic surroundings which are rational
and beautiful.
In seeking for a basis for a plan the governing factor will necessarily be
the requirements of the average family, and if the matter is considered
carefully, it will be found that these requirements represent a fairly constant
quantity. It is important that the plan should be adjusted to meet these
requirements, and that the accommodation provided should neither be too
large or too small ; for the large house is not always a thing to be desired.
It necessarily involves not only expenditure in building, but also expense in
maintenance, and so it is apt to become a costly incubus to its occupants.
On the other hand, a house which is small and cramped is still less to be
wished for, involving as it does a loss of privacy and much friction both
physical and mental between its inmates. A house should be spacious enough
to allow of its occupants to move easily about without getting into each
other's way or tumbling over the furniture, and compact enough to make it
easily and economically cleaned and worked. More than this, the average
family should not require, nor should it be contented with less, and while the
house should contain all the best appliances for saving of labour it should also
minister to the mind, and represent the striking of a nice balance between the
utilitarian scientific ideal on the one hand and the assthetic on the other.
Whatever beauty it possesses should be based on sound and rational planning
and construction. In its features it should not aim at realising the latest
things in doors, fireplaces, or windows, but the simplest and most rational
type of these, and its beauty will largely depend in the omission of much
which is vulgar, unnecessary, and expensive in the ordinary house. In gloomy
weather, it must provide an interior in which one will not find it irksome or
unhealthy either for mind or body to be confined, and a haven which will go
far to compensate for sunless days.
If, with a view to secure these good ends, the family unit is subjected to
analysis it will be found to be capable of division into two factors, the family
and the servants representing two alien communities to be sheltered under the
family roof. No longer do the early conditions obtain which made it possible
for these to co-mingle, and for the comfort and wellbeing of each it will be
well that they should each have a certain degree of privacy. Again, the
family itself is divisible into parents and children, and outside the family itself
the claims of the visitor must be considered. It is, indeed, the claims of the
B 9
HOUSES AND GARDENS
visitor in the traditions of the mansion applied to the smaller house which has
played such havoc with house planning, and which has led to the conception
of the family rooms as reception-rooms, arranged primarily to impress the
guest of the hour, and which has made the best sitting-room too fine for daily
use, and has set apart the best bedroom as a spare room, perhaps hardly ever
occupied.
The average house should not be a place primarily for the reception of
visitors, but a dwelling for a family, and the only impression the unfortunate
visitor will receive segregated amidst forbidding furniture in an unaired and
obviously unused room will be mainly one of discomfort. The house should
then be designed essentially for its occupants, and should consist mainly of
one good sized apartment, with plenty of floor space and elbow room, and
with only such furniture as may be actually required. This room or house-
place, with its ample fireplace and broad spaces of floor, may, perhaps, be
carried up nearly twice the height of the other rooms, which may be
low and small. If, however, a gallery is introduced, it should be provided
with shutters to secure privacy and freedom from draughts. The dining-
room may either be a small separate room, or it may consist of a recess
arranged as shown in the plans illustrating these remarks, and described fully
later on.
The other appendages to this central room, inasmuch as they are for the
occupation of separate members of the family, may be reduced considerably
in size. Those which demand an absolute privacy will be completely cut off
from the house place, while others in which privacy is not so essential may be
included in the central idea of the house, screened from the house place as
required by sliding doors or curtains only.
There will thus be a ladies' room or boudoir, which will also be used for
the reception of those visitors who are not received in the house place itself, a
room for the children, and a man's room which may be devoted to the par-
ticular hobbies of the master of the house, and christened accordingly as a
" den " or " study." Many modifications of such a scheme may be made to
meet limitations of cost ; but the essential principle insisted on is that the
smaller kind of house, instead of being subdivided to the greatest possible
extent into tiny compartments, should at least contain one good-sized room,
which, by such devices as sliding-doors, can be made on occasion still larger.
The arguments advanced in favour of such a reform have designedly been
entirely practical ones ; but from the artistic point of view it may be urged
that success in planning can only be achieved by a conception which has a
focus. The house which merely consists of a series of separate compartments
conveys to the imagination no definite coherent expression. To the family
crowded into one of these rectangular cells, the house for the time being is
limited by the walls of the room they are occupying, and the remaining rooms,
some perhaps rarely inhabited, are each distinct and separate, bearing no
relation to the whole scheme.
It is not alone necessary, however, that the apartments of the house should
be well designed and arranged in due relation to their functions. It is
10
HOUSES AND GARDENS
important also that the routes of passage of the various members of the
family units should be carefully studied and arranged without undue waste of
space in passages. The hall or house-place, while forming the central idea of
the plan, must not be a passage-room for servants or visitors. The servants
should be able to reach all the other rooms and the front entrance without
passing through it, and the room appointed for the reception of visitors who
may not be on terms of intimacy which would warrant their reception in the
house-place itself, should be reached from the front entrance without infring-
ing on the privacy of the family. In some cases the children may have their
special entrance from the garden and special staircase, and a separate staircase
for the servants is often desirable. The extent to which this isolation of
routes may be carried out in the plan depends greatly on the particular
circumstances of each case. It must not be pressed too far, and in that judicial
balance of advantages and disadvantages of which the plan is the outcome, it
may often be to some extent deliberately ignored.
So far I have dwelt on the economical side of house-planning, mainly
because it is in the house for the average family that reform is most urgently
required. Where space is necessarily limited and precious, it is of great
importance that it should be made the most of. The defects of the present
house, it has been shown, are chiefly due to a blind and unreasoning adherence
to obsolete traditions and to the abortive attempts to produce on a small
scale the appointments and apartments of the mansion rather than to realise
on a large scale the cottage plan. It has been urged that the number and
arrangements of the subdivisions of the whole house space covered by the
roof should be governed by actual requirements, which, in the case of the
average family, represent a fairly constant quantity, and the house evolved on
these principles should be at least approximately suited to actual uses, expand-
ing into spaciousness where the members of the family meet together, and
contracting to a minimum in rooms occupied by its individual members.
In cases where the uses of such smaller apartments do not demand an
absolute privacy, these may take the form of recesses in the central common
room, and the application of these principles to the plan suggests at once
the dining recess. In other cases, where the intermittent use of a room
occurs for purposes which do not demand absolute isolation from the
common room, sliding-doors or even curtains may be found sufficient to
give the required privacy, while in such rooms as those devoted to the
play of the children the work of the master of the house, a more complete
isolation is demanded, in the one case to shut noise in and in the other to
shut it out.
While it is probable such a conception of the house will not recommend
itself to the followers of an irrational tradition, on the other hand the
dawning spirit of a more rational era tends to a utilitarian ideal no less
to be deplored. The house here represents a congeries of conveniences,
and in its wholesale rejection of the beauties of the old world refuses to
admit features and principles which belong to all the ages. It is the
part of the modern architect to fall into neither extreme, but to study
II
HOUSES AND GARDENS
and weigh the qualities and defects of the old houses, and, having inwardly
digested the lesson they have to teach, to use the knowledge gained in a
rational way.
But if it is undesirable that the dweller in the small house should aim at a
cheapened version of his richer neighbour's abode and manner of living, it is
still less the part of the man who is able to build and maintain a large house
to imitate the cottage qualities, and achieve the cottage " with the double
coach-house."
The curious affectation which has led to the reproduction of the farmhouse
kitchen, with dishes and domestic utensils displayed instead of vases and
knicknacks in a household where such a room is a sort of artistic toy, is but
an extreme example of many such conceits. The importation of milking-stools
and spinning-wheels into our drawing-rooms are but other examples of the
same tendency to bring the cottage into the mansion. One feels at once a
sense of the incongruous in such affectations, just as one would in an assumed
artlessness of manner in the mistress of such an establishment. And examples
might be multiplied of a like inconsistency of varying degrees of affectation.
One of the least to be condemned is possibly the building of a large house as
a magnified cottage, a method for which precedents are not wanting in many
modern examples of domestic architecture. In the old days, a large house was
usually a dignified structure. It expressed a certain quiet stateliness of
planning and furnishing, and in the old English manor house one found the
straight vista of the carriage-drive leading to the square forecourt, with the
front entrance of dignified aspect. Without vulgar ostentation the whole
effect was one of quiet, homely dignity, not rejoicing in expense for the sake
of expense, but for the sake of beauty and fitness.
The large house will be chiefly marked by the number of its specialised
rooms, which, however, should still combine to form an ensemble focussed in
its central hall. It will further be distinguished by the use of materials which
are beyond the means of the occupant of the cottage, and by the introduction
of ornament of real beauty in design and workmanship. It will admit of the
realisation of decorative schemes, which still retain their quality as a back-
ground and setting to life.
Too often, the large house with its collections of furniture and ornaments
degenerates into a private museum, of which its owner is merely the custodian,
and which in many cases drive him to seek escape to more congenial surround-
ings, leaving his house unoccupied for the greater portion of the year. In such
excursions he indulges further that vice of indiscriminating acquisitiveness
which has already crowded his house with objects of Art. It becomes a
show place exhibited on the appointed day to the hushed and admiring
groups of tourists, who absorb with interest the parrot-like utterances of
its custodian.
Such a development of the house may have points in its favour when its
treasures are of real worth and arranged and chosen with discretion. But at
its best it is not a home in the true sense at all. Like the public museum, it
represents a kind of workhouse of the Arts, where furniture and china made
12
HOUSES AND GARDENS
for every-day use, and claiming our admiration chiefly in their adaptability to
definite functions in the domestic life, rest like able-bodied paupers on a
bench in inglorious idleness.
The true place of Art is in the service of everyday life, and beautiful
furniture should be found fulfilling its function in the home rather than
crowded in the museum, where the worship of its beauties becomes a kind of
dilettante cult.
In the days when beautiful things were made every day as a matter of
course, there were no museums and no Art Galleries, and the whole art force
of the nation was beneficially spent in the construction, adornment and
furnishing of its buildings.
Instead, then, of founding a private museum, it may be urged that the
man who builds a large house should resolve to achieve the highest degree of
fitness and beauty in all its appointments, and in doing so he will be getting
far nearer to the real qualities of the houses of the past than if he aims at a
mere histrionic reproduction of the ancestral hall which gives him merely the
outward semblances of a body from which the soul has fled beyond recall.
To consciously aim at achieving " style " in design, either old or new, is
to follow a Will of the Wisp. For the pursuit of style, like the pursuit of
happiness, must necessarily lead to disappointment and failure. Both alike
are essentially bye-products, and the quality of the bye-product is in direct
ratio to the worthiness of the ideal pursued. One may liken style to a
jewel in the hilt of a sword, which flashes brightly when the blade is drawn in
a worthy cause, and to which the warrior absorbed with the matter in hand
will give but slight attention. It is a quality of the " flower of things " only
to be gained by root culture, and he who aims at style is he who would paint
the lily instead of watering it.
To produce a stately modern apartment, it is not necessary to disinter the
Corinthian column, or to set the modern workman once more to carve that
oft-repeated formula of acanthus leaves at the bidding of some blind pedant
who has no eyes for the beauty of the flowers and trees which surround
him. Such vain repetitions do but destroy our sense of the beauty of their
originals.
It is well that the apartments of the mansion should be of stately and
dignified aspect, but let it be a stateliness and dignity which is vital, local and
modern, the new thought of a new age wrought with eagerness and care,
instead of the trite and stale copyism of the forms of the past. It is not
necessarily true, as many seem to imagine, that the only alternative of this
copyism is a bizarre striving after originality and eccentricity of design, and
which, posing as the " new art," is justly condemned by the judicious. New
work which is based on the study of the past, which is sane, reasonable and
vital, will only be considered eccentric from the point of view of those whose
thoughts revolve round obselescent centres. Apparent eccentricity is the
necessary concomitant to every advance in thought, and new ideas revolve
round a centre which is constantly moving forward. The impressions of the
surrounding country reported by the vanguard must necessarily seem untrue
13
HOUSES AND GARDENS
to those in their rear, but gradually as these are pushed and hustled forward
they reach the same standpoint and recognise the truth of the picture.
Architecture as expressed in house building and adornment is like all human
affairs, necessarily in a state of flux — to live is to advance ; and so, while holding
fast that which is good, let us still hope for that which is better, and not let
our admiration for past glories blind us to the undreamed possibilities of the
future.
CHAPTER TWO
SOME FORMS OF PLAN
N making the plan for a house it will be necessary to banish
from one's mind the conception of its interior as a mere
group of isolated compartments, and to think of it rather as
a central room surrounded by subordinated ones, some of
which may in many cases form either recesses in the central
apartment or communicate with it either by folding or sliding doors. In a
house of average size it has been suggested that this central room may
often be made two storeys in height, thus giving a large central air space
and counteracting any feeling of confinement which might be experienced
in a house where all the rooms should be as low as possible.
In economic building it will be wise to make the house itself of simple
rectangular form, covered with a single span of hipped roof. A plain house
is not necessarily an ugly house, and thus simplicity of form coupled with
good proportions and unbroken eaves lines will often be more telling in its
effect than unsuccessful attempts to achieve the picturesque. The site when
this is much restricted will determine to a great extent the
form of the house plan, but in cases where the conditions
are fairly liberal it may be a question as to whether the
plan should be square or long and narrow. The square
house is warmer, as there is not so large a proportion
of outside walls. It also covers more space with an equal
amount of walling than the longer type of plan.
But it does not admit of a long south front, and so its
rooms are not so sunny. Generally speaking, it is best
to follow a middle course and to make the house long
enough to secure a south aspect for the principal
rooms, and wide enough across to keep the rooms with not too much
exterior wall, and so to secure as far as possible the advantages of both types
of plan.
In order to get that low snug effect which is so characteristic of the old
English house, and which always seems desirable and appropriate in the
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
country especially, the eaves of the roof are sometimes brought down to
about the window sill level of the upper rooms, making the bedrooms partly
in the roof. This may be desirable in certain cases, but as a rule it is
better to keep the eaves at such a height that they are unbroken by the
windows, and thus secure a simple outline and a larger
attic space, which whether developed or not into rooms
is always useful as a possible means of extension.
In departing from the rectangular form of plan,
the first step consists in making an L-shaped plan by
adding a projecting wing at one end, and this is often
a very suitable form for a small house, while a further
development of this is the T-shaped plan. If this form
is then made symmetrical by adding a similar wing to
the opposite end of the main roof and perhaps by also
adding a central projecting porch the form arrived at
would be as shown in Fig. 6, and this is often to be
found in old English manor-houses, while a further
extension of this form leads to a house built round a
court (Fig. 7). Another form of plan which is with-
out precedent in the past but yet has some special
advantages is that shown in Fig. 8, and which is
described fully later on.
In all these forms it will be observed that the form
decided on for the ground plan involves at once the plan
of the roof, and these two factors of ground plan and
roof plan are the primary factors in designing a house.
Next to them the most important consideration
is the height of the ceilings and the number of
storeys ; and in order to secure the horizontal pro-
portions which are generally desirable, it is important
that the ceilings should be as low as possible and the
house not more than two storeys in height. The
larger the house the less difficulty there is in this
matter, as the extension of the ground plan makes
the horizontal dimensions preponderate even with high
ceilings ; but in small houses, unless the ceilings are
kept low, it is best to give up the horizontal idea
and to accept verticality as the characteristic of
the design, although in the country especially this is an undesirable
alternative.
Conditions of plan and the desire to achieve picturesque arrangements of
roofing will often lead to more complicated outlines in the form of the
house, though they will generally be traceable as developments of the types
I have sketched. The success of such schemes will mainly depend on the
balance of the roof plan and the satisfactory grouping of the masses of
house from all points of view. It will also depend on the extent to which
15
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V.
HOUSES AND GARDENS
picturesqueness appears to be the outcome of practical requirements, rather
than a quality pursued for its own sake.
In the consideration of house plans there is a tendency to consider only
seriously the large house on the one hand and the labourer's cottage on the
other ; but, as I have already pointed out, the house which the average citizen
requires has hardly met with the attention it deserves, while its plan is the
outcome of a tradition which belongs essentially to the large house. The
study of house planning, it is contended, may best be approached by con-
sidering the central type of plan required for the ordinary type of house, and
showing how this may be expanded into the larger house and contracted if
need be to its minimum dimensions. It is suggested that the hall as the
central focus of the house would, in most cases, persist through the whole
scale from cottage to mansion, and that changes in plan will chiefly consist
in the modification of subsidiary apartments, the rooms required for the
various members of the family, the guests and the servants. The family
group, consisting of the parents and children, will demand for its
members, besides the necessary bedrooms, &c., private sitting-room for
master, mistress and children, while the accommodation for servants and
visitors will vary in direct ratio to the size of the house. A reduction in
size from a central type of plan will involve the elimination of separate
private family rooms, in which case it is desirable that the bedrooms in some
cases should be specially adapted for use as bed-sitting-rooms.
As the house expands in size, and includes the almost continuous
presence of guests, the central hall with its adjoining rooms become more
public in their character, so that separate suites of rooms may be required
for family and guests, while the servants' quarters become correspondingly
increased and subdivided. These large houses, however, are not possible
for the average man ; and these and the labourer's cottage represent the
extremes of a scale of building of which the central type is the house of
average size for more than which few should seek, and which it should be
the triumph of the architect to make as perfect as restricted conditions
may admit.
16
CHAPTER THREE
THE HALL
The room we came into was indeed the house, for there was nothing but it
on the gound floor, but a stair in the corner went up to the chamber or loft
above.
It was much like the room at the Rose, but bigger ; the cupboard better
wrought, and with more vessels on it, and handsomer. Also the walls, instead
of being panelled, were hung with a coarse loosely-woven stuff of green worsted,
with birds and trees woven into it.
There were flowers in plenty stuck about the room, mostly of the yellow
blossoming flag or flower-de-luce, of which I had seen plenty in all the ditches,
but in the window near the door was a pot full of those same white poppies I
had seen when I first woke up ; and the table was all set forth with meat and
drink, a big salt-cellar of pewter in the middle, covered with a white cloth.
" A Dream of John Ball." WILLIAM MORRIS.
EFORE considering the hall in the modern house it is
necessary to return to the most primitive form of plan, when
the house itself was the hall and served for every function of
the domestic life. It was there the family cooked and ate
their food. It was there they talked. And when night
came it was on its rush-strewn floor that they slept.
Gradually, however, as civilisation advanced, special cells were developed
from this unicellular type of plan, each adapted for its special function. And
so the original simple organism became complex, and, as each cell became
differentiated, the hall lost one by one its functions. There were parlours
for talking, bedrooms for sleeping, dining-room for eating, drawing-room
for withdrawing ; and thus the hall itself became a superfluous and
unnecessary adjunct — its occupation gone.
And so, like the tail of the crab, it began to dwindle, or, at most, it
persisted like the buttons on the back of a coat, as a useless part of the plan,
merely serving to connect the other portions of the house.
And thus we find this atrophied form of the hall in the shape of the
narrow lobby with the staircase in it, which even in the smallest villa is still
dignified by the ancient title. In modern times the revolt against the sordid
ugliness of the Victorian house led those who aimed at re-creating beauty in
domestic surroundings to turn with an enthusiasm which was almost passion-
ate to the study of the earlier types of plan, where the hall played such
an important part. And so, amidst other features and details of the past,
the hall became again a somewhat notable feature in the plan, and was
considered almost an essential adjunct to the artistic house.
In the large house, where economic conditions of planning may give way
to the fancy of the individual, this revival of the hall may perhaps be
justified, and a sitting-room may well be sacrificed for the sake of a fine focus
to the plan; but in the smaller houses, where every inch of space must
be made the most of, such a hall was a somewhat expensive luxury, though,
inasmuch as it is the mark of the modern mind to be incapable of conceiving
c i?
HOUSES AND GARDENS
beauty except apart from usefulness, the hall in this connection helped to
give what is considered "artistic character " to a house. It was at least useless
enough for that ! In nearly all cases the hall so revived was essentially a
passage room for the family, the servants and the visitors, and so whatever
functions it might have performed as an additional sitting-room were lost.
With its numerous doors, its open staircase and gallery, it was draughty and
comfortless. And yet this revival of the hall, in spite of its obvious draw-
backs and its practical uselessness, seemed to point to some dissatisfaction
with the type of plan blindly evolved under economic conditions. In such
an evolution it is not necessarily the fittest which survives, but only the
fittest which man is capable of achieving step by step in an empirical way.
It has been shown how by such a process, the house from a single room
became gradually subdivided into a number of boxes connected by the
dwarfed remains of the original room which now fulfilled the only function
left to it and became a passage merely.
It has also been shown how such a house lacks coherence and consistency,
and in the smaller houses how it leads to cramped conditions. Advance in
planning no longer takes the form of a blind evolution ; for the modern
architect, with his essentially modern historical sense, looks back on the
houses of the past, and consciously studies the plan of the modern house
so that it shall be adapted for the real needs of its occupants.
And his first step is to revive the hall, but to revive it with a difference.
It is to be a room where the family can meet together — a general gathering-
place with its large fireplace and ample floor space. It must no longer be a
passage, and the staircase must either be enclosed or banished from it
altogether. Whether it is called hall, houseplace, or living room, some such
apartment is a necessary feature as a focus to the plan of the house.
Of all the functions which such a room originally possessed the last to
go was the function of feeding ; and even when it became desirable for the
ladies to retire to their withdrawing room, and privacy in sleeping apartments
was felt to be essential, the hall still remained a dining hall, and as such
it might well remain in the modern house, where the function of dining
is still the central and typical feature of the domestic ritual ; for home life,
even if conducted on the most approved principles of plain living and high
thinking, is still to a large extent, it must be confessed, a question of meals.
The family may or may not meet to talk or to study, but it is almost
universally the custom to meet to eat. And so, to put the matter in another
way, the central room may be obtained by an enlargement of the dining-
room in the ordinary house and by a corresponding reduction in the other
apartments.
But this reduction in some cases will make these secondary rooms some-
what small if they are entirely self-contained, and so it is further suggested
that those which do not demand a strict division from the hall should be
divided from it by folding or sliding doors, or even by curtains, so that they
share in its spaciousness and appear rather as recesses than rooms claiming a
separate individuality. If it is considered desirable that dining should not be
18
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
the central function of the hall, the dining-room may form a recess which
will be described later on. The process, in short, involves an examination of
the evolution of the house, and consists in substituting a partial for a
complete differentiation from the hall in cases where the functions of cells
make it possible and desirable.
It is felt that to merely reduce the various special rooms to their
minimum size and then to add a hall or living-room is not only expensive in
that it adds to the already large number of special rooms yet another room,
but that this room, so added, being deprived of all its functions by the special
rooms, hardly justifies its existence as a dominant note in the plan. The
term living-room for such an apartment is misleading ; for life in the home is
composed of so many functions, and when these are all provided for by
separate compartments the hall or living-room must necessarily dwindle
away. By retaining, therefore, those original functions of the hall which do
not demand a complete isolation from it, either in the hall itself or where
means allow in the form of recesses, the hall regains its ancient place and
constitutes to a great extent the house.
It is only in the large house, indeed, that the spacious hall may still
justify itself, although it still remains a passage. Here, as in the hotel,
it constitutes an expansion of the route plan of the house, where one may
observe, as it were, the full current of the household life. It bears much the
same relation to the private rooms as the busy market does to the homes of
the people who meet there.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE DINING ROOM
I entered the door, and started at first with my old astonishment with which
I had woke up, so strange and beautiful did this interior seem to me, though it
was but a pothouse parlour.
A quaintly carved sideboard held an array of bright pewter pots and dishes
and wooden and earthen bowls ; a stout oak table went up and down the room,
and a carved oak chair stood by the chimney-corner, now filled by a very old man
dim-eyed and white-bearded. That, except the rough stools and benches on
which the company sat, was all the furniture. The walls were panelled roughly
enough with oak boards to about six feet from the floor, and about three feet of
plaster above that was wrought in a pattern of a rose stem running all round the
room, freely and roughly done, but with (as it seemed to my unused eyes)
wonderful skill and spirit. On the hood of the great chimney a huge rose was
wrought in the plaster and brightly painted in its proper colours.
" A Dream of John Ball." WILLIAM MORRIS.
F we assume the case of a family who meet in the evenings in
one large room with its comfortable fireside, and adjourn to a
separate room for dinner, high tea, or supper, or whatever
form the evening meal may assume, where a certain degree of
economy in labour and fuel is necessary, it becomes undesirable
to light a fire in the dining-room, which is only used for a short period.
In many cases the difficulty is met by using the dining-room as a sitting-room
in the evening, and for this purpose it is not always adapted. The dining-
table is usually unnecessarily large, and the available floor space is reduced
to a narrow strip round this table, and this, again, is further restricted by
the sideboard and the chairs. And so a chain of circumstances may have
driven the unfortunate owner of the suburban house to spend his evenings
inexorably wedged between the dining-table and the fire. In the whole
space covered by the roof and enclosed by the walls of his house there is
room enough, if thoughtfully disposed, to afford him a more spacious
setting for life than this. The thoughtless application of an obsolescent
tradition has, in fact, ended in his being pushed into a corner by
insistent and triumphant furniture ; and there for the present we may
leave him.
In the smaller types of house it may be, first of all, considered how far it
is desirable to use the central hall as a dining-room, or, in other words, to
make the dining-room large enough to serve as a hall or houseplace as well.
This enlargement of the room will reduce considerably the main objection to
such a scheme, and the lingering odours of the food will not be so much in
evidence as in a small room.
By following an ancient usage, the table may be of the trestle or gate type,
and may then be removed when not required and placed against the wall. But
the arrangement which seems to meet the case most satisfactorily is the intro-
duction as an appendage to the hall of a dining recess, of which several
examples are given in the plans illustrated.
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
When the dinner is being laid the curtains which screen the recess from
the room may be drawn across the opening, the table being laid from the small
serving-room adjoining the dining recess, and so it is not necessary for the
servant to pass through the hall at all. When the dinner is ready one may
imagine the curtains drawn, displaying the table bright with dainty glass and
flowers, lighted by a central hanging lamp or candles against the dark back-
ground or the seats. And so, apart from the obvious practical advantages,
the effect would be far more artistic than the ordinary arrangement of the
dining-table, which lacks focus, and from any point of view hardly composes
pictorially. There would be something also specially charming from the dimly
lighted hall, in the effect of the suddenly parted curtains, and that suddenly
revealed brightness of glass and silver. Not only is an internal effect gained
in this way, which is more interesting than the ordinary arrangement of the
dining-table, but everything may be worked with a minimum amount of labour
and with that quiet orderliness which may have been felt to be an impossibility
in the cramped conditions of the small house. The position of the recess
would be such as to allow of ample ventilation, and the serving would be done
from the front unoccupied side of the dining-table, while, if on special occa-
sions the recess proved too small to accommodate the guests, it might be
supplemented by an additional table in the hall.
In seeking so to satisfy the claims of the imagination as well as the
practical needs, one is tempted to take a step further in the process, and to
dream of a table thus arranged, further adorned with piles of luscious fruit
and nuts, rather than with steaming joints.
Vegetarianism, in a meat-consuming world, is yet for most of us a counsel
of perfection. It is only those cast in heroic mould who can accept what Mrs.
Earle, in her fascinating book, describes as " servants' cheese " as a substitute
for tempting dishes. The non-meat eater at the board is in much the same
position as the non-cannibal at a feast of " long pig ;" but as it has been possible
to wean the cannibal from preying on his fellow-man, so it may also be pos-
sible to wean the civilised man from devouring his fellow-animal, and the
dining-table of the future household will no longer be disfigured by the family
joint, or the streets of the future town by the butcher's shop.
In the further development of the dining-room as a separate apartment, it
may appear as a room adjoining the hall, and preferably connected with it by
a wide doorway. It should be so placed that service can be effected from the
kitchen without passage through the other parts of the house. If it is still
occasionally used as a sitting-room, a recessed fireplace is a desirable feature,
especially when the room is not very large. The fire will not then scorch the
backs of those seated at the table, and an ample space will be provided for a
fireside circle.
Professor Kerr has insisted that a dining-room should be of northward
aspect, and he has characterised a dining-room with a southern aspect as "oven-
like." This dictum is largely due to the tradition of over-windowing rooms,
which is still so much practised, for if the south dining-room is oven-like, all
other southern rooms demand the same description. This matter will be
21
HOUSES AND GARDENS
pursued further when the windows of the house are specially considered ; but
this objection to the south dining-room is considerably modified in a house
where the windows are of the horizontal rather than the vertical type, and
where, while large enough to admit ample light, they are not so large as to
make the room susceptible to every change in the external temperature.
Modern science has shown that sunlight is the great health-giver and germ
destroyer, and few rooms should be deprived of it.
A northward dining-room seems not unreasonable in large houses, where
the number of other apartments confine its uses to luncheon and dinner
merely.
THE DINING HATCH
Many objections have reasonably been made to the ordinary type of hatch
between a dining-room and the kitchen premises. It often affords a passage
for sounds, smells, and draughts, and also demands the services of two servants
for its use. These difficulties may, however, be got over by making it in the
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form of a good-sized cupboard, having doors opening into the dining-room,
and a little side door opening into a passage adjoining the kitchen premises or
a pantry. The plan sketched here shows how this may be arranged. In such
a cupboard a great many of the table appointments would be permanently kept,
while the whole of the dishes containing the food for a course would be placed
in it from the side door. The servant would then enter the dining-room, and
from the cupboard doors at the side of the fireplace the dishes, &c., would be
removed and placed on the table. In many cases such an arrangement would
involve a considerable saving of labour.
If the cupboard were made in two parts, as shown in the sketch, the lower
part might then be devoted to the coal and wood for the dining-room fire,
which would be put in from the side door.
22
CHAPTER FIVE
THE DRAWING ROOM
HE title of "drawing-room" is perhaps a little misleading
in view of the uses of the modern apartment called by this
name. It was used originally as a withdrawing room for
the ladies from the revelry of the dining hall, and this
traditional usage still lingers. But since it was given its
original title, the other members of the family have also been allotted
their withdrawing rooms, and the name as applied to-day is hardly
sufficiently distinctive. It will be better to think of it as the ladies' or
mistress's room, just as the study is the master's room, and it is here that the
mistress of the house receives visitors, as it is in the study that the master
receives his. Inasmuch, however, as it is usually the mistress who presides
over the social functions of the house, it is the drawing-room which becomes
essentially the apartment for the reception of visitors. Its size and relative
importance on the plan will depend largely on the extent to which the
reception of visitors is practised by the family. It may safely be assumed
that in most cases this will vary directly with the size of the house, and
that those whose means are limited will not be prepared to entertain on an
extensive scale.
To begin with the smallest kind of house, it may first be desirable to
consider under what circumstances the drawing-room may be omitted
altogether. The complete conception of a normal house plan would allot to
each member of the family group, besides a share in the common room
or hall, two private apartments, a bedroom and a sitting-room. The next
reduction in the plan would be to substitute for these a single apartment —
the bed-sitting-room. Let us assume then that the bedroom of the mistress
of the house is so placed and so arranged that it is adapted for use as a sitting
room. It may possibly, under these circumstances, be placed on the ground
floor. As such, if properly planned, it might still to a certain extent be used
as a private reception room. But how far is the hall adapted for the
reception of visitors in such a household ? It may be assumed that the
master will be engaged during the day, either in his own room or at
his business, and that the children will either be in the nursery or school-
room or at school. During the whole day then the hall remains un-
occupied ; and there seems to be no reason why, except on special occasions,
it should not be used as a reception room. It is by such deliberate
concessions that the smallest kind of house can still retain its spaciousness,
and there is no reason in clinging to the cramped drawing-room simply
because somewhere in the remote past our ancestors were unduly merry
over their wine.
The next step in the house where economic conditions are not quite so
rigorous will be the consideration of the drawing-room as partially differen-
tiated as a recess or appendage to the hall. This rudimentary treatment is to
be found in the old Scotch cottages, where the working end of the single room
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
was called the butt and the reception end the ben, and where a visitor was
invited to " come ben."
It helps to preserve that wholeness of the plan which is so helpful in
securing beauty in the home. Such a form of drawing-room I prefer to call
the " bower," which admirably suggests its daintiness of treatment, and later
on will be found an example illustrated and described. Open as it is to the
hall it shares in its spaciousness, and in the warmth of the central fire, and its
occupants do not feel that sensation of confinement which makes the small
room so oppressive. It bears indeed the same relation to the hall as the
verandah or garden room does to the outside world.
It has already been pointed out that the hall itself during the hours of
the more formal calls will probably be unoccupied, and so the visitors in the
bower need not be entertained in a separate apartment, while those more
intimate friends who may pay a later visit require no isolation from the
family circle in the hall.
In the larger establishment the drawing-room may be considerably increased
in size, though the wholeness of the plan may still be retained by the use of
sliding doors dividing it from the hall, giving on special occasions a large
apartment. Or again it may become specialised as a reception room, so
constantly used that it no longer fulfils its function as a private sitting-room
for the mistress of the house. And so a boudoir is added to the plan for this
purpose, and in special cases the germ of the bower develops into a series or
state reception rooms, till the whole establishment becomes given up to the
guests, and the family take refuge in a private suite of apartments.
CHAPTER SIX
THE STUDY
AVING considered the mistress's withdrawing room from the
central hall, we must now deal with the master's withdrawing
room — the study or "den." In the first instance, considering
the smallest kind of house, to what extent, it may be asked,
is this a necessary extension of the plan ? To the average
occupant of the small house, who spends his days away from home and
his evenings in the room occupied by the family, the study is not always
necessary — and would probably be seldom used. It would be, at any rate,
worth giving up to secure a central apartment of ample size. If we
assume a house already shorn of its drawing-room, with the bedroom of its
mistress appropriated as partial sitting-room, where shall the master of the
house betake himself on those occasions when he desires privacy and solitude ?
With the special retreats already provided for the other members of the
household he may possibly claim the hall itself on these occasions, but the
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
most suitable position for his retreat seems to be in the attics. Here a pic-
turesque and attractive room can be formed with little expense. With a good
roof, boarded and felted under the tiles, such a room will not be greatly
affected by extremes in external temperature, and it will be sufficiently remote
to ensure him an absolute quiet.
If, however, the study adjoins the hall, it may be separated from it by a
solid wall, and possibly by double doors. It is in the development of the
master's room that the special plan chiefly consists. For the literary or
scientific man it will require a complete isolation from noise, and its constant
use will justify the appropriation on its behalf of a somewhat greater portion
of the house space than would otherwise be allotted to an individual member
of the family group. For the artist it will expand into a studio, for the medical
man into a consulting room, and perhaps a waiting-room, with their separate
entrance. In the case of the artist, especially when a somewhat large room
is desirable as a studio, under economic restrictions the central hall may per-
form this function during the day, when the other members of the family are
engaged either in their own special retreats or outside the house, and thus this
central hall will become the family room in the evening.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE CHILDREN'S ROOMS
HE full complement of children's rooms required for the
family will, besides the sleeping apartments, consist of three
— the day-nursery for the younger children, the schoolroom
and playroom for their elders. It is unfortunate that
incomes do not vary directly with the size of families, and so
the streets of a town often present the anomalous condition of large
houses occupied by small families and small houses overcrowded with
large ones. On a winter's night in London, for instance, one may
observe the tenements of the poor crowded to overflowing with their
occupants, while the streets, too, are occupied by those who have not even
these apologies for homes ; and yet there are thousands of empty rooms in the
larger houses untenanted.
Restricted means make it necessary to substitute a single apartment for
the night and day nurseries, in which case, if possible, the beds should be
placed in a recess. Or, again, a single room may fulfil the functions of play-
room and schoolroom. More rigorous conditions will demand that the elder
children prepare their lessons in the hall, and will deprive the children of their
private apartment, as it has already deprived the parents of theirs. It is still
maintained, however, that these successive deprivations should be faced in the
reduction of the plan, rather than the household be cramped by making the
D 25
HOUSES AND GARDENS
house consist of a number of small boxes, and in these cases its members
should fall back on the bedroom for occasional use as a sitting-room. In many
cases a portion of the roof-space affords a place for the children's playroom,
and the form and position of the attic is very well adapted for this use. The
children can make as much noise as they like without disturbing the other
members of the family, and it is easy to adapt the structural timbers of the
roof to support a swing and other furnishings of the gymnasium. A children's
room on the ground floor may have its separate entrance to the garden
through a sunny verandah, which will enable them to keep as much as possible
in the open air.
It may be well to reconstruct our conception of the home and to consider
it not so much a place for the reception of visitors as for the rearing of children ;
and in its planning the inclusion of at least one large room will be of the
greatest benefit to the health of their bodies and minds. In houses where
circumstances do not allow of ample accommodation for special children's
rooms, it is urged that the central apartment should become to a great extent
a place for their work and play.
It is no part of the scheme of this book to discuss the planning of
schools, but it is so intimately connected with my present subject that I hope
to be excused a brief digression. The private school is too often a building
planned, and not well planned, for a house, and rooms intended for
occupation by members of an average family are overcrowded with
children. In Board schools special rules govern the planning and limit
the occupants of its rooms, but in the average school no such rules are
enforced or observed.
But even in the Board school an excessive zeal for light and air has led to
an unnecessary expanse of windows, so that its rooms are subjected to every
variation of the external atmosphere, and can neither be readily warmed in
winter or cooled in summer. In warm fine weather children should be
taught in the open air in sunny verandahs or garden-rooms. In winter they
should be able to feel really indoors in the school, and not confronted
with the glare of large walls of glass. Light and air they should have in
plenty from windows of reasonable size placed in right positions ; but an
excessive expanse of window area, while it does not materially increase the
light, destroys the whole function of a room as a shelter from external
conditions.
26
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE KITCHEN AND OFFICES
"HE planning of the kitchen premises, especially in small
houses, is a subject which does not always receive the atten-
tion it deserves. In the early part of the nineteenth century
the kitchen premises, even in country houses, were commonly
placed in an ill-lighted basement, and the house was planned
with a callous indifference to the great question of labour saving.
But the growing scarcity of servants, as well as the growth of democratic
ideas, have led in recent years to a more careful consideration of the working
of the house. It is now usual to place the kitchen premises on the ground-
floor level, and where this is difficult, as in town houses, the basement is
better lighted and provided with a lift. For the house of average size it is
not desirable either to cramp or to unduly extend the kitchen premises.
They should be the best size for their purpose, and the multiplication of
offices, apart from the question of expense in building, means so much the
more to clean and keep in order. The fittings of a first-class yacht might
well be studied to show what can be done in a limited space ; and although a
more liberal space may be allowed in the house, all contrivances which make
for compactness and simplicity are worthy of study.
In the smallest houses in this country it is usual to provide a kitchen
which is the cooking-room and sitting-room for its one or two servants,
adjoining which is the scullery ; and these two apartments, often both very
small, form the main portion of the kitchen premises. In modern American
plans for small houses it is quite usual to combine kitchen and scullery into
one apartment. The English tradition in this respect dates from the period
of insanitary sinks, and the scullery was justly regarded as a place to be
severely isolated on account of its offensive odours. But fitted with its
white-glazed sink, its white-tiled dado, and its pipes properly disconnected
and exposed, the well-ventilated and well-lighted modern scullery may in the
small house at least, form a recess in the kitchen, and thus add to the
simplicity of the plan. Besides kitchen and scullery, the small house should
contain at least a good pantry, larder, coal store, and servants' w.c., all
compactly and conveniently arranged — the pantry, with its shelving of
scrubbed deal — the larder, with its slate shelves and ventilation of wire gauze,
the coal store, large enough to contain a winter supply of coals if possible,
and the w.c., with its door opening into the open air. While the kitchen
proper, which is not also a sitting-room, should generally have a northern
exposure, in the small house its uses suggest a compromise, and a more
cheerful aspect is desirable. South-east may be recommended, and, assuming
that it is not over-windowed, its temperature will not be unduly influenced by
exterior conditions. The larder should face north, and not open ofF the
kitchen, and the kitchen premises as a whole should be placed near enough to
the living-room for convenience of service, and yet be completely isolated,
so that even in the small house the noise and smell from the kitchen should
27
HOUSES AND GARDENS
not penetrate to the sitting-rooms. Although thin partitions may be used
between certain rooms, the division between the sitting-rooms and kitchen
premises should be at least of nine-inch brickwork. In the internal finishing
of the kitchen premises, that structural finish which has been suggested for
certain portions of the living-rooms will be specially appropriate. Such
superficial finishings as varnished sanitary wall papers and linoleums may be
suitable for the house built in the usual modern way, but tiles and the liberal
use of whitewash are better. It may be desirable in the sitting-room-kitchen
that the floor should be of wood. If so, the boards should be laid on
concrete with no spaces for insects. Red tiles or stone are, however, better
materials for the floor, and with a few rugs or mats will not have a cold
appearance.
For the walls there is nothing quite so cleanly as white-glazed Dutch tiles.
The harsh glaring tiles made by English firms have the same forbidding glare
which sheet glass has, while the Dutch, with their soft uneven glaze, have
an inviting and homely appearance. When means will allow, the lower part
of the walls at least should be finished in this way, with whitewash above.
For the woodwork green paint varnished and flatted is recommended. White
paint shows marks too readily to be quite suitable for kitchen premises,
or the woodwork may be in white wood specially selected and left unpainted.
The tiled treatment of the walls should be extended as far as possible in the
kitchen premises; but, where it is unadvisable, whitewashed brickwork will
form the best finish for larders, pantries, &c., although, if the house is of
stone, it will be desirable to plaster or cement the walls. For the ceilings
whitewashed plaster or, where the joists are shown, whitewashed woodwork left
rough from the saw will be the best finish. All pipes in the kitchen premises
should be left exposed, and neither buried in plaster or concealed in casings.
Everything should be capable of easy cleansing, and there should be as few
corners as possible to collect dust and dirt. Without mentioning any special
make of kitchen range, I should recommend that this important apparatus
should be of a type which admits the use of the open or closed fire, and
which has an arrangement for raising or lowering the fire as required.
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CHAPTER NINE
THE BEDROOMS
HE position and size of the bedrooms if, as is usually the case,
they are placed on an upper floor, will depend largely on the
disposition of the ground floor. This, however, should not
result in a haphazard arrangement, but ground floor and first
floor should react on each other until an arrangement is arrived
at which fulfils the conditions of plan required by each. The bed should
be placed in such a position that it is free from draughts, and not
exposed when the door is opened. It is desirable where possible that the
bed should be placed in a recess, so that the room can, if required, be
adapted as a bed-sitting-room. It is also an advantage, especially in a
room where windows on two sides are possible, that the bedroom should
have two windows — one of which, long and low, and provided with a window
seat, may be left unobstructed. The other may be placed in such a position
and at such a height that it will light the dressing-table which stands against it.
Or where the windows are in one wall only, the dressing-table may stand in the
space between two windows, neither of which is thus obstructed.
The fireplace will not take the dominant place in the plan which it enjoys in
the sitting-room, and the bed instead will form the focus of the room. The
fire, too, will be of a type which can be kept in all night without attention,
and for this purpose the fire on the hearth is the best. For the average family
a minimum of three bedrooms will be required. In the absence of a special
dressing-room, a recess in the parents' bedroom may answer this purpose, or it
may be arranged that the master of the house should use the bathroom as a
dressing-room. In addition to the parents' room, there will also be a boy's
bedroom and girl's bedroom, neither of which need be very large, and besides
these a night nursery and a day nursery may be required, with one or more
spare bedrooms. If a single apartment, specially planned, is used for a night
and day nursery, and the spare bedroom not considered justifiable under
restricted conditions, the requirements of the family can be met by a house
containing four bedrooms.
In addition there will also be the one or more bedrooms required for
servants. This it will generally be most convenient to place on the attic floor,
and where the other attic space is not used a servant's attic can be arranged by
dropping the kitchen floor a few steps below the general level, with a room
over it correspondingly lowered, and thus an attic may be gained without raising
the whole roof. It is generally desirable, however, to leave a certain amount
of space in the roof which can be developed as bedrooms if required, not only
to meet subsequent requirements of the family, but in the event of the house
changing hands to admit of its accommodation being readily capable of being
increased to a certain extent. This is the more desirable in special houses built
for small families, which might not otherwise be readily adapted for normal
requirements.
Although it is usual and generally convenient to place the bedrooms on an
29
HOUSES AND GARDENS
upper floor, where the conditions of planning suggest the desirability of one or
more bedrooms on the ground floor, it will be wise not to let custom stand in
the way of convenience. Bedrooms on the ground floor are specially adapted
for partial use as sitting-rooms, and where the bed is placed in an alcove or
recess, and screened during the day by a curtain, the room itself may open
with folding-doors on to the hall and add to the general floor space. The fur-
niture of the bedroom in this case would be of a special type — the dressing-
table and washstand being enclosed with doors on the recessed portion, for the
bed may be made large enough to include the appointments of the toilet.
CHAPTER TEN
THE BATHROOM
1
HE old country-houses of England can generally be adapted,
without doing violence to their structure, to the require-
ments of modern life ; and, with a few slight sacrifices of
material comfort, it would be possible for a modern family
to live in comparative ease in an old-world manor-house.
In only one respect would it be wanting. It would contain no bathroom,
and none of those sanitary appliances which the smallest modern villa can
boast. It has been said that cleanliness is next to godliness, but historic
evidence would seem to show that cleanliness has hitherto been the mark of
the ungodly, and that it is only when man has ceased to concern himself
with the things of the soul that he turns his attention to the care of
the body.
In the development of the modern bathroom there is therefore no pre-
cedent in the tradition of the house, and in the average modern dwelling it
will be well that the suggestion of spotless cleanliness and practical efficiency
should be its salient characteristics. The floor and lower part of the walls
of tiles, the bath and basin of white enamel with no pipes enclosed, with no
dark corners to harbour dust and dirt, and the art of the bathroom as
expressed in useless and dirt-concealing patterns rigorously excluded — such a
scheme will, perhaps, represent the best that is possible for the average
household. Under stricter economic conditions the floor will perhaps be
covered with a plain linoleum, a cork carpet, and whitewash take the place
of the tiled surface of the wall. The bathroom should be so placed that
the plumbing is reduced to a minimum, and the whole system is as simple
and compact as possible, free from possible damage by frost, and capable of
repair in all its parts without interference with the structure of the house.
The quality of mystery has its artistic value in the house, but in the matter
of plumbing it will probably only be appreciated by the plumber. In
connection with the bathroom in the small house it is generally possible to
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
arrange a linen closet, which contains the hot-water cylinder, which serves the
double purpose of keeping the linen dry and the bathroom warm. In a
slightly larger house in addition to this general bathroom there may be
a bath and basin fitted up in the master's dressing-room, and fitted wash-
stands with hot and cold water in the bedrooms help materially to reduce
the labour of the house. The housemaid's closet with its slop sink and
space for pails and brooms, is also an important feature in the house. In
larger houses each bedroom or suite of bedrooms will be provided with
its separate bathroom, and here it will often be admissible to indulge in a
bath-room which may possess some of the beauties of the classic baths.
In the house for an art-lover illustrated a scheme for a bathroom is shown
in which a circular central bath lined with mosaic is surrounded by a marble
pavement. The bathroom itself is octagonal in form, each angle being
formed by a column, between which niches in the walls give spaces for special
baths. The roof of blue mosaic represents a mimic firmament, from the
centre of which showers descend at will. The whole of this interior
represents an arrangement of broad slabs of marble, of which the most
prominent is the green Irish Connemara, which, with its deep tones of varied
green, seems to suggest the still depths of some mountain pool. To
complete the colour scheme one must imagine the deep green tones of this
marble relieved by the brightness of the silver fittings and the opalescent
tints of the Norwegian midnight sun marble which appears to contain all
the hues of a sunset.
The swimming-bath is a luxury which might well form a feature in the
large modern house, and, if circumstances allow of the use of marble, mosaic
and stained glass arranged in a definite colour scheme it would be possible
to realise a dream of the enchanted palaces of fairy land. The bath itself,
lined with mosaic of green, blue, purple, and gold, would appear as a little
inland sea shimmering with colour. Around it would stand the white
columns which support the blue dome, in which golden stars lean over the
water.
Broad spaces of white marble would cover the surrounding walls, warmed
to an opalescent beauty by the coloured lights from the stained -glass
windows, and set with coloured marbles, used as jewels are in the white
setting. In the effects of artificial light one may imagine a dim yellow moon
reflected in the purple water, which would appear as that sea over which
Goorelka sailed in her cockle-shell " enchanted even to the very bed."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE MUSIC-ROOM
HE principles of acoustics are so little understood that it is
difficult to advance any definite suggestion as to the best
size or shape for a music-room. In most houses it is the
drawing-room which usually fulfils this function ; and, when
crowded with furniture and draperies, the result is not usually
satisfactory, as the sound becomes muffled and choked. Amongst other
advantages of sparse furnishing and uncarpeted floors may be included the
appropriateness of such surroundings in a room which is used for music. A
room specially designed for music should have few draperies and rugs and
no carpet. Panelling is the best covering for its walls, and the best position
for the room is probably one where it is surrounded by other rooms. Thus,
if it is on the ground floor it would be improved if placed over a cellar. In
a large music-room a stage may be introduced with good effect, and this
isolated floor for the piano will often improve the sound.
In some cases a gallery to a hall may be used for music, and this traditional
feature may meet modern requirements in the most satisfactory way. It will
be especially appropriate on festive occasions, and the position of the per-
formers will help to give a quality of mystery to the music, which may add
greatly to its effect.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE BILLIARD-ROOM
N houses which do not possess a separate billiard-room one
may sometimes find the billiard table placed in the hall.
This arrangement, unless the hall is of considerable size, can
hardly be recommended, because not only is the floor space
much restricted where an impression of ample space is much
needed, but the central and dominant position of the billiard table in the
plan suggests that the practice of the game is the essential domestic function.
Such an arrangement would be suitable only for a professional billiard player,
and the effect might then be emphasised by the modern Jacobean mantelpiece
ingeniously adapted to serve as a billiard marker.
Much may be urged, on the contrary, in favour of an arrangement of plan
which enables a recess in the hall to be treated as a billiard-room. Here a
game of billiards may be indulged in by visitors, or members of the family,
without sequestration in a separate compartment of the house, and the
dislocation of the social circle thus involved.
The space devoted for the billiard table becomes added to the hall ; and
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DESIGN FOR STENCILLING
HOUSES AND GARDENS
thus, without detriment to the general character of the hall, it becomes more
spacious than if the billiard-room were planned as a separate apartment, and
the players enjoy the advantage of the central fireplace. Where a full-sized
table is used, this arrangement will only be entirely successful when the hall is
sufficiently large to admit of the billiard recess taking a secondary place.
Such an arrangement is shown in the plan and photographs of " Blackwell."
In the house described as " Trecourt " the billiard-room is shown as a
secondary hall, large enough to admit of ample floor space apart from that
required by the table and the players, and with a wide ingle fireplace under
the gallery, which forms one end of the open timber roof.
In a more economic scheme it will often be possible to arrange a billiard-
room either in the basement or roof space. In the former case the billiard-
room will be more accessible, but not well lighted, unless, as in the plan of the
hillside house illustrated, the fall of the ground admits of window space.
This, however, will not be a great objection where billiard playing is an
evening pastime. In the roof there will, on the contrary, be ample
opportunity for top light, but in the average house of two storeys or more
the use of the room will involve considerable climbing.
In these remarks on the billiard-room it is assumed that billiards is a game
merely, and not a serious pursuit. The man who takes his billiards seriously
will demand probably an isolated apartment for the billiard table. Inasmuch
as he will not be content to play only in the evening or amidst the disturbing
shadows cast by the side light from windows, it will be necessary that the
room should be so planned that it is possible to light it entirely from the roof
by means of a skylight, which should be the full size of the billiard table, and
immediately over it ; and the floor will be so constructed that the table is
incapable of the least degree of vibration. But in the average household it
will be enough if the billiard-room meets the not too stringent demands of
the casual player, and in this case it will not require that special treatment
which makes it unsuited for other uses. In its general treatment it is
suggested that a certain informal and easy going character is more suitable
than formality, and in its decoration the green of the cloth must be considered
as the starting point of the colour scheme. The treatment of the shades to
the light over the table gives opportunities of design in metal work, and the
table itself is capable of great variety of design.
33
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE GARDEN-ROOM
"HE success which has followed the open-air treatment of
consumption has led the modern world to realise the bene-
ficial effects of an outdoor life; for if it can strengthen the
body, and so enable it to throw off a disease apparently
curable by no other means, it must surely help to prevent the
healthy from contracting ailments. Human life, like plant life, flourishes
in sun and air and grows pale and anaemic when it is deprived of these.
And so the garden is conceived as an outdoor extension of the house, with
its sheltered apartments for sunshine or for shade.
But in our own inconstant climate it is not always possible to use the
garden entirely. It is desirable, for instance, that meals should be taken in
summer weather out of doors. But the constant removal of furniture alone
would make this difficult for the average household, and so the need of a wide
verandah or garden-room is increasingly felt. Here the necessary chairs and
table can be left out without damage from a passing shower, and a certain
degree of shelter be secured. On summer mornings breakfast in such a room
will have much of the charm of breakfast in the garden without its disad-
vantages, and in the evening it will be pleasant to sit there and enjoy the
prospect of the garden after a day perhaps spent perforce indoors. Such a
room should be planned to be free from draughts, and should face south if
possible. 1 1 should be wider than the ordinary type of verandah, so that it
can be used as a room. The garden adjoining it should be arranged so that
its most attractive vistas are commanded from the garden-room. It may
often be formed by an extension of the roof supported by posts, or it may be
included in the house plan and enclosed with arches.
A room so arranged will often be welcome even in wet weather, and
nothing but cold will make it untenable. It can be adapted for winter use by
the introduction of movable glass screens, and thus become a miniature
winter garden.
In some cases a similar feature may be included as an appendage to a
bedroom, and such an arrangement is specially desirable in a sick room.
34
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE STAIRCASE
N the planning of the staircase it is well that it should be in
scale with the rest of the house. In a small house it should
not be too extensive, but should represent the simplest and
easiest way of getting up stairs, and not necessarily a feature
in the effect of the interior.
It is not generally advisable to include an open staircase in a hall which is
used as a sitting-room, as it will often be a source of draughts, as well as
somewhat detracting from the privacy of the room. The staircase is really
part of the passage scheme of the house, and especially in cases where there
is no second stair it should be so placed that its use will not interfere with
privacy of the sitting-rooms. When placed in such a position, for instance, as
that shown in the house described as " Bexton Croft," it can be used by
servants and family without detracting from the privacy of the hall.
One of the great advantages of low-ceiled rooms, an advantage which is
not always recognised, is that it reduces and simplifies the staircase, and makes
unnecessary that long precipitous flight which is usually such a painful feature
in the loftily- ceiled villa. It is generally desirable that the staircase should be
broken up into short flights of steps with intermediate landings. Not only
does this improve the appearance of the stairs, but it also makes it easier of
ascent and less dangerous. There are probably few who have escaped from a
tumble down stairs at some early stage of their existence ; and in view of the
prevalence of this method of descent amongst children, the division of the
staircase into short flights is desirable. Besides the main staircase, smaller
special stairs may often be introduced for convenience of access to special
rooms. In the house previously referred to, such a small stair starts on the
ground floor, at the side of the drawing-room window-seat. Here a panel
opens by touching a spring, and this little stair affords a means of reaching the
little gallery overlooking the hall and the bedroom beyond, into which it opens
through a door which in the room appears as part of a fitment wardrobe.
In the " House for an Art-Lover," spiral staircases are introduced at the
angles of the building, which, besides affording a means of communication
between certain rooms, also gives access to the garden. Apart from their
practical uses, these little staircases help to give to a house a certain romantic
quality. Mere utility alone will never completely satisfy human demands in
the home. It is well that a house should be nicely adapted to its uses, but,
beyond such practical considerations, it should contain features which add to
its mystery and charm.
Something may here be noted as to the general significance of steps and
changes of level in the house. It may generally be stated that steps up to a
room, or to any feature in the house, conveys at once an impression of dignity
and importance. In the church such an impression is suggested by the steps
to the altar, and the front entrance of a building always gains in dignity if
approached in this way. On the other hand, what is gained in dignity is lost
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
in homeliness, a quality which is accentuated by downward steps. Those old
country cottages which one enters from a roadside, which is slightly above
the level of the floor, owe much of their charm to this slight change
of level.
Much of the artistic effect of changes of level in a house is due to the
corresponding changes it affords in the point of view ; and in stepping down
into a room from a higher level, from which one looks down on the interior,
an impression is gained which differs materially from the normal, and whatever
quality of homely comforts an interior may possess will be much accentuated
when approached from a higher level.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ACCOMMODATION FOR FAMILY PETS
5BS HMtfl ^-^ not aware tnat any sPecial modifications of plan have yet
US fail been made to meet the demands of the family pets. I do
iSc *1fil not suggest that tne ntting °f the ingle should include a
Bt sSI sPecial niche for a dog or cat, for such is the contrary nature
BtadiSS of these animals that it is doubtful whether such accommo-
dation would be appreciated or used. It is the same spirit which makes
them whine or scratch at a closed door which has been open five minutes
before and which must often be opened again in deference to a change of
plan in the movement of the cat or dog. In view of this erratic dis-
OUTSIDE
K
WALL
3-6"
PL A
position in these animals it might be reasonably suggested that a little
passage made in the thickness of a wall or chimney breast might be intro-
duced, provided with self-closing valves or doors hung from the upper edge.
This would allow free ingress and egress without draughts, and the
animals would soon learn how to push open these little doors.
36
HOUSES AND GARDENS
Such an arrangement in connection with a chimney stack might even be
made large enough to afford a sleeping place for a cat or dog, and its position
near the fire would make it warm and dry.
Such arrangements would probably appeal only to lovers of animals, but
I feel sure would be appreciated by those who are in the habit of keeping
family pets.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SOCIAL FUNCTIONS AND THEIR INFLUENCE
ON PLANNING
HE suitability of a house to the entertainment of guests
according to traditional methods seems to be the ruling idea
in modern planning, and the comfort of the family is often
sacrificed to this idea. While I quite recognise the import-
ance of this consideration in planning, for the average house
at any rate, the primary consideration should be the suitability of the
plan to meet the requirement of the daily routine of its occupants, and
its adaptability to social functions must be considered as a secondary
matter.
The three traditional forms of social functions to be considered are,
firstly, the afternoon " At home," secondly, the dinner party, and, thirdly,
the dance.
The first is a one-room function, demanding for its proper performance,
according to conventional usage, a good-sized drawing-room ; the second is
a two-room function, requiring a good-sized dining-room and drawing-room ;
and the third, while it also requires two rooms at least for its proper perform-
ance, also demands that one of these shall be of considerable size.
The difficulties of meeting the problem of making the house fulfil these
functions is not so great as at first appears, because the restricted income
which necessitates the small house also prevents the entertainment of visitors
on an extensive scale. While the drawing-room in its embryonic condition
as a recess in the hall may accommodate a few visitors to afternoon tea, the
hall might be used for this function on special occasions. While the dining
recess would only accommodate a few guests on a special occasion the hall
would become a dining-hall with the table in its centre. The ladies with-
drawing to the bower, and the men to the study, to meet again in the hall
after the table and its contents have been removed.
For the dance, the hall, with its gallery for the musicians, is specially
adapted— the supper being served in one of its recesses. It will thus be seen
that the type of plan suggested by the daily requirements of the family is
not ill-adapted for occasional festivities, and the possession of one large
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
central apartment will more than compensate for any failure to meet the
arbitrary conditions of conventional usage.
In less formal gatherings, such as family re-unions at Christmas for
instance, the central hall with its great open fireplace will meet the occasion
much better than the house designed as a row of boxes connected by a
passage. In the average house the accommodation required for the resident
governess, or for that singular anomaly, the paying guest, known in circles
less polite as the lodger, or for the occasional visitor staying in the house,
will not suggest any further modification of the plan than the inclusion of
a bed-sitting-room.
It is only in the larger houses where entertainment is practised on a
large scale that it necessarily modifies the plan. The central hall becomes
then the focus of a series of common rooms — the guests may be ac-
commodated in separate suites containing bedrooms, sitting-rooms, bath-
rooms, &c.
In some cases, the family may give up the whole house to the guests,
and so there may also be a private family suite.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE SOUL OF THE HOUSE
MALVOLIO. I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his opinion.
Twelfth Nighi.
HE greater part of the arguments used in support of the
reforms in house planning here suggested are designedly of a
somewhat utilitarian and practical nature. It is indeed doubt-
ful whether any other basis for an argument would be under-
stood in an age when the average man is radically though
perhaps unconsciously essentially utilitarian. But although it is held that
the house should be convenient and aptly fitted to its material functions,
it is but a mean thing if it does not express something of the aspirations
of the spirit of its builders, and indeed possess, as it were, a soul of its own.
It is a strange but incontrovertible fact that houses do so acquire a
personality. Some are so mean and sordid that while possessing all the
conveniences of modern life they seem to cast a blight over all around
them. To pass them unharmed it would seem necessary to " cut a pious cross
in the air ; " to live in them would be to one sensitive in such matters worse
than confinement in a prison cell. Others again are like mere husks, shallow
and empty, while some, and these chiefly old houses, survivals of the great
ages of building, thrill one at the first glance with a sense of their personal
charm. And as one enters and passes from room to room their deep and
38
HOUSES AND GARDENS
intense stillness seems eloquent with messages and blessings. What magic is
there in the mere putting together of wood and stone to so impress the soul,
and is it a small thing that we have lost that seeming miraculous gift ? Let
us never fall into the blindness of thinking of the modern house as a mere
matter of hot-water taps and patent kitchen ranges, or think we do wisely to
utterly disregard the possibilities of greatness that lies in mere building.
For houses and cottages once created are not merely arrangements of
materials to secure certain practical ends. They each and all develop, we know
not how, a personality which is either base or noble, and those who realise the
possibilities of expression in the building of a house will never approach the
matter lightly or irreverently. To him who creates a house is given a god-
like function which it should be his endeavour not to abuse. And how great
his triumph if as the reward of all his anxious labour it should be vouchsafed
him to achieve a dwelling which should prove to possess a soul worthy to be
ranked with the noble houses of the past !
A house too may possess that strange inscrutable quality of the True
Romance. Not shallow, showy, and pretentious as most modern mansions are,
but full of a still, quiet earnestness which seems to lull and soothe the spirit
with promises of peace. Such a house is the greatest achievement possible to
the art of man : better than the greatest picture, because it is not a dream alone,
but the dream come true — a constant daily influence and delight.
To illustrate this magical quality of spirit which buildings have the power
of retaining, one has only to consider the houses of the past. To understand
the true inwardness of the history of any period no written word can convey
such an intimate and convincing message as may be read from ancient build-
ings by those who know their language. I do not refer here to archaeological
lore, the mere cataloguing of mouldings and assignments of dates, though this
has its uses in so far as it brings the mind into constant and continuous contact
with the object of its attention, and so induces an attitude favourable to a
deeper kind of knowledge than can be expressed in words. For the ancient
building guards the heart of its mystery jealously, and reveals itself only to
those who approach it with due sympathy. And so the unbeliever is apt to
scoff" at an experience he does not share, and may consider impressions of the
past gained in this way misleading illusions.
And this view is apparently justified by the fact that such impressions lead
one in many cases to see the past through rose-coloured glasses — to idealise it
in comparison with modern vulgar life. Just as when death has severed a
friendship petty faults are forgotten, and we see in a true perspective the
essential spirit unobscured by baffling clouds, so it is with buildings which retain
no record of the superficial doings of their time, but only congeal in their
structure the deep music of the soul.
And so we may well conclude that in building a people is writing its
deepest history on the earth. Do you wish to estimate the sublimity and depth
of the Gothic devotional spirit ? You may find it writ large in our cathedrals,
or set forth in lesser but no less truthful characters in our village churches. I
say you may read it — it would perhaps be safer to affirm that you might, for
39
HOUSES AND GARDENS
the modern Churchman, with no faculty for deciphering the language of the
building committed to his care, defaces its ancient glories under the excuse of
restoration, with just the same kind of innocent indifference as the child who
burns a precious manuscript in the fire and claps its hands at the blaze.
the unsuspecting vicar expands with pleasurable delight over these devastating
restorations of his.
Or again, it you wish to understand the romantic spirit of ancient chivalry,
where will you find it so well inscribed as in the ancient Norman and
Edwardian castles ? And so on to our own times, each subtle change in the
time spirit is duly recorded in terms of bricks and mortar. The mellowing
and broadening of the somewhat narrow and intense Gothic spirit which took
place with that sudden influx of classic lore which gave England her golden
age — how well we find it inscribed in many an old manor and farm of the
period ! And then one may trace the gradual fading of that light till the chill
frosts of commerce and the machine made building such as we find it to-day.
Few things are indeed so strange as this thaumaturgic art of the builder.
He places stones in certain positions — cuts them in certain ways, and behold
they begin to speak with tongues — a language of their own, with meanings too
deep for words.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
FURNISHING
f AVING built a small house on the principles which have been
advocated, it would seem a relatively simple matter to obtain
the necessary movable furniture to complete its interior.
Already the house with its cupboards and seats will be partially
furnished, and the additional furniture required, being not
essential for effect but merely for use, will not include those unnecessary
articles, which are merely so many stumbling-blocks for the occupants.
Such furniture cannot be bought in shops any more than the kind of house I
have endeavoured to describe can be found ready built. The shops will
merely offer a choice between the ugly furniture made to meet the demands
of those as yet innocent of artistic cravings, and the " Art " furniture made
for those who are presumed to be better informed.
But the New Art as interpreted by the shops is more to be avoided than the
old ugliness. Whatever Art may be admitted to the house it must be
genuine Art and not Trade Art. The best way to secure a satisfactory result
in furnishing is to have the furniture made specially for its position — a few things
soundly and simply constructed which shall seem a part of the whole scheme.
In many parts of the country old furniture of a simple type — gate tables,
rush-bottomed chairs, bureaus, &c. — may be obtained at a very reasonable
40
HOUSES AND GARDENS
cost ; and such things, with a few special made furnishings which cannot be
obtained in this way, will always be at home in a house such as I have
described. This old furniture has a sort of human character about it ; and the
varied planes of its surfaces, with its strong construction and evidences of
careful leisurely work, make it inviting and homely. The modern " Art "
furniture bears testimony, on the contrary, that it is the work of a drilled
automaton. Its pretence to finish is a mere superficial deceptive smartness.
No human being ever loved or lingered over its completion, and its Art is the
bait held out to the purchaser as a substitute for real excellence of design or
manufacture.
In modern furniture all the charm which belongs to the imperfect efforts
of the hand of man, all the sympathy with material and carefulness of finish,
are replaced by this superficial mechanical perfection. The old furniture
stands against the wall at its ease. It is affable, generous and comely, but the
modern work is stiff and repellant. There is nothing personal or human
about it, and while its shallow smartness may be well enough for a room kept
for show, it will never seem quite at home in the rooms we live in.
To the man about to furnish perhaps the best advice is that contained in
the single word " Don't." Or at least he may be invited to pause and
consider. Furniture making and furniture selling, as now practised, is a
trade rather than an art, and the only artistic skill apparent is that evinced
by the salesman in inducing the public to believe that they must have things
which they can very well do without. The art of furnishing is perhaps best
understood by the Japanese, who have no furniture at all in their houses.
But in the Western World we have acquired the habit of sitting on chairs
and at tables, and a certain degree of furnishing is essential. The great fault
of nearly all modern rooms is that they are over-furnished, and the first step
in their reform would consist in removing all the unnecessary and cumbrous
furnishings which crowd floors and walls. There would then be sufficient
floor space for the use of the occupants, and the few furnishings carefully
disposed could be seen to the best advantage, while the domestic evolutions—
the turning out of rooms and the daily dustings and cleanings of furniture —
would be a simple matter.
The modern lady who wishes to achieve in her drawing-room an effect
which is " quite Japanese " fondly imagines she is doing so by accumulating
the greatest possible number of vases, fans and bamboo furniture. In the real
Japanese room how different is the aim of its occupant ! The walls and the
floor are alike bare, and there is nothing to distract the attention from the
single flower arrangement or picture which adorns the room. Or again, the
collector of the antique surrounds himself with a host of cabinets, tables and
chairs, and other pieces, and thinks in this way to recall the beauty of the Old
English apartments. But here again it is not realised that the furnishing of
these was really of the simplest, and the single contents of one modern house
would furnish a dozen houses in the old way. While, however, this custom
of over-furnishing may be tolerated in the mansion, in the contracted space
of the smaller houses, where space and means are alike limited, there is
F 41
HOUSES AND GARDENS
nothing to be urged in its defence. The custom has its origin in unchecked
acquisitiveness — the desire to possess merely for the sake of possessing things
which take our fancy and will help to furnish our rooms. Such a desire it
is the part of the salesman to foster and encourage ; and just as we find the
speculative builder pandering to the public demand for pretentious and com-
fortless buildings, so the furnishing firm strives to get them filled to over-
flowing with pretentious and comfortless furniture.
In the much-abused Early Victorian era, the furniture of the shops was
frankly and consistently ugly, and however repellant it was there was at least
no spurious art about it. Art as a modern trade term was happily not
invented. But just as the corruption of the best is always the basest, so the
modern art show-room has reached a depth unplumbed by the work which
preceded it. This spurious Trade Art with its canting catchwords follows
sedulously every step of the small band of serious workers in the Arts and
Crafts, with caricatures adapted and exaggerated to suit the public taste. If
occasionally it enrols amongst its designers an artist who produces really good
work it cannot refrain from producing a " line " of goods which are nearly
enough allied to his to deceive an easily gulled public, and so the last state is
worse than the first.
Real beauty of work, it cannot be too often insisted, can only be produced
by designers and workmen who are engaged primarily in their work for its
own sake. If it is done with money-making as a leading motive it must
necessarily become debased. In order to attract the public it is necessary that
furniture should aggressively intrude its claims to Art on the passer by, and
in the specimen rooms of the modern firm the art must all be underlined. In
such surroundings there is indeed no escape from this persistent appeal
Everything seems to pose and smirk, and Art is shrieked from every corner.
To turn from such surroundings to the showroom of real antique furniture
is to experience an intense sensation of relief. There is no superficial smartness
of trade finish here, but a welcome sense of leisured workmanship. The
measured tick of the grandfather's clock seems to set the key to the whole
effect, and the excellence of the furniture is of a reticent kind which does not
insist on recognition. It possesses in short that quality of repose which should
be the essential attribute of the home.
But it does not necessarily follow from this recognition ot the superiority
of old work to the New Art of the shops, that modern furniture should
consist of copies of old, or that all new designs are necessarily blatant and
vulgar. But the better class of modern work cannot be produced under the
conditions which obtain in the modern factory, but must be the result of
careful design and workmanship which shows a sympathetic treatment of
material. It must be the expression of convictions instead of mere interests,
and the questions " will it pay ? " or " will it sell ? " must be subordinated to
the inquiry as to whether it is good work or bad.
To the man who wishes to furnish nowadays, it is a little difficult to know
how to proceed, and more than a little difficult to avoid the various baits held
out to him by the enterprising manufacturer, and the result is often injudicious
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
purchases afterwards repented of. It must be remembered that what happens
to take the fancy in the showroom is not necessarily the thing which will
maintain its charm in daily life, and the very insistence of its appeal gives a
fair indication of its transient nature. The beauty ot furniture is to a great
extent a relative matter, and its fitness for a special place in a room will often
be a more important point than its intrinsic merits, which may be quite at
variance with its surroundings. And so it will be most desirable to have
furniture specially made to suit particular rooms, and so to form the finishing
touches of the scheme which begins with the structure of the house. There
should be no hiatus between house and furniture. Wherever the conditions
make it reasonable, the furniture should in the form of fitments constitute a
part of the building, and the movable furniture should seem a part of the
house, and not an alien importation.
Furniture, like everything else in the house, should be the best of its kind,
and it is better to have a first-class article of an inferior kind than a second-
class one of what claims to be a higher order, just as in building it is better
to have the best possible kind of cottage instead of the worst kind of
mansion.
The furniture of the shops often fails, because while it poses as artistic and
pretends to features and qualities which can only be obtained by the single
desire of the designer and workmen to achieve beauty, it is really at heart
entirely commercial, and produced under factory conditions which make the
Art of the workman impossible.
But there is a kind of furniture to be had which, frankly factory made, is
excellent of its kind. The kind of chair used for churches is an
example of this. There is no pretence here of " Art " finish. It bears
evidence that it is put together quickly and simply, and turned out in the
least possible time.
To French polish it, to put a little bit of carving or inlay on the back, to
add what is popularly supposed to be Art to it, would be to hopelessly
vulgarise it. It would become good enough for the suburban drawing-room
perhaps, but would be no longer good enough for the church. There are
several types of chair of this kind which are all excellent in their way. They
are made chiefly of ash, but often a piece of beech or some other wood is used,
and this casual combination of material is quite in character with its simple and
direct appeal of the whole. If furniture is to be turned out in factories, this
is how it should be made, with no affectation of arts and crafts.
In making special furniture for a house it must be recognised that it is
necessarily more expensive than furniture made by the dozen — -and in furnishing
under economic restrictions it is desirable to include as much as possible the
cottage antique, and the factory furniture described above. But if furnishing
is undertaken on the principle of omitting everything that is not actually
required, it will be possible to have a few things specially made, instead of a
multitude of articles not really required, and which cannot be said to be cheap
at any price.
In the making of furniture there are two principal methods of construction
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
in the joining of its woodwork. The simplest is that now used in making
packing-cases, the wood being joined by means of nails. The more complicated
is that in which the wood is joined by letting one piece into another by the use
of what are called mortices and tenons.
It is a foregone conclusion nowadays that the simplest way of doing a
thing is necessarily the worst way, and the nail in modern woodwork has been
considered a thing to be hidden. While in all other details of construction a
virtue has been made of frankness, and while the pegs of the tenon are dis-
played to view, the nail is sedulously concealed by all kinds of artifices. In
the making of the simple kinds of furniture in which the wood is joined by
nails of the kind known as clout-headed, made by a blacksmith, these might
be shown without shame, and form a feature in the design, and nothing could
be reasonably urged against this simple and direct " packing-case " construction
for a chest or cabinet.
As to how far it is justifiable to attempt to reproduce ancient styles of
furnishing in modern rooms will depend on many circumstances. It must
necessarily always be absurd to aim at reproducing the styles of the Gothic
period, or those which were in the Renaissance time coloured by its influence.
The modern Jacobean room, if it include all the carving and ornaments of the
period, must necessarily be a failure, simply because Jacobean art was a
workman's art to a great extent, and we have no workman now who would be
able to re-create the spirit of the Jacobean age. It would be as reasonable to
ask of the modern workman to write you a Shakespearean sonnet as to carve
you a Jacobean panel. A judicious selection of those features and principles
which are suitable for reproduction under modern conditions would lead to a
room which in its traditionalism would bear the stamp of reasonableness.
And this thoughtful modified version of old work must not be confounded
with the Wardour Street tradition of artificiality, worm-eaten carving, and
other deceptions.
The later and more histrionic styles of furnishing in which ethical
standards are given up for superficial refinements, and which were the setting
for a life divorced from realities, and which seem a kind of elaborate play-
acting, are more easily reproduced under modern conditions. Your modern
workman may copy a Louis XV. chair, though he cannot a Jacobean one. In
the modern school of furniture that is generally the most satisfactory which is
based on the principles of old work. In its aim to achieve a rational quality
of simplicity it sometimes tends to become somewhat unsympathetic and
severe, and the recognition of the materials is not so much considered as
qualities of lines and surfaces. A straining after effect and over-accentuated
ornament is often found, which destroys all sense of repose. The true course
seems here a middle one, between the extreme of archaic revivals on the one
hand, and aggressive originality on the other, and in reaching forward to the
unborn beauty of the future still to hold fast that which is good in the work
of the past.
The enthusiasm with which the designer of the revival period set himself
to copy exactly mediaeval work may have been ill-judged ; but it seems no less
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
fatal to deliberately ignore traditional work, and to set up a personal and
isolated effort against the accumulated knowledge of centuries.
The extent to which tradition may thus be admitted will depend on the
fitness of the style which has inspired the work to modern conditions of work-
manship and to modern life. A house, it may be urged, should be homogeneous,
and to design a Jacobean dining-room and a Louis XV. drawing-room in a
building of the Georgian period can be hardly defended. The building and
its furnishing should present an all pervading unity, and not a heterogeneous
collection of samples of historical periods ; and while the general scheme may
become more dainty and elegant in the drawing-room, and more homely and
masculine in the hall, there should be no definite break in the continuity of
the whole, while the structure itself should bear a definite relation to the
furnishing and decoration.
And this necessity for unity of effect which has been urged in the planning
of the house — this necessity to break away from the conception of a house as
a series of unrelated compartments — suggests at once the advisability of not
seeking to reproduce historical styles, but to treat the whole scheme broadly,
introducing, it may be, much that has been used in the past, and combining
and arranging the new to form a completely harmonious result.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
DECORATION
N turning now to consider the matter of decoration, one is
conscious of crossing a definite boundary-line and entering
a new land where practical realities are exchanged for
dreams. So far in the building of the house, and in its
furnishing, everything that has been done has had a practical
purpose at the root of whatever beauty it may have achieved — a purpose
which one could fall back on, as it were, so that at the worst the house
might claim to be a shelter from the elements, and its furniture to minister
to1} material needs. But in the decoration of the house no such excuse
can be urged for the failure to achieve beauty. If it has no beauty it is
useless, and worse than useless — and before covering our walls with sprawling
patterns it will be well to consider this carefully. There are no laws which
compel a man to decorate his house, and unless there is a real desire for beauty
in the house there seems little excuse for its decoration. In the days when
heraldry flourished, decoration had a definite purpose. It was a kind of
graphic writing, which, besides being eminently decorative, conveyed definite
facts. This heraldic system still survives in a kind of fossilised form as
a pedantic dilettantism which has quite lost its former significance. If, how-
ever, heraldic decoration is used in the decorative rather than the archaeological
spirit, it affords an extremely effective means of adornment for the house.
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
It constitutes a complete science of decoration, and in its symbolic birds
and beasts, and its simple checkers of primary colours, one finds the elements
of a kind of decorative language.
Among the objections which may be raised to the use of heraldry in the
decoration of the modern house, one may first consider the suggestion it may
be held to convey of family pride. But heraldic work need not be confined
nor need it even include the bearings of the family. The arms of a college
or school at which the members of the family have been educated, or those
of the neighbouring town, the diocese or other local bearings, may all be
included in a heraldic scheme of decoration, and the family arms in such a
comprehensive company will perhaps lose that note of personal egotism
which they might otherwise be thought to convey.
Again, it may be urged against the use of heraldic decoration that it is a
part of those trappings of the mediaeval world with which we moderns have
little to do. In these days of mauser bullets and kharki uniforms these
blazoned shields appear, perhaps, something of an anachronism, while the
somewhat blatant and brutal mottoes are also reminiscent of a less gentle age
than our own.
The historic significance of heraldry may be, perhaps, held sufficiently to
outweigh such objections. It connects the house with the past and records
something of the history of its surroundings and its owner, and while it
affords patterns of colour of great decorative value it also has a definite
story to tell to those who can read its message.
In the modern house what is usually understood as decoration consists
chiefly in the painting of woodwork and the covering of walls and ceilings
with wall-papers. It is entirely a matter of painting and papering the surfaces
of so many plastered boxes or rooms. Decoration properly considered may
rather be taken to represent the clothing of architecture with pattern and
colour. The building without its aid should possess real beauty of the
structural kind, to which decoration provides the finishing touches. The
house should not be made for the decoration, but the decoration for the
house.
It may be doubted whether the house which is built under economic
conditions should be decorated at all. The natural texture of plaster colour-
washed some plain tint will generally be far more satisfactory than a cheap
wall-paper. Here, as elsewhere, one may decide that if means will not allow
of the introduction of good thoughtful work, it is better to do without
pattern altogether. If a house is properly built it does not demand decoration
to make it " possible," and so, whatever is done towards its further adornment
in the way of wall-coverings may well be postponed for a little and intro-
duced at last with due circumspection and deliberation. The possibilities of
heraldic decorative schemes have already been alluded to, and the historic
significance of this method constitutes an added charm to decorative qualities.
But apart from heraldry one may take some flower or tree as the symbol for
a room, and evolve a scheme which is based on that. The rose, the lily, or
the daffodil may thus be taken as the motif for special schemes ; or some
46
y
00
HOUSES AND GARDENS
woodland tree, perhaps, such as the mountain-ash, with its orange berries and
white flowers, may form the basis for the decoration of the walls. In the
choice of such subjects a certain appropriateness is desirable, and thus a
dining-room might well be adorned with the grey leaves and purple clusters
of the grape, or a bedroom with the drowsy poppy. The cottage character
of a small house may be enforced by decoration with the simpler woodland
flowers, such as the daisy or buttercup, and wherever these are used they
should vary in their treatment according to the special conditions and limita-
tions of a material or craft ; and while embroidery or painting might admit
of an approximation to realism, such processes as stencilling, metal work or
wood-carving would each demand a special convention. For the conventional
treatment of patural forms should mainly consist of a modification of actual
forms to suit the possibilities of particular materials and methods of work,
and such considerations will often make it desirable to depart from actualities
and to give but a more simplified symbolic rendering of the natural form.
The success of the work will depend not so much on the accuracy with which
a given flower is copied as in the sympathetic knowledge displayed of the
limitations and possibilities of materials and tools.
CHAPTER TWENTY
MOTTOES FOR THE HOUSE
|]T has been said that a room should express in its decoration
and furnishing something of the individuality and charac-
teristics of its occupants, and that its general aspect should
inform us in an inarticulate way of the kind of person who
lives there.
It must be confessed, however, that the expression of personality
which a room is capable of conveying in this way is not very explicit and
may be misleading, but when decoration becomes articulate in the writing on
the wall it affords a more definite revelation of the character and tastes of
its owner.
In an age when conversation is often limited to trivial and insignificant
subjects, such a form of expression is not without its uses, helping us to
understand something of the ideas and conceptions of life which a man is
prepared to subscribe to.
But the instinctive reticence which makes us unwilling to blurt out our
thoughts to every acquaintance may suggest the advisability of making
these writings somewhat cryptic in their character, and to still further
conceal the heart of our mystery it may be well that they should not only
be written somewhat illegibly but also in a foreign tongue. Mottoes should
then be disposed with the idea of decorating a space with a compact and
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
definite form, and only on closer inspection should they be decipherable.
The blatant use of mottoes will only remind one of the advertisement at the
railway stations ; and however much we admire or believe in some ancient
proverb or modern epigram, it will soon be transformed into an insipid
platitude if it forces itself upon our attention day after day.
In giving a few examples of mottoes here I do not suggest that they
would be appropriate to a special individual. The choice of mottoes is
such a personal -matter that every one who wishes to include them in a
decorative scheme should choose their own.
In the studio, for instance, a helpful idea may be expressed in the
phrase " II n'y a rien plus." Few would recognise the force and application
of such a phrase, for it would be necessary to remember the anecdote of the
famous French painter whose reply it was to the friend who asked why he
was still at work. However much beside there may be in the outside world
it will be well to remember, in the studio at any rate, that there is nothing
else but the work in hand.
Or, again, the spirit of the artist may find expression in Kipling's
verse :
The depth and dream of my desire,
The bitter paths wherein I stray,
Thou knowest who has made the fire,
Thou knowest who has made the clay.
Or perhaps the student may turn to the Proverbs of Solomon and find a
stimulus in the following :
In all labour there is profit,
But the folding of the hands leadeth only to penury,
with perhaps a cynical afterthought to the modern application of £this
saying to cases where the profit of the labour is indeed forthcoming but is
not enjoyed by the labourer. Or, perhaps, in view of those menacing
difficulties which vanish when the task is once begun, another proverb might
be pictorially represented :
The slothful man has said,
There is a lion in the path.
In the dining-room the mottoes may be in a less heroic strain, such as :
Stay me with flagons,
Comfort me with apples,
from the Song of Songs ; or from Omar Khayyam :
Ah ! fill the cup, what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our feet ?
Unborn to-morrow and dead yesterday,
Why fret about them if to-day be sweet ?
which might perhaps be inscribed in the original decorative Arabic.
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
In the bedroom sleep may be invited in many a classic and poetic
phrase ;
To Mary Queen the praise be given,
She sent the gentle sleep from Heav'n
That slid into my soul.
And
Sleep that knitteth up the ravell'd sleeve of care
may be quoted as examples from Coleridge and Shakespeare : For a picture-
gallery
dost thou love pictures ?
But so many examples of mottoes suggest themselves for the apartments
of the house that it would not be difficult to fill a book with appropriate
quotations, and the space at my disposal only enables me here to suggest
a few.
In their application an excellent idea is suggested by R. L. Stevenson,
who wished to procure a set of gilded letters in metal which might be fixed
easily to woodwork, and by means of which special mottoes might be arranged
for special occasions, and this temporary use of mottoes would admit of a
much larger range of sayings grave and gay.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
COLOUR
N the use of colour in the house, perhaps the most important
question to consider is, Will it fade ? It may be noted that
those colours which at once captivate and attract the eye are
generally the most evanescent.
As in the world of letters there is a kind of book which has
a brief passion of life succeeded by total neglect, so in the decorative world
there are brilliant colours, the stimulating effects of which soon pall. In
the natural world these intense colours are found in the passing pageant of
the flowers, while the constant tints are those sober, quiet tones which one
may love little, but which one can love long ; and inasmuch as these vivid
colours are those which fade, one may perhaps take the hint which nature
thus conveys, and in the permanent dyes for the adornment of the house
keep to quiet colour as a setting for the transient brightness of flowers, or
the concentrated brilliance of a decorative picture in stained glass.
The use of aniline dyes instead of the old vegetable ones has been the
chief cause of the prevalence of unreliable colours in modern materials.
William Morris made a careful study of dyeing, and revived the use of most
of the old vegetable dyes, so that the great merit of the Morris fabrics apart
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
from their beauty of design is the permanence of their colouring. The
most reliable colours generally are yellow and reds, but blue and mauve
should be used with caution. Some colours, while they fade, may end
by becoming pleasant tints, and a vivid green may thus become eventually a
uniform grey green tone, and such materials may often be used when
experience has shown to what extent they will change in time. For curtains
or other materials which are exposed to direct sunlight, the use of undyed
materials may be recommended as a safe course.
If the spectrum of sunlight is examined, it will be found to range from
purple at one end, merging into blue, and a central zone of green, which
passes through shades of yellow and orange into red, at the opposite end.
The central green zone may be said to represent in the decorative world
a normal colour — " work-a-day " green, as Morris called it. The blue and
purple end represents the more " spirituelle " tints, while the yellow and red
appeal to the animal instincts and merge into the heat rays. The cultivation
of the colour sense leads to the extension of the spectrum and the inclusion
of many gradations of exquisite subtlety. The central green invariably
satisfies the normal eye, while the pleasure conveyed by the extreme tints or
the spectrum varies according to the predominance of the spiritual or animal
in the mood of the observer.
The terms " spiritual" and "animal" convey the idea I wish to suggest
somewhat inadequately, and I do not wish it to be inferred that the heart-
warming pleasure conveyed by red is necessarily base, or the refined apprecia-
tion of mauves and blues an indication of superiority. In the complete
human consciousness each pleasure has its appointed place, and to be uncheered
by a red colour is a sign of an incomplete rather than a superior mind.
A room decorated in tones of blue and mauve may be dainty and refined,
but it is somewhat lacking in virility, and it may very well be complemented by
a scheme derived from the opposite end of the spectrum, but generally the
central green tone of the spectrum is most satisfactory with the introduction of
its adjacent tints of either blue or yellow. The decorative use of colour implies
the cultivation of the faculty of thinking in colour, as the musician thinks in
sounds — and this process does not involve the indication of natural forms as
a medium for expression of an arrangement of tints which may be disposed in
a purely conventional way. As an example of this thinking in colour, one may
instance the Japanese prints, which judged on their merits as imitations of
nature may seem somewhat crude, while considered as scheme of colour
arrangement they are wonderfully beautiful and full of suggestions for
decorative schemes, which those who regard painting as merely an imitative
art will perhaps hardly appreciate.
Passages of colour occur just as passages of sound in a musical composi-
tion having no relation to any natural objects, and these are charged with a
mysterious and inexplicable beauty which is elusive and unsubstantial. But
while this kind of beauty is recognised and expected in the musical composi-
tion, it is considered, when it is considered at all, only as secondary to
imitative art in the picture. The highest form of picture making is often,
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
held to be that which creates the most convincing illusion of reality ; and the
artist who, giving up the impossible ideal involved in competing with Nature
uses his subject as a field for an arrangement of colour, is generally misunder-
stood and often condemned. For those who can refrain from abusing what
they do not understand are unfortunately represented by a very small
minority.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
PICTURES
T would be interesting to inquire how far the art of picture
painting is coincident with the decline of Art in its widest
interpretation, representing the last stronghold of the artist
driven from the service of life behind the gilded pale of the
picture frame, where he dreams in a little shadow world all his
own. It is curious to note in the daily newspaper that the concerns of art
are dealt with in a separate column applied to the discussion of pictures. And
these "Art Notes" seem to bear such an insignificant place in the record of life
which the newspaper presents. In the ages when art was a vital part of the
national existence, how inadequate such a classification would have appeared !
Then there was hardly a thing which the hand of man could do or his brain
conceive which was not an expression of unconscious art. It is true we have
now the art of the shops, but it is a spurious art, crushed under the iron
heel of commercialism.
If art is then to become again an all-pervading influence instead of the
concern of a few dilettante connoisseurs, it must reconstruct the old conception
of its scope. Primarily it will be concerned with buildings and their adorn-
ment, and here the picture falls into its proper place as the decoration of the
wall. As such it can no longer be an isolated product. The picture painter
will be the first to admit that the beauty of the picture as a whole depends on
the relation of its parts ; but if the relation of one colour to another is so
important, the logical inference is that the picture itself must depend for its
beauty on its place in the scheme of things. And so one finds in the earlier
ages of painting the painter at his best was a wall decorator. As Ruskin has
said, " There is no existing highest order Art but is decoration. The best
sculpture yet produced has been the decoration of a temple front — the best
painting, the decoration of a room. Raphael's best doing is merely the wall-
colouring of a suite of apartments in the Vatican, and his cartoons were made
for tapestries. Correggio's best doing is the decoration of two small church
cupolas at Parma. Tintoret's of a ceiling and a side wall belonging to a
charitable society in Venice ; while Titian and Veronese threw out their noblest
thoughts, not even on the inside, but on the outside of the common brick and
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
plaster walls of Venice. Get rid, then, at once of any idea of decorative art
being a degraded or separate kind of art. Its nature or essence is simply its
being fitted for a definite place, and in that place forming part of a great and
harmonious whole, in companionship with other art ; and so far from thus
being a degradation of it — so far from decorative art being inferior to other
art because it is fixed to a spot — on the whole it may be considered as rather
a piece of degradation that it should be portable. Portable art — independent
of all place — is for the most part ignoble art ! "
An unkind critic might be tempted to wonder why a writer who thus dis-
praises portable art should have written so eloquently in praise of portable art
as displayed in the pictures of Turner. But this is to judge by the letter
instead of the spirit.
However beautiful a picture may be, it is an isolated and unrelated beauty.
It is not a member of that great fraternity of the arts where each has not
alone its individual qualities, but its definite and calculated relation to its
fellows.
But this portable art in the form of pictures painted for no place in par-
ticular is a thing to be reckoned with in the making of a modern house — and
as the pictures we possess have not been made to fit the house, we must needs
pocket the pride which claims that architecture is the essential and ruling art,
and try to make the house to fit the pictures. If Mahomed will not come to
the mountain, it is the mountain which must go to Mahomed. It has already
been suggested how, in the decoration of the wall, a gilded canvas may help to
connect the picture with its surroundings. What is required is not so much
what is called a good background for pictures in the treatment of the wall
on which they are to be hung, for this, in relieving the picture and its frame
unduly, still makes it appear an alien there. Rather it must be our aim
to make the picture merge into the wall surface and appear a part of it. The
frame thus becomes the connecting link between it. On a wall panelled in
dark oak, for instance, dark oak becomes the best material for the picture
frame in most cases. Pictures should not be dotted over a wall, but definitely
arranged to emphasise certain focal points framed in panelling over a mantel-
piece, perhaps, or placed over some important piece of furniture. They need
not always be hung, but may stand on shelves flanked by ornaments. If they
are few and choice, and possess a decorative quality, they will thus become
really helpful in accentuating centres of interest in the decorative scheme.
In a large house a collection of pictures should be displayed in a private
picture-gallery. It has already been urged that the house should not be a museum.
Still less should it be a picture-gallery. Many of the historic houses of
England, where the walls of the apartments are lined with pictures, are, indeed,
full of artistic and antiquarian interest. But they are no longer homes in the
best sense, and convey little idea of that early beauty they possessed when their
furnishing consisted of a few essential things, and their walls were covered with
real decoration in the form of panelling and tapestry.
An excellent example of this kind is the old Elizabethan house, "Plas Maur,"
in North Wales, which has recently been made into a picture-gallery, and
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
where the dignity and reality of the ancient art of building seems to make the
best of the modern pictures on its walls appear frivolous and vulgar. From
the decorative point of view, a picture is merely a pattern of certain colours and
tones. That it should be more than this I do not wish to deny, but whatever
interest it possesses in its subject and its associations is not a matter of deco-
ration. As decoration, it would probably look as well hung upside down. And
it is the decorative qualities of the picture which really count. To the occupants
of a room the pictures normally exist merely as patches of colour with gilded
outlines. It is only by a definite and conscious effort that one perceives at
intervals beauties of subject or composition. The decorative quality is a
constant factor. If we imagine, for instance, the tired man of business
returning to his suburban home in the evening, it can hardly be supposed that
he will be prepared to make the special mental effort involved in an inspec-
tion of his pictures; but whatever decorative quality they express in conjunction
with their surroundings will at once enfold him as in an atmosphere which
soothes and charms like harmonious music.
A man may leave a room so adorned without being able to render an
intelligible account of anything in it, and yet have felt its beauty to the full.
Pictures, then, in the house, it may be said, should possess a decorative
quality which should be brought into harmony with the whole scheme of which
they form a part.
53
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
THE FIREPLACE AND ITS TREATMENT
But they've a wall'd up now wi' bricks
The vier pleace vor dogs an' sticks
An' only left a little hole
To teake a little greate o' coal,
So small that only twos or drees
Can jist push in an' warm their knees.
And then the carpets they do use
Ben't fit to tread wi' ouer shoes ;
An' chairs an' couches be so neat
You mussen teake em vor a seat :
They be so fine, that vo'k mus' pleace
All over em an' outer cease,
And then the cover when 'tis on,
Is still too fine to loll upon.
Ah ! gie me, if I wer' a squier,
The settle an' the girt wood vier.
WILLIAM BARNES.
ROM the modern utilitarian point of view I suppose it must
be conceded that the open fire is an extremely unscientific
and unsatisfactory arrangement. But the modern scientist
satisfies himself with putting the matter to the test of the
thermometer, and the value of the system is judged by its
effects on mercury, rather than on the complex human, whose attitude in the
matter is not altogether a question of degrees Fahrenheit.
In the house the fire is practically a substitute for the sun, and it bears
the same relation to the household as the sun does to the landscape. It is
one of the fairy-tale facts of science that the heat and brightness from the
burning coal is the same that was emitted from the sun on the primeval
forests ; and so the open fire enables us to enjoy to-day the brightness and
warmth of yesterday's sunshine, and the cheerfulness we experience from the
fire is akin to the delight which sunlight brings. To live in a scientifically
adjusted temperature with the fire relegated to the basement is to live in a
grey and cheerless world ; and so the house, however warm, without a fire may
very reasonably be compared to a summer day without the sun. It is, there-
fore, no mere archaic affectation which leads us to cling to the open hearth
and the blazing fire ; and although, especially in large houses, it may be
desirable to introduce more effectual means of heating, this should never
replace but only supplement the open fire.
In glancing back at the evolution of the house one of the most interesting
features is the treatment of the fireplaces. The earliest arrangement was to
place the fire in the centre of the room, the smoke finding its way out through
the roof; and were it not for this difficulty of disposing of the smoke this
central position seems to possess many advantages, and the family gathered
round such a fire forms a complete circle.
When, however, the fireplace became to be placed against the wall the
54
HOUSES AND GARDENS
fireside became more restricted and the family circle was reduced to a semi-
circle. Still the fire was not enclosed in a recess, but covered merely by a
projecting hood to take the smoke, or perhaps by an ingle recess which still
left the sides as well as the front of the fire accessible. This arrangement,
however, did not entirely dispose of the smoke problem, as such a fire was
subject to cross draughts. Next may be noted a transition stage, in which the
fire was partly covered by a hood and partly enclosed by a recess, until at last
the fire was placed entirely in a recess in the wall. Gradually this recess
became contracted into the modern grate, so that the whole evolution of the
position of the fireplace seems to be first the pushing of the fire to the wall,
and then its gradual absorption into the wall, followed by the reduction of its
size. It is not implied that such a process was chronological, and its later
developments were much hastened by the use of coal instead of wood as fuel.
With a wood fire a certain amount of smoke is not entirely objectionable, for
the aromatic odours of burning wood are too pleasant to be entirely lost.
With coal, however, the case is different, and the least smoke is objectionable,
and so in the modern grate where coal is burnt this question of the elimination
of the smoke becomes a most important one, and the whole problem of the
position and treatment of the modern fireplace resolves itself into the
getting rid of the smoke without unduly cramping or enclosing the fire
itself, and to secure the charm and beauty of the open hearth without its
drawbacks.
In passing to the consideration of the materials used in the construction of
the fireplace we find these naturally divide themselves into three classes.
Firstly, such material as will bear actual contact with the fire, such as iron and
other metals, firebrick, &c. ; secondly, those materials which are incombustible,
but will not stand contact with the fire, such as stone, glazed tiles, &c. ; and
thirdly, materials which are inflammable, and which must not be placed too
close to the fire.
In the ordinary fireplace we shall find all these three classes of materials
represented in the iron grate, with its surroundings of glazed tiles and
wooden mantelpieces.
To secure simplicity and breadth of effect it is often desirable to simplify
this formula, and the fireplace will afford the best opportunity for displaying
the actual structure of the house itself — the brickwork or stonework of its
walls. The reality and sincerity of the structure so displayed will outweigh
the claims here of superficial materials, especially in view of the desirability of
surrounding the fire with a space of material which is not inflammable. More-
over, the fire itself and its fuel are necessarily rather rough and homely in
their character, and look still more so if brought into too close contact with
over-refined materials. The mark of the smoke on the rough surface of the
brickwork will but add new notes in the scale of its varied colour, and if the
whole appointment of the fireside have a like homely character, the fire will
seem at home there, instead of an alien amidst its superfine surroundings too
dainty for the blackness of its smoke. And so the rugged virile spirit of the
fire should dictate the proper character for its setting, and however delicate
55
HOUSES AND GARDENS
the rest of the room may be, this character as it approaches the fire should
merge into a more serviceable quality. It has already been urged that the
house should contain at least one good-sized central room, and it is no less
important that this room should have a fireplace broadly designed to dominate
the scheme, and form, as it were, the centre of a solar system to which the
lesser fires are duly subordinated.
The whole question of the occupation of rooms is largely a question of
fires. In the cottage the front parlour is not used, mainly because the house-
hold is a " one-fire " household, and that one fire must necessarily be in the
kitchen. Its logical expression in a plan would show a large kitchen as the
house plan, with a parlour reduced to the small dimensions its limited
functions suggest. Again, a two-fire household implies fires in the kitchen
and in the dining-room, and should be expressed in a large dining-
hall as the central feature, or at least the dining-room should form a recess in
the houseplace. In larger houses these limitations do not occur, but even
here it is desirable that the focus and centre of the house should be expressed
by the large fireplace in the large hall. In considering the house thus as a
winter dwelling, I am assuming those conditions which test its real qualities.
The main functions of a house is that it affords a retreat from the cold or a
shelter from the rain. In fine warm weather its occupation is gone, and its
tenants should chiefly live, if not in the garden, at least in an open verandah.
In the English climate the apartments of the house can be quite adequately
heated by means of open fires alone in houses of average size ; but in America,
and on the continent, some more effectual means of heating is required. In
America, the English tradition of the open fire is still maintained in connection
with artificial heating ; but on the continent the fire is usually interred in a
porcelain tomb, and the house is robbed of one of its greatest charms — the
ruddy glow of the open fire.
While, however, the central houseplace should have its large fireplace, in
a house which is also artificially heated, where the remaining rooms are small,
it is not always necessary to follow the English tradition of a fireplace to each
room, and apartments used for writing or sleeping may be heated merely by
artificial means. This is largely a matter of individual taste, but in a house of
small size, containing only the kitchen and hall flues in one chimney stack,
the cost of building extra chimneys to its smaller rooms might be devoted to
artificial heating.
Some such compromise would form a reasonable basis for a modern plan,
and would save a certain amount of lighting fires and cleaning grates.
Where fireplaces are introduced in the various specialised rooms their position
and treatment should be modified accordingly, and in the bedroom the fire-
place may be of modest dimensions and simple treatment.
In selecting the position for a fireplace in the room, it is important that
it should be placed in relation to doors so that it is not subjected to cross-
draughts, and in relation to windows so that it is well lighted.
In the four small sketches shown here, the arrangement shown in No. I is
the best, as the fireplace is free from draughts and lighted from the side. If,
56
rrz.
HOUSES AND GARDENS
however, the door is moved down the side wall to the position shown in No.
2, the comfort of the fireside is destroyed, while the window at the opposite
end of the room is also in a bad position for
giving light at the fireplace, and cannot be opened
without a direct draught.
The arrangement No. 3 is also defective, owing
to the direct draught from door to fireplace ; while Jf V
No. 4 is good, though not so entirely satisfactory as
No. i.
These remarks, of course, presuppose that the
room is one where the custom of gathering round
the fire may be reasonably implied, and in other
apartments the position of the fireplace may be
governed to some extent by other considerations.
In the specialised dining-room, for instance, the posi-
tion of the fireplace should allow for ample space
between it and the dining-table ; and in the bedroom,
while it is desirable that the fire should be visible .„ ,
from the bed, it is not necessary that it should bear
any special relation to door or window. As, how-
ever, the future uses of a room cannot be foreseen,
it is well that wherever possible the fireplace should
meet the demands of the sitting-room.
The construction of the ingle-nook must take
us back to that point in the evolution of the fire- If 4.
place when the fire had been placed in a recess
in the wall, but when that recess was large enough
to accommodate not only the fire but those who
gathered round it. On the great hearth of stone
or brick the burning logs rested, partially supported PLAN±>
by the fire-dogs, with their primitive arrangements
for cooking, the toothed rack for the spit and the rings for holding
pots and pans and the wide oven built in the wall. Cooking in those days
had a fine romantic quality, and the hissing of the birds on the spit and
the bubbling of the steaming pots added to the homeliness and cheerfulness
of the ingle. Those who sat in the wide chimney-corner could, by glancing
upwards, see through the swirling smoke a patch of the dark sky, with,
perhaps, a star or two. At times, it must be confessed, the wind which
howled in the chimney must have driven the smoke into the room, and hail
and rain would sometimes fall in miniature fusilades on the fire ; and on a
cold and stormy night this constant reminder of the external warfare, these
occasional glimpses of the moon, pursued by flying clouds, and the expiring
kisses of rain upon the fire, kept the occupant of the ingle-nook constantly in
touch with the outside world and constantly conscious of the warmth and
comfort of his surroundings. Perhaps the sympathetic reader will realise the
spirit of romance which belongs to such a picture of " fire and sleet and
H 57
M
HOUSES AND GARDENS
candle light," a romance which, now banished from the modern house, we are
driven to find in printed books, but which is not so incompatible with the
conditions of the modern house as may be supposed.
Science starting out at a tangent, after many improvements and compli-
cations, comes back at last to some slight modification of the simplest and
earliest methods, and the most recent developments in the modern grate on
scientific lines show a return to the ancient custom of the fire on the hearth.
In the planning of the modern ingle-nook it is well to consider it not so
much a recess in the room in which is another recess for the fire, but rather
as an enlargement of the fire recess itself. Modern requirements will insist
on a more satisfactory disposal of the smoke than the old type of ingle allowed
of, and so there must be a hood over the fire of metal or masonry ; and if the
fire in the ingle is placed in an inner recess, this should be shallow and
wide, and not be too sharply defined in structure or materials from the
whole treatment. The spirit of the fire should govern the design of the
whole.
It is not desirable that the modern ingle-nook should be very deeply
recessed, or the room itself is not satisfactorily heated, and yet the best
position for a settle or couch in the room is often at the
•—•*&'««••><>•••- side of the fire. These conditions suggest that the
-n ingle nook should not be in the centre of one side of
. F the room, but placed in the corner with a long seat
against the wall on one side, and the other side of the
fire left open for movable chairs. Modern ideas of
PLATS comfort are apt to place the arm-chair before the couch,
except for actual reclining, as the former encloses its
occupant at the sides, and gives support to the arms.
And so the fitting of an ingle, with fixed seats on
each side, is not always desirable. Here, as elsewhere
in the house, the fixing of furniture to the structure is readily capable of
abuse. Where the form of the room and the special conditions suggest
fixtures, this principle may well be followed, but pushed to excess it
constitutes a tyranny of the designer which may justly annoy the average
man who may wish to use his own judgment as to where he shall sit
or write.
A necessary qualification of the designer of interiors is a saving sense of
humour, which, after all, to a large extent, consists in a fine sense of the
fitness of things, and few could occupy one of these little polished and
upholstered seats which flank so many modern ingles without being conscious
of the absurdity of the situation. As a matter of fact, the average person
who indulges in the art ingle does not occupy the seats, and so reserves for
them that admiration which is only awarded to those features of the house
which claim to be merely ornamental.
In the treatment of the fireplace generally what is mainly required is a
greater breadth and simplicity. The little grate surrounded by its scrap of
tiling, and wooden mantel, full of niches and shelves, is a formula which may
e
HOUSES AND GARDENS
well be discarded for something simpler. The grate may be surrounded by a
broad space of tiles only, or the brickwork of the chimney breast may be
surmounted by a single shelf.
Above all, the fireplace should connect itself with the general treatment of
the room, and the wood mantelpiece is at its best when it constitutes an
enriched and accentuated portion of the panelling which covers the remaining
walls.
Of all the defects in a house, smoky chimneys are, perhaps, the most
trying and the most common. In the new house they are most apt to be
caused by the coldness and dampness of the flues, and represent a painful
initial experience which does much to obliterate the pleasure and comfort of
existence in surroundings otherwise harmonious. With a modern contracted
grate, designed on scientific principles, the danger of smoke is minimised, but
the large, hospitable open fire, however carefully designed, is apt to give
trouble at first.
So essential, however, is this type of fireplace to the homeliness and beauty
of at least the central hall or houseplace, that it is well worth facing a possi-
bility of some difficulty in this respect, instead of resorting to the inglorious
safety of the mean and paltry-looking modern fireplace. Such precaution as
circumstances will allow are, of course, taken by contracting the orifice of the
flue and by introducing no flat surfaces for the smoke to strike against, and
by gathering and curving the flue to prevent down draught ; but in some
cases where every precaution is taken until the flue becomes thoroughly
dried by use there is a tendency to smoke. It is important, in view of this,
that fires should be lighted and kept burning during the later stages of the
building, so that the flues can be dried and tested before the house is
inhabited, and any slight modification that may be required can then be made
beforehand. It will often be noticed, for instance, in modern open fires, that
a piece of thick glass is fixed across the upper portion of the opening. It is
better to fix a piece of metal — brass or copper — in this position, and after a time
it will probably be found that this can be removed. The object aimed at is
to get the fire as unconfined as possible without smoke. To shut the fire in
a small and low recess is to lose that liberal aspect which is so important and
to shirk the difficulty of the problem, and the important point is to get what-
ever nice experimental adjustment done before the house is inhabited, and for
this purpose the metal placed across the upper part of the fire is an expedient
which does not spoil the appearance and can easily be either removed
altogether or raised to the maximum height which the completely aired flue
will allow. In special cases where down draught is caused by special winds or
local features, a special form of chimney-pot may be required, and of these
the Boyle extractors are the most satisfactory.
59
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
DOORS
[N considering the individual features which go to make up a
house, it must be remembered that they form part of a
structure which should be homogeneous, and as a learned
professor may build up the structure of an extinct animal
from a few bones, so, in the house, a single door for instance,
should express in its design much of the general character of the building to
which it belongs. Eclecticism is a principle which may be followed in the
designing of a house only under severe restrictions. We may choose, indeed,
from all the Ages, but in choosing we must change till all is in harmony.
The simplest kind of door is one composed of vertical planks, secured
to horizontal cross-ledges. The candid construction of such a door finds
itself peculiarly at home in a house where the direct and simple use of
materials is the keynote of the design. In the average modern house it has
been relegated to back premises, in favour of elaborate arrangements of
mouldings and panels, but in many respects it is more appropriate and more
interesting than the panelled door.
In the first place, its two sides are quite distinct in character, one with its
unbroken surface forming a field for the decorative use of ironwork in
hinges and latch, and the other with its ledges barring the surface of the
door with horizontal lines.
This type of door may be most consistently used in a solid frame of
wood, or hung on gudgeons set in stonework, or brickwork of the doorway.
It is less desirable when the internal finishings of the house are entirely
superficial, and in carrying the principle of direct expression of constructive
decoration which such a door exemplifies to its logical conclusion in the
house, the universal use of plaster as an internal finish for the walls is not
always desirable, for plaster entails the use of superficial woodwork in the
form of fascias and skirtings, which are not quite in harmony with the ledged
type of door. A compromise may, however, be effected in this matter by
reducing such fascias to their smallest dimensions, and thus keeping them
quite distinct from the structural woodwork, to make them appear rather
part of the plaster than part of the door frame.
Or if the actual brickwork or stonework of the wall or the woodwork of
the framed partition is left exposed, this will form the most satisfactory
setting for a door of this description.
The consideration of the old Scandinavian door frames which were so
intricately carved, suggests the use of the plain surface of the ledged door
as a foil to the carving of the frame which embowers it with branches, leaves
and fruit.
The next type of door to be considered is the panelled door, which
presents many possibilities for design in the number and proportion of the
panels, and the moulding of the rails and styles.
In the simpler types of door the mouldings may be omitted altogether,
60
HOUSES AND GARDENS
and wherever mouldings are introduced, they should justify their existence
by the refinement and beauty of their lines. Inasmuch as they serve no
practical purpose, and rest their claims to our regard solely on aesthetic
qualities, there seems little excuse for the existence of the coarse and ugly
mouldings which disfigure the doors of the average house.
In a panelled room it is generally desirable to make the doors a part of
the panelling, so that the continuity of the wall treatment is unbroken. In
this way the door becomes almost a secret one, and does not assert itself as a
feature in the room.
In the same way a door may be effaced by covering it with arras cloth or
canvas in a room which is hung with this material, and this leads us to the
consideration of the door which is made specially to cut off sound, and
which tradition has decreed shall be covered with red or green baize. This
type of door may be covered with canvas and decorated with embroidery or
stencilling.
Doors may also be covered with metal work of various kinds — with brass,
copper or lead, and ornamented with repousse work, or with leather which
may be embossed and tooled.
The use of metal is particularly suitable for an exterior door, where it
suggests permanence and strength.
In the number and arrangements of the doors in a house, it will be
found generally desirable to have but one to each room, and that so placed
as to avoid draughts at the fireside.
The multiplication of doors in a room may seem desirable if convenience
of access only is considered, but they do not make for comfort of habitation,
and in most cases every additional door means a possible draught, and a
corresponding decrease in the comfort of the room.
In the hanging of the doors it should be arranged that they screen the
room as far as possible when open.
61
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
CEILINGS
NE of the most widespread of the popular delusions about
houses is expressed in the demand for a high ceiling, quite
irrespective of the scale of the house or the size of its apart-
ments. The mansion, with its numerous apartments and
lofty rooms, is still the model for the small house. Under the
inexorable pressure of the limited site and limited means the rooms are
reduced till each is too small for human habitation, but still the lofty
ceiling is retained, partly because it is an attribute of the ideal mansion,
and partly because of the baseless superstition that it is healthy.
This " hygienic falsehood," as Mr. Voysey justly describes it, has been
sufficiently exposed, but apparently to little purpose. Conditions of perfect
ventilation are quite independent of the cubic capacity of a room. A man
enclosed in a box sufficient only to accommodate his person may enjoy perfect
hygienic conditions as regards ventilation. But the question is not one
between a small cubic capacity and a large cubic capacity. We have, it may
be assumed, a certain sum of money to expend in cubic feet of air in a room,
and the question is, how are these cubic feet best arranged to secure the
best results — to what extent shall they be disposed vertically, to what extent
horizontally ? Now it is obvious that, as man cannot fly but wants all the
elbow-room he can get in a small house, it will be wise for him to extend his
rooms as much as possible horizontally, and as little as possible vertically;
and the first improvement which suggests itself in the small house will be to
make it lower and broader, so that all the wasted space overhead may be
exchanged for extension of the floor area. Such a change, it must be borne
in mind, will not decrease the cubic capacity or increase the cost. Not only
will it increase the actual size, it will also add to the apparent size of the
rooms. They will become at once large rooms of a small kind instead of
small rooms of a large kind. We shall so far achieve the roomy cottage
instead of the cramped mansion. It is unfortunate that the by-laws in many
districts reflect the popular superstition in this matter, and minimum heights
of ceilings are often fixed which make it impossible to build a small house on
rational lines.
For the height of the ceiling is not an isolated and independent feature in
the plan, which may be modified at will. It is one of the ruling factors in
the design of a house, and governs the whole structure. The long, low window
of the horizontal type, which has so many practical advantages, follows as a
necessary result of the long, low room. The staircase becomes easy of ascent
and occupies little space. The house itself becomes broad and low and snug,
and in its rooms this breadth and spaciousness is exchanged for the cramped
floor-spaces of the vertically extended house. The ceiling, too, comes into
the picture of the room and completes it, and the whole effect is comfortable
and homely.
The fixing of the ceiling height of rooms, which is often so thought-
62
HOUSES AND GARDENS
lessly and lightly decided, will influence its final effect inside and outside far
more than any subsequent decorations, and the initial mistake made of a
badly proportioned room will consume the abilities of the decorator in
trying to palliate it with all kinds of divisions of the wall-space.
The test of good proportion in a room, as in a house, is that the
structure can be left alone if desired, and while its wall-spaces may be sub-
divided horizontally for deco-
rative purposes, this is not \
essential to palliate bad pro-
portions or to disguise the :;
defects of the original struc- \
«-nf» 1pf^&
ur
W>
L.
~- -~ '— 6EAM
One of the most important
functions of the ceiling is to
act as a reflector for light, and
for this purpose it is generally
advisable that it should be
white.
In cases where the joists
of the floor above are shown
in the ceiling, the most im-
portant consideration will be
the proper " deafening " of
the floor. This may be done as shown in Fig. i , where two thicknesses of
boards are used for the floor, with a layer of felt between. It will be
noticed that the joists are here flatter in proportion than those generally used,
and they should also be somewhat wider apart than modern usage demands.
The under side of the flooring-boards and the joists and beam may all be
left roughly finished from the saw, with the edges merely taken off them, and
then the whole may be whitewashed. In the spacing, as well as the actual
sizes of the joists, it is not desirable that mechanical accuracy should be
insisted on. They may be placed with such regularity in their distance apart
as the eye may be able to judge, and it would be well also if they slightly
varied in size, and all these slight variations in the size, direction, and spacing
of the timbers will give a vitality to the whole effect, and the eye will not be
repelled and chilled by that monotonous and cast-iron regularity which is the
ideal of modern work. It is the eye of the observer which is to be satisfied
with such work, and to the intelligent there will be no pleasure in an inhuman
precision which is obviously obtained by mechanical means.
There are occasions and places in the building where an extreme
accuracy is necessary, but in this, as in many other cases, a certain variety
is essential. It is just such little points as these which make the difference
between the vital beauty of old buildings and the lifeless uniformity of
modern ones.
Other and more elaborate ceilings may be divided into panels with
wooden ribs. In such cases there is an obvious departure from the floor
63
HOUSES AND GARDENS
structure of the room above, and such panellings should therefore not be too
structural in their character, but of such sizes as will lead to the recognition
of their superficial character. They may most reasonably be used in passages
where it may be desirable to form the ceiling at a lower level than the
upper floor, and the narrower the passage the lower its ceiling should be.
Nothing is so fatal as the Procrustean method of making every depart-
ment of the house of the same height irrespective of the size of each, and
nothing makes a narrow passage look so narrow as a disproportionately
high ceiling.
In the treatment or the plaster ceiling it will be well to consider first
whether the plaster cornice is really necessary. It does not in its usual
forms represent a reasonable use of the material, because plaster is necessarily
a superficial substance, and should as far as possible clothe the structure like
a close-fitting garment. The cornice has no structural significance whatever,
and is merely an expedient to get round the corner between wall and ceiling.
A much better way in most cases is to omit the cornice altogether, and white-
wash the whole of frieze and ceiling. In this way, the angle between ceiling
and wall will practically disappear in the universal whiteness. The plaster
ceiling should not, moreover, be made absolutely and mechanically level,
except as a basis for superficial decoration. The plasterer should not be
allowed to use a long " float," but it should only be permissible for him to
gain such regularity as may be possible in the use of a short " float " with
the assistance of the eye. I do not suggest that the ceiling should be
obviously irregular. It should appear to the casual observer to be quite
level, but it should present a subtle variety and change of plane in its
surface. Why, too, it may be asked, should the plaster ceiling be necessarily
finished with what is called "fine stuff"? Plaster has a characteristic
texture, which is far more interesting than the smoothness of finish invariably
insisted on. Such subtle modifications in the plastering of a ceiling will all
tend towards vitality in the appearance of the work.
Perhaps the most reasonable and effective way of decorating a plaster
ceiling is by means of the use of modelled plaster work, which Mr. Bankart
has so bravely rescued from mechanical ineptitude. Here the modelling
should be vague and suggestive rather than sharp and incisive, and flowers
and fruit should seem to have floated, as it were, to the surface — to have
been coaxed from their white bed instead of stuck on to a surface from
which they are clearly detached.
Much of the old plaster work has obtained an excellent quality by
repeated coats of whitewash, and if any of the mechanical embossed materials
are used, their undesirable sharpness can be removed by the same means.
It is not necessary, if modelled plaster is used, to have an elaborate
scheme of decoration for the ceiling. Much may be done by stamps, such
as those used for pats of butter.
In upper rooms it is often possible to obtain an excellent effect by means
of a curved segmented ceiling, which affords an excellent field for decoration
in many ways, and in a room where the walls are covered with leafage with
64
HOUSES AND GARDENS
glimpses of blue sky, this ceiling may develop into a blue sky without a
cloud and set with circling swallows.
The consideration of vaulted ceilings hardly comes within the scope of my
FLOOR
present subject, and can but be barely touched on here. A small example of
this form of ceiling occurs in the little staircase to the room over the fire-
place in the hall, illustrated in the description of Blackwell.
Simple types of vaulting may often be used in corridors with excellent
effect, but this method of ceiling is hardly appropriate for the average
room.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
WINDOWS
When Pentridge House wer' still the nest
Of souls that now ha' better rest,
Avore the vier burnt to ground
His beams an' walls that then wer' sound —
'Ithin a nail-bestudded door,
An' passage an' a stwonen vloor,
There spread the hall, where zan-light shone.
In drough a window fream'd wi' stwone.
WILLIAM BARNES.
HE primary object of the introduction of windows into a house
is to let light into its rooms. They also afford a means of
looking at the outside world, and in their modern development
also afford the outside world a means of looking in. While apart
from these uses they also serve for the ventilation of the house.
In the modern house, windows are almost invariably too large, and this
excessive size is fatal both to the comfort and beauty of the rooms. If we
enter an old house on a hot summer's day, one of the most pleasant qualities
we notice is its coolness, and though it is amply lighted there is a sensation
of remoteness from the outside world. We feel at once really an inhabitant
of an indoor world, where the blazing sun, or the pouring rain, may be
almost forgotten. It is a shelter and retreat — a pleasant haven, and this
quality about it goes far to give us the feeling of rest associated with the
idea of home.
And all this is greatly due to the small windows. But on entering the
modern villa no such pleasant impression meets us. Already from the out-
side we have been made aware of these gashes in the structure, which reveal
the window arranged, like a shop is, for outside effect. There is the table
with its vase, the lace curtains, and the rest. Inside, we are met by a glaring
and pitiless light which destroys all sense of repose or shelter. The rain
beats in torrents against the glass, and the sun blazes unchecked into the
room. The window is indeed furnished with all kinds of expensive dust-
collecting upholstery, but even this cannot cloak the glaring light. The
window has also made the room susceptible to every change of temperature
outside. It is impossible to cool it in summer, or heat it in winter.
So much for its practical effect. To say that large windows make archi-
tecture all but impossible is to touch an aspect of the case which will interest
few, but I can recall no example of building where the windows are formed
with large sheets of glass which have survived their disastrous effect. The
beauty of glass depends entirely on its use in small pieces, in a setting which,
allowing of a slight variation in their planes, will make them sparkle and
twinkle. The large sheet, with its blank and vacant stare, should never be
used unless under stress of circumstances.
One of the most essential reforms in the modern house is the reduction
of its windows to a reasonable size, and their careful placing to amply light
66
HOUSES AND GARDENS
the interior without destroying its repose, or making it unduly subject to the
changes of the external temperature. With the large window will also be
banished all its trappings and the Venetian blind, and the rest of the uphol-
stery with the cumbrous poles and rings will be replaced by a simple curtain
blind, on a light rod of brass or iron.
Many people who regard the window mainly as a means of prospect
demand the large sheet of glass. Such a demand can, however, be generally
met by concessions introducing a larger pane of plate-glass to comniand a
particular view. Windows can be made large enough to meet such require-
ments without any serious drawbacks, but there are those who find a peculiar
pleasure in the prospect afforded by the smaller pane. The leaded line
becomes a bar of shade which seems to enhance the beauty of the landscape
it conceals, and yet reveals. Imagination, which is foiled by the bald com-
plete revelation of the plate-glass window, has here a chance to play its part,
and to weave a beauty of its own out of the actual facts partially displayed,
and the window becomes a picture gallery of separate scenes, each with its
own little frame. The type of window most suitable, at any rate in the
country and suburbs, is the casement opening outwards like a door. It is
the simplest to construct, and least likely to get out of order. As it enlarges
it increases horizontally in the low room, and in higher apartments it increases
vertically by one or more rows of lights separated by horizontal bars. The
long low type of window has a practical advantage which is not always
recognised. On a south aspect it may be left uncurtained without fear of
the direct rays of the sun raking the whole room. The sash window is more
suitable in the town than in the country, though it is a necessary part of the
house which is based on Georgian traditions. It is better adapted for lofty
rooms than low ones, and is not suited for the horizontal type of window
which is advocated for the average house. In its modern form it has been
much debased by the thinness of its cross-bars, but when these are of reasonable
thickness, and well moulded as in its earlier forms, it is more acceptable, but
it never achieves the simple constructional appearance of the casement.
In the small house the casement window will, on economical grounds, be
constructed in wood, but in larger houses stone will be admissible, and this
building of the window-frame with the leaded glass let into the stone,
reduces the openings to their simplest structural form. There is no external
woodwork to require painting, and the whole exterior of the house will look
capable ot standing the weather. Stone window-frames are specially suitable
in the stone house of a stone district, and especially in bleak exposed
positions where woodwork often has a flimsy appearance. Casement window-
frames of both wood or stone should be simple and solid in their construction,
and should appear to be fully capable of carrying the wall over them without
the addition of concealed lintels or arches. The wooden casement is most
happily at home in the house framed in half timber, where its mullions
appear part of the general framing.
In order to secure the feeling of enclosure from the outside world it is
desirable that the window sill should not be too near the floor, and to
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make the best use of the window area for lighting it, is important that the
window-head should be near the ceiling level.
In order to secure ideal artistic conditions, especially in low-toned rooms,
it is desirable that all windows which are on the level of the eye should be
toned by means of stained glass or other means. Any light in a room
which has the effect of causing inhalation in a photograph of the room has
also the effect of dazzling the eye and making it out of focus with the lower
tones, of the interior, which would be best seen if all the light came from
above.
The function of muslin curtains to windows is to temper the crudeness of
the light. For the same purpose the Japanese use oiled paper in their
windows, and this suffused and tempered light helps to maintain that feeling
of repose which is somewhat diminished by the glare of light from a window
which is on the level of the eye. The objection may be much reduced by the
placing of the windows so that the room may be viewed on entering it
lighted from a side which is not facing the observer. In a hall, part of the
lighting may be gained from windows at a high level, but it is impossible
under ordinary conditions to quite get over this difficulty, and the best that
can be effected is a more or less successful compromise. The objection is
much reduced by the reduction in the size of the windows, which has been
advocated ; but as long as windows are considered necessary for outlook as
well as inlets of light, they must necessarily involve a certain glare of light.
It is best, therefore, to concentrate the window space so that the light comes
from one side only, and that side being the one wherever possible which it is
not necessary to face. This lighting from one point is also desirable for the
general appearance of the room and its occupants. Cross-lights are always
undesirable, and most things look best when lighted from one side only.
The function of the bay window is chiefly to enlarge the range of
prospect and aspect in a room. By this means a window on an east or west
front may admit the southern sun or display a view to north or south which
might otherwise be lost. Their position and form should be to a great
extent the outcome of local requirements in this respect. They also have
their uses in extending the floor-space of the room. They may often be
fitted with a window-seat, which, in helping to reduce the movable furniture,
will tend towards the ideal of the unobstructed floor-space in the room.
Where means will allow it is desirable to glaze the leaded squares of the
window with crown-glass. Instead of the absolutely flat surface of sheet-
glass, this has subtle modulations which, while they do not detract from its
uses, give it that characteristic quality which it should be one's aim to secure
in all the materials for the house.
The casement window will give opportunities for some interesting black-
smiths' work in the form of casement stays and fasteners.
68
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
WALL TREATMENT
JN the internal treatment of the walls of the house, before
deciding on any superficial decoration which presupposes
the usual formula of plaster and wall paper, it will be well
to consider what claims the structure itself has to be dis-
played internally and to what extent these claims should be
admitted. At the fireplace, it has already been suggested that the stonework
or brickwork of the wall itself is peculiarly appropriate as a setting for the
fire. At the windows and doors the wall again may crop out in the form of
arches, and in the upper part in some cases of the walls themselves. In
order, however, to obtain a sense of comfort it is generally desirable that the
lower parts of the walls should be finished with a material not too cold or
rough to the touch.
It is in the stone house especially that the structure is most interesting,
for brickwork is necessarily a little mechanical and monotonous in its effect,
and the best stone for this purpose is that which is rather warm in tone.
Let us suppose the case of a hall for instance where the structure is
completed with stone-mullioned windows, stone archways to the doors and
fireplace, and the masonry left inside without plaster. Its effect would be
a little cold, though it would possess that air of reality which the actualities
of building have the power of conveying. In the modern phrase it would
" palpitate with actuality," but it requires a certain amount of clothing to
make it appear comfortable. Let us then fix to the walls, to a height of
six or seven feet, some wide oak planks, and on a portion of the upper
part of the walls hang a piece of tapestry. The room will now begin to
look comfortable, though the superficial finishings will not destroy the
sense of structure which they partially conceal. But a treatment of this
kind would only be suggested where the stonework was good in colour —
too good to hide with plaster unless the plaster is the basis for decoration
which will compensate for the loss of the structural effect. In the room
which thus becomes a decorated plaster box, the result is not an example of
the art of building, of which architecture should be the supreme expression,
but a purely decorative affair.
In a brick house the extent to which the wall is shown would be more
limited — perhaps at the fireplace only, but in finishing the walls with plaster
it is suggested that this should only be brought to an absolutely flat surface
as a preparation for decorative work — in the same way that a piece of
canvas is strained for painting a picture on. Plaster which is to be finished
with a plain colour should have its characteristic surface and should be
finished from the trowel.
In the use of woodwork on the walls, it is not by any means necessary
to use expensive and elaborate panelling, and if ledged doors are used the
most logical continuation of their construction will be expressed in the use
of planks to the heights of the doors or forming a dado. These planks
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
may be as wide as can be obtained, and of varying sizes, with a simple
capping, which in some cases may develop into a shelf. The ordinary
stained and varnished dado of V-jointed match-boarding of depressing
regularity is an example of the most degraded use of good material. The
V-joint represents a clumsy attempt to hide the opening of a joint, due to
the shrinkage of the timber, which deceives nobody.
In the use of great planks of varying widths and somewhat roughly
finished, the timber still suggests in a far-off way the beauty of the wood-
land, and still in the varied planes of its surface retains something of its
individuality and tells of the workman and his tools ; and all this interest
should only be given up in the case of a material which, like mahogany for
instance, demands a higher finish to bring out its beauty. The wall above
this woodwork may either be the stone of the structure or perhaps brick-
work whitewashed or finished with trowelled plaster, or if some more
superficial treatment is adapted, the plaster may be modelled or stencil
decoration may be introduced. All these should, however, possess a real
beauty. They should be unique and individual, and few of the superficial
decorative materials of commerce will have the same claim to our regard as
the structural beauty they conceal.
Apart from economical considerations probably the best superficial
material for the walls of a room is tapestry. A wall peopled with dim
figures, with trees, with fruit, flowers, and flowing streams, illustrating,
perhaps, some legend of " the supreme Caucasian mind," or of the Knights
of King Arthur, or, better still, some story entirely local and peculiar, will be
indeed well lost for such adornment, and on entering such a room one will
become a member of its goodly company, wandering in imagination by stream
and grove in a land where flowers always bloom and fruit hangs ripe on the
bough.
Such surroundings are, however, only for those who having the means
have also the wit to choose such company for their life, and these are few
indeed.
A simple form or wall hanging, and one which will be within the means
of the majority, is canvas unadorned. Specially suitable for a house by the
sea is the ruddy brown of the sails of fishing-boats, with above, perhaps,
a stencilled or modelled frieze of flying sea-gulls in white, grey and blue.
Canvas of its natural undyed colour is also an excellent basis for
decoration, or if gilded it forms an excellent background for pictures
merging into the gilt of the frames connecting the pictures with the wall,
and absorbing them as it were into the decorative scheme, instead of
emphasising that detachment from their surroundings which makes the
picture too often appear an alien in the decorative community.
A warmer scheme may be inaugurated with canvas dyed a dull red and
decorated with stencilling in dim gold, or green and blue canvas may form
a basis for cooler arrangements of colour.
If wall papers are adopted the quality of texture must be given up to
some extent, though some of the plain ingrain papers with their rough
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
surfaces are not entirely devoid of this quality. In pattern papers there
are nowadays an overwhelming number of designs, many of which are
excellent. Of these, one need only mention the famous Morris papers or
those more recent designs by Mr. Voysey, Mr. Walter Crane, or others who
are content to forego their claims to individual recognition in favour of
the manufacturing firms. In the design of wall papers it is universally
considered essential to disguise the fact that the paper is pasted on in strips ;
and it is suggested that papers might be designed which, repeating only
vertically, do not attempt to disguise the joints formed by their edges, or
the joints might be emphasised by dividing vertical strips of plain paper by
narrow bands resembling in character ecclesiastical laces.
In choosing wall papers as well as other decorative materials it should be
borne in mind that their qualities are necessarily relative to their surround-
ings, and this relative suitability should always be considered in preference
to intrinsic beauty.
Another material which has great decorative value on the wall is leather.
It should retain its characteristic surface, and its qualities be suggested by
lacing the skins together at the edges.
Whatever treatment is adopted for the walls it must never be forgotten
that they are after all chiefly valuable as a background. A room is not
entirely a thing to be looked at, but a place to be lived in, and its virtue
will chiefly consist in forming a setting for the life of its occupants and the
transient beauty of flowers. And it is here that so many modern artistic
interiors fail. In the drawing-room with its multitude of insistent patterns
you may fill every vase with flowers and they will seem to disappear ; but in
a room where the wall has not lost its quality as a background, a single rose
will give one the impression that the whole room had been designed with
no other object but to show off the curves of its petals. It is here that
panelling is so valuable, and against a background of dark oak or
mahogany everything will look its best. For woodwork has a quality of
tone, a " timbre " which is unequalled. Full tones of green or greyish blue
are also excellent background colours in canvases or paper.
One of the fundamental questions in wall decoration is whether the
objects they relieve are to be dark on a light ground or light on a dark
ground, and between these two classes are the middle tones.
As a general rule, and especially in informal rooms, a dark background
is the best, because the objects displayed in the room merge into the back-
ground instead of being sharply defined against it. Against a wall of white
woodwork, for instance, furniture in dark mahogany seems to demand a
certain formality in its disposition, and the slightest disarrangement is at
once perceptible. But place the same furniture against panelling of
mahogany and its outlines are no longer salient, its exact disposition is no
longer an essential matter. As, however, it is only the lower portions
of the walls which form the background for furniture and people, the
upper portions may reasonably be decorated in a less restricted way. A
dark treatment of the background portion of the walls may tend to make
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the whole effect somewhat gloomy, and so it is desirable that the upper portion
should be in a lighter key, and thus the old formula of dark oak panelling,
with white plaster work above, forms a very reasonable solution of the
problem. In the use of middle tones for the background portion of the
wall it is important that they should keep their place and not compete with
the furniture and ornaments. The use of patterns in this connection is
chiefly valuable as a means of improving and enriching the quality of tone in
the background.
I have insisted at some length on this subject of background because it is
the point most readily lost sight of in modern work. The practice of
exhibiting specimen rooms has led to a conception of an interior as something
to be looked at and admired for its own sake — an arrangement of certain
colours and patterns which is pleasing to the eye, whereas the final test of a
successful room is that people look well in it. In the modern room the
individual withers and becomes but an incident, and often a discordant
incident, in a scheme which is complete and self-sufficing. The rooms of the
past, the Elizabethan hall for instance, with its wall spaces of dark oak,
appear incomplete without their inhabitants, and the individual seems to gain
an importance and dignity in a setting so rich and yet so subordinated. Or
again, in those French salons, which Orchardson paints, with their wall spaces
of white, an elegant company, is still more elegant, though here the white
background in emphasising outlines demands a gracefulness of form and
gesture which, with the more homely and less exacting dark background, is
less essential.
Having decided to what extent structures shall form the decoration of the
walls, and in considering the question of superficial decoration, it will be
desirable to turn to Nature and think of the pleasantest natural surroundings
one can conceive. Thus we may wish to surround ourselves with the green
leafage of trees, where fruit gleams golden and blossoms white, where birds
cling and flutter in the branches, from between which one catches glimpses
of the blue sky. Here, where the greater part of the wall-surface is covered
with leafage, the pattern becomes naturally a better background than if
flowers are the motif, for, in conventionalising these, it may become necessary
to tone down the brightness of their colouring if the pattern is used on the
lower part of the walls, and they are, therefore, perhaps better adapted for
the decoration of friezes.
But a certain reasonableness should govern the decorative scheme of the
wall ; and just as one should not be obliged to walk on flying birds and
trees laid out flat on a carpet, so flowers in the frieze should not bloom over
tree tops.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
THICKNESS OF WALLS AND INTERNAL
PARTITIONS
IN small houses, where economy must be studied, it is not
advisable to indulge in a thick wall in brickwork, for its
advantages will hardly be justified by its cost, and the money
so spent would probably be more wisely devoted to an increase
of the floor space. In such cases a nine-inch brick wall covered
with cement rough cast and strengthened where required with buttresses, will
answer all practical purposes.
In stone districts, however, the thin wall is no longer an economic gain,
and the exterior walls may be made two feet thick.
This has many artistic as well as practical advantages, giving deep jambs
to windows and recesses, enabling one to get a broad window-sill or seat
without projecting into the room, and giving the whole interior an effect of
solidity and comfort. To enter such a house is to feel really indoors,
sheltered and protected from external conditions. Practically, also, the thick
wall helps to maintain in the house an even temperature uninfluenced by
external heat and cold. In winter it is easily warmed, and in summer it
remains cool. But these conditions do not apply to the average modern
house, where the builder, having built a thick wall to retain the heat, makes
a large window to let it out, and to reap the advantage of the thick wall the
window openings must be small.
Another advantage of the thick wall is that, with a high-pitched roof
especially, it enables one in many cases to get a lower eaves line with the
same inside height.
Internal walls should vary in thickness according to their position and
structural requirements. The kitchen premises should be divided from the
rest of the house by a solid wall, and this may be made more impervious to
sound by the introduction of cupboards.
Between the family rooms generally, except those which require isolation,
it will be noted that the principles advocated involve the breaking away of
the usual partitions, and much of the beauty and interest of the house will
depend on the extent to which this principle is judiciously applied. If, for
instance, one imagines the corridor in the house called " Springcot," flanked
with ordinary partitions, much of its character would disappear, and very much
of its effect here depends on the suggestion conveyed by the glazed screen tc
the dining-room of something beyond half-concealed and half-revealed, and
such effects as may be legitimately obtained by such means are very helpful ir
obtaining a successful interior. As in all Art this suggestive quality is mon.
potent in its charm than a complete revelation. In old buildings the wood
and plaster partitions were often constructed to display the framing, as in half
timber work, and this displayed use of construction may be effectively used in
the house. The practical objection to it is that the vibration caused by the
doors is apt to shake the key of the plaster filling ; and so in modern work
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
it is usual to cover the joint between the plaster and the door frames with a
piece called a fascia, and this gradually led to the elimination of the solid
structural door frame, and the use of superficial exposed woodwork. By
keeping the door posts solid and heavy as befits their structural nature, and
by reducing superficial fascias to their smallest dimensions, the structural feeling
of the whole can still be retained, or if the plaster is omitted and the timber
framing built in with bricks and tiles the fascia will not be required.
Such a method of construction in internal partitions is especially suitable
in a half-timbered house, where it represents the logical continuation of the
external structure.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
THE FLOOR AND ITS TREATMENT
'T is difficult to over-estimate the importance of the floor in
the house, and its successful treatment goes further to secure
a satisfactory room than anything which may be done to walls
and ceiling. And this importance of the floor increases in
direct ratio with the size of the room, for while in a normal
attitude we may not be conscious of the floor immediatly beneath our feet,
its distant portions come more fully into the picture. In a level landscape
all that the eye can see up to the point where the sky begins may be considered
as floor, but where a wall of trees encompasses the observer, the nearer it is
the less important become the floor and the more insistent the wall, so that
the relative value of wall and floor vary in direct ratio to the size of the
room. But the floor has an additional claim in that, unlike the wall or
ceiling, it is constantly subjected to the sensation of touch as well as sight.
In considering the internal treatment of the house, it is suggested that the
claims of the structure should be first recognised, and should only be set
aside in favour of superficial decoration when such a treatment more than
compensates for the loss of that sensation of reality and sincerity which the
actual building alone can convey.
If we decide to obscure or partially obscure the structure by superficial
treatment, it may be helpful to turn to Nature for inspiration, and to
think of the best natural floors we know, and thus, for instance, one may
evolve a conventional equivalent of a green meadow studded with flowers.
But in the floor treatment there is a special reason for not too lightly
setting aside the claims of the structure. It is the floor more than
any other part of the house which is subjected to a constant wear and
tear, and it is here that dirt and dust accumulate. It seems reasonable
then that it should present a durable surface, and that it should be capable
of being easily cleaned. All this points to the exclusion of carpets in favour
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of floors composed of stone, tile or timber. There is a special charm in the
floor composed of large stone flags, not too regular in shape or too closely
jointed. It conveys an impression of permanence and breadth combined
with homely serviceableness, which it is difficult to gain in any other way, and
with a few rugs giving warm notes of colour on its expanse of varied grey, it
is not so cold in appearance as might be supposed. Red tiles or bricks also
have, in a less degree, much the same qualities if they are not too highly
finished and possess a characteristic surface and texture. Tiles used in patterns
are less desirable unless designed with great skill, and mosaics of marble
or glass, such as were so successfully used in Roman or Byzantine buildings,
are hardly within the means of the average house-builder, and their beauty is
hardly homely enough in its character for the modern English house. The
uses of the room will to a large extent determine the treatment of its floor,
and, while those apartments constantly used by the members of the family
may have floors of timber with a few rugs, those only occasionally occupied
may be carpeted, while the stone or tile floor is peculiarly adapted for bath-
rooms, lavatories and kitchen offices.
In the sitting-rooms of the average house there is one apparent extrava-
gance which may prove wise, and that is the use of oak or some hard wood
for the floor. It is lasting and durable, and will outlive a succession of
carpets, and it meets both practical and aesthetic requirements. It need not.
be in narrow boards, and, if properly prepared in the first instance, it need
not be polished. It is cleanly and labour-saving, for, of all the trappings
with which we surround ourselves, the carpet will be found to be the most
tyrannical, and, however we multiply door-mats and scrapers, muddy
boots on a clean carpet will be a constant source of anxiety to a careful
housewife.
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CHAPTER THIRTY
CARPETS AND RUGS
N the choice of carpets it would be well to avoid the dirty
drab and biscuit-brown tones which make the average villa
such a depressing place. Whatever else the carpet may be, it
should at least be cleanly and pure in its colouring. It is well
to secure, if possible, a colouring which will not show the
dirt ; but this principle may be carried too far, and while one may be content
with dirty colours chosen on these grounds for railway carriages or steamboats,
one can hardly be satisfied with them in the home, where the appearance of
cleanness and freshness is invaluable. Better a floor of scrubbed deal than
a frowsy carpet which, however clean or however unclean it may be, always
looks dirty.
On the other hand, it would be well to avoid what is quaintly described
as the " Art Square " ; first, apparently because it is seldom square, and
secondly, because there is little art about it. If we are to carpet at all, let
the carpet extend right to the edges of the room. Round the margin of the
art square custom has declared there must be a sort of Tom Tiddler's Ground
of boards, stained a dark brown and varnished. This constitutes one border,
and the art square provides a second inner border, which is one of those
accommodating patterns which does not mind being cut to fit any size, and so
the floor in a small room resolves itself into a series of borders. First there
is the art square, which immediately breaks out into border, and then border
again in the shape of varnished boards. All this frittering away of the floor
surface reduces the apparent size of the room, and the carpet is too large to
be considered a rug and too small for the room as a carpet. It is usually
adorned with flights of birds and trees laid out flat, and the pattern, instead
of developing from centres, develops from the side. Surely, of all the furnish-
ings labelled with that fatal prefix, the art square is the least to be desired.
Although, from a practical point of view, it is extremely desirable that
rooms subjected to much wear should be uncarpeted, it must be confessed
chat nothing gives such a sensation of luxurious comfort to a room as a deep
pile carpet, where footsteps are noiseless. Carpets like Brussels, which have
no softness and depth, are unsatisfactory ; and, if a carpet is decided on, it is
best to get the full possibilities of this means of floor treatment. A plain
green Axminster makes an excellent floor covering, and realises that meadow-
life effect which has already been alluded to. Or a deep red carpet makes a
fine basis for a warmer scheme of colour, while a good blue is almost equally
desirable, though this colour is not quite so reliable. In all cases it is well to
avoid borders and central ornaments, and to have an absolutely plain colouring,
confining whatever pattern may be used to the rugs which may be placed at
the fireside and at doorways.
The soft reds, blues and greens of the Turkey carpets are excellent for
certain rooms, and the possession of an old Turkey carpet would indeed justify
its possessor in taking it as the basis for a decorative scheme. Persian rugs and
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
carpets are also of great beauty, and have been so long associated with
Western furnishings, that they do not seem to demand an Oriental character
in the treatment of the rooms they occupy.
This is not the case, however, with many other traditional types of carpet,
which are only possible in rooms furnished in the traditional styles.
Cheap carpets may be obtained of jute, but when dyed these are rarely to
be relied upon, and, if used, it is better that they should be undyed, and this
natural " string colour " will form an excellent floor covering for a cottage-
like room.
Some allusion has been made to that silent tyranny which inanimate things
have the power of exercising over their possessors. This tyrannical attitude
is chiefly noticeable in the carpet, and to reduce it to a proper subjection a
yearly beating with rods is necessary. In the case of rugs, this annual
drubbing is not demanded, and an occasional shaking is all that is required.
In most cases it is therefore desirable that carpets should not be universally
used in the house, and that they should be easily removable.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
THE HOUSE IN RELATION TO ITS SITE
If God has made the country, then may God
At least complete the country house;
So let the humble artist stand aside,
Prepare the canvas and the palette set
For those sure hands
Which touch by touch add purple to his roofs,
And clothe his walls with woodbine and with rose.
HE success of the artist in house-building will largely depend
on his faculty for recognising the demands of the genius loci.
Robert Louis Stevenson, in his " Gossip of Romance," has
shown how the aim of the writer of fiction should be to fit to
a particular place its appropriate story, to make the right thing
lappen in the right place, and so satisfy the imagination of the reader.
And so the architect must try to express in his building the spirit of the
country-side. So far from forming the blot on the scene which the modern
country house or cottage so often is, it must be, if possible, an added beauty,
appearing to interpret and explain the character of the surrounding country,
and supplying that human note without which its appeal would be less
intimate.
To explain this relation between the house and its surroundings, one must
turn to the old buildings, and think first of some village in Kent or Surrey,
with its cluster of purple roofs ana timber-framed walls. There is no
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
inharmonious note here, unless it be the modern board school, or a few smug
modern villas or cottages. Or again, let us visit, in imagination, a Wiltshire
village where the straggling cottages which line the wide High Street are all
of pearly grey. And here perhaps the sole discordant note may be a modern
arrangement of red bricks and tiles. Or, if we go further north, we shall find
in a rugged mountainous district houses and cottages which express the same
stern qualities as their neighbour hills. Again, in a chalk district, such as
Norfolk for instance, we find that the presence of beds of flint in the chalk
causes them to be used for building the walls. And so these old villages
constitute a kind of geological, map of the country. Much of the
appropriateness of the old buildings to their positions was due no doubt to
this use of the local materials. The stone house was thus of the very stone
of the hill out of which it grew, so that it became difficult to realise where
man's work began and Nature's ended. Or the timbered structure was
framed from the trees of the forest near which it stood, and in its curved
braces and massive corner posts still there lingered some hints of the forms of
the branches from which they were hewn. The step from Nature to building
was a short one, and the materials were not subjected to the iron rule of the
factory to lose their characteristic qualities under the steam saw and planing-
machine. Not only were the conditions more favourable to the retention of
local character, but the builders themselves were unconsciously closer to
Nature and were almost as much a part of their natural surroundings as
their buildings were. Their conceptions were the unconscious result of long
hours spent in the open fields, and not the conscious and fantastic imagin-
ings bred in offices and factories. And so it will generally be found that
communities based on agriculture are usually characterised by buildings in
harmony with Nature, while round the factory building becomes mean and
sordid.
Modern facilities of transit, as well as the artificial conditions of modern
life, the influence of machinery on the modern workman and his materials, as
well as the growth of the commercial spirit are the main causes which have
destroyed local character in modern building, and so on the bleak hillside we
find the machine-made half-timbered picturesque villa showing in its rugged
environment like a child's toy which has been left out in the rain. The town
encroaches on the surrounding country like the spreading of some foul
disease, and in the wildest and most picturesque scenery the traveller's
enthusiasm is checked by the fatal glimpse of a desirable residence " pricking
a cockney ear " over the tree-tops. Building, no longer an added beauty to
the country, has become a nightmare of ugliness from which there is no
escape, and soon the pictures in the railway carriages will be the last surviving
record of the beauty of the past.
In modern building, while we may well learn a lesson from the old work,
in using local materials, it would be unreasonable to forego the opportunity
modern transit affords of importing materials which are more suitable for our
requirements. Such importation, if judiciously effected, will not destroy the
harmony between the house and its surroundings. It becomes dangerous
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when materials of an artificial character are imported to a district where the
buildings are of natural materials. Stone, for instance, may not look out of
place in a brick district, but it is not generally advisable to introduce a brick
house into a stone locality.
It is desirable in country building to use materials which will colour
naturally. Whatever artists we may employ to decorate the interior of the
country house, it is well to invoke the aid of Nature in toning down its
exterior till it harmonises with its surroundings and its walls are clothed
with creepers. And so the materials for the exterior will be chosen with
this end in view, and its tiles and bricks will not be selected for the smoothness
of their surface.
In the town, on the contrary, this natural colouring cannot be included
in the architect's scheme, and everything will tend to become black and dirty.
Whatever beauty its buildings possess must be of an entirely artificial character,
and the beauty of the whole must depend on some definite and conscious
conception which should include a colour scheme. There is little to cheer
the heart of man in the dingy buildings of stone or brick which comprise the
modern town.
In the country or suburban house it may be noted that the more formal
its surroundings the more artificial the house may be. Its terraces and lawns,
like the frame of the picture, will help to isolate it from the surrounding ,
country. In fact, instead of making the house harmonise with Nature in
this case, we make Nature harmonise with the house. It will still be wise,
however, to make concessions on both sides, so that house and Nature meet
each other half way. But for the small houses, at any rate, it has been shown
that the formal type of garden may not be altogether suitable, and the house
which springs directly from its natural surroundings must be more natural
and less artificial in its materials and their treatment. When, however, small
houses occupy restricted roadside sites, a degree of artificiality is necessarily intro-
duced which may suggest a more formal character for the house and its garden.
The choice between artificial and natural beauty will depend largely on
the tastes of the individual. The first becomes reasonable wherever houses
are grouped into communities, and the latter is desirable when they are built
in the country, and the house will be judged not alone by its intrinsic qualities,
but by the extent to which it adapts itself to its surroundings.
The position of the house on its site is a matter of primary importance,
and too often the fatal mistake is made at the outset in this matter, in which,
as in many others, the architect's advice may be duly considered, but is only
acted on when it agrees with the preconceived ideas of his employer. Too
much attention is usually given to the question of view, for houses nowadays
are commonly so designed that it is only possible to endure to live in their
apartments by resolutely and constantly looking out of the window. In most
cases the best view is the outlook on to the garden, and the plans illustrated
show how, in the placing of the garden in connection with the house, special
vista effects should be arranged opposite the principal windows. But in some
situations the question of a more extended prospect must be considered. Let
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us assume the case of a hillside sloping to the south. Here in the old days
it is probable that the house would have been built in the valley at the bottom
of the hill, because the builders valued shelter and cared little about outlook.
But in modern times the tendancy would be to place the house, if not on the
hilltop, at least as near to it as possible, in order to get the most extensive
outlook. In most cases it seems the wiser course to secure as far as possible
both view and shelter by placing the house in such a case about half-way up
the hill, so that the higher ground to the north shelters the house from cold
winds and forms a fine background to the building, which rises above terraces
formed in the hillside to the south. If the approach to the house is from a
road which runs parallel to the hillside on the north side, the conditions
will be favourable for the best possible arrangement of the grounds. It
must not be supposed that the approach to a house from a higher level is
necessarily undesirable. One catches then at first a glimpse of the building
lying low amid its encircling gardens, giving an impression of sheltered
homeliness which is perhaps preferable in some respects to the view from the
valley, where the house is seen towering above its terraces. In discussing the
question of steps and levels in the interior of the house itself this matter has
already been mentioned, and here the same principles may be applied. It will
be found that while the approach from a higher level suggests snugness and
homely comfort in the house, in the approach from below these qualities are
exchanged for dignity and impressiveness of effect. The distance of the
house from the road is a question which demands careful consideration. In
cases where the site is on the north side of the road, and the house must be
approached from the south, the drive should be kept to either the east or
western side of the site, and should be screened from the gardens opposite the
south front. In such a case the conditions suggest that the house should be
placed well back from the road, and the entrance to the house should be placed
at the end rather than in the centre of the south front. But where the opposite
conditions obtain, and the house is approached from a road on its north
boundary, the house would then naturally be placed nearer the road to allow
ample space for the garden opposite its south front. This arrangement is
the best one for a country house, though the town-bred mind is apt to
rejoice in making the approach to the house from the south, with the
drawing-room bay window at the side of the front door. In cases where
the road is to the east or west of the house the front entrance may well be
placed facing the road, but the house should be kept to the north side of
the site, so that the greatest possible space may be available to the south.
In thus fixing the position for the house on the site the question of
aspect is here the main factor, but where the site is restricted it may be
necessary to give up the idea of the south front overlooking the garden,
and to be content instead with a garden outlook which faces west or east,
bnt in such cases, wherever possible, windows to the south should be
introduced to admit the sunlight. Special local conditions may often modify
the principles advanced, but in most cases the question of aspect will be the
dominant factor in determining the situation of the house.
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CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
THE GARDEN
Awake O north wind ; and come thou south ; blow upon my garden that the
spices thereof may flow out.
i AV1NG considered what changes are desirable in the conception
of the modern house to meet the real needs of the average
family, I next propose to deal with the garden in the same
way, and to try and indicate a few general principles which
should govern its design. The function of the garden is to
grow fruit and vegetables for the household, and also to provide
outdoor apartments for the use of the family in fine weather. This has
led to a rough division of the garden into kitchen garden and pleasure
garden, a distinction which implies there is no pleasure to be derived
from the contemplation of plants or trees which are otherwise useful. We
have already encountered this modern conception of beauty, allied solely
to uselessness in the house and its furnishing, and need not therefore be
surprised to find it arising again in the garden.
If rose leaves, like cabbage leaves, were found to have culinary uses, it is
probable that the rose would soon be deposed from its position as queen of
the flowers. In the kitchen garden one finds so many plants which have lost
caste, as it were, by daring to be useful, and the scarlet runner would probably
be as much admired as the scarlet geranium, were it not for the uses of its
slender pods. The grey-green foliage and great thistle-like heads of the
globe artichoke, the mimic forest of the asparagus bed, and the quaint
inflorescence of the onion have each a distinctive beauty of their own which
would be more widely recognised if these plants were not used for food.
But if for the sake of convenience we adopt this rough division of the
garden into kitchen and pleasure garden, it may be concluded that for the
cottager the kitchen garden alone is the most appropriate, including in its
borders roses, lilies, and perennial flowers, with a background of cabbages,
potatoes and other vegetables. Many old cottage gardens which are no
more than this are to be seen in our villages, and show the possibilities of
homely beauty which belong to such a union of use and beauty in the garden,
and such a garden, worked in the spare time of its owner with a rough and
ready lore which is his traditional inheritance, will be profitable as well as
pleasant. But if we take a step from the cottage to the smaller type of
suburban or country house, we shall often find its occupants have little
knowledge of gardening. Under the specialising influence of modern civili-
sation they have lost the instinct for cultivating the soil, and they have
neither the time, knowledge, nor inclination to grow their own vegetables
and flowers.
" He who looks at my garden," says Emerson, " may see that I have
another garden." The proper cultivation of the garden demands a consider-
able degree of leisure and thought, more than the man of affairs will usually
be able to give it. And so the limited means of the dweller in the small
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house are often still further depleted by the hire of the professed gardener,
whose ideas of gardening as an art are expressed in terms of bedding-out and
general grooming, clipping and tidying. For such a household the best type
of garden would be one which maintained its beauty with a minimum
expenditure of labour. The growing of vegetables, in most cases where the
labour is not supplied by the householder, will be found to be somewhat an
expensive luxury. The lawn, too, will demand constant attention to keep it
in order. Gravel paths will require weeding, and hardy annuals will require
the preparation of the soil, the sowing of seed, and the removal of the
plants after they have flowered. The whole situation seems to point to the
natural or wild garden, with those departures that may justify themselves by
their usefulness or beauty, secured without undue cost of maintenance. A
visit paid to a copse in the spring, carpeted with primroses and anemones,
followed by blue-bells, and later with groups of foxgloves, may, perhaps,
suggest the thought that this kind of beauty can only be outdone by garden-
ing of the more ambitious kind when it is at its very best. The woodland
copse, moreover, demands absolutely no labour, and is a product of Nature
unassisted by the art of man.
And so the small householder, in forming his garden, will do well to take
Nature into his counsels and make a virtue of developing the local character-
istics of his land.
On sunny hills, where purple heather grows, purple heather shall be the
dominant note in his garden scheme ; or by the sea, the thrift which blooms
on the cliff shall be invited to lend its pink blossoms to edge his paths ; and
Nature, thus included in the garden, will be assisted and directed and raised
to the nth power, so that it will seem but the apotheosis of the beauty of
the country-side, and by the help of man in the battle for survival the coarser
weeds will be severely handicapped. On these principles it will be possible
to secure a garden which does not require constant grooming, and, once
established, will take care of itself. Whatever labour may be given to it will
be an investment repaid with compound interest, instead of that futile
tidying and clipping which must be constantly repeated to keep Nature
at bay.
But, apart from the wild garden, the orchard must find a place in the
type of garden suggested for the smaller house. The trees, once planted in
the grass, will require but little attention. Few things are more beautiful
than the masses of blossom in the spring or the ripened fruit in the autumn.
Under the trees the grass need not be constantly mown, and if the crop of
hay is not profitable, it will at least repay for the labour of the scythe. In
the spring the drifts of daffodils and crocuses will show to much greater
advantage than if planted in flower-beds, where, on the bedding-out system,
it will be necessary to remove them to make room for the next garden
effect. It is in the orchard that use and beauty are most happily wedded,
and the planting of fruit-trees should form an essential part of every garden
scheme.
Having thus agreed to design the garden for the small house on natural
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lines, and to base it on the wild garden and the orchard, it will become a
question as to how far mown grass, in the shape of lawns, should be included
in the scheme. In many cases a lawn for tennis, bowls, or croquet is
demanded, and, apart from these uses, I do not wish to undervalue the
beauty of a well-kept lawn ; but it will be well if the smaller householder,
before including the lawn as a matter of course in his garden scheme, should
realise that it implies a certain cost of maintenance, and that a garden can be
formed, and not a bad garden either, without any mown grass at all.
Paths should be as few as possible, and should follow the lines of natural
traffic. They should not wind, unless there is a reason for their winding, but
should represent the easiest and shortest routes. If one imagines a garden
without paths at all one would soon find certain beaten tracks appear, and these
would represent the general lines for the fundamental paths. Wherever possible,
paths should be paved instead of gravelled, and this is a luxury which may
repay by saving the labour of weeding.
It is not, however, necessary to have a wild garden as the outcome of the
conditions I have assumed. Plantations of flowering shrubs with the orchard
and borders of perennial flowers will constitute also a type of garden which
will require little cost for its maintenance.
A garden is expensive to maintain, chiefly in proportion to its artificiality
and in the extent to which it includes mown lawns, bedded-out flowers, and
clipped hedges. I do not wish to imply that these things are therefore in-
appropriate to the garden, but that they should be introduced in households
of limited means at least with a full knowledge of the labour in maintenance
they entail, and that it may be wiser in many cases to aim at that kind of
beauty in a garden which can be achieved by assisting and directing Nature
rather than by striving to mould her to an artificial ideal. The kind of
garden I have tried to indicate is, in short, one for a man who, while fond of
a garden, is unable, either through lack of time, means or ability to give it
the attention it requires.
It has been my purpose throughout to show what is possible for the
average householder, both in the planning of the house and its surrounding
garden, and this has led me to dwell on the economic question in gardening
designing which, as in the house, is often overlooked. But if these restric-
tions are removed, many possibilities appear in the development of a garden
designed with artistic skill, and planted and maintained with expert
knowledge.
The desirability of a natural or wild scheme for the basis of gardens
will, of course, greatly depend on the nature of the site ; and in the
country it is often possible to obtain a site for the house which will
require little modification in its essential features. Probably the best
in this kind is an old orchard, but this is difficult to obtain. Of
natural surroundings, however, there seems nothing quite so good as a
setting for the house as a dark moorland covered with the purple of
the heather, and that lesser kind of gorse which seems to have been
clipped into neat round bushes by Nature's invisible shears. Add to this the
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background of a deep pine-wood and a few silver birches, and all the setting
a house of grey stone will require will be a terrace enclosed with a rough
wall of lichened stone. If a site of this ideal description is large enough, a
portion of it may then be well enclosed as a garden of a formal kind ; and if
there is a stream, for no garden is quite complete without water, it may be
carried in formal waterways and by fountains till, in the moorland, its course
is marked by the emerald green of its grassy banks, and by the groups of
iris, forget-me-nots, and other water plants.
But, in the suburban plots, there are few such possibilities, and a more
formal kind of garden is suggested by the rectangular enclosure of the site
and the somewhat artificial character of the surroundings.
In my previous indication of the lines in which a garden may be made
which will need the minimum expense in maintenance, I have purposely
assumed a somewhat extreme case. It will be mainly useful to the average
man in showing what features of the garden are expensive to maintain.
In the production of a small suburban garden its practical application
may lead to a reduction in the area of mown grass, and the avoidance of
grass banks and edgings, which are difficult to keep in order. It may suggest
the advisability of paved paths wherever possible, and when the site is large
enough, the inclusion of an orchard and wild garden.
It will lead to the exclusion of bedding out geraniums, begonias, or
pansies, and will take as a general principle of open-air flower culture that
plants should be perennial, and not require removal in winter ; and though
dahlias, as well as some of the best annuals, may be included in the garden
scheme, these will be recognised as worthy of a relaxation of the general rule.
In preparing the flower-beds, the ground should be dug for at least a yard in
depth, and where the soil is heavy, a drain formed with stones and filled up
with good garden soil. The roots of the plants will then strike deep, and
they will be little affected by drought. To protect the soil from drought,
too, the garden beds should be well covered, and creeping plants may be
introduced between the masses of perennials for this purpose. The borders
should not be invariably planted with the smallest flowers nearest the edge,
and the effect should be varied by bringing tall, bold clumps to the edge of
the path, and this edge should not appear as a line, but should be formed by
the plants in the border overhanging the path. When a change of level
occurs in a garden, a grass bank should not be made, but a rough retaining-
wall built of stone, and from the upper level roses and trailing plants should
shower their blossoms. The joints should be planted with wall plants, and
at its base flowers that will be grateful for the warmth and shelter it gives.
The same rough and homely treatment should be used in steps, and these
and the walls should be considered as not being mere masonry, but building
which is to be clothed with plant life.
A garden of average size may include a lawn for tennis, croquet, or bowls,
an orchard, a kitchen garden, and a flower garden in two main divisions — one
a rose garden, which may be square or nearly square in form, and the other,
which may be long and narrow, devoted to perennial flowers. All these out-
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door apartments will be connected with straight paths, and one of these may
form a pergola. In making the divisions of such a garden, it is important
that sufficient space should be devoted to backgrounds for the flowers and
garden ornaments. Of these background materials, the yew hedge is still
the best, because of the depth and intensity of its tone. White lilies may
look well against a brick wall or a shrubbery, but they will look their best
against the sombre yew. And so will roses and other bright flowers. It is
this use of the yew background which makes the old flower gardens so
unequalled in their effect, and those who advocate its supersession by modern
flowering shrubs, which may be more intrinsically charming, forget that the
primary value of the permanent material in a garden is as a background to its
passing show of blossoms — a stage on which the flowers present their yearly
show. Having so arranged the plan that its transient brightness shall be
seen in a proper setting, and not lost in the competing confusion of the
shrubbery ; the next important point to consider will be the connection of
its apartments by paths where the vista effects are carefully studied. The
beauty of the garden will depend to a great extent on its vista effects, and
for this purpose its paths must be straight. The ends of these vistas
require special attention, and may be treated in various ways — either by
a semicircular recess, with a seat, or a summer-house.
The garden should not, moreover, be too open and exposed to the sun,
but should be full of mystery, surprises, and light and shade. One of its
most attractive features will thus be the pergola, with its paved walk
checkered by the shadows of the climbing plants which form its walls and
roof. It matters little what the structure of the pergola is. It may be
rough poles with the bark on, roofed with branches, or it may be piers of
stone or brick, with an open timber roofing. It should at any rate be rude
and simple, and look as if it is meant for an outdoor life in rough weather.
Other effects of shade may be gained by walks bordered with, perhaps, hazel
or willow, and through these shadowed vistas we may look beyond to an
open sunlit space bright with flowers. Actual size has little to do with the
effect of such a garden, and a variety of effects may be achieved in a
comparatively small area by careful planning.
The garden may include various features and centres of interest on the
lines of the main vistas. The square rose garden may be focused in its
central sun-dial, and round this wreathed climbing roses may form a circle
supported by chains and arches. The angles of the square may be marked
by single yews, and standard roses may be placed in regular symmetrical
positions to realise a calculated effect, while the roses generally will be
arranged in some definitely conceived colour scheme. Or in the perennial
flower garden clumps of delphinium, phlox, hollyhocks, day lilies, &c., will
be the subject of a similar scheme. The flowers, instead of being repeated
at regular intervals, like the geranium and calceolaria formula of the villa
garden, will be massed in single clumps, and the whole garden will be
planted so that at each season of the year something is in bloom there, and
in blooming forms a well-studied arrangement of colour. Here a central
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feature may perhaps be a dipping well for watering the garden. The garden
seats, which should be of good design and solid structure, should be placed
at those points in the garden which command the principal vistas to which
they may form the terminal features, and in similar positions should be
placed the arbours or summer-houses.
Amongst other features of the garden not to be overlooked are trellises
to form screens or enclosures, and wreathed with rose or vine, tubs and
pots for plants to be set at intervals on a terrace or stand, sentinel-like,
to mark an entrance. Dovecots set on a pole will give a homely note to
the garden, and fountains and statuary will be essential features in a stately
scheme.
Terracing will form a necessary part of the garden on sloping ground,
and where, as in the old Italian gardens, the slope is considerable, fine effects
can be obtained with steps and terraces one above the other. They should
be retained by walls rather than by banks, and these walls may be formed of
rough stone and planted as previously described.
It would be impossible, with the space at my disposal, to deal adequately
with all the features of the garden. I can do no more than indicate a
few general principles. Neither have I any wish to pose as a partisan in the
quarrel between the naturalists and formalists in its design. In the large
garden each should have free scope, and natural garden and formal garden
will enter into no rivalry there, but each will only enhance the peculiar charm
of the other, and afford a solace for varying moods.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
WAYS AND MEANS
T is a common belief that to build an artistic house a large
sum of money is required. Art and ornament are often held
to be synonymous terms, and the house which possesses the
largest amount of ornament is often held to be the most
artistic. It will be necessary, first of all, therefore, to state
that the reverse of this is very often the case, and that a house is artistic
in proportion to the amount and quality of the skill and thought dis-
played in its design, and not in proportion to the amount of decoration it
possesses.
Again, the intrinsic value, or rather the market price of the materials of
which a house is built, is often taken as the measure of its artistic merit,
without regard to beauty of workmanship or design. Such a method of
judging is almost as unreasonable as if one estimated the value of a picture
by the price per pound of paint or per yard of canvas.
So far from being a luxury, the house which is rationally designed on
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economical lines is not only a source of pleasure and comfort to its possessor
but also a wise investment.
In considering the cost of a house designed on the principles I have
endeavoured to explain — principles which are claimed to be both rational and
artistic — it is necessary to think of the house with its furniture and decoration
ready for occupation, and to compare the total outlay required with the ordinary
house, built, furnished and decorated in the usual way. And then, again,
the cost of maintenance must be compared, the wear and tear of furnishings,
and fabrics which perish in the using and which have to be replaced.
If one recalls to mind the ordinary house to let unfurnished, what a
chilling and depressing vision is invoked ! Think of its dreary wall surfaces,
covered, perhaps, with three or four layers of dirty papers, its gas-fittings, its
glaring windows with their broken Venetian blinds, its mantelpieces and grates,
and its floors with their borders of battered staining. To make all this
endurable there must be curtains and carpets and drapings of all kinds ; ;md
in the furnishing it is often considered necessary to introduce a multitude of
unnecessary things to distract and confuse the eye, and so to screen and
palliate the original ugliness of the unfurnished room.
But in the house where the building itself has been the subject of
careful study, beauty does not depend on furnishing or decoration. Un-
furnished, it is still inviting and homely, and nothing but essential
furniture is required for its habitation. The perishable fabrics, which form
so large a part of the ordinary house, are here reduced to a minimum.
Its floors do not demand carpets nor its windows curtains, and the less
furnishings and trappings put into it the better it will look. Where only a
limited sum of money is available for the making of a home, it will be the best
wisdom to spend as much as we can afford in securing a thoughtfully designed
and well-built house, and as little as may be required for essential furnishings,
and nothing at all in decoration.
If, later on, circumstances admit of further outlay, decoration can be
added as a result of careful consideration, or cheap and temporary furnishings
may be replaced by better, but the structure of the house cannot be so easily
modified. Custom and habit are the tyrants who have settled for the non-
reflecting majority the expenditure required for the furnishing of a house. It
is usual to spend, say, ^500 in furnishing a certain type of house, and the
family is therefore invited to consider a scheme showing how to furnish for
^500. The expense may be grudged, but it is paid because it is usual and
customary so to do. And so the furniture arrives, and probably includes the
very pictures for the walls. Given a certain station in life such surroundings
are correct and usual. It is not merely that such furnishings are badly made
and vulgar in design. They are for the most part quite unnecessary and
merely a source of labour and an obstruction of floor spaces. The demand
for such things is the creation of their manufacturers, for, it may be observed,
that by continuously and patiently telling a man that he wants a thing, he will
end by believing you, and whether it is an encyclopaedia or a drawing-room
cabinet he offers himself a willing victim to the enterprising advertiser. And
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so the Englishman's house has become an indiscriminate collection of objects
which he has been insistently told that he wants. It is a compound or the
cabinet-maker's shop and the picture-dealer's gallery, and as such is surely the
strangest medley which, since the world began, has ever been chosen as a setting
for human life.
In this country it is not usual for the average man to contemplate the
idea of building a house for himself. He is deterred by various considera-
tions. He has been told that building is an expensive luxury, and that the
cost of a house invariably exceeds initial estimates, while he fears that if it
may become necessary for him to sell or let his house he may not realise his
expenditure. His informants are generally those who have built houses, and
whose experience in the matter he therefore values. Speaking from my own
experience, I may say that I have designed houses which have been finished
within the expenditure originally proposed, and others in which the initial
estimates have been more than doubled ; and I believe I am but stating the
experience of architects in general when I say that the additional cost has always
been incurred by the client's express demands. It has never occurred in houses
designed for people whose means were limited, because they, knowing they
could not afford to indulge in extras, were content to exercise a necessary
restraint.
Generally speaking, the richer the client the more unchecked the tendency
becomes to add to the original price, and this seems a very reasonable position
of affairs for the man who in his daily life is accustomed to deny himself
nothing ; and, when the accounts have to be paid, it is perhaps merely human
to cast the burden on builder or architect, and afterwards to nurse the con-
viction that this accumulative and unforeseen expenditure is an inherent part
of the business of house-building.
To avoid such an experience it is necessary at the outset to determine
once for all what is actually required and how much may be spent, and to
allow a reasonable margin for unforeseen contingencies, and by keeping strictly
to the original programme, or by departing from it only with the calculated
knowledge of the cost involved in each case, there is no more reason why a
man should spend more than he intends in building a house than in making a
purchase in a shop.
If we assume the case of a man for whom it is necessary that economy
should be studied, and who has no large sum to invest, and if we suppose that
the rental he is prepared to pay allows of the expenditure of ^1000 on the
house, it will be necessary for him to allow a certain sum for the formation of
the garden and its enclosure, as well as for furniture and perhaps decoration,
and in order to be quite on the safe side it will be well for him to think of
the total sum as ,£900 instead of £ioco, so as to leave an ample margin for
contingencies. The sketch-plans for the house having been prepared, unless
the architect has had experience or special knowledge of the price of building
in the particular district, it will be wise to get a preliminary estimate at this
stage by submitting the sketch-plans, with a rough specification, to a local
builder.
HOUSES AND GARDENS
In the selection of a builder to carry out the work, the competitive system
of tendering is not always the most satisfactory. It is better to make local
inquiries and to try and find a man who has the reputation for being straight-
forward in his dealings, and give him the work on condition that his price
is considered reasonable by the architect. The architect is thus spared the
necessity of playing the distasteful part of the amateur detective, and the
work is carried out with the minimum amount of friction. It seems, indeed,
little short of disgraceful that in the ancient and honourable craft of building
there are so many men who demand the services of a constant spy in the form
of a clerk of the works to insure proper work being done. Apart from
ethical considerations, this degrading and vulpine attitude is the worst sort of
business policy, and the architect who has the misfortune to engage this type
of builder does not continue to employ or recommend him. But the competitive
system of tendering, assuming that all builders belong to the criminal class and
need constant police supervision, gives the work to the lowest bidder without
considering his reputation or inquiring as to his character. It is this competitive
system which is to a great extent the cause of the degradation of the modern
builder. Under the pressure of necessity he may be tempted to offer to do
the work for a price which compels him to attempt to scamp it, and his dis-
honesty in this respect is a retaliatory measure. I do not say that competition
between builders of reputation is necessarily bad, but in competitions between
builders whose characters are not inquired into it will generally be the most
unscrupulous — the one who counts on making up deficiencies by undetected
scamping — who offers the lowest bid, and the whole process thus often results in
the survival of the unfittest. To inquire into character after the competition
has taken place is useless. The rules of the game demand that the work should
be given to the lowest bidder, and the fact that a man has been invited to
compete implies that he has been considered eligible.
Although an architect may be able to obtain from an unscrupulous builder
a minimum standard of excellence in the work, not only is this achieved with
much unnecessary friction, but in the absence of any pride in his work on the
builder's part, it is impossible to obtain a really satisfactory result, for the best
kind, of work cannot be obtained under compulsion, and so the final result is
never quite satisfactory.
Having succeeded in obtaining a reasonable price for the work from a
reliable builder, it may next be considered how the man who has not a large
sum to invest may set about the important matter of paying for the house.
Assuming that the cost of the house is ,£1000, it will not be a difficult matter
to obtain a mortgage on the building as it approaches completion for three-
quarters of its value, so that the actual sum of money required will be, say,
£300. Assuming that the interest payable on such a mortgage is 4 per
cent., the house may thus be equivalent to one for which a rental of £40 a
year is paid. It might be considered necessary to allow a certain sum out of
this for repairs, but in a house simply and solidly built this will be a much
smaller sum than is usually allowed for old houses. The possibility of
either selling or letting such a house eventually, should occasion demand,
M 89
HOUSES AND GARDENS
would depend very much upon its position and suitability to average
requirements.
My own experience in this matter has shown that houses of average size,
built in suitable localities, can be readily disposed of, for, while it is not the
general public who at present demand rational houses, the minority who do
are not catered for at all at present, and this minority, I feel assured, is
increasing every year.
Those who have any faith in human nature at all must believe that the
hideous outcrop of modern villadom is a merely temporary condition of
affairs, and a veneer of so-called art will not for long be accepted as a substitute
for comfort and convenience in planning.
The most economical house to build is one which is a simple rectangle in
plan covered with an unbroken roof. In most cases, to aim at picturesque and
elaborate roof-lines and plans full of nooks and corners, is to add to the cost
and often merely to secure a restlessness and fussiness of effect. It is commonly
supposed that the art of the house lies in complexity of roofing, in pic-
turesque " skylines," and so on. In answer to an attempt to induce a client
who held such views to accept a simple type of plan, I was told that a plain
house c'ould be obtained from any one, and that he had come to me because
he wanted something unusual. To achieve the unusual in building nowadays,
it is necessary merely to aim at being rational and simple, and to depend on
proportion and the structural integrity for whatever beauty of an unobtrusive
kind the house may possess. It does not by any means follow that a plain
house is an ugly house, and conscious striving for picturesque effects often
results in failure.
The most telling and prominently satisfying buildings are generally those
which are simple in outline and structure.
In estimating the cost of the various houses illustrated, it must be remem-
bered that, as the price of building varies considerably in different localities,
these can only be taken as approximately correct. In some cases I am able
to give the cost for which the houses have been actually built. In London
and its neighbourhood, within a certain radius which it is difficult accurately
to define, as well as in certain popular or fashionable resorts in other parts of
the country, the price of building is high. In country districts it is much
lower, and is lowest in those where old traditions have been least influenced by
modern ideas.
Large firms in most districts tend to maintain a uniform and somewhat
high scale of prices, but in many country places the small local builder, who
perhaps even works with his own hands, and who is not entirely consumed
with the idea of making money, is perhaps the best type for building a small
homely house. He does not possess elaborate machinery, and cannot produce
that high mechanical finish in the work which represents the modern ideal of
perfection, and which has made modern building so depressing. He may not
be so intelligent or so expeditious in his work as the more up-to-date builder^
but, on the other hand, he is often more conscientious and careful.
90
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
MAKING THE BEST OF IT
Ah Love ! could you and I with Fata conspire,
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits — and then
Remould it nearer to the heart's Desire !
N England, at any rate, the average man does not generally
build a house for himself, and building is regarded as an
expensive luxury to be indulged in only by the rich. My
present purpose is not to inquire how far such a state of things
is justified or what are its causes, but to accept the fact that
many people who have their clothes, for instance, made to fit them, feel
bound to accept the ready-made house. This might not be so serious
a matter if the ready-made house were thoughtfully planned and adapted
to the comfort of the occupant, but few, I think, who have experienced
life in the average villa will claim so much for it as that ! But assuming
that such a house must perforce be ours, it may be useful to consider
in what way its interior, at least, can be modified to make the best of it.
The task is not such a hopeless one as at first sight may appear, and for
this reason : In the criticism of all art, an unconscious allowance is made by
the intelligent observer for the limitations involved. We do not quarrel with
the painter because, with his tube of flake white, he attempts to represent the
brightness of sunshine. Unconsciously we make due allowance for the
difficulties of his task. To make the best of the situation is all that any man
can do, and the very difficulties of the task add to the interest of the final
result, and make our triumph more readily applauded or our failure more
easily condoned.
Those who have read of Japanese theatrical performances may remember
that they include the presence on the stage of certain gentlemen in black who
are not supposed to be seen by the spectator. In England, their duties
would be performed out of sight ; but the Japanese, while placing them in
view of the audience inconspicuously attired, assume that the intelligent
observer will consider it his duty not to see them. It is on some such
principle as this that the undesirable features of the suburban house should
be treated. One recognises at once, for instance, that its rooms are too high,
aud that an ugly plaster cornice divides wall from ceiling. In such a case,
the decorator may finish his treatment of the walls, at the height of the doors
perhaps, with a wooden rail. All the space above that line he practically
ignores. It is not in the caste of his piece, and so it may be treated in the
way which will best efface it from our impression of the room, and generally
the best method is to whitewash all above the rail and then leave it
contemptuously alone. There is nothing to be gained by picking out the
cornice with colour, or by papering with elaborate friezes and ceiling-papers
this upper portion of the room. All this will but help to draw attention to
what we wish to ignore. Or again, the doors and woodwork generally will
91
Fie. I.
The inevitable
terrace plan.
HOUSES AND GARDENS
probably be enriched with all kinds of coarsely designed and mechanically
executed mouldings. Here, again, the same principle will lead us to avoid
any scheme of painting which emphasises these features by special colours for
the mouldings, or different shades of colour for panels ; and here again
disapproval of features of this kind can best be shown by painting all the
woodwork one uniform tint. Such a principle will, however, hardly serve us
in dealing with such important features as fireplaces, for instance. The more
important grates, which one may almost safely assume will be cast iron
coarsely designed and finished in shiny black, with a few highly ornamental
tiles let in the sides, and the overmantels, white enamelled probably, in the
drawing-room with all sorts of niches and shelves, must, if possible, be
removed to an attic, and a better and simpler fireside arranged,
so that it can be easily removed if necessary, and the old one
replaced when the house is given up. If, however, the house
is an older one, even if it belongs to the much-abused Early
Victorian period, the mantels may be of that simple type which
was almost universal, and thus possess a sort of negative virtue
in being at least not artistic ! Here it will be necessary to
remove the grate only and to fix above the shelf a small over-
mantel designed mainly as a background for ornaments.
In many cases a few slight structural alterations may be
managed with an indulgent landlord. The house, if it is in
a terrace, at any rate it may be assumed, will be of the plan
shown in Fig. i. It is the recognised formula. From the
porch or vestibule, passing through the inner door with its
leaded glass, of which the least said the better, one enters the
narrow hall where the hat-stand is, and one looks beyond to
the long flight of stairs, with possibly a varnished pitch-pine
newel-post, which is as much too large as the balusters above
it are much too small, and which seems to have absorbed the
whole art of the stairs. Here, the first step in improving
the plan will be to remove the partition between the narrow
hall and the front sitting-room — the opening being spanned
with a beam behind which a curtain is fixed. The hall
now becomes a recess in the front room which may be
screened with the curtain when required. The dismal passage
has disappeared.
A further improvement may be made by forming a ceiling of wood panels
perhaps on fibrous plaster and wood at a low level to this recess, for its
ugliness as a passage even is much increased by the excessive ceiling height,
for in the suburban villa the height of its largest room is the height of its
narrowest passage.
The staircase will also be shut off by another low opening with its beam
and curtain or even by a door.
On entering from the porch of such a house, we are at once in a recessed
portion of the hall or house-place, with its liberal suggestion of space and
92
FIG. 2.
The above plan
modified as sug-
gested.
HOUSES AND GARDENS
freedom, instead of that chilling passage which no art of man can make
homely and inviting.
Let us now consider the back room, which in a house of this kind will
be the dining-room. It is generally small and cramped, and in spite of its
sheet of glass, which makes it impossible to escape from the insistent
presence of narrow back premises, it is also dark. It is assumed that the
kitchen premises form an annexe in the rear, and are not in the basement ;
and their position will make it difficult to light this room properly, while
the prospect from its window can hardly be anything but cheerless. But
the window of the front room will give a large amount of light, and more
in fact than is needed there.
A further modification of the structure would therefore take the form
of making an opening in the partition which divides the two rooms, which
may be either fitted with glazed doors or with the beam and curtain as
before. A small conservatory might then form the end of the vista outside
the dining-room window, or if the window itself is merely modified it
might take the form of making it solely a means of letting light into the
room without disclosing the barrenness of the outlook. This may be done
by fitting shutters glazed with leaded glass on the inside face of the wall.
These could be easily removed, and besides forming a screen, they would
have all the advantages of double windows and counteract those disadvantages
of the large window which have already been referred to.
In making such a modification of the stereotyped villa plan, I fully
recognise that it will only appeal to the more intelligent inhabitants of villadom.
The conception of the house, which includes the sacrifice of the front room
to the visitor, and the furnishing of it with superfine and highly polished
cabinets and occasional chairs and tables, will not gladly accept for mere
family uses the most important room in the house easily and comfortably
furnished, with materials which will stand, and not be the worse for, constant
service. In considering how such a modification of the plan will meet the
conditions of family life, the question may first of all be considered from the
fundamental standpoint of heating. In such a villa, the family will often be
normally a " two-fire " family, and will only keep in constant use the kitchen
fire and that in the back sitting-room. The inevitable result of this will be
that the back sitting-room in the winter months will be the general and only
sitting-room and feeding-room for the family group, or if the front sitting-
room fire is kept in use the family must necessarily have their meals in the
cold. When, however, the whole area of the two rooms is treated as one
apartment with a good fire in the front room, the dining-room becomes a sort
of recess in the hall, and shares in its heat as well as light, and the whole
interior forms a roomy and comfortable setting for the family life. On
occasions when it is necessary to receive visitors without infringing on the
family life, this may be done either in the back or front portion of the plan,
according to the convenience of the occasion. The separate uses of the back
room would depend on the possibility of including another fire in the
minimum heating arrangements, or a heating apparatus might be used to
93
HOUSES AND GARDENS
warm the greenhouse and dining-room, and the possibility of other retreats
for members of the family would depend on the number and disposition of
the bedrooms, and the possibility of heating them either by artificial means or
by additional fires, while in some cases a reception-room may be placed on the
upper floor, which could be reached without disturbing the privacy of the lower
rooms. In cases where additional frontage allows of a garden of reasonable
width at the back, the space outside the dining-room window may be used
as a garden-room, and if the wide doorway to the front room is still retained
this will not make the dining-room itself too dark.
Figure 4
FIG. 3.
shows another modification of the normal plan which is
particularly adapted to houses where there is an outlook at
the back on to the garden, and especially when this is to
the south, the partition between the back room and the
staircase hall being removed and a beam and curtain
introduced. The whole of the back portion of the house
now becomes the hall, and the front room communicating
with it by double doors becomes the part of the plan set
apart for the reception of visitors. As the staircase now
becomes an important feature a slight modification in its
form is often desirable, and this can be effected by forming
a square landing as shown. This arrangement is specially
adapted for houses where the back room is fairly large, and
in its altered form it will become the dining-hall. Here,
as in small dining-rooms generally, a folding table will be
desirable which can be removed when not in use, and in its
reduced size used as a side-table.
In the decoration and furnishing of the villa thus modified
in its structure the general principles advanced elsewhere will
equally apply, and it only remains to note a few of the special
conditions which it presents. In the new house it is advised
that the structure should in itself be complete and satisfying
and not depend on superficial decoration, which when applied takes the form
of clothes designed to display bodily beauties of proportion rather than to
conceal defects. In the villa, however, decoration must be palliative. It
is not so much a case of a house to be decorated as a disease to be alleviated,
and the decorator thus becomes a physician who advises the proper treatment
for each case.
It has already been shown how features which cannot be removed may be
made at least inconspicuous, and how others too important for such a system
may be removed and replaced by something better. A few notes may be added
as to the treatment of the floor, which, in a house built as one would wish,
should, as far as possible, be structural. In the villa the best treatment of the
ordinary floor is to cover it with a veneer of parquet prepared with a dull
glossy surface which does not require polishing. This treatment should at
any rate be adopted, if possible, in the principal sitting-rooms, and considering
the saving in the cost and wear of carpets its cost will be justified.
94
FIG. 4.
HOUSES AND GARDENS
In other rooms, linoleum ot plain colour or cork carpets will form a
satisfactory basis for rugs. These materials will form useful palliative remedies
for bad floors, and they are considered in this connection merely because, in
the house as it should be, the real floor should not require covering except
to gain that sense of luxury which the deep pile of a good carpet conveys.
Certain labour-saving appliances may be easily added to the house. A lift
from the kitchen when it is in the basement, and a speaking-tube, and a
few washstands, fitted with taps, in the bedrooms, and the use of tiles for
wall-covering as far as possible in bathrooms and kitchen premises — all these
will help to reduce the labour of the house.
To make the best of some old country farmhouse will constitute a more
congenial task. Old houses in the country are full of inspiration and sugges-
tion. But how seldom is the genius loci regarded, and how often one sees the
serene dignity of an old house marred by all kinds of up-to-date artistic
furnishings and decorations.
Whatever is done to an old building should be so conceived in harmony
with the house that one should not be able to detect where the new work
begins and the old ends. All should show alike an old-world beauty,
comfortable, serviceable and homely. The ancient glories of the house, many
of which may have been since obscured, may be replaced with only such slight
modifications as may be required to meet modern demands.
In suggesting these schemes for the modifications of the average house, I
am fully conscious that each case will have special conditions demanding special
treatment, but in the average house this will largely consist in the judicious
removal of partitions, so securing a sense of spaciousness instead of the
cramped confinement of the house, which consists of a series of small
compartments.
95
o
>
LU
I
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
THE TERRACE HOUSE
UCH has recently been written on the improvement which it
is assumed has taken place in recent years in the design and
adornment of the home. If the prevalent use of "art" wall-
papers and " art " furniture, and the continuous construction of
" art " villas may be taken as an evidence of progress, there may
indeed be some reason for congratulation on a national advance in this
important matter. But to the better informed this artistic progress is a
mere chimera and only evidences the ignorance of the general public as to
what constitutes beauty and fitness in domestic surroundings, and the
commercial acumen of the various tradesmen who pander to the popular taste.
It is true that here and there, in isolated instances, houses are built and
furnished with modest comeliness, but in the rank and file of building, in the
average home of the average family, modern progress has chiefly consisted in
the substitution of spurious art for confessed ugliness.
A great part of this rank and file of modern houses is made up of row
upon row of terraces — houses built on plots of standard width and designed
on a standard plan, so that an absent-minded occupant of one of them might
be excused for entering his neighbour's house in mistake for his own, and
would find little in its interior arrangements to undeceive him. All this
regularity and similarity might find some excuse for itself if it represented
the final outcome of a logical scheme. It has again and again been urged
that the standard plan represents the best solution of the terrace problem, and
that attempts to modify it have not been successful. If it were conceded
that in the planning of the terrace house it is first of all essential that there
should be a seldom occupied sitting-room with a bay-window commanding a
view of another similar bay-window on the opposite side of the street — that
kitchens and other compartments of the house connected with domestic
service are shameful things, and should be hidden at the back, regardless of
aspect — that the interior of the house should be subdivided as far as possible
into as many little apartments as possible, which, though they must needs be
small, may at least be lofty — that the comfort of the family is really quite
a secondary matter in comparison to the proper respect due to furniture,
for the proper display of which the house is built, &c. &c. — one might,
perhaps, then admit that the stereotyped plan is the best that can be
arrived at, and it is in accepting these unwritten canons without question
that attempted modifications have failed. One of the primary factors which
induces variety of plan is the aspect of the houses; but this question
is not considered at all in the plan of the terrace house. In view of the
importance of sunlight in the principal rooms, it seems unreasonable that
the houses on the north side of a road should be of the same plan as those
on the south. In the case of a terrace with a north aspect towards the
road, is it really the best arrangement to make the principal sitting-room
sunless, and in this case, at any rate, is it desirable to place there the usual
K 97
HOUSES AND GARDENS
bay-window with its plate-glass, lace curtains, Venetian blinds, and other
upholsteries ? Were it not better done to place the kitchen premises here, and
thus gain the full breadth of the garden at the back, and make there the
principal room, with its bay-window overlooking a sunny garden, thus reducing
to a minimum the line of communication between the kitchen and the road,
and obviating at once all that traffic across the house which the position of
the kitchen premises at the back usually entails ?
The conception of the house, which primarily consists, as I have endeavoured
to show it should consist, of one good-sized living-room or hall, makes the
position and outlook of this room a fundamental question. There the family
live, and there, at any rate, they must have sunlight, a pleasant outlook, and
cheerful surroundings.
In the ordinary terrace house there is no such dominating room for the
family use. The principal apartment overlooking the road is usually preserved
for visitors, and a little dining-room at the back is badly lighted by a window
blocked by kitchen premises which leave only a narrow strip of ground
available for a garden.
If you ask me where the family live I cannot tell you, but, judging from
the unlighted rows of front bay-windows, one may at least conclude that they
support existence somewhere in the back, and reserve their front apartment to
display all those evidences of advance in modern domestic furnishings on
which we congratulate ourselves nowadays.
If, however, the family life is centralised in one large apartment, the posi-
tion of this apartment, in its relation to the road, would vary according to
aspect, while the general tendency of the occupants of houses in terraces to
live at the back, where freedom from dust and noise and an outlook on to a
private garden may be enjoyed, suggests the advisability of a complete
reversal, wherever possible, of the present scheme for the terrace house
described in the phrase " Queen Anne in front and Mary Ann at the back,"
a reversal which would place the kitchen premises adjacent to the road and the
sitting-rooms overlooking a garden at the back.
In such cases the house with its back to the road may be placed as close to
it as possible without the usual disadvantages of such a position. In other
cases, where considerations of aspect suggest that the principal sitting-room
should be placed towards the road, it would be better for the houses to be set
well back.
In the case of roads which run east and west, it would be best if these
divided each single set of plots, so that in all the house would face south.
In roads which run north and south, the question of aspect will have less
influence on the plan. Thus one is brought to consider the question of
laying out an estate, not entirely with a view of convenience for traffic, but
to allow the best conditions for the individual house, and where terraces are
introduced it is desirable that these should run east and west, and, instead
of being planned with houses facing the street on both sides, should have
houses close up to the road on the north side and gardens on the south.
Special local conditions must necessarily modify such arrangements in
98
A TERRACE HOUSE (A)
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
FIRST FLOOR PLAN"
A TERRACE HOUSE (B)
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I '^^j^m
mmF-m'$mm
U&*-V?:\f>t,J>t' «'i
VIEW FROM SOUTH
A TERRACE HOUSE (B)
GROUND FLOOR PLAN FIRST FLOOR PL4N
PLANS
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
special cases, but the estate plan should be evolved in this way from the indi-
vidual house, which should be again evolved from real requirements, and not
based on fantastic chimeras and conventions.
As to the amount of frontage given to the houses, some variety may also
be introduced, and a terrace with a liberal frontage allowance is better than
detached houses set close together, because in the latter cases the spaces
between the houses are practically useless for light or outlook.
It is, moreover, unreasonable in building a terrace that all the houses
should have exactly the same accommodation.
The tailor who sells ready-made clothes recognises certain variations from
the normal in the human frame which it is impossible to ignore, and the same
variations occur in families. So that while the majority of the houses may
contain normal accommodation there should also be a certain number adapted
for abnormal cases. It will thus be seen how many factors there are which
tend to suggest variety in the plan of the terrace house, and when to these
are added the peculiar local conditions which it is impossible to deal with here,
it may well be urged that there is no rational excuse for the standard terrace
plan, and, so long as the large majority of the population are doomed to live
in such dwellings, it is doubtful whether there is much cause for congratu-
lating ourselves on the improvement of the British homes of to-day.
In the two plans for terrace houses shown, the first would be appropriate for
a terrace where the road is on the sunny side, and where it is therefore desirable
that the principal windows should look towards the road. In such a case it
would be desirable that the houses should be set well back, so that the garden
space should be in front, and the house should be to some extent free from
the dust and the noise of the road.
The straight walk leading to the front entrance might be flanked on the
one side with a range of posts and roofed with branches so as to form a
pergola, of which one side is formed by the division-wall between the houses,
and the other afford glimpses of a long flower border. This path would
then appear as a simple kind of cloister. The whole of the ground plan of
the main block of the house would then consist of one large room, with its
dining recess, serving-room and staircase. In this room the usual passage at
the side is incorporated, and is merely divided by a curtain, for it seems
unreasonable that so much space as is usually occupied by this passage should
be entirely cut off" from the house for only occasional use. This large room
is heated by a fireplace of ample proportions, and the whole effect on entering
from the porch is one of homely comfort and breadth.
In order to get the maximum amount of light at the back, the kitchens
are treated as a separate block, and represent a little additional house for the
servants, with its separate stair and bedroom accommodation over the kitchen.
In the main block the family bedrooms are provided on two floors, of which
the upper is in the roof.
In the second plan for a terrace house it is assumed that the road is on the
north side, and so the kitchens are placed on the road side and the whole of
the south front then remains to be treated as a private garden. The frontage
99
HOUSES AND GARDENS
is here about twenty-eight feet, and here, as before, the essential feature of
the ground plan is the large hall. Instead of the usual three small sitting-rooms
there is this roomy hall, with the other two sitting-rooms represented by the
relatively small bower or reception-room and the dining-recess, both of which
appear as mere appendages to the principal room. There is no attempt to
secure the usual apology for a garden towards the road, but a certain
character is given to the approach by introducing a little square paved court
which is approached from the road by an archway in the wall. Under the
kitchen wing would be a basement which would afford space for a larder,
washhouse and cellar.
On the upper floor the bedroom accommodation consists of two rooms
facing the south, and two smaller ones overlooking the entrance court. The
position of the bathroom admits of a domed ceiling carried into the roof-space,
and lighted from above with a central circular skylight. The main roof-
space would contain, besides the servants' bedroom, two additional attics which
might be used either as additional bedrooms, children's playroom or study.
It is doubtful whether such a plan as this would appeal to the speculative
builder who is at present the sole arbiter of the fate of those who dwell in
terraces. Not because of its cost, because it could be built as cheaply as the
ordinary type of house, but merely because it is unusual and runs counter to
those cherished accepted traditions which have made the terrace house so
irrational and inartistic.
The miniature gardens to these houses would admit of a variety of
treatment, and it is not suggested that they should all be similar in plan and
arrangement. In the garden, of which a plan and view is given, a more
liberal use of water has been made than is usual. The little square rose
garden, with its central fountain, overlooks a semicircular pool in which is
reflected the terrace wall and sundial, and beyond this a narrow stream
conducts the water to the lower pool, beyond which is the pergola forming
the termination to the garden. The posts of the pergola would be made of
pine-trunks with the bark on. In their natural state these are a little dark in
tone, so they could be whitewashed and would thus eventually show that
pearly grey tone which may be noticed in the tree trunks of old fruit-trees
which have been treated in this way. The importance of the proper study of
reflections in the use of water in a garden has suggested that the pergola
should begin at the edge of the water so that its columns and the lantern
which marks the line of the central vista are reflected there.
100
i-
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
COTTAGES
N the planning of modern cottages under the guidance of the
general principles which have already been advanced in the
consideration of the plans of houses, it will be observed that
the problem is here much simplified by the absence of the
servants, while the increased rigour of economical restrictions
eliminates all but the absolutely essential. In seeking for a basis for
the plan, the essential fact to be borne in mind is that the cottage
household in most cases maintains but one fire and that fire fulfils
the twofold function of warming the kitchen and cooking the food.
It may be at once deduced from this that the cottage family lives in its
kitchen, and such will be found to be the case. In many modern cottage
plans this essential fact is hardly realised, and one finds a large living-
room, perhaps with a small kitchen attached, while others are sub-divided
into equally minute parlour and kitchen. In all these plans it is the kitchen
which will be lived in, and the parlour or living-room will be filled with
pretentious furniture and kept for show. And so as the villa apes the
mansion we shall find again the cottage struggling to attain the coveted
elegance of the villa. The possession of a parlour with its recognised appoint-
ments is in this case not an expression of the requirements, tastes, or habits
of the family, but rather the symbol of one of the degrees in that spurious
scale of excellence on which the modern social system is based. Just as to
the vulgar the term "carriage people " is used as a caste distinction, and the
possession of a carriage is held to be a sign of merit, so on a lower plane
the owner of a parlour acquires precedence over the family not ashamed to
admit frankly its custom of living in its kitchen. The central feature of the
cottage plan should thus be a roomy kitchen. If a parlour is added it
should be relatively small, and the kitchen should dominate the plan, while
an intermediate type of plan might, by including the parlour as a recess in
the kitchen, obviate the necessity of the second fire.
In addition to the kitchen living-room it is desirable that a scullery or
back-kitchen should be added, where the washing of dishes and other work
may be done, and here, unless a separate washhouse is provided, there should
be a boiler. In addition to this accommodation, a coal-store and water-
closet are required, and these may often be placed in a detached position,
while the pantry is generally more conveniently placed in the main building.
The typical cottage should have at least three bedrooms, of which one should
be larger than the other two.
The question of the bathroom as a feature in the modern cottage plan
is a somewhat difficult one. It must be frankly admitted that the average
cottager would have little use for it, and in such families it is often only the
children who enjoy a weekly " tub." A recent inspection of some model
cottages in which the greater part of the scullery floor-space was taken up
by a full-sized bath, left one wondering as to the probable uses to which
o 101
HOUSES AND GARDENS
it would be put — whether the cottager would find it a handy place for
storing potatoes, for instance, or whether, as in an actual instance, the visitor
would find its dusty interior embellished by a slipper and an orange. If a
bathroom is introduced it should not be on the upper floor, unless connected
with a hot-water system arranged in connection with the kitchen fire. It is
better on the ground-floor, because, while it is easy to come downstairs it is
difficult and laborious to carry water upstairs to the bath.
The best arrangement for the bath is, then, adjoining the scullery, so
arranged as to levels that the water heated in the boiler can be drawn off by
a tap placed directly over the bath. Both on account of the limited supply
of hot water as well as to economise space, the bath should not be five
or six feet long, but modelled on the sensible American bath-tub, which
allows of complete immersion with a limited water-supply.
Where there is no hot-water system it is doubtful whether there is any-
thing to be gained by making the bath a fixture. It is much better to give
the cottager the option of where ablutions shall be performed, and in cold
weather in the case of the children, at any rate, the tub in front of the
kitchen fire can hardly be improved on. A few cottage plans are illustrated.
In those in which the cottages are shown as terraces, separate washhouses, earth-
closets and coal-sheds would be provided besides the accommodation shown
in the plan — the washhouses being common to two or more of the cottages.
The more advanced type of cottage plan — the parlour cottage, as it may
be called — is represented by the plan of the lodge at Falke Wood, and the pair
of cottages illustrated under the title of Elmwood Cottages.*
In these the small parlour is so arranged that, divided from the living-
room by a wide doorway, it represents a recess in the house-place.
Here, as in Boffin's Bower, the cottage housewife, who, like Mrs. Boffin,
wished to indulge in a higher flight, might define the elegances of the house-
hold by a chalk-line on the floor as Mrs. Boffin did.
Crossing that frontier the more material male would tread with mincing
footsteps — speak with bated breath ; and there on a Sunday the family would
assemble, and find perhaps a welcome relief from the workaday associations
of the kitchen. The district visitor and all those charitable and well-
meaning persons who have so little respect for the privacy of the cottager
would here be entertained in a portion of the house-place, which, while not
so entirely isolated and self-contained as the usual musty and ill-ventilated
cottage parlour is, would yet be sufficiently screened from the kitchen itself.
In the kitchen the treatment of the range gives it something of the
broad and inviting character of the ingle and Jess of the repellent and
unhomely appearance of the modern utilitarian cooking-machine. As of
old pots hang suspended over the open fire, while broad hobs on each side
* Since writing the above these cottages have been realised at the Letchworth Garden City,
where they were entered as No. 65 in the exhibition of cheap cottages.
They were designed as a protest against the merely utilitarian ideals of modern building
generally, and the cottage exhibition in particular, and attempted to show how the beauty of the
old cottage it not incompatible with modern requirements.
1O2
ROW OF COTTAGES (A)
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EXTERIOR
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LIVING —
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BEDROOM Kf °0'1
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GROUND FLOOR PLAN
FIRST FLOOR
(REVERSED)
ROW OF COTTAGES (B)
EXTERIOR
LIVING DOOM
18' * 14-'
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
FALKEWOOD LODGE
f •'
F.XTKRIOR
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
ELMWOOD COTTAGES. GARDEN CITY
EXTERIOR
HALF GROUND FLOOR
HALF FIRST FLOOR
HOUSES AND GARDENS
give ample space for cooking-utensils. In the centre of the brick floor
stands the table of scrubbed deal, while the settle, the dresser with its array
of homely china, and the sturdy Windsor chairs complete the furnishing of
a room, which, instead of the heartless and brutal utilities of the model
dwelling, would seem to minister to something more than mere material needs.
In the scullery, besides the boiler, there is a small fireplace, which is always
a welcome adjunct to the cottage household. It is here that in sultry
summer weather the simple cooking, which in such a season is all that is
required, is effected without lighting the kitchen range.
The little square court set in patterns of cobble-stones crossed by paved
ways is common to both cottages, and this merging of garden paths and
garden gates simplifies the approach and obviates the competing duplication
of these features.
On the south side, however, the gardens are completely separated by a
dividing hedge. The actual extent of the garden should be such as to
amply provide the family at least with all the vegetables it requires, if not
fruit, while its borders would also be set with all the old-fashioned cottage
flowers. Such accommodation as is provided here should not be too much
for the average cottager to expect. It is difficult accurately to estimate the
cost, but in most districts this pair of cottages should be built for from
^400 to £500.
It is impossible entirely to sympathise with the earnest desire of the
modern philanthropist for the cheapest possible kind of country cottage, or
to object entirely to restrictive by-laws in so far at least as they prevent the
wholesale use of galvanised iron in country dwellings.
It is true that cottages constructed of wood might reasonably be erected
in many cases with roofs of pantile, but it should not be forgotten that
while the temporary building is cheaper in its cost, its shorter life and need
for constant repairs makes its eventually more costly than the permanent
building. Temporary building may possibly enrich the fathers, it will
surely impoverish the sons, and the only possible excuse for temporary
structures is that they are only built for temporary purposes. One cannot
but deplore modern commercial conditions, which seem to make mean
dwellings inevitable, and the work expended in building the cottage, so
grudgingly bestowed by a contractor and workmen, who will do no more
than is in the bond, and not so much in many cases. Under the more
human conditions of rural England in the past, cottage building was done
in a different spirit. One may suppose that a man then, who needed a
dwelling for his family, would call together his neighbours and friends, each
of whom would contribute their share of labour. All would be imbued
with the primary idea of making a comely little dwelling. This would be
the first consideration, and however important the financial side of the
question, it would still be secondary. And this is the rule in all good work
— a rule which cannot be too often insisted on. A man working in such a
spirit would be ashamed to stint his work, when, by perhaps a few hours
more labour he could do it well. It has been truly said that a thing of
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
beauty is a joy for ever, but it is a saying which implies its converse — that
an .ugly thing is a disgrace for ever — and it may be noted how the com-
position of the word disgrace implies the shame one ought to feel in the
creation of an object devoid of grace. It is well that cottages should be as
cheap as careful and ingenious planning can make them. The time is passed
for those great unbroken roof-spaces or these massive chimneys like castle
towers which make so much for beauty in old cottages, but while in totally
ignoring the claims of beauty, it is an easy matter for any one to design a
cheap country cottage, the difficulty of the problem lies in achieving a build-
ing reasonable in cost, and not without that kind of beauty which will make
it seem at home in rural surroundings.
It seems to be generally supposed by landowners who build cottages
that to be practically satisfactory they must needs be ugly, and that sanitary
cottages cannot possess any of those beauties which belong to old cottages
and farm-houses, or, if such beauties are possible, that they can only be
added by excessive cost. So widespread is this conviction that ugliness in build-
ing is generally accepted as evidence of practical qualities, of which it is held
to be the natural and inevitable outcome. And so the modern cottages which
are gradually destroying the beauty of English country, and which appear as
hideous ulcers on the fair face of many an ancient village, are supposed to
represent the inevitable result of modern progress instead of the ignorance
and callousness of their builders. And so the beautiful village streets, where
each cottage contributes its share to the whole effect, are gradually being
transformed into sordid slums.
The only alternative to such ugliness of cottage building at present seems
to be the artistic community of model dwellings, where the earnestness and
reality of the ancient village is replaced by complacently picturesque semi-
detached cottages, which seem to constitute a sort of high-class suburbia, and
where all the superficial artistic features cannot compensate for the omission
of that real beauty which seems to be rather the unconscious outcome of
sound building than a quality which depends on the designing of front
elevations, picturesque half-timber work, and the like.
Such buildings rarely appear as confessed cottages, but all seem to strive to
pose rather as little villas, and, on the whole, one seems to prefer the
unashamed ugliness of the average modern cottage to their shallow artistry.
It is, perhaps, needless to add that by the general public the modern artistic
community is taken at its own valuation, and its owner is content with the
minimum percentage on his outlay in the fond delusion that he has been
instrumental in producing an object-lesson in the art of cottage building. It
is only here and there, in isolated exceptional cases, that cottages are built
which are really cottages ; modest and unassuming, and without any taint of
the suburban villa or that underlined art which is everywhere accepted as an
evidence of the advance of modern architecture.
The question of the cheap cottage has assumed such importance in recent
years that it seems desirable to include plans for a pair of cottages which
could be built in most country districts for not more than £i"]$ each, and
104
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A PAIR OF CHEAP COTTAGES
VIF.W FROM ROAD
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
HOUSES AND GARDENS
which would, even for this price, be something more than mere wooden
shanties.
The irreducible minimum of accommodation for such cottages consists
of a good-sized kitchen and scullery, three bedrooms, pantry, coal-shed,
and earth-closet. In some cases the scullery may be included as a mere
recess in the kitchen, but this is not desirable where the scullery is also
the washhouse and bathroom.
Although in the normal cottage household three bedrooms are required,
there are many families in which two will be sufficient, and thus it seems
desirable that one of the three bedrooms should be placed on the ground floor,
where it can be used as a parlour or bedroom as required. In this way the
planning of the cottage is simplified, for in the main block two rooms are
placed over two rooms, and the scullery is added as a lean-to at the back.
This pair of cottages are designed for a site in which the approach is
from the south. They should, therefore, be set well back from the road, so
that the outlook from the windows overlooks the garden.
The common entrance, which in the pair of cottages previously described
was justified by conditions which led to the placing of the cottages near
the road, with the gardens at the back, is here not so admissible, and the
whole scheme serves to show how the position of cottages, in relation to a
road, should vary with varying aspects, and how such conditions as these
lead naturally to variety in position and plan, which adds to the interest and
beauty of any group of detached buildings, and which, though appearing
accidental, is actually the logical outcome of a proper study of the problem.
105
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
SEMI-DETACHED HOUSES
HE semi-detached house might, perhaps, be better described as
semi-attached, for it is its attachment which forces itself upon
its tenant as its salient characteristic. It generally represents
a hesitating compromise which is fatal to success, and secures
for itself neither the advantages of the terrace nor the detached
house, while it seems to combine the drawbacks of each. It represents
a builder's expedient for making the most of his frontage, and inasmuch as
it ranks higher in the conventional scale of excellence than the terrace
house and commands a higher rent, it is often to be seen on the outskirts
of the modern town, where it has been built for those who cherish the
illusion that a semi-detached house is necessarily superior to one in a
terrace.
This type of house generally consists of the ordinary terrace plan with the
addition of a narrow passage at the side by which the butcher's boy is enabled
to reach the back premises. The rational planning of a house on such a
frontage would not sacrifice three feet of it for the use of the butcher's
boy, but would rather, in building a continuous terrace, give this space to the
principal rooms, and would then rather consider the possibility of bringing
the back premises to the butcher's boy instead of sacrificing space and spoiling
the garden by placing the kitchens at the back of the house regardless of
aspect, and thus involving difficulties in their approach from the front. Here
one is met by the same traditional follies which have been alluded to in the
case of the terrace house, and comfort and convenience are alike cheerfully
106
VIEW FROM NORTH-WEST
HOUSES AND GARDENS
sacrificed to a convention which decrees that the kitchens must be placed at
the back.
If there is any rational excuse for the semi-detached house it is that the
unattached side should be utilised for light, but in the class of houses which
gain their title with the least expenditure of frontage this excuse cannot be
urged. But there is a secondary class of semi-detached houses with more
ample frontages, which seem to have all but realised the dream of complete
detachment, and it is this type which has some degree of reason for its
existence. In such houses light can be obtained from three sides, although this is
not in all plans essential or desirable. On the other hand, the lack of privacy
DINING ROOM
2.0'x. 12.'
DRAWING
ROOM
16'x. 15'
which is inevitable in the open parts of the garden of the terrace house is
equally felt in the semi-detached one, while for those who appreciate the
isolation of the detached house the enforced attachment to one other
establishment is more felt than if they were merely one in a row. The
houses represent a series of families arranged tete-a-tete, and neighbours
can hardly be ignored as in the terrace. Under these circumstances it
is doubtful whether the slight reduction in the cost of the houses caused
by the common wall between them is sufficient compensation for these
disadvantages.
From the artistic point ot view the semi-detached house presents
the advantage of an extended frontage which enables the designer to gain
that long, low proportion which is specially desirable in country buildings,
and this may be noted in the examples of semi-detached houses illustrated.
But while special conditions of site and demands of occupants may make the
semi-detached house suitable in exceptional cases, ;as a rule it is better to avoid
the compromise it affords and to build either terraces or detached houses.
107
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
THE HOLIDAY HOUSE
HE term holiday house is here used to include all those
dwellings which are adapted to life in the country or at the
seaside during a holiday, when the formal routine and con-
ventionalities which have to some extent dictated the plan
of the permanent home are set aside for a freer and less
restricted existence. The possession of a little holiday house in some
favourite summer resort has many advantages, especially for those who
do not wish to occupy it during the popular period, when it may be let.
A house for this purpose should be as compact and simple as possible.
Its windows should all be provided with solid shutters, so that it cannot
be easily damaged when unoccupied. Its furniture should also be of the
simplest kind, without carpets, curtains, and other unnecessary fabrics, so
that even the most ruthless tenant of the furnished house will be unable to
injure it.
Such a house should contain one large sitting-room, as well as four or
five bedrooms, bathroom, and the usual kitchen premises, reduced to their
simplest form, while a verandah or garden-room is an important feature in
the holiday house.
In the general scheme of the house and its decoration, a wider scope for
fancy is admissible in a dwelling only occasionally occupied, which should
be adorned in a holiday mood. The general characteristics of the exterior
should be governed by locality, and here the seaside house demands a special
treatment, widely differing from that of the country cottage set among trees,
and local traditions of building should in all cases be carefully considered, so
that it does not appear as an importation of the town into the country.
There is something essentially illogical in following the common practice of
choosing some country site for its beauty, and then deliberately defacing that
beauty by the erection of a cockney villa, which calls itself a cottage ; or
perhaps constructing there one of those galvanised iron " artistic bungalows,"
lined with match-boarding, as per catalogue. One finds these charming
structures gravely discussed in magazine articles. For a few pounds extra
a barge-board or a finial are added as an artistic finish, or aesthetic quality is
imparted by " breaking the line of the ridge." Or, again, one is shown how a
dwelling may be made out of three railway carriages, and various schemes are
illustrated for enlarging and disfiguring old country cottages. Mr. So-and-So
has constructed a tin bungalow of horrible aspect in the sacred solitudes of
the New Forest, for £230 js. 6d., and when he can afford another pound or
two, he will probably make the recognised concessions to the claims of art
involved in the addition of finials perhaps to the roof. And yet it is so easy
to construct the simplest kind of dwelling without offence to the artistic
sense, and the best course is to follow the local customs of the district, to
employ local labour and local materials. In many parts of the country
tarred weather-boarding, with roofs of pantile or thatch, are used for farm
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
buildings, and suggest a basis for a scheme which would be quite satisfactory,
both artistically and practically, for the holiday house, and in all the details
of the house safety from ugliness may be found in eschewing as far as possible
the products of the town factory.
The simplest type of holiday dwelling is the tent, which, although only
suited for use by hardy people, in favourable weather at least, brings one
closer to Nature than any more permanent habitation. And what possibilities
of beauty are to be found in the artistic treatment of the tent. One may
imagine it striped in shades of green, showing as some strange tropical growth
in a meadow, or in some dainty little encampment one may catch a glimpse
of gay banners. But, beautiful as the tent may become, it is essentially a
fair-weather dwelling. For permanent dwellings of the simplest kind, one
may try to realise some of the primitive types of human habitations. The
huts of savage races may be studied as examples of how it is possible to
achieve a romantic beauty in the simplest kind of structure.
And for those, in these material and commercial days, who still dare to
"think nobly" of the home — as Malvolioof the soul — it may be possible to
realise in the dim recesses of some woodland such a dainty dwelling as to
some chance wanderer from the town might seem to sum up and express
the very spirit of the forest.
At the seaside, it must be remembered, you cannot count on that natural
weathering and vegetation of the exterior which helps to harmonise the
house and its surroundings in country districts inland, and so, instead of
painting the coast red with bricks and tiles, it will generally be better to
adopt the formula of white walls and green slate roof. In chalk districts,
the local use of flints may be noted and adopted, or walling may be constructed
of beach-stones.
In the smaller kinds of holiday houses, however, a wooden structure,
which is so designed that it can be readily moved, may meet the demands of
those who are content to dispense with material comforts in a temporary
shelter from the elements. Here the roof may be formed of prepared canvas,
and the dwelling represent but a slight improvement on the tent or the
gipsy's caravan. The whole of the appointments of such a little dwelling,
modelled on those of the yacht, should be compact and serviceable, and it
might well be fantastically adorned with brightly painted chamferings.
Of the four designs for holiday houses illustrated, the first has been
described in the Studio for July 1 904.
One of the disadvantages, from an economical point of view, of the house
which consists of one storey only, is that much space is often wasted in the
roof, especially in cases where the use of tiles makes it desirable that this
should^ be high-pitched. In the plans for the country cottage illustrated, it
has been arranged that the roof-space should be fully occupied by making
the bedrooms partly on the ground floor and partly as attics in the roof,
while in the hall the inclusion of the roofing in the room gives a constructive
character which it is difficult to obtain in a room with a flat ceiling. The
hall thus appears to be, indeed, the house itself, and not a mere compartment.
Q 109
HOUSES AND GARDENS
The broad and low passage which crosses the building from front door to
garden-room serves the artistic purpose of providing at the threshold a
fine vista effect as the first impression on entering the house, and the grey-
brown of its homely timbers, the creamy white of its plastered surfaces, and
the subtly varied shades of grey in its stone-flagged floor form a frame to
the brightness of the court beyond and the sun-flecked pavements and posts
of the pergola, while a hint of the hall is conveyed through the panes of dim
greenish glass in the screen.
Practically this passage serves to disconnect the kitchen premises from
the rest of the house and to provide a ready means of access to the garden.
A small staircase, which does not attempt to assert itself as an artistic feature
in the plan, and which is concealed by the panelling on the passage wall,
gives access to the gallery which overlooks the hall and the servants' bed-
room over the kitchen. At the opposite end of the house, on the 'ground
floor, is the principal bedroom, with bathroom adjoining, and a second little
stair gives access to two attic bedrooms over these. An enlargement of the
plan, where more bedrooms were required, might consist of an extension of
this wing, and this might suggest the use of the principal bedroom as an
additional sitting-room, opening with a wide doorway into the hall, and thus
adding to the general floor-space of the house.
In this little house it will be noted how structure everywhere replaces
superficial decoration. The modern tradition of house-building, which
strives to make of each room a rectangular box, lined with smooth plastered
surfaces, and which then proceeds to decorate these surfaces with superficial
materials covered with patterns, is here set aside in favour of the decorative
claims of mere building. Such decoration as is included in the scheme is
introduced mainly for some definite purpose, and thus the ornament on the
walls of the dining-recess gains in richness of effect in contrast to the relative
plainness of the hall itself, and helps to deepen the shadow under the beam
over this little alcove.
The plan for the garden shown in connection with this country cottage is
submitted mainly as an illustration of certain principles of design in garden-
making. It is not suggested as a suitable scheme for any site, for each will
demand a special treatment. And in such treatment much will depend on
the due recognition of the possibilities of local features. In a cottage which
is only occupied for certain portions of the year, it is important at least for
those for whom the economical aspect of the matter cannot be ignored, that
both the building and the garden should be able to take care of themselves,
and the house and garden, as usually designed and furnished, may often prove
in this respect a costly incubus, demanding for its maintenance considerable
labour in repairs of the structure as well as much clipping and grooming
and weeding in the garden.
As far as the house is concerned, it is not a difficult matter to make it
self-sustaining. It is. only necessary to apply those principles which have
already been dwelt on, and to omit all those cumbrous and useless fabrics
and furnishings which demand so much attention in the average house,
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SPRINGCOT. VIEW EROM KITCHEN GARDEN
HOLIDAY HOUSES
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And in the garden it might be suggested, in view of the labour required
in weeding, to decide to give up that unequal conflict and to have a garden
composed entirely of triumphant weeds. But in order to do this it will be
necessary to choose a site where the right kind of weeds grow. There are
many such country places where the flowers which grow naturally and quite
untended might well form the basis for a wild garden in which the skill of
the gardener would be shown mainly in recognising and accentuating the
natural characteristics of the place, for it is easy to spoil natural beauty by
the introduction of sophisticated plants and shrubs. But where it is not
possible to obtain a site which possesses natural advantages, there are still
many types of garden suitable for the occasionally occupied house, and labour
in maintenance may be reduced to a minimum by the substitution of an
orchard for the lawn, and by the use of paved paths instead of gravel walks.
In referring to the garden illustrated by the plan, one may note first of
all the importance attached to vistas — vistas arranged with definite terminal
effects. One may also observe the usefulness of shade in the garden as well
as light, and how embowered paths may be contrasted with the brightness of
open spaces.
The most important of these vistas is the one which, beginning at the
garden gate, extends through the passage which crosses the house and beyond
across the open courtyard to the pergola, where it is terminated in a garden
seat, and a glance at the plan will show how much it depends for its effect
on such vistas, and how widely it differs in this respect from those gardens
full of winding paths which never fulfil the promise they seem to convey
of some vision of the beyond. On the other hand, the defect of the formal
treatment often lies in a certain barrenness, a lack of mystery, and those sur-
prises and dramatic effects of light and shade which are such essential
attributes of the garden. Open flower gardens are best approached through
dim and shady alleys, and everywhere broad and open sunlit spaces should
be contrasted with the shade of pergolas and embowered paths. In passing
through these enclosed ways one loses all conception of the garden scheme
till, at the intersection of a path, one suddenly perceives through vistas of
roses and orchard trees some distant garden ornament, or perhaps a seat or
summer-house ; and so one becomes conscious of a scheme arranged to secure
definite and well-considered effects. As in a dramatic entertainment, apart-
ments of the garden full of tragic shade are followed by open spaces where
flowers laugh in the sun ; and by such devices the art of man arranges natural
forms to appeal in the strongest way to the human consciousness.
In the treatment of the exterior of this country cottage, a simplicity of
form has been adopted which conveys something of that air of repose which
belongs, as a matter of course, to old farm-houses and cottages, but which
may be sought in vain in the average modern country dwelling.
The second design for a holiday house is especially adapted for a seaside
site, where its simple roof-plan and long low eaves-line would seem to
harmonise with somewhat bleak and wind-swept surroundings. Here the
use of slates for the roof permits a low pitch, so that, although the whole
ill
HOUSES AND GARDENS
accommodation is provided on the ground floor, there is little space wasted
in the roof.
The central feature of the plan consists of the large hall, or living-room,
a portion of which can be screened off if required. Access to the front door
and the bedrooms can be obtained from the kitchen premises without passing
through the hall itself. Under a slight extension of the roof is also included
a verandah or garden-room.
The treatment of the garden in such a seaside house might well include
all those flowers and shrubs which flourish by the sea. The feathery foliage
of the tamarisk, the blue-greens and purples of the sea-holly, the puce-pink
flowers of the sea-thrift, the sea-lavender, the sea-poppy, and many other
seaside flowers, would combine to make an interesting and unique garden.
Here, too, might be grown that group of plants which, originally dwellers
by the sea, have been trained to live in inland gardens, and all these plants
would not present that air of protest which one often seems to discern in
flowers removed from their proper home, but would seem to rejoice in the
salt air and sea-breezes.
The third plan for a holiday house was originally designed to meet the
demand in a special case for rather more than the usual number of bedrooms,
some of which are placed on the ground floor.
The form of the plan, while giving a wide outlook from the hall by
placing the little terrace to the south between the protecting wings on each
side, shelters it from cold winds and makes it a trap for the sunlight.
112
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CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
FLATS
: HE ordinary town house, in distinction from the country house,
may be considered as a dwelling which, owing to its restricted
size enforced by the costliness of land, cannot expand laterally.
As the land is sold in pieces like cloth of a constant width it
is capable of easier extension to the back, and the form of
house which results from these arbitrary conditions is long and narrow,
and as the plan is unable to expand laterally it develops vertically, and its
rooms, instead of being placed side by side, are placed on top of each
other.
But in the flat, the houses instead of being packed laterally are packed
vertically, and so a block of flats is really a series of one-storey country houses
placed on top of each other. But the conditions which have led to the
development of flats in modern towns have not been favourable ones. Built
as commercial speculations on restricted sites to meet a demand which is
generally in excess of the supply, the object of their existence has been to
secure the highest rent for the minimum of space and convenience. But as
the flat is more economical to work than the town house, and as it possesses
several other advantages over it which will be alluded to later on, its tenant is
prepared to put up with certain restrictions which do not essentially belong to
the flat at all, but only to the flat as it is now built. Tradition has fixed the
lowest standard of comfort demanded in the house, but no tradition applies
to the modern flat, and the fact that in its present state it still competes suc-
cessfully with the more commodious house of equal rent seems to show that
it is more adapted for town life.
In the flat one might suppose the utilitarian spirit which prides itself on
its practical qualities and sound common sense would at least find expression.
Here it might be assumed there is no margin for the art of the house, and the
lift, the electric light and the other modern conveniences seem to bear witness
to the prevalence of conditions with which it is popularly supposed that art
has little to do.
And yet a visit to the average flat will impress the intelligent observer
chiefly with the extraordinary ignorance of planning which it displays, the
reckless squandering of space, and the want of any sort of arrangement in
the rooms.
He may be duly impressed with the imposing facade, but on opening the
front door of the flat he is visiting he will be confronted with an apparently
interminable passage, narrow and lofty. On each side of this dismal thorough-
fare are rows of shut doors, each opening into minute compartments having
no definite arrangement or sequence, so that the unattended visitor on open-
ing one at a venture may find himself confronted by the elegance or the
miniature drawing-room, or precipitated into the more homely if less preten-
tious appointments of the kitchen. And such a dwelling is cheerfully regarded
by its occupants as a " cosy flat," and its inconveniences and restrictions are
R 113
HOUSES AND GARDENS
considered as essential parts of the scheme, the defects of the qualities for
which they pay so dear.
The popular view as to dwellings seems to be that they grow like trees in
certain shapes, and with certain internal defects beyond the control of mere
human agencies, and so the flat, like the villa, is accepted without a murmur
of criticism.
The plans for flats which I illustrate may be found to be somewhat more
liberal in their accommodation than those to be obtained at a moderate rental,
in London at any rate ; but the present high rent of flats seems to be due to
temporary artificial conditions, and there is no valid reason why a flat should
not provide the same accommodation as a terrace house for approximately
the same rental. Moreover, the plans submitted are mainly to illustrate
certain principles of planning which would apply to small flats as well as
large ones.
The first essential is to secure a roomy and spacious ensemble in the
sitting-rooms by such modifications as we have already considered in the
ordinary house plan, and this is a more pressing requirement in the flat because
its rooms are generally small, and there is no garden to afford relief to those
prisoned within its cells. The apartments for the servants should not be
jumbled up with the family rooms, but should be definitely planned and iso-
lated, and while the sitting-rooms can be connected to give an ample floor-
area, there should be rooms also which may be entirely quiet and private. A
balcony is also a desirable feature in a gardenless dwelling.
On referring to the larger plan illustrated, it may be noted that the
servant can reach the front door and the bedrooms without passing through
the sitting-rooms. On entering from the porch the visitor, instead of finding
himself in a narrow passage, is at once welcomed in a roomy hall, beyond
which a glimpse may be caught of the drawing-room. In both hall and
dining-room the planning has led naturally to recessed fireplaces, and in spite
of the ingle-nookeries of the modern villa it is maintained that such a type is
unequalled for comfort. The bedrooms are five in number, including the
servant's bedroom, and thus afford the full complement of rooms which the
average family demands, while the furnishing of some of these as bed-sitting-
rooms would afford private retreats for the individual members of the
family.
The whole scheme is practically a house built round a court which affords
light to the servants' premises and to the passages from which the bedrooms
open. This passage, with its side lighting and ceiling at a low level, will be
entirely different to the narrow and lofty one which has already been men-
tioned. Its windows will not afford an outlook into the court, but with their
leaded glazing will merely let a toned light into the passage.
There is a lack of storage-space for boxes, but it has been considered that
space in the flat itself is too valuable to be used in this way, and the base-
ment or roof-space of the building would afford the necessary accommodation
of this kind required by the tenants. In the treatment of the exterior of
such a building simplicity and economy should be the ruling ideas, and the
114
FLATS
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
use of cleanly whitewash is recommended, which with some bright window
boxes and a roof of green slates will make an ensemble which would possess
the qualities of freshness and gaiety which are the essence of beauty in build-
ing, and worth miles of grimy pedantic facades.
Let the money which would otherwise be spent in trying to impress the
indifferent passer-by by all sorts of architectural features be spent instead on
the interior, or in adding a few more square feet in area to the rooms.
Such a building, placed in a town where the inhabitants are not forced by
the unchecked greed of the speculator to huddle their houses together in
restricted sites, would naturally be surrounded by foliage, and its white walls
with their gay window adornments would rise out of green leaves. Within
easy reach, if not actually surrounding the building itself, would be the public
garden, which would replace that private garden which its occupants are unable
to obtain. I am aware that the term public gardens conjures up a sorry
vision of winding walks, carpet bedding, and notices to keep off the grass.
Very different is the public garden I should ask for as a satisfactory substitute
for a private domain. It would be selected first of all for its natural beauties,
including, if possible, a piece of woodland, and a stream perhaps, and these
would be developed on natural lines, while within its bounds would also be
included enclosed apartments for the culture and display of flowers and fruit.
The inclusion of natural features in such a garden would of course only
be possible in certain cases, but if the garden is entirely artificial and formal
it should be designed with thought and feeling, and with plenty of light and
shade, and some good vista effects.
The smaller plan for a flat shows the application of the same principles
in a flat which, lighted only from the front and back, might be built as a
continuous terrace. Here there is one good-sized sitting-room, with
ingle fireplace and balcony, adjoining which is a bed-sitting-room, in which
the beds can be entirely screened by curtains. The bedroom furniture
would be designed in the form of little cabinets, which when closed
would help to convey the character of a sitting-room. Besides this bed-
sitting-room are two other bedrooms at the back, and a servant's bedroom
isolated from the family rooms, a bathroom and kitchen premises. If the
bedroom accommodation thus provided is not all required, the bed-sitting-
room adjoining the hall could be furnished as a drawing-room, and if neces-
sary it could be cut off from the hall by closing the sliding doors and entering
it from the small door at the back, to which access from the front door is
afforded by means of the passage adjoining the kitchen.
CHAPTER FORTY
CO-OPERATIVE HOUSES
NY one who has penetrated to the less fashionable outskirts of
a modern town must have observed those long rows of mean
dwellings which encroach on the surrounding country, and
must have felt what a melancholy thing it must be to live there.
One cannot but think that there should be some better way
of living than that which finds expression in these sordid streets. The house
of a civilised people should convey something more than the callous
commercialism of the speculative builder, and should be arranged on some
better principle than that which merely aims at crowding as many as
possible into a given space. In this matter the savage who decks his
primitive dwelling with brightly painted carving is more advanced than
we, and of all the habitations of man, surely none have quite reached
such an expression of sordid meanness as the modern street of modern
villa residences.
Let us a consider for a moment one of these rows of little houses, all
exactly alike, and each with its gas-meter under the stairs, its scraper on the
front doorstep, its linoleum in the narrow hall, the patent cooking-range and
its incapable cook in the kitchen.
Here it would seem that a great saving of labour and expense might be
effected by centralising the functions of cooking and heating in these houses,
and by providing one large fire and one capable cook to take the place of a
dozen incapable cooks and a dozen miniature cooking-ranges.
The difficulty of such a reform would appear to be that in the combina-
tion of the family units, which it would involve, what is gained in convenience
and economy may be lost in privacy and comfort ; for while, as the copy-
book maxim says, " union is strength," the strength of the community is
generally obtainable only at some sacrifice of its individuals, and while the
bundle of arrows is not so readily broken as the single shaft, their feathers
may be sorely ruffled by their close contact with each other.
And so the centripetal force, which urges the desirability of combination,
is opposed by a centrifugal one which, in the interests of individual develop-
ment, tends to keep our houses isolated and self-contained. And thus the
problem seems to resolve itself into a compromise between these opposing
tendencies to secure the benefits of union and co-operation, and yet not to
lose the advantages of privacy.
It is proposed, in the scheme for an arrangement of small houses here
illustrated, to replace the servants of the individual house by a central staff
of trained domestics under skilled supervision, and to provide the necessary
accommodation for their work and habitation in the shape of one well-
appointed kitchen, with the necessary offices, sitting-room and bedrooms,
thus removing from the house all that portion of the premises devoted to the
servants.
Again, the small dining-rooms of the houses are replaced by one large
116
CO-OPERATIVE HOUSES
GARDEN PLAN
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GROUND FLOOR PLAN
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
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HOUSES AND GARDENS
central apartment, where the occupants of a group of houses could enjoy well-
cooked food in spacious surroundings, while still, where required, food
could be conveyed to the separate houses where special conditions made it
desirable.
Having thus centralised the functions of feeding and service, the next
consideration would be the centralisation of heating, which would be effected
by hot air or hot water supplemented in the separate houses by the
open fire.
In seeking for the type of plan which would be most suitable tor such a
group of houses, the college court with its central hall and cloisters at once
suggests itself. A covered approach to the central hall from the various
houses is thus provided, and the whole arrangement is one which is admirably
adapted to artistic treatment.
In the plan illustrated, such an arrangement on a small scale is shown,
comprising twelve separate houses, which vary slightly in their accommoda-
tion, but contain on an average two sitting-rooms on the ground floor, with
four bedrooms and bathroom, &c., above, and in the roof one or two
attics.
These houses are placed round three sides of the square, which a further
addition to their number would enclose, leaving merely a covered carriage
entrance. In the centre of the south side is the central hall, beneath which
is the kitchen and offices, and over which are the bedrooms for the servants
and accommodation for the mistress. Adjoining the hall are lavatories and
cloak-rooms, and over this lower portion, in a mezzanine floor, is a reading-
room.
The building is surrounded by ample garden-space, where, instead of curly
paths and shapeless shrubberies of the villa, there are square lawns enclosed
by yew hedges, an orchard with brick paths set in the grass, pergolas and
arbours, and all the other features of the old English gardens. It may be
questioned whether such a setting is altogether admissible in a scheme which
professes an economical basis, but it is not suggested that this group of
houses should be tied to a railway station, where land is dear and space
limited. One of the promised results of modern advance in locomotion has
been the practical possibility of living in the country, and one of the features
of the scheme proposed is a motor 'bus, which would convey the occupants
at stated times to their business or pleasure.
It is a question as to what degree the features of the individual house
should be retained or merged into the general use, and it might possibly be
advisable to set apart a portion of the garden to be divided up into small
private gardens for the individual houses ; or again, in the central dining-hall,
on a larger scale a series of recesses might be arranged, allotted to individual
families. For the benefit of those who wish to retain the possibility of the
simpler forms of cooking in their own house, such as the preparation of a
simple breakfast or tea, at least one of the fireplaces in the sitting-rooms
would be of a type suitable for such purposes, and the presence in the room
of necessary appliances for such operations would help to give it that quality
117
HOUSES AND GARDENS
of homeliness which is so difficult to obtain in a room where the china is
merely for show. Many minor improvements would probably suggest
themselves in a more complete and exhaustive study of the scheme, which
is here advanced in a tentative way, but the central and inevitable fact is
the economy of labour which must result from the co-operative system of
dwelling.
118
HOUSES ILLUSTRATED
A HOUSE AND GARDEN IN SWITZERLAND . . . "i^i
A HOUSE IN AMERICA . . 128
A HOUSE AND GARDEN IN POLAND . ... j 30
LE NID 138
FINDON ... 140
TRECOURT 146
TREVISTA .... 150
ROSE COURT 156
WHITE NIGHTS 161
THE CLOISTERS 163
BLACKWELL 167
A HOUSE FOR AN ART LOVER 173
THE HAVEN 181
BEXTON CROFT 186
THE FIVE GABLES 191
HEATHER COTTAGE 195
EVERDENE 197
LINGFIELD 200
THE WHITE HOUSE 203
THE CROSSWAYS 207
HALCYON COTTAGE 209
FALKE WOOD 211
AN OLD HOUSE REMODELLED 214
DANESTREAM 217
A STONE HOUSE 221
SANDFORD COTTAGE 223
A ROADSIDE HOUSE 226
ST. MARY'S 228
THE GARTH 230
FURNISHED ROOMS AT DARMSTADT AND MANNHEIM . 235
A HOUSE AND GARDEN IN SWITZERLAND
THE house and garden which forms the subjectof the followingillustrations
was designed for a hillside site in Switzerland. The site is a somewhat
small one, only slightly more than one-third of an acre in extent, and is
bounded on its upper and lower sides by roads which do not run parallel to
each other. The house is placed parallel to the upper road, and gains a
certain air of snugness by being placed somewhat below its level, so that
from the entrance gate one descends eight steps into the little square
entrance court. From this court vistas to right and left end in garden
ornaments backed by clipped hedges. The house is symmetrically disposed,
with its central arched doorway with black door relieved by metal, and on
each side this recessed central portion is flanked by the projecting gables
with their chimneys.
Turning to the right from the entrance court and passing the angle of the
house is a small part of the garden specially arranged for children, with its
swing, giant's stride, and flower beds, while in one angle, the masses of dark
shrubs which surround it are cut out into a circular recessed retreat, one
of those enclosed nooks which especially recommend themselves to children.
The woodwork of the swing and giant's stride is painted in gay colours, and
in the centre of the four flower beds is a circular tank, lined with turquoise-
blue tiles, in which gold-fish and other aquatic pets are kept. The furnishing
of this part of the garden would also include a low garden seat and table.
Descending some nine steps which pass the bay-window to the children's
room one reaches another terrace, at a lower level, from which access may be
gained, through a verandah or porch, to a billiard-room on the lower floor.
From this terrace also opens a small garden pavilion from which one
reaches the flower garden and lawn below by means of a sloping path
on the bank of shrubs above which the house and its terrace rise. On
turning the corner of the house by the drawing-room bay-window one passes
along the terrace which runs parallel to the garden front of the house. At
the opposite end of this terrace one turns to the right down a wide flight
of steps leading to the rose garden. Half-way down these steps is a landing
from which to the right one looks through a shady archway of clipped
shrubs into the bright flower garden with its central dipping well and ter-
minal pavilion. To the left from the same landing one looks into the
pergola. The rose garden is laid out in square form with a circle of climbing
roses on arches round another dipping well. Here also is a semicircular
recess for a seat, and passing down another flight of steps one reaches,
through an iron gate under an arch, the lower road. Divided from this rose
garden by a hedge is the lawn with a semicircular recess at the end for
another seat, and adjoining the rose garden to the north is the shady pergola
with its roof of leafage on the level of the court which adjoins it to the
north. In this pergola one passes through a door, not without a suggestion
of mystery, up a flight of steps into a square court. To the north of this
are the kitchen premises with a drying-yard for linen which is placed half
outside and half under the arched wall of the house, so that the clothes can
s 121
A HOUSE AND GARDEN IN SWITZERLAND
be dried under cover in wet weather. This drying-yard immediately adjoins
the washhouse and laundry. Above this one passes the back entrance, and
turning the corner of the house reaches the entrance court again.
It is a garden of many vistas, a garden of mysteries and dramatic effects
of light and shade, and within its narrow confines are included apartments
for all weathers and all moods. From the rose garden, as shown in the
sketch, the house soars above its terraces and steps, and so this aspect of
the building is in marked contrast to the view from the upper road from
which it appears so low and so snugly ensconced in its surroundings.
On entering the house one finds oneself in a roomy square low porch
from which an inner door opens into the central hall, which one sees beyond
the low-ceiled gallery which forms a picturesque approach to the dining-
room from the drawing-room. The drawing-room is divided from the hall
by folding doors, and these two rooms together afford an ample floor-space.
In each the open fireplaces are important features. In the hall the fire is
placed under a wide arch of masonry, and in the drawing-room a corner fire-
place is arranged with copper hood, wide open hearth, and tiled wall-spaces.
The dining-room has a recess which would be used for the less formal meals,
and adjoining this and conveniently placed for service are the kitchen pre-
mises. The hall is two storeys in height with a gallery and lofty bay-window
overlooking the terrace and garden.
From the deeply recessed doorway adjoining the fireplace of the hall one
reaches a garden-room and little upper terrace, from which the lower terraces
and garden are reached by a flight of steps. The children's room and study
occupy the opposite wing of the house to the kitchen, and both open out to
another square verandah.
Below this main floor-level is another floor which from the garden side
becomes on a level with the main terraces. Here, besides the necessary wash-
house, laundry, heating-chamber, servants' hall, bathroom and w.c., and the
cellars, there is also a billiard room with large ingle fireplace and verandah
opening on to the terrace.
On the bedroom floor are four bedrooms, three dressing - rooms, two
bathrooms, and a linen-room over the porch. Two of the bedrooms have
wide balconies with flat roofs.
On the attic floor are four attics and a large studio.
The walls of the exterior are finished in creamy white with red tiled roof.
122
A HOUSE AND GARDEN IN SWITZERLAND
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
A HOUSE AND GARDEN IN SWITZERLAND
ATTIC AND ROOF PLAN
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
BASEMENT PLAN
124
A HOUSE AND GARDEN IN SWITZERLAND
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A HOUSE IN AMERICA
THE house which is illustrated here was designed for a site in America, under
somewhat severe restrictions as to cost — restrictions which suggested the
simplicity of its form and roof plan. In these respects it resembles " Findon."
The 'low square porch is designed on somewhat the same lines. This
opens into a small hall-space, from which the staircase ascends. The drawing-
room and dining-room form together the main living-rooms of the house, and
each have ample fireplaces. The study is smaller and more isolated, while
the kitchen premises are simplified by the absence of the separate scullery and
by the partial use of the basement for storage. Five good-sized bedrooms
occupy the first floor, with bathroom and linen-closet, and above these are five
attics with servants' bathroom. The basement contains heating-chamber,
laundry and cellars. American characteristics will be recognised in the
ample cupboard-space provided in the bedrooms, and the servants' bathroom.
In the arrangement of the ground plan the hall forms a recess in the
drawing-room, from which it can be cut off when required by sliding doors.
When these doors are open, the drawing-room and hall together form a
spacious reception-hall, and when the doors to the recess are closed it obtains
the privacy which may be required for its uses as a drawing-room. The hall
recess does not attempt here to pose as a room. There is, therefore, no fire-
place, and its whole treatment suggests it is but a recessed portion of the
larger room.
128
A HOUSE IN AMERICA
T
I29
A HOUSE AND GARDEN IN POLAND
THE house now to be considered is one designed for a site in Poland,
where the rigour of the winter climate demands some modifications of the
normal English plan. The chief of these modifications consists in the reduction
of the windows as far as possible, and the construction of these with double
thickness of glass with an air-space between, and also in the thickening of
the walls, and by these means reducing to a minimum the influences of
outside conditions on the internal temperature. It further became desirable
to create an interior world which in its warmth and brightness would, to
some extent, compensate for an enforced seclusion within its walls for half
the year. A large floor-space and a somewhat irregular disposition of
the apartments was specially desired so that the interior would be rich
in pleasant vistas, and the occupants feel something of that sense of un-
confined freedom which the rectangular plastered box cannot give. The
plan which is illustrated shows but a modification of a scheme which was
originally designed by my client with a view to realise such a spacious and
unconfined interior effect.
In the scheme for the roof it became necessary to consider the question of
snow and to avoid all internal gutters. The heating question is also an
important one, and involves, besides the ample open fires, a complete system
of hot-water heating.
The conditions under which this house is to be built are peculiarly
favourable to that human expression in workmanship which, under modern
conditions, it is so difficult to obtain. The brick for the walls are all made
on tne spot, and the timber for the trees felled in the neighbourhood. In
the working of this timber it does not pass under the fatal rule of the
steam saw and plane, and so the beams of the house seem still to retain
some of their original characteristics, and are eloquent in signs of human
handicraft. It is all the difference between the orange picked from its native
tree and the orange bought from the greengrocer's shop, and the associations
of Nature still cling around the beams and posts in the house. In the effect
of the interior it is the art of mere building which is principally relied upon,
and posts, beams, braces and arches all contribute their aid to the whole
constructural scheme.
The final notes of the general effect of the interior, which consists for
the main part of broad spaces of creamy plaster with the grey-brown of
timber, are supplied by brilliant concentrated notes of colour in heraldic
decoration. In some of the rooms a more extensive use of superficial decora-
tion is arranged for, and the bedrooms are each adorned with a special flower
motif.
The scheme for the garden shown in connection with this house is based
on existing features in the grounds surrounding a previous house, and also the
natural levels, so that lawns and terraces can be formed without excessive
cutting and filling. In thus modifying and developing an existing garden,
impediments which one is apt to regard a little impatiently at first seem
gradually, when the matter has been exhaustively considered, to become the
130
A HOUSE AND GARDEN IN POLAND
means of realising unexpected effects, and like the grain of sand in the oyster,
form the nucleus for what may at last become a pearl. As an example of this
may be instanced the hothouse shown on the garden plan illustrated, a building
of solid structure which could not be easily removed. Other and more vital
considerations led to the placing of the new house at an angle which bears no
definite relation to this building, and as the lines of the new garden plan
necessarily followed those of the house, the hothouse seemed to become a
discordant element in the scheme. A reference to the plan will show how, by
the introduction of diagonal paths which follow the lines of the hothouse,
this building is brought into harmony with the scheme, and the sketch
of this portion of the garden shows that thus, from a given point of view, one
may look along the lines of three radiating vistas — a special garden effect which
resulted from the necessity for incorporating the hothouse in the garden scheme.
An important feature in this garden is the circular drive to the north of
the house where the horses may be exercised, and viewed from the house or
from the seats in the recess which forms the terminal feature to the main
drive vista.
One of the principal factors which have governed the choice of the
position for the house as well as the main lines of the garden has been the
relation of both to existing old trees, so that they should so group themselves
round the building and form points of interest in the garden so as to make it
appear that the trees were a part of the general scheme.
So too the existing tea-house, by the extension of its verandah and the
introduction of a little paved court in front of this becomes a terminal feature
to one of the main vistas, and is brought into pleasant relations with the rose
garden.
It will be noticed that this garden plan chiefly extends to the east of the
house. This is owing to the fact that it is in this direction that the slope of
the ground, which falls towards the lake to the south, is less steep. On the
south and west of the house the ground falls rapidly, and here the principal
feature is a pergola cut in the hillside and open on one side to the lake, the
other being formed by a retaining-wall. This follows the natural lines ot
the hillside round the south and west sides of the house, and connects
the terrace below the lawn with a kitchen garden formed on the west side of
the house. In this part of the garden plan is also included a broad flight of
steps which forms a descent from the centre of the lower terrace of the house
to the lake and boathouse.
Amongst other features of the garden scheme may be noted the maze,
which occupies an irregular piece of ground, and the long flower garden
adjoining this to the north.
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A HOUSE AND GARDEN IN POLAND
GARDEN PLAN
137
LE NID
IN modern times the house of the average citizen is necessarily a somewhat
prosaic affair. It has been my endeavour to show how far some quality
of romance may be introduced into its scheme, so that the man who is justly not
content with bread alone may find in his home some solace for the imagination
— some stuff of which dreams may be made.
In the dwelling, which it is now my purpose to describe, less rigorous
restrictions have made possible a fuller expression of decorative ideals. To
describe it I must transport the reader to a dim pine-wood in Roumania,
a wood such as that of which Swinburne sings :
Far Eastward and Westward the sun-coloured lands,
Shine bright as the light on them smiles,
While fairer than temple uplifted by hands,
Tall column by column the Sanctuary stands,
Of the pine-forest's infinite aisles.
There is surely nothing in Nature quite so architectural in character as a
pine-wood. Under foot is the brown carpet of the pine-needles, and around
in endless perspective the tall columns of the trees, while above one catches
glimpses of dusky orange branches set in sombre green. The air is heavy
with the incense of the trees, and no tangled undergrowth obstructs the floor
save where the pale green of bracken shimmers in a misty light amidst the
purple trunks.
If in such a wood one were to seek a dwelling, surely one would expect
to find, as Psyche did, the " hostelry of a god," or at least the woodland
retreat of some goddess of the groves.
It would not seem unfitting that these columns should support such
a structure perched like a nest under the vaulting of the spreading branches.
It is in such a wood that " Le Nid " is built. The floors of its chambers
are formed by horizontal pine-trunks secured to the trees enclosing a some-
what irregular space. Its walls are of a like rustic character, and its roof
of dark-toned thatch, so that the whole structure seems in harmony with the
trees which support and surround it.
But while this general roughness and rustic character seems essentially
appropriate in such a situation, it will be necessary to explain that it differs
materially from those arrangements of squirming and tortured branches
which have so corrupted modern rustic work with evil associations. The
columns which support the roof and the balcony, which partly surrounds
" Le Nid," present the subtle vital curves of healthy unobstructed growth,
and not the contorted and bizarre convulsions of trees stunted and blighted
by unfavourable surroundings.
On reaching this balcony, poised so high above the earth, it seems inevit-
able that the mystic influences of the dim incense-breathing wood should
suggest Rossetti's lines :
The blessed damosel leaned out
From the gold bar of Heaven.
138
LE NID
Under the deep shade of the roof one perceives the entrance door to
" Le Nid " bowered in an interlacing framework of carved branches and
leafage, in the midst of which birds flutter and cling, and over which gleams
a gilded nest.
On entering, one perceives that the brown and rough outer husk of this
aerial dwelling is richly lined with jewelled and brilliant colour.
Some indication of the effect from the entrance may be gained from the
illustration which forms the frontispiece to this book. The apartment
represents the room of the sun and sunflower, and in all its various decorations
the same symbol is presented. Thf tiles, the seats and the windows all
represent different treatments of this sunflower motif, while the ceiling
represents an attempt to convey in conventional terms something of the
effect of glimpses of sky and sun seen through the upper branches of trees.
In contrast to this golden room is the cool recessed ercker, of which the lily
is the symbol flower. Its floor is set with a mosaic of water lilies disposed
in lines which converge to the shrine on which a dim light burns. Towards
this shrine, too, the lilies of the frieze bend their heads, and the pictured
Madonna is framed by branches intricately interwoven. On the opposite
side of this little oratory is the organ enclosed by doors, the inner sides
of which are bright with flights of angels painted on a gilded ground.
The lines from Rossetti—
\Vc two will stand before that shrine,
Occult, withheld, untrod,
lines which seem to have been struck out with masterly precision as by a
sculptor's chisel — seem especially appropriate for inscription over this shrine
so remotely enskied.
Adjoining this principal apartment — the salon of the sun and the sun-
flower— is a bedroom where the drowsy poppy prevails. Over the door the
inscription is from the Ancient Mariner :
To Mary, Queen, the praise be given,
She sent the gentle sleep from Heav'n
Which slid into my soul.
Here the hangings of the bed are embroidered with poppies. Poppies art
painted on the walls, and are inlaid in the panels of the furniture. Beyond
the bedroom is the kitchen, daintily appointed, and completing the whole
plan of a dwelling probably unique in its situation, structure and adornments.
139
FINDON
THIS house was designed for a client who had no delusions about pictur-
esque roof-lines and quaint arrangements of gables, but who recognised
the merits of simplicity both from an artistic as well as an economic point
of view. The house is a simple rectangle, roofed in one span with a plain
hipped roof, thus avoiding the expense of lead gutters, and the unbroken
eaves-line runs round the whole building.
Half-timber work was adopted for the wall framing because it seemed
peculiarly adapted to the district where its cost was no greater than a nine-
inch brick wall. It is framed of solid timbers which in some cases show
inside the house, and the same framing is carried out in internal partitions.
The site, which is practically level, is laid out as shown in the garden
plan illustrated. The house is placed in the centre of the ground, and the
space is divided into definite compartments of lawn, forecourt, rose garden,
orchard, &c., as shown, which are connected with straight paths giving some
good vista effects.
From the inner door at the side of the wide and low porch one enters a
recessed portion of the dining-hall under the overhanging gallery above.
This recess may be divided by a curtain from the dining-hall itself, and thus
the drawing-room, study and kitchen premises can be reached without passing
through the dining-hall itself — the whole of the traffic of the house being
confined to this recess. The principal room ot the house, which constitutes
the focus of the plan, is the dining-hall, which is about fourteen feet high,
and is boarded round with wide planks to the height of its doors, above
which are broad spaces of whitewashed plaster, and a ceiling of rough
woodwork also whitewashed. As the house was designed for a lady, the
drawing-room is rather large in proportion to the other rooms. It is low
and homely, and from it to the south are casement doors which open on to
the terrace.
On the south-west corner is a small study, in which the walls are chiefly
lined with bookcases. A fixed seat is placed near the fireplace, with a little
window above it. The writing-desk is placed in a corner of the room where
it enjoys a left light. This disposition of the furniture shows how a small
room may be arranged to make the most of a limited floor space. In the
other sitting-rooms the principal pieces of furniture are shown on the plan—
the grand piano in the drawing-room, with its special window, and the couch
at the. side of the fireplace. In the dining-hall the central circular gate-table,
which can easily be moved to one side when required, stands in the centre of
the room. The sideboard is placed under the overhanging gallery, and a
long and wide seat occupies the bay-window, from which one looks on to the
terrace and the central vista of the rose garden beyond.
A feature in connection with the dining-hall which must be noted is the
serving-cupboard which has already been described. The fire is placed on a
wide hearth of stone under a brick arch. The kitchen premises are com-
pletely isolated, but conveniently placed for service, and are all floored with
red tiles. In the kitchen itself the window to the east, which overlooks the
140
FINDON
rose garden, is glazed with obscured glass, and the outlook for the servants
is into the orchard on the north.
On the upper floor are tour bedrooms, bathroom, w.c., and linen-cup-
board. The positions tor the beds are shown on the plan.
On the attic floor is a large central attic bedroom — the servants' bedrooms,
and boxroom and cistern-room.
It will thus be seen that though in some ways a specialised house, it yet
provides ample accommodation for the average family requirements. It
requires but little furniture, and that of the simplest kind. Whitewash is
its principal decoration. It demands little outlay to furnish, less to decorate,
and can be maintained with the minimum of labour.
On the whole it may be taken as a fairly typical example of the average
house built as a practical realisation of the principles which I have
advocated.
141
FINDON
ENTRANCE FRONT
GARDEN FRONT
I42
FINDON
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
___ i
|I4'»IO LJI SPARE
&EOROOM
OVER
IN CEHTPE
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
& THREE
ATTICS •
- ~5 C'---^^"" ^
GARDEN PLAN
H3
FINDON
THE DINING HALL
144
FINDON
THE DRAWING-ROOM FIREPLACE
THE STAIRCASE
TRECOURT
THE title of this house was suggested by the fact that the grouping of
its structure involves the formation of three courts. Of these the central
or fountain court is completely enclosed by the house, and, so far, the
traditional model of an ancient type of plan is followed. There seems
little doubt that this formation was originally adopted mainly for purposes
of defence, and some excuse may be required to justify the perpetuation
of such a plan in these days when conditions demanding the fortification
of dwellings no longer obtain. It may be urged then that there are
many other advantages, practical and aesthetic, which make the plan
of building round enclosed courts advisable in modern times. The
form of plan which resulted from the necessity for defence inevitably
secured the quality of seclusion, and led to the creation of a little inner
world, an enchanted territory of courts and enclosed gardens which owed
the greater part of their charm to such enclosure. And this idea of the
house and its garden as a little fairy- land, sheltered and defended from the
bleak influences of the common every-day world without, can only be ade-
quately conveyed by the same expedients which would be adopted by those
who were obliged to fortify it against the attacks of enemies.
The court system of house planning has, moreover, other advantages,
leading as it does to compactness of plan in a large house, and to an in-
creased facility for lighting the various rooms and passages. Another
ancient device for the defence of the house, may here be noted in passing as
an example of that process of rational adoption and reluctant rejection of
the features of old houses which results in a building which fulfils modern
conditions. The enclosure of a house by a moat has much to recommend
it from an aesthetic point of view. The reflection of its walls in the still
water from which they seem to spring, conveys the idea of a little island
home set like a jewel in a zone of silver. But the obvious inconsistency of
creating an obstruction to the approaches of the house with no practical
object, and then making bridges for transit over it, makes the enclosing moat
to a modern house appear an archaic affectation, and the most one can learn
from it is the beauty of the conjunction of architecture and still water, and
the value of reflections in design.
Referring to the illustrations, it may be noted that the use of colour in
architectural sketches, especially when it is of that accidental character which
the weather gives, has often been somewhat unfairly reprobated. As,
however, in the choice of materials for country building, it has been urged
that they should be adapted for Nature's painting, some suggestion of this
process must necessarily be conveyed in illustrations of exteriors. Some
indication might also have justly been added of the growth of creepers on
the walls, and these have only been omitted in order not to confuse the forms
of the structure. The relative plainness of the building is an indication
that its grey stone walls will be partially adorned with climbing plants, and
its red roof stained by the weather with tints which can only be dimly
suggested by the sketches illustrated.
146
f- i
Di f
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TRE COURT
Referring to the plans of the house, it will be noted that the arrangement
is entirely symmetrical ; but it is a symmetry which is net incompatible with
practical considerations, and does not involve those anomalies of plan which
the rigours of the Palladian style enforced on the designers of English
country houses in this respect. From the central entrance in the long north
front one enters a porch which opens on to an arcade revealing the central
paved court, with its fountain and bright tubs of flowers. Immediately
adjoining the porch on the right is the business-room communicating with
the private study beyond, and in the wing which forms the extension of the
north front to the west is the billiard-room with its open timber roof and
gallery. Passing along the wide low corridor on the west side of the fountain
court, it will be noted that this forms the direct approach from the entrance
to the drawing-room ; and adjoining it, and forming the connecting-link
between drawing-room and study, is the long and low library ; its unbroken
wall-surfaces lined with books, and its central bay-window commanding the
garden court, and beyond it one of the chief garden vistas.
The corridor, which bounds the fountain court on the south, extends
east and west, and its lines are extended in the form of pergolas emphasising
the unity of design in house and garden. At its centre a bay-window over-
looks the fountain court with its arcade to the north, and to right and left,
in summer weather, one may catch glimpses of garden vistas checkered with
light and shade, and bright with flowers.
From this corridor the great hall, fifty feet in length, is entered, and here
broad white wall-spaces contrast with the darker tones of panelling, and the
principal features are the great open fireplace and the bay-window overlooking
the terraces and gardens to the south. From this hall, drawing-room and
dining-room open with wide doorways, and so the route from the former to
the latter is another vista of which the terminal features are the alcoves in
both rooms, more richly decorated than the rest of the walls, and with little
windows where stained glass show like gems in the shade.
In the drawing-room the realities of the structure, the display of which
gives a certain earnest character to the whole interior, will be modified by a
more elegant treatment, and in the boudoir adjoining it the same feeling
suggests the octagonal form developed from the square, and the introduction
of slender white columns, above which a domed ceiling represents a miniature
firmament adorned with flights of birds.
At the eastern end of the hall is the panelled dining-room, adjoining
which the breakfast-room has an eastern aspect. The remaining portion of
the ground plan is occupied by the kitchen premises, which provide the usual
accommodation required for a house of this size. Of these the kitchen itself
has an open timber roof, and the lower part of the walls lined with Dutch tiles.
The first floor provides eleven bedrooms and four bathrooms, as well as
two of the servants' bedrooms, the remainder of which would be in the floor
above, the further development of which would provide a number of addi-
tional attic bedrooms. The bedrooms generally have been arranged to form
suites, each including a bathroom and dressing-room.
H7
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148
TRECOURT
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
'49
TREVISTA
THE house now to be considered is one specially designed to suit one of
those rectangular plots of ground so commonly to be found in suburban
and even country districts, where estates are laid out with little regard for
anything but commercial and utilitarian ends. In such districts it is not
permitted to advance the house beyond what is called the building-line.
Such beauty as might be gained by a certain irregularity as one may
find in old villages, where here a cottage abuts on the road itself, and
there one stands back from the highway, is here impossible, and the
houses appear as if drawn up on parade, toeing the line with dreary
and inevitable regularity. The land so divided is generally sold by the
foot of frontage to the road, and the plots are generally of consider-
able length, as°it is assumed that the back land is of no great value. A
house is considered, apparently, as primarily a place where one sits in a bay-
window which commands a view of other bay-windows and an outlook on
the road. Whether the sun looks in at your window is apparently a minor
consideration as long as an expanse of plate-glass reveals to the passer-by
the elegance of your furnishings. The house illustrated here follows no
such canons, but deliberately turns its back on the road because the road is to
the north, and its occupants prefer the sun and the beauties of a secluded
garden to the traffic and dust of the street.
Although thus cut off from the drawbacks to a roadside situation, it yet
keeps as close to the road as the building-line permits, in order to gain the
more land for the garden on the sunny side.
In its frontage of a hundred feet three gates form the starting-point of
three main vistas, which extend to the back boundary of the site. On
entering the centre gate in the paling of cleft oak one finds oneself in no
miserable apology for a front garden set with rows of bedded flowers or
choked with amorphous shrubberies ; but, instead, in a cleanly open court
from which one catches glimpses right and left of pleasant vistas appro-
priately terminated. On opening the front door, one enters a wide and low
passage, and beyond its cool shade one sees the garden-room, and, beyond
that, one catches a glimpse of a garden vista which, beginning with the rose
garden, ends in the semicircular recess at the end of the lawn. This definite
connection of the garden paths with the passages of the house helps to make
house and garden parts in a comprehensive studied effect.
Ic is impossible to consider them entirely apart from each other, for taken
together they form a single conception. It is not a case of first designing a
house and then laying out its immediate surroundings as a garden bearing a
certain relation to it, tor house and garden are here the product of a single
initial idea which comprehends the whole.
In the consideration of the ground plan it will be observed that the
central passage serves to separate the main living-rooms of the family from
the kitchen premises and the children's room. The central feature is the
large hall, house-place or living-room, of which a sketch is given, in which
some indication is conveyed of its great hospitable open fireplace, and its
150
TREVISTA
broad spaces of wall, where homely whitewash forms an economical and
satisfactory substitute for superficial and mechanical artistry. Adjoining
this hall is the dining-recess, a feature which has already been described.
The drawing-room is also so arranged in connection with the hall as to give,
when required, a combined room over forty feet in length, while the position
of the fireplace in the drawing-room not only gives a certain seclusion, but
allows of a window there to the south.
The functions of the garden-room have already been dwelt on, and it is
here placed to command the main garden vista.
Turning to the consideration of the rooms on the left of the central axis
of the plan, it will be noted that the staircase is so situated that a separate
staircase for the servants will not be required. The children's room is long
and low, with a sunny outlook to the garden, and a wide ingle fireplace.
Here, as elsewhere, the structure is all, or nearly all, the decoration, and
so the interior acquires a certain dignity and reality which cannot be
realised by the cunningest schemes of paper and paint. To the north of this
the kitchen premises are well isolated, and in occupying the position of
honour overlooking the road represent a radical departure from the average
scheme for a house. A covered way or entry here isolates, but gives dry
access, to the coal-cellar and w.c., and forms a part incidentally of one oftiie
three vistas which are the basis of the whole scheme.
On the upper floor there are four bedrooms and bathroom, while above
in the roof the space admits of further development ; and besides the
servants' bedroom, cistern-room, and boxroom, a study or studio might be
formed there, or additional bedrooms if required.
In considering the garden scheme, it may first be noted that in addition
to the three main vistas there are two subsidiary ones, one of which is
opposite the bay-window to the hall, and the other opposite the window to
the children's room, and these help to confirm ths unity of plan in house
and garden, which has already been alluded to. The regularity of the out-
line of the site and the assumed, absence ot natural features on an approxi-
mately level site are all attributes which suggest, and indeed demand,
formality of design. There are occasions and places where it would be
equally reasonable and inevitable to admit natural features as the basis of the
scheme, and to depart from the rectangular in the formation of paths. But
here to do so would be to indulge in unreasonable affectations of design, and
so the rose garden opposite the south front of the house is symmetrically
disposed, culminating in the central dipping-well, a feature so practically
useful for watering flowers with water which has been exposed all day to the
sun, surrounding which roses wreathed on arches, and festooned on chains
seem to join hands as in some ancient country dance round the maypole.
This rose garden is flanked on each side by semicircular recesses for seats,
and from the lawn it is divided by an open screen of climbing roses. The
lawn itself presents an open space of shaven turf, flanked on each side by
pergolas, which seem to be the side aisles of a floral church, while at the end
of the lawn another semicircular recess forms the terminal feature to the
TREVISTA
central axis of the plan. Between the pergolas and the boundary hedge is a
long narrow flower bed where lilies and other flowers show their beauty to
the best advantage against a dark, background, and gleam at intervals between
the pergola posts. Beyond this pergola, where the paving is dappled with
shadow, a little garden of perennial flowers completes the vista, which is
terminated by an arbour. The possessor of such a little garden will find
scope enough within its boundaries to create a little paradise of flowers. But
it should always be borne in mind that the flowers are for the garden, not the
garden for the flowers. As in the house, the collector of furniture and
bric-a-brac comes to regard his home as a mere shelter for art treasures, so
the gardener is apt to consider the merits of the individual bloom before the
general effect of that little outdoor world in which it is but a unit. It is
not enough to grow the right sort of flowers, but it is necessary that they
should be arranged in right relation to each other, and considered in this
way, the materials of which the garden is composed are as the colours which
a painter uses to make a picture, and he who chooses a small canvas
may rival the efforts of a whole staff of gardeners employed without the
controlling influence of artistic skill in the grounds of the millionaire's
mansion.
I5Z
TREVISTA
VIKW FROM ROAD
BIRD'S-EYE V1KW OK GARDKX
'53
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TREVISTA
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
1_ C 0 U O T
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
'55
ROSE COURT
THE little house and garden nowto be considered is adapted forthe ordinary
type of building plot, and requires a frontage of about sixty-five feet. Its
equivalent in the house agent's lists would be represented by the villa with
three or more reception-rooms, each reduced to dimensions which would
make them cramped and uncomfortable — each demanding, too, its separate
fire. The best room would be one facing the road to the north, and this
would probably be to some extent preserved from vulgar daily use, and the
family would probably be crowded into a little back room where a cumbrous
dining table would occupy most of the floor-space. The garden would be
"tastefully laid out" with winding walks and shapeless shrubberies. In
fact the whole scheme would represent the usual congestion of absurdities
for which the dweller in villadom is content to pay a high rent. In the
plan here submitted the central feature is necessarily the hall or living-
room, and adjoining this the dining-room and drawing-room have dwindled
to mere recesses sharing in the warmth of the great central fireplace,
and adding to the spaciousness of the hall, of which they are a part.
The small study occupies a more isolated position, and the kitchen
premises towards the road are conveniently placed for service while they are
completely isolated from the family rooms. On the upper floor are four
good-sized bedrooms and bathroom, and over these the full development of
the attic space would admit of additional bedroom accommodation, or perhaps
a children's playroom, in addition to the servants' bedroom, boxroom, and
cistern-room. The general character of this interior is structural and homely,
and would present that earnest reality of effect which belongs to the confessed
elements of its structure. It is the quality which is to be found in old farm-
houses and cottages, but may be sought for in vain amongst the uncharted
wildernesses of modern villadom. The plan of the garden is somewhat similar
to that previously described, especially in that it presents three main vista-
lines, each bearing a definite relation to the house. It presents a somewhat
similar artistic scheme to a church, and if one considers its central rose garden
as a square nave flanked by the aisles which the pergolas suggest, it will be at
once apparent that the central flower garden beyond, with its screen of roses,
must be the chancel where at matins and vespers pale lilies are the choristers.
The orchards are thus side chapels, and between nave and chancel will be
seen a miniature transept completing the vista to right and left. The reader
will be able to complete still further this picture of a church of flowers which
was designed merely to meet the conditions of the site, and with no conscious
ecclesiastical idea. The small sketches indicate the general character of the
house, and the view from the garden-room looking down one of the pergolas
s also shown.
It will be noted, in this and other of the roadside houses illustrated, a site
is indicated with a frontage to the north. This is generally not difficult to
obtain on most building estates, because the average builder, obsessed with
the fixed idea of the bay-window overlooking the road, and who prefers to
display all the glories of the house and garden to the man in the street,
156
ROSE corn r
Till: I'l ! ~ ^i ! N, : l.\l
ROSE COURT
naturally selects a road frontage facing south. In adopting the opposite
arrangement, not only is privacy obtained and that air of seclusion which is
essential to the ideal garden, but the house itself constitutes a substantial
screen to northern winds as well as to the dust and noise of the street. In
placing the kitchen premises towards the road, the route to the back door is
reduced to a minimum, and the whole of the kitchen premises are isolated
from the garden. In the case of a house facing a frontage to the south, it
would be desirable to place it well back from the road so as to allow of a
garden in front of it. The front door should then be placed at one end so
that the approach to it can be formed at one side of the plot, and may be
screened with a hedge from the garden. In the case of a house having a
frontage to the east, it will often be desirable to adopt the same scheme as I
have suggested for a northern frontage, making in this case a western garden
frontage, and by the use of bays securing still a share of southern aspect.
Kach site will demand its own special treatment, and in those with an eastern
or western frontage, where the frontage admits, it will often be desirable to
place the house with its end towards the road, an arrangement which may
often be met with in old villages.
That the majority of people really demand as a sine qua non that they
shall have a bay-window facing the road it is difficult to believe, and its
continual recurrence, 1 feel assured, is owing merely to a fixed idea on the
part of the builder whose commercial training leads him to forget the
essential difference between the house and the shop.
'57
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I58
ROSE COURT
K1TCHEM 1-jcUL
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GROUND FLOOR I'LAN
BE.DROOM
IB'* 10'
BEDROOM
16' A 14'
DATH
0
DEDROCj-1
Ig'x 15'
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
GARDEN PLAN
ROSE COURT
VIEW FROM NORTH
VIEW FROM SOUTH-WEST
1 60
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WHITE NIGHTS
IN this plan a small house is shown which in many respects resembles the
last. It is adapted for a fifty-foot frontage to the north. Here, however,
the building-line has been ignored, and the house brought right up to
the road. This allows of a little high-walled square court, with the front
entrance through an arched gateway, and with the back, entrance through an
entry, as in the previous plans.
As one approaches the front entrance of this little dwelling, and, looking
through the bars of the entrance gate, as one begins to realise the character
which the house obtains from this treatment, the Dutch primness and cleanli-
ness of the paving and cobble-stones, with a few tubs of flowers and SOUK
central ornament — a little lead figure, perhaps, on a well-designed pedestal -
one may, perhaps, be excused for preferring it to the inevitable ''drive" and
shrubs of suburbia. Such a little grey court, with its indefinable hint of
romance, is worth a dozen front gardens and sweeping drives, which are the
pretentious preludes to such mean habitations. In the plan of the house it
will be noticed that the hall, with its appendages of bower and dining-reccss,
occupy the whole of the garden frontage to the south, while the kitchen
premises, as in the previous example, are placed towards the road. On the
upper floor the plan shows the arrangements of the bedrooms, while the attic
accommodation is a variable quantity, and may include additional rooms for
the family as well as the usual servants' bedroom, boxroom anil cistern room.
The plan of the garden is not shown in this example, but the central position
of the bay-window, as well as the position of the window in the boudoir, will
be sufficient to indicate that its main lines have already been determined.
The coloured sketch gives a suggestion of the general character of the
interior. In the dining-recess here it is proposed to stencil the walls with a
pattern of trailing vine, with grey-green leaves and purple grapes ; and this
vine motif will perhaps suggest an appropriate selection from the "Hubaiyat"
on the beam above.
Ah till the cup : — what boots it to repeat
] low time is slipping underneath our feet ;
Unborn to-morrow and dead yesterday,
\\liv fret about them if to-day be sweet.
Such a sentiment may not commend itself to all, but except in its opening
phrase it seems but another way of repeating the canonical command to take
no thought for the morrow.
It will be noticed that this little space of vine adornment is the only super-
ficial decoration made in this apartment, which almost constitutes the house.
All the rest is grey-brown timber, red bricks, and whitewash. It may also be
noted that there is only one picture in the room and but few ornaments ; anil it
one examines the materials which go to make up this interior, it will be found
that there is little but has its definite structural function. It is no histrionic
reproduction of a farm-house kitchen, such as the modern furnishing firm will
construct for you, where beams and joists are arranged tor eftect, and where the
whole is as much like real building as a piece of street scenery en the stage.
7. 1 6 1
WHITE NIGHTS
VI KW FROM ROAD
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
162
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
THE CLOISTERS
THIS house was designed for a site divided from the road on the north by
a high wall, the line of which was not parallel with the main axis of the site.
The ground plan shows how this difficulty has been met by the formation of
a forecourt of irregular pentagonal shape. Paths paved with old flagstones
radiate from the centre of the court, and the triangular spaces between them
are set with cobble-stones in patterns of grey and white. The little grey
court, enclosed with its high wall, is brightened by its marginal areas of mown
grass, and in its centre a little lead figure completes the focus of the scheme.
The house is grey, too, like the court, relieved by the varied tints of
purple and gold in its roof of old tiles, by the toned whiteness of the panels
in the half-timber work, and by the twinkling lights of its windows of crown
glass.
The plan of the house itselt is based on the traditional model ot many an
old manor-house. One enters from the porch a paved passage, which crosses
the house and forms the starting-point for the main garden vista. To the
right of this are the three principal sitting-rooms— -the hall, two storeys high,
in this case used as a dining-hall ; the drawing-room and study — -each with its
comfortable fireside and separate approach.
To the left of the central passage are staircase and lavatory, and beyond
these a children's room, which opens on to a cloister walk open to the south,
a place for meals in summer weather and for the children's play.
The remainder of the ground plan is occupied by the kitchen premises.
On the upper floor the hall, with its galleries, divides the bedrooms into
two groups. That at the west end comprises two bedrooms and dressing-
room as spare rooms — and that at the east the family rooms — the principal
bedroom having a dressing-room with bath adjoining the principal bathroom.
The roof-space contains the servants' bedrooms and boxroom, and the
development of the space over the hall would admit of a possible billiard-room
there. The position of the children's room on the ground floor, in relation
to the kitchen premises, suggests that a modification of the plan might consist
in making this room the dining-room, the children's playroom being placed in
the attics.
A portion of the garden scheme is shown on the ground plan. The path
which forms its central vista-line divides the lawn from the rose garden, and,
the latter being sunk, this path becomes a terrace. A few old trees seem to
adapt themselves naturally to their positions on the edge of the lawn, and the
rose garden is focused in the central dipping-well. Beyond, to the south,
are kitchen garden and orchard ; and the house is so placed that the bay-
window of the hall looks down the centre of an existing avenue of old fruit-
trees beyond the lawn.
Another feature of the garden scheme which may be noted is the little
square court to the west of the house, from which an arcade opens communi-
cating with the study.
The cost of this house would be about /,220O.
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THE CLOISTERS
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
SCALE ,y = i FOOT
166
BLACKWELL
THIS house in the Lake District is chiefly noticeable for its large central hall,
in a recessed portion of" which a billiard table is placed. The principal
feature in this hall is the great ingle fireplace with its open hearth and seats,
and over this a little stair, with stone-vaulted roof, leads to a small chamber
overlooking the hall. From the front entrance a broad and low corridor
gives access to drawing-room, dining-room, and kitchen premises, without
infringing on the hall itself, so that it never becomes a passage-room. The
first floor and attic floor give ample bedroom accommodation. In the
adornment of this house it was specially desired that the mountain ash
should form the subject for decoration, and this appears in the form of
carving, leaded glass, plaster-work, and stencilling in the various rooms.
Two of the most important features in the metal-work are the
drawing-room grate and hall electric light pendant. In each of these
the ironwork is brightened by white enamelled flowers and scarlet berries.
£j J
In the carved trees, which appear in the staircase screen and on the hall
ingle, birds' nests are interwoven in the branches and birds flutter amongst
the leaves and fruit. In the brackets to the lower beams and in the bosses
to the ceiling various local plants are represented. One is entwined with
bryony, another shows the blooms of the wild guelder-rose, while the bloom
and berries of the hawthorn and the wild rose are amongst the features of the
carving. The same variety of carving occurs in the white drawing-room,
where, in the capitals to slender columns, the foliage and branches of various
trees are represented.
167
BLACKWELL
Till' KNTRANCK HALT,
168
VIK\V FROM SOUTH-WKST
BLACKWELL
(,Ror\I) FLOOR PLAN
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
2 A
169
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170
HLACK.WELL
TDK 1)R \\VING-KOOM
TIIK DRAWING-ROOM INGLE
171
BLACKWELL
THE DINING-ROOM
THE UPPER CORRIDOR
A HOUSE FOR AN ART LOVER
TI IIS ''H;ius enus Kunst-freundes " \v;is awarded the first prize by a jury of
German architects in a competition organised in ( itrniaiiy. The accom-
modation shown in the plan was specified in the conditions ot the competi-
tion, and the complete set of drawings in colour have been published as a
portfolio by Herr .Alex. Koch, of Darmstadt, who has kindly allowed ire to
reproduce here, on a small scale, a selection ot the illustrations. The ti nn
of the plan was suggested by the tact that both on ground tl<-.or and first
floor the required rooms seemed to divide themselves naturally into a group
of four, connected by the central hall. This hall was therefore made six-
sided, with the projecting wings attached to tour ot the six sides. On the
ground floor these consist ot kitchen premises and dining- and breakfast-rooms
on the one side, ladies' and reception room, with stud}' and business-room, on
the other, while on the upper floor the four departments or suites consist ot
guests' rooms, parents' rooms, children's rooms, and rooms for daughters
and governess.
The advantage ot the projecting wings, as enclosing and sheltering the
terrace to the south, follows naturally from this arrangement as well as the
variety and interest given to the vista effects of the interior, which, like those
arranged on the stage, vanish at an angle from the picture plane.
Some suggestion of the character ot the interior may be gained from the
illustrations. Here, as in other schemes, unity ot effect is aimed at by
making the principal apartments combine into one coherent whole.
The whole of the route plan ot the house is carefully studied, so that the
occupants of the various suites have their special private approaches to the
rooms. The principal bathroom is a special feature, octagonal in form, and
lined with marble and mosaic. The children's breakfast-room may also be
noted as an octagonal room with a domed ceiling. The lines of the house on
the exterior suggest the scheme tor the garden.
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A HOUSE FOR AN ART LOVER
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
'75
A HOUSE FOR AN ART LOVER
THK HAL
A HOUSE FOR AN ART LOVER
2 B
THE MUSIC-ROOM
177
A HOUSE FOR AN ART LOVER
LADIES' ROOM
PLAN OF BATHROOM
I78
A HOUSE FOR AN ART LOVER
'ARF.NTS' BKDKOOM
SECTION OF BATHROOM
179
A HOUSE FOR AN ART LOVER
THE PLAY-ROOM
180
THE STUDY
THE HAVEN
THIS is a house, designed for a site in Surrey, having a hundred feet
frontage to a road on its north boundary. The type of building is
ground floor and attics, low enough to give breadth of effect, but not so low
as to look like a bungalow instead of a country house.
The plan encloses a central court, from which covered entries lead to
kitchen and stable-yards. From the main entrance one looks into the
central court. The shade of the entry frames the picture, as it were, and
in this arrangement of light beyond the shadow, there is the symbol of
Hope and the suggestion of a little inland haven enclosed and sheltered.
Crossing this main court and entering the front door one approaches the
hall by a wide and low corridor. Part of this corridor is included as a
recess in the hall, which may be curtained off, if required, when the hall
becomes the dining-room. The drawing-room opens into the hall with a wide
doorway, and over it a little special stair leads to the billiard-room, which has
an open gallery overlooking the hall.
The south-eastern end of the house contains six bedrooms and two bath-
rooms, with a studio, while there are also two servants' bedrooms in the
western wing. At each end of the south front are open verandahs or garden-
rooms.
Under the bathrooms is a heating chamber, which is utilised for heating
the house generally and also the hot water for the baths.
The contract price for this house, with the stable and other outbuildings,
in a somewhat expensive district in Surrey, including all the structural wood-
work in English oak, and the floors in oak and maple throughout, was
,£2300.
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181
THE HAVEN
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GARDEN FRONT
ENTRANCE FRONT
182
THE HAVEN
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GROUND FLOOR PLAN
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
'83
THE HAVEN
BILLIARD ROOM
184
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BEXTON CROFT
THE plans and photographs of "Bexton Croft" represent the realisation of
a scheme for a house described in the Studio for January i 895, and some-
what rashly entitled there an ideal suburban house. A study of the ground
plan shows that it consists mainly of three sitting-rooms, of which the centre
one, the hall, is two storeys in height. These three rooms may be com-
bined by sliding back the wide doors which divide them, forming a
spacious interior effect focused in the central hall. The passage on the
north side of these three rooms allows of access to all of them and to the
front door without infringing on the privacy of the house. The kitchen
premises are isolated but conveniently placed for service. Under them is a
larder and cellar.
On the upper floor there are five good bedrooms, with bath and w.c.,
and over them again a central attic, which is used as a study or " den," as
well as a boxroom and servants' room.
A special feature of the plan is the little secret staircase which opens in
the panelling at the side of the drawing-room bay and gives access to the
south gallery in the hall and beyond this to the principal bedroom.
The photographs give some idea of the homely character of the wood-
work in this house, though they do not show the brilliant colouring of the
heraldic decoration which, in the hall ceiling and elsewhere, relieves the dark
oak. In the fittings of this house considerable use was made of old panelling
and balusters.
1 86
BEXTON CROFT
V1F.VV FROM DRIVF,
THE DINING-ROOM
I87
BEXTON CROFT
THK PORCH AND CORRIDOR
188
THE HALL
HEXTON CROFT
THE SOUTH GALLERY
189
BEXTON CROFT
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190
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
THE FIVE GABLES
THE house now to be described represents a realisation of a plan illustrated
in the Studio for December 1897. In this realisation some slight modifi-
cations were introduced which may be noted in comparing the Studio plan with
those now illustrated.
Unlike other plans which have been illustrated in the Studio this one
was originally designed to meet the special requirements of clients and
site. It will be noted that the wide doorways between the rooms on the
ground floor are used as an expedient to make these appear to combine
to form one large apartment, and to avoid that impression of confinement
in separate and isolated boxes which constitutes one of the essential defects
in the plan of the modern small villa. Further study of the problem
of the small house suggests a more complete combination of dining-room and
hall, with a possible separate route to the front door from the kitchen through
the space occupied by the bicycle-room on the plan; but the plan, as it
stands, represents a fairly effectual compromise between the ordinary plan
arranged on the separate box system and the logical conclusion arrived
at by the study of the actual uses to which the rooms would be put,
which might condemn the hall, in so far as it is not used as an exten-
sion of the dining-room floor-space, as an inadmissible luxury in a small
house. Another feature which might also be considered a luxury is the separate
staircase for the servants, and this is mainly justified by special conditions ot
plan, which make it possible ro introduce it with the minimum sacrifice of
space.
One of the greatest difficulties in the planning ot the small house is the
proper isolation of the kitchen premises from the family apartments. A reference
to the plan will show how this difficulty has been met, partly by the inter-
position of a brick wall, and partly by the use of the serving-room or pantry
as a disconnecting space between the rectangular block containing the kitchen
premises and the rest of the house, while the odours of cooking are disposed
of by a ventilating shaft carried up at the side of the kitchen flue.
191
THE FIVE GABLES
VIEW FROM SOl.'TH
I92
THE HALL
THE FIVE GABLES
THE DRAWING ROOM
THE DINING ROOM
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THE FIVE GABLES
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
194
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HEATHER COTTAGE
IN the plan of this little house and garden on a hillside, the levels or the
ground formed the most important factor. It is long and low, but while at
one end it consists of merely a ground-floor room with attic over, at the
other the sloping ground has changed it into a house of practically two storeys.
To the north the hill rises considerably and helps to shelter the house.
It serves, indeed, as a practical illustration of the principle of placing a house,
not on the highest point in the site, which is so often done, but at an
intermediate level, which gives both shelter and view. In the garden the
pergola is a notable feature, serving to screen the drive from the lawn,
of which it forms the northern boundary. One of the objections sometimes
raised to the pergola is that the flowers of the creepers which clothe
it are all outside, and not seen from the inside, where the effect, save
for such flowers as may bloom in the borders, is mainly one of light and
shade. This suggests the placing of the pergola so that its exterior may also
form a garden feature, and in this case its sunny side comes into view both
from the drawing-room window and the lawn.
In the house, the dining-hall, with its open timber roof and wide ingle, is
the central and dominant apartment. The dining-table is placed at one end
across the room. The drawing-room is small and low, and over it the study
forms a little attic-room with its private stair and gallery overlooking the
hall. The arrangement of the bedrooms allows of the treatment of the
dressing-room as a second bathroom, with comparatively little extra cost in
plumbing, while a third little staircase gives access to servants' room over the
kitchen. At the time of writing this house is in process of construction, and
drawings must replace photographs in its illustration. These at least admit of
some suggestion of the colour, in which the heather, from which the house
takes its name, is a notable feature.
'95
HEATHER COTTAGE
GARDEN PLAN
GROUND FLOOR
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FIRST FLOOR PLAN
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EVERDENE
IN many of the country houses illustrated it will he noted that the favourite
formula is that in which the garden front faces the south and the
entrance front the north. One enters at the hack. And this arrangement is
usually most to be desired. In the present case, however, the road being on
the south side of the plot, it is desirable that the entrance should be either
on the west or east front, while the accommodation required seems to
suggest the possibility of a house built round and enclosing an inner
court. The house is low — one storey with attics- -an arrangement which
admits ot a hall with an open timber roof, and which, in bringing the attics
down to the first floor level, makes them more valuable than when they
can only be reached by a long climb. In country districts, where land is
not too expensive, this broad and low manner of building has much to
recommend it, for not only does it make use of all the roof- space, and that
in ways which add greatly to the picturesque character of the interior, but by-
bringing the rooms so formed within easy reach it makes them of greater
value.
In the disposition of the ground floor, the important feature is the three
rooms to the south, culminating in the central hall, while the bedrooms and
kitchen premises enclose the court on the remaining three sides. The bath-
room on the ground floor, with a bath, perhaps, of circular form sunk in its
floor, is capable of special treatment, which would make it somewhat more
interesting than the bathroom of the usual utilitarian type. The study, with
its little special private stair, forms an attic-room, with shuttered openings
overlooking the hall.
In this type of plan, indeed, the claims of romance seem to meet most
happily economical limitations. Its cost, at the average country price of eight -
pence per cubic foot, amounts to about ^2000. In some districts it would
be less than this, and in others, near London, it would amount to perhaps
^2500, at tenpence per cubic foot. But the use of the roof-space gives for
this sum a considerable accommodation.
The treatment of the garden illustrates the application of the principle of
carefully studied vista effects applied to an actual site of sorntwhat irregular
form on a practically level piece of ground.
197
EVERDENE
THE HALL
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
198
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
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EVERDENE
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GARDEN PLAN
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LINGFIELD
THE plan of this house somewhat resembles " Falke Wood," its central
feature being the dining-hall. with which drawing room and study com
bine to make a spacious interior, \vhichthus has a certain unity of effect.
The remainder of the ground floor is taken up by kicchen premises of the
usual type.
On the first floor are three bedrooms and dressing-room, as well as bath-
room and w.c., while the roof-space contains, besides the servants' rooms
and boxroom, another large bedroom.
The inclusive cost of this house was /, 1500.
The garden scheme, ot which a plan is given, represents a carefully studied
arrangement of vista effects, and includes a considerable area of natural
heather garden, with silver birches and pines. From the front gate there are
two main vista lines, one looking down the pergola, and the other along the
grass path which leads to the sunk rose garden, and ends in the drawing-
room bay, while, in proceeding up the drive, several other cross vistas occur.
The circular carriage court is set with formal yews.
From the point of view of the house itself, the two principal bay-
windows form the outlook of studied effects From the seat of the bay-
window in the dining-hall three vistas spread fan-like through the heather —
three narrow brick paths go to meet the curved path which forms the edge
of the fan.
From the drawing-room the outlook is immediately on to the little
square sunk rose garden, and beyond this along a grass path through a
plantation of silver birches and pines carpeted with woodland flowers.
200
LINGFIELD
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GROUND FLOOR I'LAN
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
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201
THE WHITE HOUSE
THE White House, in the general arrangement of its plan, may be com-
pared with " Bexton Croft." It presents the same arrangement of the
three sitting-rooms connected with a passage at the back, and combining to
form a spacious interior effect.
The importance of the outlook towards the south-west, however, led to
the corner bay-window there, and the placing of the kitchens in a return wing
instead of as an extension of the south front.
The general character of the house also became changed in response to
local influences. Occupying an exposed position on the Clyde, not far from
the birthplace of that modern revival known as the Glasgow School, and
designed for a client who already possessed some of Mr. E. A. Walton's
beautiful furniture, without any conscious effort the conception of the house
seemed to be modelled by these factors to a greater severity in its external
lines and to a general character throughout which suggests little of the old-
world houses.
202
THE WHITE HOUSE
THK NORTH FRONT
THE SOUTH FRONT
203
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THE WHITE HOUSE
THF. DRAWING-ROOM
THK DINING-ROOM
205
THE WHITE HOUSE
GROUND FLOOR 1'LAX
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
206
THE CROSSWAYS
THIS house is somewhat inadequately represented by the plans and the
sketch of the hall. Some idea of the effect of its exterior can be gained by
referring to the house described as " Findon." It has the same simplicity of
roof plan and outline, and is thus essentially economical.
The hall or house-place, with its large ingle fireplace, occupies the
greater part of the ground floor, the dining-room and drawing-room
having dwindled to recesses. The garden-room or verandah occupies a
corner of the south front, and the study is an isolated compartment of
the plan. The design, as it stands, was made to meet the demands of
a special client. It would be improved by omitting the partition between
scullery and kitchen and the lavatory by the front door. The back
stair is hardly necessary, and a door might be added giving access to the
garden-room from the bower. The upper floor contains five bedrooms and
bathroom, and the roof would give space for two more bedrooms as well as
the servants' room and boxroom. The cost would be about .£900.
207
THE CROSSWAYS
THK HALL
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GROUND FLOOR PLAN
208
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
HALCYON COTTAGE
THIS little house has recently been built in a site within sixteen miles ot
London. The central feature of the plan is the roomy living-room or
house-place, which, as in various other plans illustrated, appears as the hall,
and, indeed, almost the house itself. The whole ot the traffic of the house
is confined to the little recess in this room opposite the front door, which
can be screened by a curtain from the room itself. The remaining accommo-
dation of the ground floor consists ot a small study and the usual kitchen
premises, while on the upper floor there are four bedrooms, bathroom and
linen-closet in which the hot-water cylinder is placed In the attic there
are servant's bedroom and boxroom. The plan shows the proposed treatment
of the garden, and the sketch of the living-room the general homely treatment
of the interior.
The inclusive cost of this house was /^2v
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HALCYON COTTAGE
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FIRST FLOOR
PLAN
A'F'FIC AND
ROOF PLAN
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GROUND FLOOR
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THE LIVING-ROOM
210
FALKE WOOD
THIS house was designed as a summer dwelling, and by special request the
principal rooms were placed to face north. The basis of the plan is the
" dining-hall " scheme, in which the dining-room when not in use appears
as the hall. The remaining sitting-rooms are the drawing-room and children s
room, and both these can be reached without pass'ng through the dining-hall.
Both of these rooms open on to a square garden-room. The kitchen
premises are unusually large for the size of the house, and include servants'
hall and butler's pantry, with back staircase.
On the first floor there are four good-sized bedrooms ar.d sewing-room,
bathroom, &c., and in the attics are two servants' bedrooms and a boxroom.
The two colour-plates show the proposed treatment of the interior of
dining-hall and drawing-room, and plans are also shown of the stable and
garden, while the lodge is illustrated in the chapter on cottages.
21
FALKE WOOD
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FALKK WOOD
GROUND FLOOR 1'LAX
FIRST FLOOR I'LAN
213
AN OLD HOUSE REMODELLED
THIS little house, now occupied by the present writer, is illustrated
chiefly as an example of simple types of cottage furniture.
It is essentially a house of small rooms, and the principal structural
modifications consisted in forming a hall by the removal of a partition.
The fireplace in the room so formed was then removed and the brick arch
which formed its structural basis left exposed. A coarse sacking was then
fixed on the walls as a background for the old furniture.
In the small dining-room the upper part of the walls and the ceiling were
whitewashed, with a dark blue dado beneath.
The exterior, thanks to its long low roof of weathered tiles and its setting
of trees, required nothing but a little white paint on the woodwork.
214
AN OLD HOUSE REMODELLED
THE HALL
THE DINING-ROOM
215
AN OLD HOUSE REMODELLED
VIEW FROM CJATK
216
VIEW FROM LAWN
DANESTREAM
THIS house was designed for a site which slopes towards the north, and
the floors of the rooms follow the natural slope of the ground. At the
front door one enters a wide low passage which runs across the house to
the garden-room, and beyond this is extended in the line of one of the garden
vistas. On the south side of this passage are the two principal sitting-
rooms — the drawing-room and study; while, on its north side and at a lower
level following the slope of the ground are dining-room and kitchen premises.
On the first floor are four bedrooms and bathroom, anil in the attics, servants'
bedroom and boxroom. The cost of this house was A 1250. The plan of
the garden includes an old gravel-pit developed as a rock garden.
2 c; 217
DANESTREAM
YIKW FROM NORTH-FAST
VIEW FROM SOUTH- WKST
218
DANESTREAM
THK DRAWING-ROOM
THE CORRIDOR
219
22O
A STONE HOUSE
THIS house was designed for a somewhat exposed position in a stone
district.
1 hree sitting rooms occupy the greater part of the south front, culminating
in the central hall, which extends through two storeys with a gallery.
The morning-room, or study, occupies one ot the win^s, and the
remainder of the plan is taken up with kitchen premises.
On the upper floor are five bedrooms ami bathroom, with servants' rooms
and boxroom, &c., in the attics. The general character ot the exterior, with
its central porches on both fronts flanked by gables, represents the traditional
model ot manv small manor-houses.
221
A STONE HOUSE
'I'HK (GARDEN FRONT
THE ENTRANCE FRONT
222
SANDFORD COTTAGE
THIS little house was built in Scotland in a district where thatching with
reeds was still understood, and so this method ot roofing was adopted.
The plan consists of dining-hall and parlour, the traffic bc-ing concentrated in
a recess in the former and the rooms made capable ot combination by a wide
doorway. The rest of the ground plan is occupied by the kitchen premises,
which include a separate washhouse.
On the upper floor are three bedrooms and dressing-room, with bathroom
and u.c., and servant's room with boxroom in the attics. The inclusive cost
was ,£850.
223
SANDFORD COTTAGE
VIEW FROM NORTH
224
THE HALL FIRESIDE
SANDFORD COTTAGE
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
2 H
225
A ROADSIDE HOUSE
THK pi. ins of this house represent a fairly simple and economical arrange-
ment. The central feature, as in other cases, is the dining-hall, which
here extends through two storeys, as at " Findon," and from this room the
drawing-room opens with a wide doorway. In the two wings are study
and children's room, besides which, on the ground floor, there are the usual
kitchen premises. On the upper floor are four bedrooms, bathroom and
linen-closet, and in the roof over these are two good attic bedrooms, besides
the servants' rooms and boxroom. The cost of this house would be about
/i 300.
226
A ROADSIDE HOUSE
VIKW FROM ROAD
GROUND FLOOR I'LAN
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
227
ST. MARY'S
THIS is a somewhat special type of plan in which there are less than the
normal number of bedrooms and a drawing-room on the upper floor.
The staircase, as the approach to the drawing-room, is therefore somewhat
wider than usual and is supplemented by a back stair for the servants. The
hall and dining-room are divided by a partition with a wide doorway, and
in the study a little Eastern oratory is a special feature.
228
ST. MARY'S
THK ENTRANCE FRONT
(JROL'NI) FLOOR I'l.AN
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
229
THE GARTH
IN this house the main block of the ground plan consists of four gocd-
sized rooms which, by the use of double doors, combine to form a spacious
interior effect, while the kitchen premises, which include a somewhat large
pantry and small servants' sitting room, occupy a projecting wing.
On the upper floor are five bedrooms, two dressing-rooms and bath-room ;
the attic space contains the servants' bedrooms and boxroom.
The photographs give a fair idea of the interior and exterior of this house.
230
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THE GARTH
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'I'HF. GARDKN FRONT
THE HALL
232
THE GARTH
THK DINING ROOM
2 I
THE LIBRARY
233
THE GARTH
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
FURNISHED ROOMS AT DARMSTADT
AND MANNHEIM
IN looking back on the record of past work, and in recalling the flavour,
not always entirely delicious, of ten or fifteen years ago, one is chiefly
struck by the strange irony of fate which has made one's employment consist
of building houses for other people to furnish, or furnishing houses which
other people have built. In no single case in the houses illustrated by
photographs am I responsible for the furniture, and the sympathetic reader
will perhaps realise this in glancing at some of these illustrations.
In the two examples now given of Continental work, it has been my task
to decorate and furnish only.
In work of this kind, which depends so essentially for its effect on colour
schemes, photographs are somewhat inadequate.
In the sitting-room at Darmstadt the panelling is ivory-white, and above
this the wall is orange. The central electric-light fittings, designed by Mr.
Ashbee, are grey pewter, and the furniture is chiefly in tones of green and
blue. And this arrangement of white, orange, grey, green and blue is
supplemented by touches of brilliant pink in the flowers.
In the dining-room a more sober scheme prevails, the wall above the
panelling being covered with embossed leather.
In the music-room at Mannheim the panelling is again white, and on the
white ground of frieze and ceiling are set trees and wreaths of mountain ash
and rose modelled in plaster, and painted their proper colours with flights ot
silver birds.
The fireplace presents a space of white marble with a central rosette of
pink-toned " midnight sun " marble surrounded by rays of black. The
grate is repoussee brass, and the slender shafts of the columns are crowned
by capitals, where white lilies bloom between pale green leaves. The electric-
light fittings are of armour-bright iron, with touches ot green enamel.
The principal piece of furniture is the large music cabinet, specially
designed for the use of a composer. It is of oak, inlaid with ebony, pewter
and pearl.
The special piano for this room has not yet been executed. The little
inlaid semicircular chairs which appear in this room have recently been much
exploited by furnishing firms.
The double windows used in German houses gave an opportunity for the
use of stained glass, designed to not unduly obstruct the light. The flowers
are in shades of pink with grey-green leaves. The boudoir, which opens into
this music room, follows much the same scheme of colour.
The corner fireplace is lined with turquoise-blue tiles, and the furniture
of oak is inlaid with ebony, ivory and pearl.
Other rooms in Germany, not illustrated here, which have been decorated
and furnished, consist of exhibition rooms, designed for firms in Berlin and
Dresden. It appears to be a growing custom with the principal furniture
firms in Germany to invite representative architects to contribute to such
periodical exhibitions, and in these it has been Mr. Mackintosh and myself
235
HOUSES AND GARDENS
who have represented the British section. In thus recognising the claims of
the individual artist in this field of design these German firms seem to set an
example which might well be followed in this country, where, so far, furniture
is still considered a commercial product merely, and its design as hardly
worthy of serious study as an art.
The examples of furniture illustrated are selected from designs made for
Mr. J. P. White of Bedford, and published in a book of furniture which may
be obtained from him. The rose bedstead and dressing-table are part of a
suite designed tor a bedroom in which the rose prevails. The walls and
ceiling are decorated with a trellis of roses. Gleams of pale blue sky show
between the flowers, birds cling and flutter amidst the branches.
The daffodil dresser is part of a room where cool fresh spaces of green and
grey are relieved by pale yellow blossoms.
Each piece of furniture is a thing to be considered not entirely alone, but
qualities depend in every case on the proper relation to a complete scheme
when this furniture finds itself happily at home in a little world of colour
and form.
236
NEW PALACE, DARMSTADT
DINING-ROOM
SITTING-ROOM FIRF.I'LACT
237
NEW PALACE, DARMSTADT
SITTING-ROOM
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FURNITURE IN SITTING-ROOM
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MANNHEIM
BOUDOIR AND MUSIC ROOM
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FURNITURE
BLIT, HF.LL
BF.DSTEAD
INLAID SIDEBOARD
243
FURNITURE
DAFFODIL DRESSER
244
FURNITURE
ROSE DRESSING-TABLE
ROSE BEDSTEAD
245
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PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY
NA Scott, M.H.B.
7120 Houses and gardens. 1906
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