Rules · Doors & windows · Materials · Arches
Over a window in a brick front, turn a flat arch of soft red bricks rubbed and cut (gauged) to radiate from a centre below, laid with the finest joints, and give it a keystone of stone where the front is dressed in stone.
The voussoirs splay outward so that the flat arch carries its load as a true arch; rubbed to a fine finish, the brick of the arch is brighter than the wall round it.
Make the architrave round a door or window as wide as a sixth part of the opening’s breadth, and dress the openings of the principal floor more richly than those of the storeys above and below, with a frieze and cornice, and on the grandest a pediment.
architrave = ⅙ × width of the light
Break the architrave of a door or window with blocks of plain stone laid across it, alternately larger and smaller, and set a keystone in the middle of the head.
Bind the corners of a wall with dressed stones laid alternately long and short on each face, so that they bond into both walls and mark the angle of the building.
Glaze the sash windows in panes of equal size, three across: six over six on the ordinary storeys, six over nine on the tall windows of the principal floor, and three over three in the low windows of the attic.
Carry the front wall up as a parapet in front of the roof instead of eaves of timber (1707); set the window frames back four inches behind the face of the brick (1709), and later hide the sash boxes wholly in the reveals (1774).
Light the hall over the front door with a fanlight: a half-round light with bars radiating like the ribs of a fan, or, after 1770, an elliptical one, often with narrow lights at the sides of the door.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The gauged brick arch”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/gauged-brick-arch. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.