Studio: international art (6.1896)

An Artistic Treatment of Cottages

has more than a word to say) is the transformation district whose wide sweep of heath and moorland
of a farm labourer's two or three roomed cottage with its far-stretching horizon suggests Yorkshire
into a home for gentlefolks, a problem feasible rather than Surrey, sundry examples which are
only, and only aristically successful, when the suggestive at least of naturally produced facts
retention of the cottage character is thoroughly obtained in conditions such as I have noted above,
and insistently borne in mind. The original plans of cottages which have been thus

treated by the architect, who
f "^p seems to have taken this

district under his especial
charge, are primitive and

uirunj ^Rormft^ 1^s'e_a/%, ^.................... simple to a degree. The

more common form is
merely a central passage,
with a room on either side

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ftfKwj ftom-vv •• Qf -lt an(j another jutting out

at the back. The stairs are
either to be found in this
3 ± £ passage, or consist of little

•i''' ''*V/<'":'":'' more than a ladder leading

more than a ladder leading
out of one of the rooms.

In the plans with which
the architect has enabled
me to illustrate this article,
the walls of the original
cottages are shown in solid
black, the dotted portion
fig. 3.—plan of cottage (fig. 4) setting forth the addition.

Let me first take the

It is to be a small house in the country—not a simplest of the examples chosen, the plan of
small country house. As to a "villa," that is a which is shown in Fig. 2. It will be seen how
thing abhorrent to any and every well-regulated in this case the alteration has been simple. The
mind. More than this, the reconstituted plan of original cottage consisted of the usual simple
such a house is likely to be of greater interest, of type of labourer's cottage—that is, kitchen and
greater convenience, and of greater beauty, if parlour on the ground-floor separated by a
instead of being made it is
allowed to grow. By this I
mean that, though from the
first a certain general scheme
of alterations and additions
may be borne in mind, yet
the new rooms and other
features are better added
where and when they are
wanted, rather than con-
ceived and carried out as a
finite whole. More by this
than by any other means is
the necessarily casual and
cottage-like character to be
consistently maintained.

To step from precept to
practice. There are in the
village of Chilworth, a few
miles from Guildford, in a fig. 4.—cottage treatment by c. harrison xownsend, f.r.i.b.a.

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