Introduction

One of the most prominent features in the literature of the last few years has been the garden book, and so numerous have these publications become that every one may learn how a garden should be formed and how maintained. All the gardens described in these books are necessarily attached to houses, and the house as an appendage to the garden meets with a certain degree of attention; but the problems involved in house-building, furnishing, and decoration have hardly been treated with the consideration they seem to deserve. If this increased study of gardening is but the prelude to the consideration of the house, it may be taken as an augury from which much may be hoped. For just as one finds that the buildings of an agricultural community are generally well conceived,; S0 the kindly influence of the garden may lead to the realisation of houses which may possess some of the kind of beauty which flowers: and trees have. For the building and adornment of the house is surely the most important as well as the most human expression of the Art of man. We are apt to consider it in these utilitarian days is: Z trite formula—a matter of drains, wall-papers, and bay-windows—and we are apt to forget the possibilities of beauty which lie in mere building—possibilities which do not necessarily demand great expenditure for their.development, but which may be realised in the simplest cottage. Those who dwell amidst the vulgar and impossible artistry of modern villadom may visit now and then some ancient village, and in the cottages and farm-houses there be conscious of a beauty which makes their own homes appear a trivial: and frivolous affair; but such beauty is generally held to be incompatible with modern ideas of comfort and sanitation, and the lack of real comeliness in a modern house is often held to be a necessary concession to practical And so the art of building as practised in modern times is not so much an Art as a disease. In the early stages of the Victorian era it took the form of a pallid leprosy. Nowadays, it has become a scarlet fever of red brick, and has achieved a development of spurious Art expressed in attempts to achieve the picturesque, which in its smirking self-consciousness has made -the earlier candid ugliness appear an almost welcome alternative. There is no town or village but is being gradually disfigured by this plague of modern building, and one has almost forgotten that houses have been and may yet be an added beauty rather than a disfigurement to the land. And in matters of furniture and decoration one finds the same spurious art on all sides, so that the modern house of the average citizen has reached a stage of degradation which might be a subject for ironic laughter if it were not for the pity of it. The serene and earnest beauty of the old house is everywhere being replaced by a superficial smartness posing as art. It is difficult to know where to turn to escape from this oppressive nightmare of hideous building. Here and there one may find houses built and furnished with sincerity, but these are comparatively so few that they appear but as drops in the ocean. It is doubtful whether education will provide relief, for it is mainly the modern Board-school which provides the most convincing object-lesson of the degree of depravity of which building is capable. Nor is it possible to hope for much from the Church, where building activities have recently been mainly concerned with the disfigurement of the ancient glories of its buildings and in the construction of elaborate and unconvincing forgeries of an obsolete art.

It might be supposed at least that all this ugly building would be attended with some compensation of a practical kind, and that the modern villa would at least possess utilitarian qualifications. But here again one finds that so far from being in any way adapted to the real requirements of its occupants, it is designed in accordance with a tradition which is based on the life and habits of the occupants of a mansion. The best part of its limited space is set apart to impress the neighbours, and the family is confined in some plastered rectangular cell which is already crowded with unnecessary-and pretentious furniture.

But enough has been said, perhaps, to show that there is an urgent need for reform in the plan of the average modern house, and, apart from artistic considerations, it is at least desirable that it should be rationally designed. It has often been urged that a house should express and conform to the special needs of those for whom it is built. But while this is certainly desirable it may be questioned whether houses of special type should be: extensively built. A house has to meet the requirements of many occupants, and it seems reasonable that one should bear in mind in its construction as to. how far it is adapted for general demands.

In the design of houses for various clients of moderate means, I have been led to conclude that it is possible to deduce a normal plan which meets, the requirements of the average family, and that variants from this constant type of plan are to be found rather in appendages to the plan than in any essential modification of its central features. Instead of a conception of’ the house which presupposes the collocation of a number of compartments which in the smaller houses become each too small for comfort, it is. suggested that the house rationally planned should primarily consist of at least one good-sized apartment, which, containing no furniture but that which is really required, leaves an ample floor space at the disposal of its occupants.

The private apartments for the individual members of the family may then be considered as subsidiary to the central dominating room, and in some cases some of these may take the form of recesses in it. In cases, where limited means demand a smaller type of house this should still consist of its central ample floor space, and restrictions should be met by giving up secondary rooms, while the bedrooms should constitute the private apartments of the various members of the family group. In this way even the labourer’s cottage still retains its hall, which has now become kitchen, dining-room and parlour. In thus aiming at realising completely a simple type of plan rather than in striving to attain a. cheapened version of a more complex design is salvation to be found for the small householder. That the principles of house planning thus briefly suggested, and which are further developed and exemplified in the following pages, are something more than impracticable dreams, may be partly shown by the evidence of those who have built houses designed on these lines, many of which are illustrated and described here.

Since January 1895, when I first illustrated in the Studio a scheme for a house, I have been flattered by many realisations of my plans for houses in various parts of the world. While some have had the justice to realise that an artist should be given the opportunity of developing his own conceptions, others less scrupulous have consigned the matter to other hands, and the plans have suffered much from unsympathetic treatment in this way. So much depends on the careful working out of the details to meet each particular case, so much in the choice of materials and in adaptations to local conditions, that a plan realised in this way must necessarily differ widely from the original conception; and inasmuch as it is not the reputable architect who is willing to appropriate the plans of his contemporaries, these houses have been for the most part merely caricatures, which have done much to bring undeserved discredit on the principles they profess to follow. So much has been ably written on the subject of the Garden, that I have confined my remarks here chiefly to a few broad principles with a special reference to the economic question. To those who wish to study the subject I would recommend a careful perusal of Miss Jekyll’s books which may be taken as an infallible guide.

In the chapter “on making the best of it,” I have endeavoured to show how a suburban house may be mitigated by judicious treatment. The man who lives at St. Mildred’s or The Pines might, after re-christening his house more appropriately as “The Crime,” seek to reduce its pernicious influences by some such means as I have endeavoured to describe. In the design of the modern flat I have tried to show how the same principles advocated in the plan of the ordinary house are applicable.

In the discussion of the terrace house it is shown, I think conclusively, that the universal standard plan is based on irrational fallacies, rather than on real requirements, and that the question of varying aspect alone demands a corresponding variation in planning.

In the consideration of cottages it is urged that their cheapness should only be such as may be consistent with comeliness and comfort, and that the plan should be the outcome of actual requirements based on the habits of life of their occupants.

Some types of holiday houses are illustrated, and it is suggested that in such buildings a greater fancifulness is admissible than in houses for every day occupation.

It has always seemed to me impossible to consider the matter of furniture and decoration apart from house building with which they are so intimately related, and the architect who attempts to achieve a satisfactory interior must necessarily to some extent control these important factors. While in the space at my disposal I have been unable to deal with these matters in detail, I have endeavoured to indicate a few guiding principles.

In conclusion, it may be well for me to anticipate certain criticisms by stating that I profess no expert knowledge in the arts of literature or illustration. It is my business to design houses and their appointments, and the work of preparing this book has been done in leisure moments snatched from the time which must be devoted to the labours of the architect. It is my hope that this may afford some excuse for the manifold shortcomings of a work which necessarily constitutes a very limited and inadequate treatment of a subject of such illimitable scope.