The Five Gables

The house now to be described represents a realisation of a plan illustrated in the Studio for December 1897, In this realisation some slight modifications were introduced which may be noted in comparing the Studio plan with those now illustrated.

Unlike other plans which have been illustrated in the Studio this one was originally designed to meet the special requirements of clients and site. It will be noted that the wide doorways between the rooms on the ground floor are used as an expedient to make these appear to combine to form one large apartment, and to avoid that impression of confinement in separate and isolated boxes which constitutes one of the essential defects in the plan of the modern small villa. Further study of the problem of the small house suggests a more complete combination of dining-room and hall, with a possible separate route to the front door from the kitchen through the space occupied by the bicycle-room on the plan; but the plan, as it stands, represents a fairly effectual compromise between the ordinary plan arranged on the separate box system and the logical conclusion arrived at by the study of the actual uses to which the rooms would be put, which might condemn the hall, in so far as it is not used as an extension of the dining-room floor-space, as an inadmissible luxury in a small house. Another feature which might also be considered a luxury is the separate staircase for the servants, and this is mainly justified by special conditions of plan, which make it possible to introduce it with the minimum sacrifice of space.

One of the greatest difficulties in the planning ot the small house is the proper isolation of the kitchen premises from the family apartments. A reference to the plan will show how this difficulty has been met, partly by the interposition of a brick wall, and partly by the use of the serving-room or pantry as a disconnecting space between the rectangular block containing the kitchen premises and the rest of the house, while the odours of cooking are disposed of by a ventilating shaft carried up at the side of the kitchen flue.