Studio: international art (22.1901)

Some Modem Cottages.

■ GREENLEES," NORTHWOOl) C. HARRISON TOWNSEND. ARCHITECT

general character of the building when
approached through trees and hedges, or

importance, not only for
beauty of effect, which is en-
hanced by a steep angle, but
also because a steep-pitched
roof is found to be much
warmer than a shallow one.
Probably it allows an accu-
mulation of warm air from the
rooms below to rest longer
in the loft- space, especially if
the chimneys are in the middle

seen from a distance on the hillside,
with its outline sharp against the sky.
In all small homesteads, any attempt
to over-emphasise the chimneys by
fantastic shape, or by treating them as
distinct from the main block, should
be discouraged. We naturally associate
tall and apparently isolated chimneys in
a landscape with a factory rather than
a dwelling, and the poet's

" wreaths of smoke
Sent up in silence from among the trees"—

would seem to come more genially from
the low nestling chimney of the old roof-
tree than from the separate and singular
stack.

The pitch of the roof is a matter of

PORCH OF LODGE AT STAGENHOE PARK WALTER F. CAVE, ARCHITECT

ot the house, as they should be, if
possible, in all cold and bleak districts.
/Hsthetically considered, such a roof has
nearly always a great charm, giving dignity
and repose to the outline, while any
dormer-windows set in it gain cosiness
and warmth of aspect. We might fairly
compare the steep-pitched roof of a
mediaeval cottage with the height and
dignity of a true Gothic arch, and pursue
the analogy to the opposite extreme—the
mean shallowness and depression of
arches in post-Renaissance work, re-
peated in the commonplace angles of
later domestic architecture.

It should not be necessary to insist
that half-timbering is a structural method,
and not an ornament to be added at
pleasure to external walls. Unfortu-

LODGE AT STAGENHOE PARK WALTER F. CAVE, ARCHITECT

Io6 nately> however, certain architects or