Everdene

In many of the country houses illustrated it will be noted that the favourite formula is that in which the garden front faces the south and the entrance front the north. One enters at the back. And this arrangement is usually most to be desired. In the present case, however, the road being on the south side of the plot, it is desirable that the entrance should be either on the west or east front, while the accommodation required seems to suggest the possibility of a house built round and enclosing an inner court. The house is low—one storey with attics—-an arrangement which admits of a hall with an open timber roof, and which, in bringing, the attics down to the first floor level, makes them more valuable than when they can only be reached by a long climb. In country districts, where land is not too expensive, this broad and low manner of building has much to recommend it, for not only does it make use of all the roof-space, and that in ways which add greatly to the picturesque character of the interior, but by bringing the rooms so formed within easy reach it makes them of greater value.

In the disposition of the ground floor, the important feature is the three rooms to the south, culminating in the central hall, while the bedrooms and kitchen premises enclose the court on the remaining three sides. The bathroom on the ground floor, with a bath, perhaps, of circular form sunk in its floor, is capable of special treatment, which would make it somewhat more interesting than the bathroom of the usual utilitarian type. The study, with its little special private stair, forms an attic-room, with shuttered openings overlooking the hall.

In this type of plan, indeed, the claims of romance seem to meet most happily economical limitations. Its cost, at the average country price of eightpence per cubic foot, amounts to about 2000. In some districts it would be less than this, and in others, near London, it would amount to perhaps £2 00, at tenpence per cubic foot. But the use of the roof-space gives for this sum a considerable accommodation.

The treatment of the garden illustrates the application of the principle of carefully studied vista effects applied to an actual site of somewhat irregular form on a practically level piece of ground.