What makes an Edwardian house? How to recognise one

Edward VII reigned from 1901 to 1910, but the Edwardian house is usually taken to run to the outbreak of war in 1914, and its style had begun in the 1890s. It is an English house above all, found in the outer suburbs of London and the big cities, in seaside towns, and in the garden cities and garden suburbs of Letchworth, Hampstead and their followers. It took the ideas of the Arts and Crafts architects, Voysey, Baillie Scott, Parker and Unwin, and gave them to the speculative builder.

What to look for

The roof. Often red clay tiles rather than slate, on long, steep roofs that often sweep down low over the walls, with gables to the front and tall chimneys. Gables are often filled with applied half-timbering, white render between dark boards.

The walls. Red brick on the ground storey, and above it roughcast, pebbledash or tile-hanging. The red-and-white contrast of brick, render and white paint is the quickest way to tell the Edwardian street from the Victorian one, whose fronts are brick and stone throughout.

The windows. Wider and lower than the Victorian. Sashes have small panes in the upper sash and a single pane below, or the windows are casements in bands, with leaded or coloured glass in their top lights. Bays are wide and often square rather than canted, sometimes carried up both storeys.

The door and porch. A deep porch, often of timber with turned or square posts, painted white, sometimes running into a veranda across the front. The door has glazed upper panels, frequently with stained glass of flowing, Art Nouveau design.

The plan. The plot is wider and the house shallower than its Victorian neighbour. Behind the door is a broad hall, large enough to sit in, rather than a passage; in the better houses it is a true living hall with a fireplace. Bathrooms are inside, and the kitchen is part of the house, not banished to a back wing, because there are fewer servants to keep apart.

℟The hall to live in

Make the hall, not a passage, but the house’s largest and most used room: a great fire with a seat beside it, the other rooms opening off it, and the stair kept out of it or enclosed, so that it does not make the hall a thoroughfare.

What it is confused with

Late Victorian houses of the 1890s already have red brick, tile-hanging and white sashes, and the two are often indistinguishable; the wider plot, the broad hall and the upper-sash glazing lean Edwardian. The semi-detached houses of the 1920s and 1930s borrowed much of the look, but they are built with cavity walls, whose brick shows only stretcher bond, under hipped roofs, with bays that are curved or canted to the full height of the front, and often with metal windows. The half-timbering of an Edwardian gable is boarding fixed to the wall, like that of the Tudor Revival, and should not be mistaken for a real frame.

The rules its builders followed

The Edwardian architects wrote books about the house, and two of their rules shaped it. Baillie Scott asked that the hall be a room to live in, not a corridor, its stair kept out of the way. Parker and Unwin asked that the house be turned to the sun whatever the line of the road, the living rooms to the south and the kitchen and larder to the north, and they built whole garden suburbs on that rule.

℟Plan for the sun

Turn the house to the sun rather than to the street: the living rooms on the sunny side, lit from more than one direction, the kitchen and stores on the cool side, and the fewer and larger rooms the better.