Part 9

This plan which we have just considered, representing, perhaps, rather a large house to be classed as “small,” does not quite illustrate one point to which we attach very great importance in the designing of small houses. The second plan shown gives me an opportunity of referring to this. Here a special effort was made to obtain one room giving some sense of space in a house not large enough to contain several large rooms. In all small houses much must be sacrificed, but it seems to us to be infinitely less of a sacrifice to reduce the number of rooms, than to reduce the size of them all. In every small house it should be a first consideration to secure one room large enough to allow of some interest being worked into the room itself, and to afford some comfort and dignity of life to its occupants.

[Sidenote: _See plates 3, 64, and 65._]

In the plan now before us the hall was made into the chief living room; it is carried up two stories to provide for an organ gallery. The gallery leading to the balcony, the landing, and the staircase, are all thrown into this hall; the stairs are so arranged as to afford a screen to the fire, and form a sort of deep ingle with low ceiling under the landing. The low ceiling continues under the organ gallery and the balcony, the central part of the hall being open to the full height. The sense of cosiness in this ingle is greatly enhanced by contrast with the lofty open space outside; while the variety in lighting, whether when the morning sun streams in at the great east window, or when the ingle glows red in the gathering dusk, adds a perpetual charm. In the gallery is a second fire, with a lounge seat by the organ, under a kind of canopy formed by the half-landing of the second floor stairs.

[Sidenote: _See plate 4._]

To obtain this spacious hall the remainder of the house has been reduced as much as possible. Only one other small room, for den or meal-room, is provided, with kitchens, offices, and four bedrooms, two of which are on the second floor. Lest you should be inclined to think that only for people living a very exceptional life would it be advantageous to throw so much space into one room, I will next refer to a design drawn for a London literary man, who, though not able to afford a large house, still by reason of his position required occasionally to be able to entertain a good many people. Here the first consideration has been to obtain a hall which would be at once a comfortable living-room and a dignified entertaining room. The meal-room has been kept as small as would just allow of a little dinner-party being given in it. The fire is placed in one corner, the sideboard in another; had it been possible to put the door also in a corner it would have been still more convenient, for in a small dining-room it is in the corners that there is a little space to spare. The narrow Hampstead building plot, having a south-west aspect, and the best prospect to the south, dictated the general arrangement of the house and the placing of the best room at the south corner. This room is spanned by two arches to carry the wall of the study over; within one of them is placed the fire recess with seats and fitment, thus using up all the space under the stairs to add to the size and character of the room; while the stairs themselves, which are shut off from the vestibule by a door, are also open to the room, the quarter-landing forming a small gallery overlooking it.

The staircase is such an essentially interesting and decorative feature in a house, and the space under and around it may be made to add so much to a room both in size and individuality, that it always seems a pity to shut it off in a mere passage. In old houses the charm of some departure from the plain room is well recognised, for the favourite view, alike for the artist and the photographer, is always that which contains some peep of stairs from the hall, some gallery, balcony, ingle, or deep window recess. When the most is made of such advantages as can be claimed for the bare square room, they seem but a poor compensation for the loss of character and charm.

Over the hall in this house are placed the client’s study and bedroom, the two being combined that both may have the benefit of the whole air space: book cases and curtains screen off the bedroom portion. Double doors and double windows are fitted to this room, for perfect quiet both by day and by night is essential; and further to secure this, ventilation is obtained independently of the windows by means of two fireplaces and an air shaft built in one of the stacks. The client’s wife, son and daughter all proposed to make considerable use of their bedrooms in the day time.

But I must pass on now to cottages, the second part of our subject. The distinction between a small house and a cottage, never a very clear one, has been further obscured by a common affectation of simplicity. The word certainly suggests a simple shelter for a simple form of life, and for our purposes I propose to regard as a cottage any house in which separate accommodation is not provided for servants. Provision for domestic help there may be, but it must be “as one of the family,” not constituting a separate class to be separately provided for.

To cottages, what has been said about the advantage of securing a good living-room, even at great sacrifice of other conveniences, applies with additional force. For not only is the total space at our command usually less, but the number of functions which the living-room has to provide for is greater, many of the functions of a kitchen being added to it. To combine the comfort of a living-room with the convenience for work of a kitchen will tax our skill in planning, and as the space we can give becomes less, our care in the disposal of it must become greater.

[Sidenote: _See plates 5 & 37._]

Let us again proceed by way of example, taking a largish cottage designed for a client who wished to live a quiet simple life, yet on a scale that would allow of his enjoying the more necessary comforts and refinements. The site is near a small Derbyshire town, and consists of a mound caused by the out-crop of some shale grit. On the north runs a stream, to which the ground falls precipitously; the road is to the west, and there is a steep fall here also; to the east the fall is slight, while to the south the ground rises gently. There are fine views in all directions, most interesting to the north, least so to the south. The client, however, desired the main windows of the living-room to be to the west, having a special liking for the evening light. The site seemed to demand a simple oblong house with plain span-roof kept as low as possible, forming a sort of crest on the steep-sided mound.

The western end of the building becomes the living-room, having windows with the desired outlook. There is a window to the north to command the best of the view; another on the south side admits plenty of sun; and in addition on this side there is the outer door, placed there that it may be possible to enjoy the charm which a door opening direct from a room upon a sunny garden always gives. Such a door must, however, be so placed that while the peep out is obtained the comfort of the room is not destroyed. Here we have gathered the two doors and the stair foot together in a narrow part of the room out of the way, leaving all the rest of the space comfortable to occupy. The fire is placed on the north wall, in a deep recess; one side of which is devoted to rest, the other to work. The former is occupied by a comfortable low seat; in the latter is fixed a plate-rack, and a working dresser fitted with a small fixed bowl for washing up glass and china. All the kitchen work done in the living-room is thus confined to the one corner handy to the fire for cooking, and well lighted by the north window. The fireplace is designed to be used as a closed cooking stove or as an open fire to sit round. The floor of the recess is tiled, which enhances a little the feeling of sitting on the hearth, and at the same time affords the most easily cleaned surface for the working corner. The arrangement, though producing a little the effect of a room within a room, secures at anyrate some of the cosiness of an ingle. We are enabled to get a sheltered garden-seat by reducing the width of the recess to a more comfortable dimension. The ingle is further defined by an archway, on one side of which is fitted a writing desk, and on the other the piano is designed to stand, occupying part of the space under the rising stairs, the remaining portion being taken up with a store cupboard opening into the kitchen. A second resting place is provided by a wide low window seat in the main window. Fixed seats are arranged for two sides of the meal table, one having a high back to screen it from any draught coming through the outer door.

To this one good room is added a kitchen for the more dirty work, fitted with a small range; a good cupboard for coats and hats by the entrance; a coal-place and larder. Upstairs are four bedrooms, necessarily rather small; one has a bed-recess taken off the largest room to help it, and as it is over the low ceiling of the ingle, it gets the advantage of extra height under the sloping roof; and thus the low ceiling, which adds so much to the feeling of cosiness in an ingle, is made to benefit the bedroom over. Where some such arrangement as this is not possible, we sometimes utilize the space between the low ceiling and the floor above as a storage cupboard, and we often take advantage of it for ventilating purposes, by bringing fresh air into the room, slightly warmed by passing behind the fire, and delivering it over the opening to the recess, where it is distributed with the least possible draught. Where an outlet into a flue is desirable to supplement the exhaust due to the fire, we find this a very good place to arrange it. In a room with close-fitting iron casements, sufficiently well built not to leak excessively through floors, skirting, and door, the most frequent cause of a smoky chimney is the want of sufficient air supply, and some form of inlet is an absolute necessity. For bedrooms this may be successfully arranged in some cases through a hollow fender kerb.

All the bedrooms in this cottage are so arranged as to have a fairly comfortable corner between the fire and a window, where one can sit to read or write. An east aspect is obtained for the bath-room, and a linen cupboard warmed by the cylinder is provided.

Of the elevations I need only say that local random range stone is used for the ground story, while for the upper portion the need for obtaining four bedrooms over a house so narrow requires the use of nine inch brick walls which are rough-cast in cement. The roof is covered with local stone slate.

It is obvious that the living-room of this cottage could with much less trouble have been made a four-square room with a fire at one end and a door at the other; and might have been furnished with a mixture of kitchen and parlour furniture. But I shall have sadly missed the purpose of this paper should you not now feel, as we do, that life would be immensely more comfortable and more dignified in a room such as I have been describing, where each requirement has been considered and provided for, and which has had just the shape and arrangement given to it that seemed best to meet those requirements; where, moreover, all the furniture has been designed in keeping with its place and its purpose, so that there is no incongruity between the desk and the dresser, the piano and the plate-rack.

Time will not permit me to refer in detail to any smaller cottage plans. But enough has, I hope, been said to make it quite clear, that, whatever the size of the house, we think it should grow, both as a utilitarian plan and as an artistic creation, out of the real needs of the occupants; and that the art of designing small houses and cottages consists, not in following any accepted code of conventions, however useful these may be in their place, but in working out such a convenient and comely setting for the special life that shall be lived in them as shall enable that life to expand itself to the fullest extent, not merely unhampered by the building in which it is clothed, but actually stimulated by a congenial surrounding.

LIST OF PLATES.

PLANS. Plate

House at Northwood, ground floor plan 1

„ „ first floor plan 2

House at Marple, Cheshire, plans 3

House designed for a Hampstead site, plans 4

Cottage designed for a Derbyshire site, plans 5

Co-operative Dwellings, Cottage plans 6

Co-operative Dwellings, plan of Common Rooms 7

Co-operative Dwellings, block plan of quadrangle 8

Co-operative Dwellings, plans for larger houses 9

Co-operative Dwellings, plans of larger Common Rooms 10

Plan for a hamlet 11

LINE DRAWINGS. (Barry Parker, delt.)

An Artizan’s Living-room 12

A Living-room 13

A Living-room 14

Sketch for a Hall, near Derby 15

Sketch for a corner in a Hall, near Derby 16

A Library 17

A Living-room 18

A Study in the roof 19

A Hall in Buxton 20

A Living-room in Buxton 21

Sketch for a Hall in Buxton 22

Sketch for a Hall in Marple, Cheshire 23

Corner in a Hall, Church Stretton 24

A Living-room, Church Stretton 25

Sketch for a Billiard-room, Carrigbyrne, Co. Wexford 26

Room to be built on to “The Old Cottage,” Tintagel 27

Sketch for a Fireplace, Westmoreland 28

Sketch for a Hall, Westmoreland 29

A Hall, Montreal, Canada 30

A Living-room 31

WASH DRAWINGS. (Barry Parker, delt.)

A Living-room, Northwood 32

A Hall, Northwood 33

Design for Co-operative Dwellings 34

Common room in Co-operative Dwellings 35

Village Common Room 36

A Cottage interior 37

Design for a hamlet 38

A Village corner 39

PHOTOGRAPHS.

Corner in Dining-room 40

Living-room in Bridgwater, The Garden Bay 41

A Hall in Buxton, view 1 42

„ „ „ 2 43

„ „ „ 3 44

A Living-room in Buxton 45

A Hall in Buxton 46

A House in Church Stretton, the Hall, view 1 47

„ „ „ view 2 48

„ „ The Living-room ingle 49

A House in Church Stretton, Dining recess in Living-room 50

A House in Church Stretton, a Bedroom, view 1 51

A House in Church Stretton, a Bedroom, view 2 52

A House in Bradford, the Hall 53

A House in Bradford, the Consulting-room 54

„ „ the Sitting-room, view 1 55

„ „ „ „ view 2 56

A House in Buxton, the Living-room 57

„ „ the Drawing-room 58

„ „ the Balcony 59

A Farmhouse Sitting-room, Derbyshire 60

A Living-room in Buxton 61

A Living-room in Croydon 62

A Living-room in Buxton 63

A Hall in Marple, view 1 64

„ „ view 2 65

A Hall in Montreal, Canada, view 1 66

„ „ „ view 2 67

„ „ „ view 3 68