The Studio yearbook of decorative art (1915)

SMALL COUNTRY HOUSES AND COTTAGES


HOUSE IN SUSSEX-ENTRANCE FRONT

M. H. BAILLIE SCOTT, ARCHITECT

has led to such a number of separate apartments in the house that in the
smaller dwellings these become too cramped and minute for comfort.
The gradual specialisation which has taken place does not fitthehabitsot
the average family, because the average family is gregarious, and if one
were to pay a series of house-to-house visitations in any district of small
houses, it would be found that the family when at home is crowded
into one of the apartments of the house, and that the whole of the rest
of the space under the roof is only intermittently utilised. So that ifwe
break away from the legacy of polite fictions as to the uses of the apart-
ments of the house, we shall find the requirements of most families best
expressed by the dominant apartment. It matters little what this room
is called. It used to be called the hall or houseplace; but whether we
name it living-room or drawing-room or hall in the modern house, it
owes its existence there to a recognition of the fact that the family has
a communal life to which the dominant apartment of the house is
dedicated.
In the subdivision of the space under the roof in response to the re-
quirements of nor-
mal life, we must
contrive to make a
shoe which shall not
pinch anywhere,
and the plan must
expand into spaci-
ousness for the ac-
commodation of the
whole family group, <
8


PLAN OF HOUSE IN SUSSEX