Design No. 22 — A Villa in the Old English Wooden Style
This structure was intended to bear the resemblance, as near as possible, of a first-class old English half-timbered house, the post-and-pan dwelling of our forefathers, which seems to have been an especial favourite throughout the country. It was easily constructed at a time when timber, chiefly chestnut, was far more plentiful than at the present day. Such were the most picturesque of all our domestic buildings; the timber cottage, with its projecting windows, and highly ornamented barge-boards, is found in every village. The large houses in Cheshire and Shropshire, which still remain, prove that such constructions are as lasting as brick and stone, provided the timber is felled at the proper time, and thoroughly seasoned before it is made use of. Houses of this kind have been seen to rock and bend in severe storms, while adjoining buildings, comparatively strong erections, have been blown down, this was known to have been the case with Park Hall, near Oswestry in Shropshire. Such buildings were called by different names, as will be shortly described in detail, according to the materials of which they were composed.
The design afforded on page 234 was taken from an elevation given in “John Thorpe’s Sketch Book,” one of the richest illustrations of wooden architecture. It was to have been erected in a Kentish village, with its front towards the road, on high ground, the road looking down to a wide extent of open country. The garden side of the house commanded a fine prospect. Advantage was taken of the steep descent of the ground to build the kitchen and scullery, with a day room for the children, apart from the main building.
The plan of the basement is given on p. 236; a is the kitchen, 18 feet square, the scullery b, was at the side, and the larder, c, at its side; d is the place for coals, a passage e, leads to the day room, f, for the children; g is either the cook’s room, or a sleeping room for a man servant; h is the passage up to the house, i is the dry larder, j is the butler’s pantry, with a strong room for holding plate; this was intended to be a sleeping room. k is the wine cellar, l the back staircase which went from the lower floor to the attic, m is the principal staircase, and n a place for stores. The roof of this lower building was to be formed with flat-girders, and brick and tile in cement, making a terrace-walk above; the chimneys were taken up from the lower building to the higher one, as shown in the side elevation by the dotted lines. The kitchen, and the whole of the basement, was to be paved with the best Seyssel asphalte. It is laid on a solid foundation, on a thickness of ground lime. The objection to the black and British asphalte for the interior of rooms, is that a fine dust rises from it, which in sweeping, affects the eyes of the occupants of the apartments.
The plan of the building was not intended to be in the old style, but to be arranged, as far as possible, according to modern notions, without any great hall, or stone screen within it. A noble stone porch was placed in front, resembling slightly an ancient archway. The hall is 20 feet in length by 12 feet in breadth. The breakfast and eating rooms, b and c, 20 feet square, are on each side; both have bay windows, with an exterior colonnade and terrace. The drawing-room, d, and the library e, are each 18 feet square; both have bay windows, and the angular window peculiar to the Elizabethan architecture. These windows open on to the terrace. f is the gentleman’s dressing-room, g is the principal staircase containing the servants’ staircase, h, within it; o is the lift. At the back of the building is a colonnade commanding a view of the country, and beneath is the terrace, with its balustrading and steps to the garden.
The one pair floor contains only four large bed-rooms a, a, and two dressing-rooms b, b. One dressing-room, that in front, could have been converted into a pleasant morning room; each of the two principal bedrooms in the front could easily have been formed into two; a small dressing-room taken out of each. Terraces were in front of these two rooms, the small circular bow-window opening on to them; the principal staircase only led to this floor. The servants’ staircase led to the attics.
This floor contained three large servants’ rooms, with two small octagon rooms. It was proposed to form the front rooms into one, with a circular roof, covered with scroll work and flowers, in the form of a garden-bower, similar to the gallery ceiling at Burton Agnes in Yorkshire. In this ceiling there are about a dozen varieties of flowers and bunches of leaves, which were placed in a scroll-stem in various positions so as to vary the pattern. The flowers and leaves could have been painted in their natural colours. These rooms, however, could not be spared, so it was proposed to turn the two octagon rooms into what may be termed garden-bower rooms, and to attempt growing dwarf fruit-trees in them, as practised in Germany. The roofs of these rooms were to be constructed in iron and glass, and covered internally with wire trellis-work, the warming to be effected with flue pedestals, two in each room, one taking the kitchen flue and the other house flues, the corresponding pedestal in the other room to have the remaining flues in that side of the building. The illustration on page 242 shows a plan and section of one of these rooms.
The tower in the centre of the back front contained a cistern for the supply of the house; the closets beneath could have Moule’s earth system applied to them, the earth to be brought up by the lift o, dried in the bower rooms, and deposited in an enclosure in the tower room from which it could descend to the closets.
It may be here remarked that the closets throughout the whole of these designs are in such a position that the dry-earth system could be easily applied to each. In cottages that have the flues in an external wall, and where this system is introduced, the earth deposit should be placed against the flue, and the closet adjoining.
The lift o, shown in the plans, connects every floor with the basement; it permits coals and other heavy articles to be lifted up, receives the speaking tubes leading to the basement and children’s day-room, and any bell wires that may be required.
The first elevation given shows the front of the building, having a length of 87 feet. Although the structure was to be an imitation wooden house, the timber was merely intended to be an appendage to the brickwork. The exterior walls were to have been two bricks and a half thick on the ground-floor, two bricks above. The wooden posts and pans were let into the external half brick, and well built in, the ornamental woodwork in inch oak screwed to the wood-quartering, the space between them filled with plaster, with an ornamental pattern-stamp on it, and the columns and entablature were of oak.
The next elevation given is that of the side front, with its gable, in the centre of which is a small circular window, opening on to a terrace over the colonnade; the scroll at the side is a construction to permit the flues from the lower portion of the basement to ascend the tower walls; flue sweeping doors could be placed there. A section of the lower part of the building is given, taken through the centre of the house, showing the principal staircase and the external steps to garden. The perspective view shows the garden front.
Wooden houses were once the chief kind of construction in England. The great fire of London would not have been so serious in its results if such constructions had not been almost universal.
In many parts of England these houses have other designations. There is a mode of building peculiar to each, and adapted to the kind of material that the districts offer. In Cambridgeshire, for instance, many of the houses are formed entirely of “Clunch,” a kind of indurated chalk marl, of which there are extensive quarries at Roach, near Burwell. Others are of gault, a local term for the blue clay which lies below the gravel of Cambridgeshire, and forms the immediate substratum in the low ground about it. This is beaten up with chopped straw, then formed into blocks of large size, and dried by the sun. A writer in the “Cambridge Portfolio,” in his remarks on what he terms the inferior style of domestic architecture, says: “Many of these houses have the lower floor formed of stone or clunch, in which a framework of wood is raised, consisting of studs and wall-plates with strong posts at intervals and some cross pieces as a tie. The joists of the upper floor are laid in the wall-plates, and project about a foot or eighteen inches beyond the wall beneath. The smaller timbers have tenons which are fitted into mortices in the larger, and secured by wooden pins. The interstices are filled either with durable boarding, double lath and plaster, clunch or bricks, laid level or obliquely. The better houses of this description have gables, with ornamented barge-boards with hip-kobs and corbels or brackets, more or less carved, under the ends of the principal timbers of the upper floors.”
The barge-board is sometimes called berge-board, verge-board, parge-board. It was a board fixed to the ends of the gables of timber houses, to hide those of the projecting timbers of the roof, and throw off the wet. They were generally richly carved and very ornamental. Occasionally some of these of the date of the 14th century are met with; those of the 15th and 16th, many of the Elizabethan character, are very common. We have few of the better class of these half-timbered houses, in which the decorative labour of our ancestors was most conspicuous, remaining in our towns and cities; but in Edinburgh, York, Chester, and Newcastle there are still a sufficient number of specimens to prove the truth of these remarks. In the towns of Normandy and the Netherlands numerous buildings, and indeed whole streets, may be seen which still exhibit the perfect counterpart of our old Cheapside, as it appeared before the great fire. Troyes, the capital of Champagne, still retains its ancient buildings, and the chestnut-timber houses of Caen, which were raised, or restored, during the period in the 15th century when it was in the hands of the English, show us what our cities once were, and, of course, the extent of our improvements. London formerly possessed the richest examples. At the corner of Chancery Lane, in Fleet Street, there once stood a five-storied house in timber, each story projecting; the whole of the timber and the gables being richly carved. In this house once lived the celebrated Isaac Walton.
The other most common application of this kind of house is “half-timbered.” In some counties the woodwork is not in patterns. It appears that when a greater degree of elegance was required the uprights and beams were carved, or the houses were pargetted, that is, coated thickly with plaster, in which embossed or indented ornaments were used. This kind is very common in nearly all the English counties. The origin of the word parget appears to be doubtful. We find parget, substantive, and pargetting, pergetting, and pergining, verb, in old writings, of various kinds of plaster work, used inside and outside of houses, particularly about the time of Elizabeth; the word parget was used as far back as 1450.
The half-timbered houses generally had the woodwork (studs and posts) painted black or tarred, with the intermediate spaces of brickwork whitewashed. Many of these houses have been plastered over in modern days. In London several of them have been refronted, and we lose sight of the woodwork, and imagine we see fresh-built houses.
In some parts of the country we see numbers of cottages built of mud mixed with chopped “haum.” This is commonly barley stubble. The word appears of foreign derivation; in High and Low German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, halm; Ang.-Sax., healm; Icelandic, halmr, stubble.
The haum is used to give the mud strength. These houses, previously described in connexion with concrete erections, were built about a yard in height at a time; each part was allowed to dry before further addition was made. The openings for windows and doors were cut when the wall became firmer; the walls were then smoothed off a little, and whitewashed. These houses are said to be very strong, and to last for many years. In the Midland Counties they seldom exceed one story in height, but in Devon, Somersetshire, and Hampshire, this composition is a common material for gentlemen’s houses two and three stories in height. It is there called cob, the derivation of which word remains in obscurity, unless it is a short term for cobble, or a coarse clumsy performance. A cob-wall was one composed of straw and clay beaten up together.
In Kent, the half-timbered houses are called wood-noggin houses, because the pieces of timber were called wood-nogs. Nog is properly a wooden brick, which is inserted into walls to hold the joiners’ work; nogging is the term for the brick-filling partitions between the quartering.
Sometimes, but very rarely, there is no projection of the upper story over the lower one. These openings in the windows are common, and all have richly carved barge-boards.
In some of the Kentish villages there are several noggin houses plastered over, with a ground in which flowers and patterns are worked in another colour. Some have a red ground and white flowers, others a black ground and white flowers. The wooden frame is always built on a substructure of brick or stone, called the “under-pinning.” Numbers of the houses in Kent are covered at the sides with weather tiles; here the brickwork is carried up to the first floor, in which the wooden framework is placed, and laths nailed across, in which the tiles are hung; the shape of the tile varies. Some are diamond-shape, and others finish with circular ends.
In Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, and Gloucestershire, we meet with half-timbered houses, which are there called brick pane houses, but very few of them are worked in patterns.
In Northamptonshire the half-timbered houses are commonly called studded or framed houses, because the framework is put up before the spaces are filled up. The studs are upright between the posts, which are larger than the studs. There are also “wattle,” and “dab-houses,” and sheds, which are constructed of studs, sills, and wall-plates. Between or into the studs are laid, horizontally, plaited or wattled strong hazel twigs, or other underwood, and on both of these a thick coat of plaster or mud is laid or dabbed. A wattle is a hurdle made of four or five upright stakes, and hazel branches woven closely and horizontally into the stakes—Anglo-Saxon, watel, a hurdle or covering of twigs; in some counties they are called “flakes,” merely from their being thin and flat. In Sussex and Devonshire, and in the South of England, wattled hurdles are called “Raddles.” In a little Dictionary for children of the date of 1608, we find “a hartheled wall or ratheled with hasile rods or wands.” The word hartheled is the same as hardilled, and the Dictionary spells hurdill hardill, Ang.-Sax., hyrdel, Low Germ., hoidt, Dutch, horde. Germ., hurde. Ratheled is from the same derivation as raddled. What in one county is “wattle and dab,” is in another “raddle and dab.” Dab is here used as a substantive, but it is properly a verb—to dab on, to sprinkle, or bespatter. In French, dawber, or dober, to smear, hence “to daub.” These mud cottages are very common even in the richest counties of England. In South Northamptonshire are red sandstone houses frequently possessing stone mullions in the windows, and dripstones.
Further northwards, as in Shropshire, Cheshire, and Lancashire, we find a better description of the half-timbered houses in many of the manor houses built there. Lord Liverpool’s seat at Pitchford, near Shrewsbury, illustrated by Habershon, is a fine and a very large example, although the pattern is not so elegant as many of them. Joseph Nash and other artists have made the best of these familiar to us by their publications. Cheshire is the county most abounding in them. In the southern part of the county of Lancashire they are called “post-and-pan houses.” Post is an upright piece of timber, used in various ways, such as gate-post, door-post, a jamb-lining. The word “post” is found in many languages, commonly meaning an upright. In Ang.-Sax., post, a post, Frisic, post, a beam, German, pfost, French, poste, Latin, postis, a post.
“Pan,” in Lancashire, certainly means a beam, and is the common name for it (beam not being used), although we do not find the word pan, a beam, noticed in most of the glossaries as it deserves. In the Craven Glossary, “post and pan” a building of wood and plaster alternately. Pan, totally to fit: “Weal and woman cannot pan, but woe and woman can,” is the complete old English proverb, in which the word pan is used. In the glossary of Tim Bobbin, “Pan” means to join or agree. In Hunter’s Hallamshire Glossary “pan,” properly in building, is the wall-plate—the piece of timber that lies on the tops of the posts, and on which the balks rest, and the sparfoot also. To pan, to apply to closely. In Brockett’s North Country work, pan means to match, agree. The idea of a pan for a beam would seem to be a shortened word for span, but it comes, it is said, from the old word pan, denoting to close or join together, to match, fit, apply, agree. From this, or the origin of which, came pane, or panel of wood, or wainscot, pane of glass. Ang.-Sax., pan, a piece, hem, plait; pan hose, patched hose, because pieces are fitted into them.
In Warwickshire and Oxfordshire they call a post-and-pan house a brick-pane house, because the wood-work divides the building into rectangular spaces, filled with panes of brickwork.
In Forby’s Suffolk Vocabulary pane is a division of work in husbandry, also strips of cloth. The slits in Elizabethan dresses are called panes. Du Cange, in his Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis, has panna, a carpenter’s word, signifying a square piece of wood of 6 or 7 fingers on a side, which being placed on the rafters of the roof, and retained by wooden supports, carries the asseres. The “Glossary of Architecture” construes a pan as a lathe; but of this there seems some doubt.
There is a remarkable example of the word Panna in the Close Rolls of the 9th of Henry 3rd, membrane 5, page 65, though the word in the printed copy is erroneously spelt pauna.
De postibus et pannis datis.
Mandatum est Hugoni de Neville quod habere faciat Baldivinium de Veer duos postes et duos pannas in bosco nostro in Deresle, de dono nostro ad se habergandum apud Thrapston. Teste rege apud Westmonasterium XV die Octobris, anno nono.—That is: The King orders Hugh de Neville to give Baldwin de Veer two posts and two pans out of the Royal forest of Deresley to build a house at Thrapstone.—“Habergandum” is from habergo, to build a house, which seems to be derived from the old German habe, goods and possessions, and bergen; in Ang.-Sax., boergan, to defend, keep, and protect. Habe, goods, is from the German haben, Ang.-Sax., habban, to have and possess. In Du Cange we find “Habergagium vel habergamentum, domicilium domus,” that is, a place to keep goods in. This account is given us by the writer in the “Cambridge Portfolio,” who adds, “That it is probable the house alluded to in Thrapstone was merely a shed.” He gives a great many derivations from the word pan in French. He says that pan or post is a post and pan wall, perhaps with boarding in the panes instead of brick or stone. A post-and-pan house therefore signifies one formed of uprights and cross-pieces, and this appears to be the most rational name for them. The patterns of the woodwork are sometimes extremely elegant; at Park Hall in Shropshire, one represents balustrading intermingled with quatre-foiling, while the plaster ceilings inside the building are of excessively rich character. In many of the old post-and-pan houses, the windows are between every post, running the whole length of the house in each story, rendering a remark of Lord Bacon’s true, that in such houses you did not know where to become to get out of the sun or the cold. They are now sometimes called “bird-cage houses,” from the effect at a distance. Some of these old mansions had the hall extending to the roof, and this was carried down to a very late period. At Kirby in Northamptonshire, a seat of the Lord Chancellor Hatton, built by the architect, John Thorpe, Inigo Jones altered the timbers of the hall roof and gave them an Italianized character. He was, previous to his visit to Italy, one of the chief and most celebrated masters of the then fashionable Elizabethan style, which was carried down to a later period than is generally supposed.
The superior class of wooden houses were for the gentry, the wattle and dab houses for the hind. This cottage, then, must have been little better than a miserable shed. Cottages still exist in the north of England, amid the northern counties, that are bad at the very best. The tenants have to bring everything with them, partitions, window-frames, fixtures of all kinds, grates, and a substitute for a ceiling. Certainly the improved concrete cottage, if it could be erected at a small expense, would be a great advantage to them. Its partitions, and even its roof, the latter covered with slate, might be securely formed of strong hurdles, and a cistern for water easily placed just below it. The walls, if covered with a good Portland cement face, will last for many years, and, if the roof be so formed as to protect them, for warmth, comfort, and cleanliness such cottages are unsurpassed.
It is to be regretted that the combination of workmen forming the various Trades’ Unions, has so raised the price of labour that it has reacted against themselves, and the workmen’s houses, roomy, and formed of sound, lasting materials can no longer be constructed at a cost that would allow a fair percentage on outlay.
Lord Bacon paid particular attention to building, and he had several fine mansions. He received his Sovereign at one, Gorhambury, who on her remarking its great size, said, “It was not that the house was too big, but that her Grace had made him too big to inhabit it.” His essay on building gives such a complete picture of what the nobleman’s house was in those days, that it is here quoted.
“First, therefore, I say you cannot have a perfect palace, except you have two several sides: a side for the banquet, as is spoken of in the book of Esther, and a side for the household; the one for feasts and triumphs, and the other for dwelling.
“I understand both these sides to be not only returns, but parts of the front; and to be uniform without, though severally partitioned within; and to be on both sides of a great and stately tower in the midst of the front, that, as it were, joineth them together on either hand. I would have, on the side of the banquet in front, one only goodly room, above stairs, of some forty feet high: and under it a room for a dressing or preparing place, at times of triumphs. On the other side, which is the household side, I wish it divided, at the first, into a hall and chapel (with a partition between), both of good state and bigness; and those not to go all the length, but to have at the farther end a winter and summer parlour, both fair; and under these rooms a fair and large cellar sunk under ground, and likewise some privy kitchens, with butteries and pantries, and the like. As for the tower I would have it two stories, of eighteen foot high apiece above the two wings; and goodly leads upon the top, railed with statues interposed; and the same tower to be divided into rooms, as shall be thought fit. The stairs likewise to the upper rooms, let them be upon a fair open newel, and finely railed in with images of wood cast into a brass colour; and a very fair landing-place at the top. But this to be, if you do not point any of the lower rooms for a dining-place of servants; for otherwise, you shall have the servants’ dinner after your own; for the steam of it will come up as in a tunnel; and so much for the front; only I understand the height of the first stairs to be sixteen foot, which is the height of the lower room.
“Beyond the front is there to be a fair court, but three sides of it of a far lower building than the front; and in all the four corners of that court fair staircases, cast into turrets on the outside, and not within the row of buildings themselves; but those towers are not to be of the height of the front, but rather proportionable to the lower buildings. Let the court not be paved, for that striketh up a great heat in summer and much cold in winter; but only some side alleys with a cross, and the quarters to graze, being kept shorn, but not too near shorn. The row of return on the banquet side, let it be all stately galleries: in which galleries let there be three or five fine cupolas in the length of it, placed at equal distance; and fine coloured windows of several works: on the household side, chambers of presence and ordinary entertainments, with some bedchambers; and let all three sides be a double house, without thorough lights in the sides, that you may have rooms from the sun both for forenoon and afternoon:—cast it also that you may have rooms both for summer and winter; shade for summer, and warm for winter. You shall have sometimes fair houses so full of glass that one cannot tell where to become to be out of the sun or cold. For embowed windows, I hold them of good use (in cities indeed, upright do better, in respect of the uniformity towards the street); for they be pretty retiring places for conference, and besides they keep both the wind and sun off; for that which would strike almost through the room doth scarce pass the window; but let them be but few, four in the court, on the sides only.
“Beyond this court, let there be an inward court of the same square and height, which is to be environed with the garden on all sides; and in the inside, cloistered on all sides upon decent and beautiful arches as high as the first story; on the under story, towards the garden, let it be turned to a grotto, or place of shade, or estivation; and only have opening and windows toward the garden, and be level upon the floor, no whit sunk under ground, to avoid all dampishness: let there be a fountain or some fair work of statues in the midst of this court, and to be paved as the other court was. These buildings to be for privy lodgings on both sides, and the end for privy galleries; whereof you must foresee that one of them be for an infirmary, if the prince or any special person should be sick, with chambers, bedchamber, ante-camera, and recamera, joining to it; this upon the second story.
“Upon the ground story, a fair gallery, open, upon pillars, and upon the third story likewise, an open gallery upon pillars, to take the prospect and freshness of the garden.
“At both corners of the farther side, by way of return, let there be two delicate or rich cabinets, daintily paved, richly hanged, glazed with crystalline glass, and a rich cupola in the midst; and all other elegancy that may be thought upon. In the upper gallery too, I wish that there may be, if the place will yield it, some fountains running in divers places from the wall, with some fine avoidances. And thus much for the model of the palace; save that you must have, before you come to the front, three courts, a green court plain, with a wall about it; a second court of the same, but more garnished with little turrets, or rather embellishments upon the wall; and a third court, to make a square with the front, but not to be built nor yet enclosed with a naked wall, but enclosed with terraces leaded aloft, and fairly garnished on the three sides; and cloistered on the inside with pillars, and not with arches below. As for offices, let them stand at distance, with some low galleries to pass from them to the palace itself.”
The vignette is an elevation, with enlarged details, of a design for a weathercock or wind vane. In buildings where there are many on the roof, they are sometimes seen pointing different ways, and it is of importance they should be properly constructed. The construction necessary to prevent these differences is shown in the two sections on each side the elevation; a is a gun-metal rod, in which is fixed the small steel rod b; this moves in a piece of agate fixed in a small block of copper c; the agate is marked black in the left-hand section.