What makes a Victorian house? How to recognise one

The Victorian house was built in greater numbers than any house before it. Between 1837 and 1901 the population of Britain roughly doubled, and the railways carried the middle class out to new suburbs of terraced, semi-detached and detached houses round every town. In the United States the same years produced a sequence of Victorian styles, Gothic Revival, Italianate, Second Empire, Stick and Queen Anne, mostly built in timber. This guide follows the British house; the American ones share its plan more than its looks.

What to look for

The roof. Slate, carried from Wales by the railways to every part of the country, on roofs steeper than the Georgian ones, with gables turned to the street, often trimmed with carved bargeboards and finials. Chimney stacks are tall and carry several pots, one for each fireplace.

The bay window. The best single sign. The front room stands out in a bay window, usually canted, often rising through two storeys under its own gable.

℟The bay window

Let the principal room of the front stand out in a bay window, canted or square, under its own gable: more light, a view along the street as well as across it, and a front that shows where the best room is.

The windows. Sash windows of large panes, two over two or one over one, made possible by cheaper sheet and plate glass after the excise duty on glass was abolished in 1845. Heavier glass needed stronger sashes, and the small horns projecting below the meeting rail of the upper sash are a Victorian mark. Window heads are often arched or pointed, with stone or moulded brick dressings.

The door. A panelled door, often of four panels, with coloured glass in its upper panels or in the fanlight over it, set back in a recessed porch or under a porch of its own. The path and step are often laid with patterned clay tiles.

The materials. Machine-made brick, in the High Victorian years laid in bands of contrasting colour, with stone or terracotta for sills, lintels and ornament; cast iron for railings, gates and balconies; stucco on the fronts of the early Italianate villas.

The plan. The terrace house has a passage from the front door along one side, a front parlour and a back room opening off it, and the kitchen and scullery in a narrower back extension. The larger house is divided into two departments, the family’s and the servants’, with their own passages and, in a big house, their own stairs.

What it is confused with

Early Victorian houses of the 1840s often look Georgian: flat fronts, small-paned sashes, stucco. Their larger panes, sash horns and slightly heavier detail usually give them away. At the other end, the late Victorian Queen Anne houses of the 1880s and 1890s shade into the Edwardian. The Edwardian house is usually wider and shallower, its woodwork painted white rather than in dark colours, its upper storey often roughcast or tile-hung, and its windows have small panes in the upper sash and one large pane below. A Victorian Gothic house, with pointed arches and steep gables, can be mistaken for something older, but its machine-made brick and regular slate give its date.

The rules its builders followed

The Victorian house had rules of two kinds. The reformers wrote rules of planning: Robert Kerr, in The Gentleman’s House (1864), on privacy and aspect; Pugin on letting the plan shape the outside. The law wrote rules of health: the Public Health Act of 1875 and the model by-laws that followed it fixed the width of streets, the space behind each house and the drainage, and produced the long by-law terraces of the industrial towns. In America, A. J. Downing’s books made the case for the veranda.

℟The veranda

Give the country house in a hot summer climate a veranda, or piazza, some seven or eight feet deep: a roofed porch along the front on light posts, stopping short of the ends of the front, shading the windows and the walls and giving the household a room out of doors.