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).
The area before the town house, the garden behind
Set the town house back from the pavement across a sunk area that lights and serves the basement, fence the area from the street with iron railings, and bridge it with the steps to the front door; behind the house, lay out a long garden walled in brick.
The Georgian terrace put its kitchens and offices in a basement half below the street. The area, a narrow open yard along the front, gave the basement its light and the tradesmen their own door, reached by a stair down from the pavement; the vaults under the pavement held the coal. The railings along its edge, and the lamp-holders and link-snuffers on them, are the iron of the Georgian street.
The garden behind was a long walled strip, often no wider than the house: a gravel walk from the back door, grass and borders, a tree or two, and at the far end the privy or, in the larger houses, the coach house and stable opening on a mews.
Related rules
In the formal room, stand the furniture against the walls and leave the middle of the room clear: a pier table (with its glass above) between each pair of windows, the sofa facing the fire, a chair either side of the chimneypiece, the chairs ranged round the walls in a line with the dado, to be brought out when wanted and put back after; and keep each wall symmetrical about its middle, its chimneypiece or its windows.
In the room of the Regency and after, bring the furniture out into the room in groups for the occupations of the company: a sofa by the fire with a sofa table before it, a round table in the middle with chairs round it, the pianoforte, a work table, a couch; leave the walls for the pier tables, the cabinets and the bookcases.
Let the grand front of the house open on a plain lawn of grass, adorned with statues and closed at its sides by open groves; beyond, plant wildernesses cut through by winding walks, and end every walk in a view of woods, a building, a ruin or the open country, rather than in clipped evergreens.
Do not shut the garden in with walls: lay out the whole estate as one design, carry the walks and avenues out into the woods and fields, and mix the useful with the pleasant, so that the farm and the park are part of the garden.
Build the orangery as a long room with a solid back wall and tall windows the full height of its front, turned to the south, so that the orange and lemon trees standing in it in their tubs through the winter have all the light and warmth of the low sun.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The area before the town house, the garden behind”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/town-house-area. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.