Chapter III: Part 3

And so those to whom beauty really appeals are seeking a simpler form of life, one which need not cost so much of the labour of others to maintain, or so much of their own to procure. And the more they come to love & enjoy beauty, the greater must this tendency to simplicity of life become, not from any virtue or asceticism, but simply as a matter of choice. Why should one having such tastes encumber himself with an elaborate household, which but offends his inner love of harmony, and takes his time and energy from the enjoyment of so much greater pleasure? He knows that the art in a picture belongs to all who can appreciate it, not solely to the purchaser of it, who buys not the art but the right to shut it up; and he realizes that the beauty of a landscape is a pleasure open to all who can see it, and that it cannot be conveyed in the title deed. Such an one does not barter away his time and his freedom to enjoy these solid pleasures, for the sake of a fine house, fine society, or any other fictitious refinements. He minds not how simple his surroundings, if only he may be able to dwell in thought on everything he handles or sees about him without any painful suggestion of drudgery in the making of them, or squalor in the maintaining of them, marring his pleasure in their simple elegance. The most humble house will content him, so only he may have time and quiet to appreciate the beauties of nature and art, and opportunity for the sharing with others of like taste the enjoyment of these things. For the love of beauty is not selfish, it grows by sharing: we all love to make others see the beauty that we enjoy.

It is true that such a man may be fastidious, that he may hate all ugly or sordid things, and may demand that everything he has shall be the best of its kind. But this must not be confounded with a desire for many things, or a dislike of simple ones. The musician too, is hurt by harsh sounds and requires his music to be of the best, but he does not ask that an orchestral concert shall be for ever going on.

This general dependence of beauty on simplicity, at any rate in the private dwelling house, is of special interest to those whose function it is to give an artistic setting to the lives of clients by so designing their homes that they shall be comfortable for those who are to occupy them and comely for all who shall behold them. The architect is astonished to find how very conventional generally are the reasons which dictate the size and arrangement of the house. He is impressed by the great difference that exists between what are considered to be suitable houses for different classes of people: and he begins to wonder whether there are not discoverable some factors determining what is a suitable size for a man’s shell having more intimate relation to his life than the depth of his pocket, or some reason for its form and adornment less conventional than those usually accepted.

For example, an architect receives a commission to design some labourers’ cottages. The cost is the first stipulation: this must be low enough for the cottages to yield a fair return on the outlay when let at such rents as the labourers can afford to pay out of their present wages. Probably the next stipulation is that each house must have a parlour, kitchen, and three bedrooms. The usual result of such instructions is a design for a row of cottages, all alike, each having a small parlour in front with a front door into it, a kitchen behind--it is well if this is not smaller still--with the stairs going up between the two and a little larder under: the kitchen has a back door leading into the yard, a sink under the only window, and a copper between that and the fire. Here we have as the living-room for a family a place twelve to fifteen feet square, containing three doors, a sink, and a copper. True there is a sitting-room; but that is of little use. The occupants will have neither money to find coal for a second fire, nor energy to keep the fire going and the room tidy for use, nor will there be any inclination for the family to divide for the little time they are all at home. But a false convention of respectability demands this sitting-room; and the stern limits of cost preclude the possibility of having a scullery or washhouse in addition.

How an architect must wish he could attack this commission from another standpoint. How he must long to design a house to fit the habits of life of those who are to occupy it. Then he would work on quite different lines. Knowing that the family will practically live in the kitchen, he would think out the space needed to give room for doing work, taking meals, and resting. He would consider what of the work which must be done most tends to make the living-room uncomfortable and dirty; and he would banish that to a scullery or wash-house. In the living-room he would plan so that there might be warm seats round the fire in winter, free from draughts, and seats for summer near the window; a good dresser for work, well lighted and supplied with cupboards, plate-rack, and perhaps a small washing-up sink for the crockery. Then he would allow space for a table for meals, and a few shelves for books; perhaps he might even find a corner for a piano or desk, in case either should be wanted. Instead of the sitting-room, he would either build a little den for quiet reading or writing, if any member of the family desired to study, or more probably so plan one of the bedrooms that a portion of it could be made cosy for such a purpose, about the only one for which a sitting-room would be at all likely to be wanted. Remembering too that cleanliness has been placed only second among virtues, and that probably most of the labourers would have dirty and arduous work, he would contrive to give a bath; and if nothing better could be done might put it in the scullery. In this way he would have obtained a cottage as nearly as possible fitted to the lives of the people. It would take no more daily labour and expense to keep up than the conventional one, and would not cost such a great deal more to build--in fact, omitting the bath, and keeping within the total size, need cost no more.

Perhaps the next commission is for a country house. It is stipulated that there shall be dining-room, drawing-room, and library, a good entrance hall and six bedrooms, together with kitchen, scullery, two servants’ bedrooms, butler’s pantry, china pantry, larder, laundry, a lavatory and cloak-room on the ground floor, and a bathroom on each bedroom floor. Such requirements have probably as little real connection with the lives of the people who are to live in the house, as the conventions which dictated the two roomed cottage. The size of the house has more to do with the social position assumed by its owner, than with the number of his household; and the library quite as likely is due to the length of his purse, as to the number of his books or his literary pursuits.

Somewhere between these two extremes must lie the sort of house which the lover of art and beauty would desire for himself. Somewhere, in each case, must the two opposing tendencies of comfort and simplicity meet. Up to a certain point it will add to a man’s real pleasure in life to enlarge upon the bare shelter of the labourer’s cottage; but beyond that point any gain there may be will be too dearly bought. This point is fixed for any individual, but must of course vary widely with the temperament and circumstances of each. It is sufficient for our purpose to realize that there is such a point, and that the development of a man’s love of beauty and art will in the long run give more and more force to the tendencies which make for simplicity. Those whose main desire is for beauty in their lives, are coming to see that to the rational cottage as sketched above, with its ample living-room and the other absolute necessaries of a decently comfortable life, they must add with great caution and reluctance, and only as dictated by really pressing needs. Every extra room is an added care, means further demands on time and energy, and makes it harder to maintain the home without introducing additional inharmonious elements in the way of service. It is possible, though not easy, to introduce one helper into the home life on equal terms, but very difficult indeed to do this with two. The increase of the house must be zealously resisted, if it is to be kept within the limits of one helper doing a fair share of work. And not only must the size be watched: the furnishing and decorating likewise need to be kept simple. It is a good rule in such a house to add nothing until actually needed, and to think well whether the pleasure and comfort it can give will repay the care and dusting it will require.

Working on these lines there will be a good chance that our homes will grow beautiful, that they will fit our lives and be really filled with life. When we try how few things we can do with, we also begin to try how beautiful those few may be made. When we value our time, and the time of our helpers, by the pleasure which may be had from a wise use of it, we shall take care that any adornment we have, shall at least give pleasure equal to any other use we might have made of the time required to obtain it. Therefore none but good decoration will tempt us. We shall be content with our bare coloured walls, until perhaps some artist friend comes along and adorns them for us with some true ornament, which will be an abiding satisfaction, not only in the direct suggestion which it conveys, but also in the memories it revives of a pleasant visit and a guest happy in a congenial task.

RAYMOND UNWIN.

OF FURNITURE. Part 1.

A lecture given before a gathering of art workers.

Our instructions for to-night are that we show you examples of some of our work. But we have found ourselves unable to comply with the letter of the instructions, to confine the examples that we show you to-night to furniture; for, of furniture which can be considered apart from the building it furnishes, we have scarcely any to show. Complying as nearly as we can, we will as far as possible keep within what may be considered furnishing.

Before proceeding to the illustrations of our work, I would like to point out what we claim you shall find to be its leading characteristics: and among these I will name first, absolute simplicity, directness, and straightforwardness. I feel that we are to-day so completely smothered in lifeless and meaningless fuss of pattern, moulding, knick-knack, flourish and convention, and the machine-made & mechanically produced substitute for ornament, that it is well-nigh impossible for our artistic sensibilities to exist at all unless liberated from them. I would mention secondly complete unity and absolute harmony between all the parts, such as can only be obtained when a house, its decorations and furniture, are all designed by one man--or at least under the entire supervision of one man. Now when I claim that if the result is to be artistically satisfactory, nay also if it is to be satisfactory from the point of view of comfort and practical utility, the house and everything in the house must from the first be thought of and designed as a whole, the objection most commonly made is that a house should reflect somewhat the character, habits, and taste of those who live in it; and that if the architect is to make his influence felt in every detail of its furnishing and decoration, it will show _his_ feeling, taste, and character, not his client’s.

There seems at first glance to be some truth in this; but a very little thought will show, that instead of the power of the members of a household to impress their own individuality upon their home being lessened by this extension of the architect’s influence, it would be greatly increased.

The architect who is worth anything will always design a house which will fit any particular client much better than would any house he could possibly find not designed for him: and of furniture, fittings and decoration, and all else belonging to a house, this is also true. The client wanting a piece of furniture, can otherwise only select, from those offered for sale in the shops, that which will most nearly fill the place of something designed specially to meet his requirements. His own taste and individuality can have no influence upon it whatever; no say in the form it shall take; this has been decided for him by a designer to whom he probably never gives a thought. But if his architect designs something to fit him & his house, the client can make his own taste felt from the beginning; he can make known to his architect his own personality, habits, and feeling; and have some chance of getting what will accord with these and moreover be in proper relation with the whole. It is not a question whether he shall have things to his own design or to that of another: this would be a different matter altogether: the question is: Shall he have things designed to fit in with him and his requirements, or do the best he can with what chance may offer him?

It has struck me as very wonderful how good a result has in rare instances been attained by one of true artistic feeling through long years of careful watchfulness making the most of such opportunities as came in his way of picking up & gathering round him--often in a house which has not a redeeming characteristic--furniture and decoration which his own taste has told him are good and reasonably congruous. But I have always felt: What would not this man have made of it if he had been able to have some influence upon the design for the house and the things in it! By choosing an architect capable of sympathy with his own artistic feeling, he could have done more at the very outset towards procuring a fitting setting for himself and his life, than he has been able to do by all his care and thought in selection.

That they who lack taste will also stamp their own individuality on the house they live in, no matter how extended has been the architect’s province, we know to our cost to be only too true.

All here know that the only right way to go to work to design anything is to give it that form which will best enable it to fulfil its functions, that form which is best adapted to the methods by which it is to be produced, at the same time giving it the most beautiful form consistent with & explaining these conditions of purpose and construction: and I contend further that to gain artistic success the position it is to occupy must also be taken into consideration; it must be designed for its place; and, to get the best result, its place must even be designed for it.

Socially morally and artistically one of the most necessary reforms to-day is that we should simplify our lives; we should shake ourselves free from all this hampering web of artificialities in which we have become so degradingly entangled: and in our homes we must make this possible for ourselves by first sweeping away all these fussy substitutes for ornament, all these supposed indications and requirements of refinement. Then, when we have done this, we must set ourselves to make those things which are necessary and helpful to real life and true refinement also beautiful.

But have you ever seen the _ordinary_ room with nothing but the bare necessaries of educated and refined life in it? I can assure you the effect is not comfortable. And it is not to be wondered at that people condemned to live in such rooms should try to supplement their baldness by all sorts of added ornament and bric-à-brac. Some time ago a picture dealer was looking at some of our designs for rooms, and he said: “Yes, but it cannot be expected that I should admire them. You, and those who follow your teaching are the worst enemies I have. I want people to have houses of the ordinary type, that they may always be trying in vain to make something of them, by patiently buying & buying in the hope that by adding first _this_ then _that_ some approach to a satisfactory result may be obtained. Each of these rooms is in itself a complete and satisfactory whole: there is no temptation to add anything.”

Lest the foregoing should give any the impression that I do not find places for pictures, I will let this bring me to what sooner or later this evening I shall be called upon to justify myself in, namely, the amount of realism I admit in a picture to which I accord a place as an element of decoration. I hold that the degree of conventionalisation justifiably demanded in any decoration is only such as is necessitated by the following: The limitations of the materials and the processes by which it is to be produced; a just appreciation of the special beauties of these materials and characteristics of these processes; and a full recognition of its proper relations to all by which it will be surrounded, and with which it is to be combined as a component part of an architectural whole. There is no need for adding any further artificial restrictions. But as a legitimate reason for convention I would add a perfectly frank acknowledgment of considerations of economy. If you use one process in preference to another because it is less costly, there is no occasion to disguise this. But, spite of the convention justified by this needful economy, seek to retain something of the effect which the _motif_ that gave the inspiration had upon you.

The easel picture hung on the walls of our houses is certainly unsatisfactory; that it is only more so when hung on the walls of an exhibition all will admit: but that all the advance we have made in our power to represent nature in realistic portraiture is in the wrong direction we cannot admit. We may insist that our easel pictures shall be regarded as complete in themselves, and thought of as detached & dissociated from all that surrounds them; but this is demanding an impossibility: they must form part of a whole. We find the easel picture is less unsatisfactory if we do nothing more for it than consider its frame, the colour scheme of its setting and surroundings with relation to it: give it a definite place made for it, and it is better still. But let us add to all its other dignity this too, that it fulfils all the demands made upon it in its capacity as an element of decoration, and it will be by so much the greater. The imaginative picture, or the picture giving a bit of nature with her mood, and having something of the effect upon one the real scene would have, only gains by being at the same time also decorative. And it is equally true that if decoration, by the suggestion of a beautiful scene, can also have upon us something of the uplifting effect such a scene would have, as a decoration it is finer.

Do not let us have convention pure and simple. If we are to retain all that art has gained in the development of the easel picture, we must face the problem fairly, not shirk it. Let us first have something which we feel to be really beautiful, and then let us suffer it to undergo only such conventionalisation as is dictated naturally by the conditions and processes of its production, the limitations of the materials from which it is to be created, and a true feeling for fitness; never losing sight of the essential elements of the beauty of our _motif_ and the factors in creating that beauty, and sacrificing nothing we can help of its meaning and charm.

BARRY PARKER.

OF FURNITURE. Part 2.

There is one point touched upon by Mr. Parker in his paper, about which I should like to say a few words: I refer to the question of simplicity in furnishing. I feel that in showing to an assembly of art workers many of the illustrations which we wish to show, some further explanation on this point is due.

There may be rooms required for state purposes in the palaces of kings or the mansions of the great, which call for elaborate & very ornate furnishing: such I do not propose now to consider. I would refer rather to the homes of average middle-class people, where this style of furnishing would be out of place.

Such people have usually thought it necessary for their houses to contain several sitting-rooms, calling them dining-room, drawing-room, and breakfast-room, although the means at the disposal of the great majority would not allow three decent rooms; and the desired number could only be obtained by reducing them all to tiny box-like chambers, not one of them large enough to make a comfortable living apartment. From this supposed necessity has sprung the typical modern suburban residence, which consists of a series of these small box-like chambers more or less cleverly fitted together; while to meet the demand thus caused, we find the warehouses filled with ready-made furniture, supposed to be suitable to these rooms, inscribed “drawing-room suite,” “dining-room suite,” and so on. These also I will not consider; they have no interest, no actual touch on life. Such houses and the furniture which is made for them are no more fitted to the lives of nine out of ten middle-class families than would be the old hall and solar of the middle ages with their rude fittings. My contention is that the great majority of middle-class families live in one sitting-room. It is even pathetic to watch their attempts to do this in houses which seem specially designed to make it as difficult as possible. Many make the dining-room serve them for a living-room, wasting the best room in the house by keeping it vacant, except on more or less state occasions; others live in the drawing-room, taking their meals only in the dining-room. But whatever the arrangement, they all alike seem to be hampered for want of a good comfortable living-room designed and furnished as such.

I want specially to speak of rooms of this class, in the designing and furnishing of which we are at once brought into touch with the daily life of the household, and have scope to consider and meet their actual requirements. In such a room, if they possessed it, most families would take some at any rate of their meals; suitable table and seats must therefore be provided, with something of the nature of a sideboard or dresser to hold the many accessories which are most conveniently kept in the room. The ladies would do their work here and should have cupboards or other provision for their numerous apparatus. A piano and place to keep music will generally need providing; while book shelves, cupboards or drawers for newspapers and magazines, will be required; and some kind of writing table or bureau properly fitted to contain the household stationery & business papers would mostly be a great boon. The room too should have cosy seats, and something in the way of a sofa or settle as the family will sit and rest here; and these must be comfortably placed in relation to the fire, door, and windows. A place would not uncommonly have to be found for children to spend at any rate part of the day, which implies a toy drawer and some space for play.

It is of course only in the smaller middle-class house--which by the way is numerically far the most important--that the whole of the family life is carried on in one sitting-room: but the need of a good living-room is none the less felt in many a larger house where the means of the occupants will allow of their having more rooms than one in regular use. In such houses some of the functions of the living room will no doubt be provided for separately. There will be a nursery or play-room for the bairns in one house; a special room for meals in another: in one, afternoon callers will be received in a boudoir; in another, a study or library will be set apart for more studious pursuits; while the tastes of some families may demand a room set apart for music. But whatever rooms may be added, still, in the great majority of cases, there will be needed one to serve as a general living-room. Just as in the middle ages the great hall was the centre of the house, all the other chambers clustering round and being subordinate to it; so in the modern middle class house a good living room is the first essential, and all the other rooms should be considered in relation to it.

This living room requires furniture and fittings specially suited to its various functions, and its requirements can no more be met by a suite of dining-room or drawing-room furniture than they could by a set of kitchen things. If we remember that large numbers of such houses as we are speaking of are worked with one servant, and the majority with not more than two; it will be obvious that this room, which in so many cases will be used for an early breakfast, must be so arranged that it can be easily and quickly cleaned. If we consider further the great number of articles that must be kept handy in such a room, to say nothing of the people themselves who are to occupy it--for whom after all the room exists, and as a back-ground for whose life it alone has any reason for being--it will be evident that the furniture cannot well be too simple.

If the result is not to become a crowded jumble, ample allowance must be made, in considering the decorations and furnishing, for the life that is to come into the room, and for the hundred and one articles which we may call the implements of such life. These of themselves must form a large element, good or bad, in the decoration of a room; and could they all be obtained graceful and beautiful, there would be a liberal supply of ornament. But this is one of the greatest difficulties; for, while it is possible to find beautiful plaster-work, carving, gesso panels, and so forth, it is almost impossible to obtain the necessary implements of life even tolerably elegant.

In vain do we seek to make a room look beautiful by the elaboration of its decoration and furniture, irrespective of all that goes to make up the life that will be lived in it. The successful room is the one which looks well with all the life in it, not the one which looks its best before it is occupied. It is only by making proper allowance for this life that a living room can be made to look well. Great simplicity is needed in the treatment of a room which may so soon become crowded and restless; but which may also, if properly treated, be more charming and homelike than any other, just because it is so full of life and the evidences of life--a decoration after all by no means to be despised.

RAYMOND UNWIN.

BUILDING & NATURAL BEAUTY.

Around the cottage I live in there is a large rookery, spreading over many trees which form a small wood on the hillside. Last year a pair of rooks began to build a nest in a beech-tree that stands by the cottage: they chose a large bough over-hanging the road, quite away from the general colony, and in a very prominent position. This was evidently the cause of great annoyance to the black-coated community, who again and again destroyed the half-built nest. The enterprising pair maintained their position however; and after some weeks of contention got the nest completed, by working in turns, one mounting guard while the other fetched the twigs. They reared their family without further molestation, so far as I could observe; but this spring the first thing the rooks did was to destroy the last remnants of the nest left by the winter storms.

This interesting little episode of rook life set me musing as to why the community should object to this nest. I could only suppose that its isolated and prominent position offended their sense of the general fitness of things, and that they wished to guard against the first beginnings of “Suburban Villadom.” If so, we must I think commend alike their good sense and their good taste. For there is nothing which it seems more hopeless to harmonize with natural scenery than the modern town suburb. We find plenty of cities, towns, and villages, castles, mansions, and cottages, which are a joy in the landscape; but when a modern town begins to sprawl its squalor or its suburban gentility out into the fields, what desecration of scenery follows! Most people feel this without realising the cause very fully. But if we look for it, we shall find that modern suburbs specially offend in coming between the town and the country; so that, however the city may be fitted to beautify the landscape, we cannot see it from the fields; nor can we catch a refreshing glimpse of the cool green hillside from amidst our busy streets. For between lie miles of jerry cottages built in rows, or acres of ill-assorted villas, each set in a scrap of so-called landscape garden.

In the old towns which we admire when we chance to come on them, we notice that the country comes up clean and fresh right to the point where the town proper begins: and it does begin indeed: honest town, confessed, which does not seek to look half-countrified. In the oldest cities we sometimes find a wall with the country coming right up to the gates, which adds to this effect. In old times all the townspeople lived in the town, and tried to make it comely as a town; and when this was done it generally looked pleasing in the landscape. It was possible to get most charming peeps of country from its streets--framed in perhaps with an old gateway, or with some decent town buildings. Of our modern citizens, all who can afford it live outside the town, removed from those who work to make them wealthy. Hence they lose interest in the town as a dwelling-place, and we get a great central business quarter, surrounded by the residential suburbs containing only poor town buildings or nondescript half-country dwellings. It is not however with suburbs only that we spoil scenery; in isolated buildings, or groups of buildings, we very often put up what is offensive to the lover of country; and it will I think be both interesting and useful to enquire a little further why the buildings which our forefathers put up mostly adorn a landscape, while our own erections so frequently spoil it.

Much of the charm of old buildings is no doubt due to the kindly hand of Time, which not only heals the scars that man makes on the earth, but tones down the raw surfaces, and softens the hard lines and colours of anything he may build. But not to Father Time can we give all the credit. It will be more than he can do, I think, to make our modern suburbs look as beautiful, as fitting in the scenery, as many an old city or country town does. Apart from the question of beauty in the style of building, which of course is an obvious factor of great influence, there are a few more easily understood reasons for the difference between old and new. If we take for example their position: do not old houses and villages generally seem to nestle in a valley, under a hill, or by the edge of a wood or copse, and both by their placing and style convey the idea of shelter and retreat? Sometimes this characteristic was carried so far, that we find houses placed so as to get little or no view. But they were built for busy people who lived mainly out of doors, and returned to their shelter at night as the rooks come home to roost. Too often now we place a building so as to strike a note of defiance with surrounding nature. The thing stands out hard and prominent in the landscape; shouts at you across the valley; and through not co-operating with the scene, fails to convey anything of that sense of nestling in a fitting nook, or on an appropriate ledge--that sheltering under Nature’s wing as it were--which makes a building look really at home.

Then, too, does not the old building seem almost to grow out of the ground on which it stands? Built of the local stone; roofed with material common to the district--thatch, stone shingles, or grey slates, perhaps; harmonizing in colour with the rocks and soil; it is as appropriate to the earth on which it rests, as the twig built nest of the rook is to the tree top on which it sways so lightly and yet so securely.

As we pass from county to county, rejoicing in the unspoilt bits of old villages and towns, we cannot but notice how much of the restful quiet beauty is due to the general harmony. We see the grey stone-roofed village of Yorkshire and Derbyshire, so quietly fitting to the country of rocks and stone walls; the green slate of Cumberland and Westmoreland, that country of bright colouring; the thatch of Shropshire or Somerset, always cosy and homely looking, whether on the timber-framed building or on the whitewashed cottage; or again, the purple slates of North Wales, unobtrusive among the dark blue shadows of her towering peaks, and fitly covering in the cottage whose walls are of rough slabs of the same slate. The red tile, too, coloured with the iron which tints the soil, more widely distributed and in greater variety than any of the roof coverings, though not exactly a natural product only needs to be clothed with the golden green of the lichen to look as much at home as any of the rest: we know it well in Staffordshire, and to think of Whitby without its red roofs is to realise at once what beauty it can give to a scene. Each of these roof coverings has a special beauty of its own; some look well almost anywhere; but we do not always realise how much of roofs we see in a landscape, or to what extent the restful charm of old places springs from their harmony with surroundings and the general prevalence of one material in the district.

Our fathers were not tempted as we are in this. They had to use the local material and to stick to it. There were no railways in their time carrying blue slates to Whitby, or red tiles to North Wales. Now all these materials are brought to our doors, and the builder chooses each according to his own fad; and so we get all sorts of materials and colours hopelessly jumbled up together, with no thought of general harmony.

Our manufactured materials too are less beautiful. Our tiles by perfect machinery are made so true and flat that a modern tile roof looks as though it had been ironed with a polishing iron, like a shirt front. And both our tiles and bricks tend to become so hard and forbidding that no kindly lichen will clothe them, no wind and rain soften and tone them. It gives one something of a shock to see the delicate clematis and the clinging ivy struggling with a wall which, after twenty or thirty years, still looks as hard and new as the day it was built. The old tiles were a little curled in burning, and had a surface rough enough to afford lodgment for moss and lichen; and so the lines were less hard, and the newness of surface and colour soon mellowed into all sorts of lovely shades.

Many an old building that has little pretension to fine architecture, yet adorns a scene of natural beauty by its simple fitness of design, where a modern one would probably spoil it. Such design was the outcome of a natural effort to get the most use and convenience out of materials thoroughly known. Hence a general suitability is found between design and material, and an obvious connection between quaint features and the want that has called them into being. Look at the plainest old four-square thatched cottage, and there will nearly always be some interest in the way the thatch has been coaxed up over a window, or a ridge worked to avoid a chimney gutter, which redeems it from baldness. The same skilful handling of tiles is found in all real tile districts; and so we find many picturesque gables, which we should miss in a country of slates or stone shingles.

There is on all hands evidence of a willingness to give labour without stint; to do a job well and a bit more; to linger over it, and see if a little more work here and there would not improve the look. In fact, we read in these old buildings, as in an open book, of a simple workman who was something of an artist, one who could take pleasure in his work, finding joy in the perfection of what he created, and delight in its comeliness.

Whenever we again raise up such an army of builders, working at their trades with the pleasure of artists, then will all buildings become as beautiful as of old; then will it be possible for such workmen, co-operating with a true architect or master builder, to raise fine architecture, like our old cathedrals and abbeys. No effort of office-trained architects, with workmen whose chief interest on the job is to find ‘knocking-off time,’ can ever take the place of the co-operation between real craftsmen under the leadership of the most able among them: for it is to this that we owe most of the building that we can truly say adorns our country.

RAYMOND UNWIN.

CO-OPERATION IN BUILDING.

As beautiful as an old English village.” The phrase arrests our attention and calls up many a pleasant picture stored in our minds; but with the remembered beauty there comes too the associated sadness of something loved that is fast passing away. The picture we recall may be the view down some long wide village street bordered with clusters of cottages, some opening direct on to the roadside, some with their bright bits of flower border in front; here and there a break in the buildings is marked with the dark foliage of trees in a larger garden; a dignified forecourt with its iron railings reveals an old manor house, or a gate-way in a high wall overhung by elms leads to the vicarage; while at the street end where the road turns away is the lich-gate, leading to the church whose parapetted roof and slender spire rising far above all the surrounding buildings complete the whole group. Or maybe we picture to ourselves rather some village green, with the rows of sunny whitewashed houses, the barns and haystacks of an occasional farmyard, the end of an orchard, and the village school, that are gathered round it.

In such views as these there are houses and buildings of all sizes: the hut in which the old road-mender lives by himself, the inn with its ancient sign, the prosperous yeoman’s homestead, the blacksmith’s house and forge, the squire’s hall, the vicarage, and the doctor’s house, are all seemingly jumbled together; and mingled with them are barns and village shops, wood-yards and wheel-wrights’ sheds. Yet there is no sense of confusion; on the contrary the scene gives us that peaceful feeling which comes from the perception of orderly arrangement. This is the more surprising because the order is rather intuitively felt than seen or consciously realised by the beholder. It is due very largely to the beautiful grouping of buildings and roofs, a grouping which has come so inevitably that it seems as if it would be somewhat difficult to avoid it, or to utterly spoil it. Certainly where many buildings of various characters and sizes are gathered together, as in a village, a picturesqueness of grouping is rarely absent even when the individual buildings have in themselves no special beauty; and very often the introduction of one or two really ugly modern buildings detracts little from this particular charm.

The village was the expression of a small corporate life in which all the different units were personally in touch with each other, conscious of and frankly accepting their relations, and on the whole content with them. This relationship reveals itself in the feeling of order which the view induces. Every building honestly confesses just what it is, and so falls into its place. The smallest cottage has its share of the village street on to which the manor house also fronts. It is content with that share and with its condition, and does not try to look like a villa. It is this crystallisation of the elements of the village in accordance with a definitely organized life of mutual relations, respect or service, which gives the appearance of being an organic whole, the home of a community, to what would otherwise be a mere conglomeration of buildings. This effect is greatly enhanced where the central feature around which the village has clustered, the church, castle, or manor house, is of sufficient size and architectural interest to challenge comparison with the whole village rather than with the individual houses. The impressive pile of the old Priory as seen across the valley towering above all the other grey roofed buildings of the little town of Cartmel, is a fine example of this. The sense of unity is further increased in most old villages by a general harmony in colour and style of the buildings themselves, due to the prevalent use of certain materials, which are usually those found in the district.

In the modern building-estate all these elements of beauty are entirely wanting. The land is cut up into little plots all about the same size; these are sold to a chance collection of people who erect on them houses of any conceivable style, or lack of style; each deals with his own plot quite regardless of the others; and every house seems to be wishing to dissociate itself as much as possible from its neighbours, to look as distinct and imposing as it can. Ground enough not being allowed for each house to stand comfortably within its plot, such separation as exists only makes it possible for every house to block the view from some other, and easy for the occupants to over-look their neighbours and realise their near presence all round to a maximum extent. No grouping of buildings is thought of nor any organized arrangement, beyond occasionally some feeble attempt at laying out streets; and it is rarely indeed that we seem able to erect a public building of any sort at all in scale with the extent of the surrounding houses.

To compensate for the loss of the interest springing from variety of grouping, a loss specially evident in the old-fashioned four-square suburban villa, an attempt is now mostly made to introduce some special features into each individual house, and so to create an artificial picturesqueness. This is not uncommonly done by needlessly cutting up the roof with turrets from which there is no outlook, or gables which serve no purpose except to provide an excuse for a little black and white half-timber work. A street of such houses is however even less satisfactory than one of the old square box houses, in that it is more artificial, and lacks a certain element of dignity which its predecessor often acquired from its very simplicity. In short, around all our towns are spread patches of villadom of the beauty of which no one can cherish any memories, but the ugliness of which causes them to be regarded by many with a cordial hatred; so much so that to the lover of natural scenery the commencement of a new house is regarded as a sure sign of the coming destruction of the old beauty.

Modern conditions of life and work are not conducive to the production of great architecture, and it seems probable that we shall have to await some change in these conditions before much that is really fine in building will be accomplished. But in the simpler buildings required for domestic purposes there are marked signs of improvement. Already a few architects are meeting our wants without affectation or pedantry, but with simple directness and honesty of construction, and are producing individual buildings of great beauty; but so long as these remain isolated examples, mere units in a chance collection, they can do little to help the whole effect. The various buildings must be brought into harmonious relations one with another; the suburb or settlement must be conceived in some broader spirit and developed in relation to a definite idea of the whole, if any improvement is to be effected.

We cannot of course put back the hands of time, nor can we re-create the spirit which built the old churches that crown so many villages. The relationships of feudalism have gone, and democracy has yet to evolve some definite relationships of its own, which when they come will doubtless be as picturesque as the old forms. But allowing full force to these disadvantages, we could, if we really desired it, even now so arrange a new building site that it should not be an actual eye-sore, and might manage that it should have some little of the charm of the old village.

Thanks to the growth of taste among all classes of people there is springing up a demand for something of the kind. In all the large towns are numbers of people who hate the ugly & dreary life that they are condemned to live in them, who love the country and country life, and who will travel long distances to and from their work that they may be able to enjoy them. These people do not want to live in isolated houses, out of sight of their neighbours; they are townspeople of sociable instincts: but neither do they desire to live in a mere extension of the fringe of the town. What they really want are country villages, little centres of life large enough and varied enough to give them interesting human society and a few of the more necessary comforts of modern life, such as a post office, a railway station, efficient drainage and water supply. These people have many common interests, much that all would wish to preserve in a new home, as, for example, fresh air, and an open view of country that cannot readily be spoilt. Just such an amount of associated action as would ensure these advantages for them all, would suffice to give the sense of cohesion to the whole settlement which is so lamentably wanting when each struggles ineffectually to secure as much as he can of them for himself alone. With some co-operation the maximum of these advantages could be obtained for every individual house, be it large or small; without it none but those rich enough to purchase a large tract of country for themselves can be secure of even a limited share of them.

Within easy reach of large towns, estates & farms are constantly changing hands at prices little above their value as agricultural land. Frequently we find the enterprising purchaser takes advantage of the demand for country homes: he spends a few hundred pounds in developing his purchase as a building estate, by making roads and laying drains; then he cuts it up into small plots and sells it at three, five, or even ten times the rate at which he bought it. If a few of those who wish to secure a country home were to purchase such an estate or farm among them, they could get all the advantage of cheap land themselves. If they were then to develop the site on co-operative lines, they could obtain many other equally solid advantages. The houses could be grouped together and so arranged that each would obtain a sunny aspect and an open outlook; and portions of the land could be reserved for ever from being built upon to secure these views.

[Sidenote: _See plates 11, 38 and 39._]

The arrangement that should be adopted to obtain the best result, would depend entirely on the nature of the site. If it were on the ridge of some rising ground, probably the best plan would be to group the houses at each side of a good broad roadway, taking the wide village street as the suggestion; while on a good southern slope, the most successful plan might be to gather the houses and other buildings on three sides of an open space, adopting the village green as the model. Where the site was large enough, and the slope sufficient, a second green with its houses could be arranged, low enough not to obstruct the view from the upper one; or where two sides of a valley were included, villages might be placed on each of the slopes, leaving the valley below for ever free to afford a pleasant prospect for each village. The particular arrangement to be adopted would be a matter for most careful thought, and no building should be commenced until some definite conception of what the completed village was to be like had been worked out. The sites for prospective schools, church, or other public buildings, should be reserved from the first, in accordance with the size to which the available land would allow the community to grow. The houses should be clustered together as much as possible, not set villa-wise each in the centre of a little plot. Some few houses of wealthier members could stand back in larger grounds, taking advantage of outlying positions or sharing in the common outlook as seemed best: their gardens and entrances would make pleasant openings in the buildings. But the majority of the houses should be gathered into groups, which would inevitably acquire picturesqueness from the variety both in size and form of the buildings.

A good number of the houses too might be open to the road or green. The unfenced common coming right up to one’s doorstep, always gives a charming sense of openness whether viewed from within or from without; a sense in no way diminished by the contrast that occasional fenced gardens or forecourts offer where the houses are set back somewhat. All sorts of individual tastes and needs would afford opportunity for obtaining variety: the one thing to be avoided at all costs would be the producing of anything like a street of detached villas.

The common insatiable desire for detachment is very remarkable; it appears to arise mainly from a resigned acceptance of the jerry builder’s party wall as the inevitable one. Everyone suspects a party wall, looks to hear through it his neighbour’s child in the dead of night, or his piano on a Sunday afternoon. Guarantee a sound-proof party wall, and few will be able to give any valid reason why there should be from ten to fifty feet of useless ground between every two houses. In a properly built house, one is really much less conscious of one’s neighbour, and much less over-looked by him, if his house is attached, than if it is a few yards away. Where it is desired, however, many minor devices, such as a highly walled garden or a covered-in yard, may be used with effect to increase the number of separate houses without destroying the grouping.