Guides
Questions answered
Short answers to the questions readers ask most, with the rules, sources and models behind each.
The orders, according to whom
The writers on the orders disagree, and most summaries of them blur the differences. These guides set the authorities side by side.
- The module: how the writers measured the ordersThe module is the unit from which every part of an order is measured. Vitruvius, Vignola, Palladio and the English handbooks each chose a different one; this guide explains each and shows how to convert between them.
- How tall is each order? The column heights by authorThe height of each order’s column in lower diameters, and its entablature as a fraction of the column, according to Vitruvius, Serlio, Vignola, Palladio and Scamozzi, set beside two measured Greek buildings, with the reasons the writers disagree.
- The five orders compared: what changes from Tuscan to CompositeThe five orders set side by side, part by part: proportion, base, capital, shaft, entablature, ornament and the character the writers gave each, with a model of each order.
- What the common summaries get wrong about the ordersThe usual errors in short accounts of the classical orders, checked against the treatises and the buildings: the fixed ratios, the Tuscan and Doric confused, fluting, the Greek Doric base, the origin of the Composite and the golden section in the Parthenon.
- How far apart? Vitruvius’s five spacings of columnsVitruvius named five ways of spacing columns, from the close-set pycnostyle to the wide araeostyle, and tied each to a height of column. This guide gives his figures and reasons, and shows how the Doric frieze limits the choice.
House styles
How to recognise the house styles of England and America, and the rules their builders followed.
- What makes a Tudor house? How to recognise oneA real Tudor house is a timber frame or a stone house of about 1450 to 1600, built round a hall entered at one end. Its steep roof, jettied upper storey and leaded windows are easily copied; its pegged oak frame and its plan are not.
- What makes a Palladian house? How to recognise oneA Palladian house follows Andrea Palladio’s villas of the 1550s and 1560s, or their English revival of 1715 to 1760: a symmetrical block with a temple-front portico, the principal rooms raised on a basement, and rooms paired either side of the centre.
- What makes a Georgian house? How to recognise oneA Georgian house, built in Britain or Ireland between 1714 and 1830, has a flat, symmetrical front of sash windows in even rows, diminishing in height towards the top, a panelled door in a classical doorcase, and a roof kept low or hidden.
- What makes a Colonial house? How to recognise oneThe American Colonial house of about 1700 to 1830 is the Georgian house built in timber, brick or stone from English pattern books: a symmetrical front of small-paned sash windows round a central door, a side-gabled roof, and a center hall with rooms either side.
- What makes a Victorian house? How to recognise oneA Victorian house, built between 1837 and 1901, is usually brick under a slate roof, with a bay window to the front room, sash windows of large panes, a recessed or covered porch, and a plan that kept the family’s rooms apart from the kitchen and the servants.
- What makes an Edwardian house? How to recognise oneAn Edwardian house, built between 1901 and 1914, is wider, lighter and plainer than a Victorian one: red brick below, roughcast or tile-hanging above, white-painted woodwork, small panes in the upper sash only, a deep porch, and a broad hall in place of a narrow passage.
- What makes a Craftsman house? How to recognise oneA Craftsman house, built in America between about 1905 and 1930 and most often a bungalow, is low and broad, with a gently pitched roof on deep eaves and exposed rafters, a deep front porch on heavy posts or piers, and a living room just inside the door.
Gardens
How to recognise the historic styles of garden and park, and the rules their designers followed.
- What was Capability Brown’s style? How to recognise a landscape parkLancelot Brown (1716–1783) made or remade some two hundred English parks between about 1750 and his death: grass up to the house, a hidden ditch in place of a wall, a lake made by damming a stream, trees in clumps and in a belt round the edge, and almost nothing else.
- Italian, French or English? How to tell historic garden styles apartThe Italian garden is a hillside of terraces and falling water; the French garden is a level plane of parterres, bosquets and still water on one great axis; the English landscape garden throws down the walls and makes a park of grass, trees and a lake. The ground, the water and the way the plants are treated tell them apart.