Domestic Architecture 1700 to 1960

Contents
1 Georgian Architecture - Introduction
2 Georgian Architecture - Theory of Design
3 Georgian Architecture - Developments
4 Regency
5 Victorian Architecture - Introduction
6 Victorian - Style
7 Late Victorian and Edwardian Architecture - Change
8 Between the Wars, 1918-1939 - Part One
9 Between the Wars, 1918-1939 - Part Two
10 Between the Wars, 1918-1939 - Part Three
11 Post-War Housing, 1945-1960s - Introduction
12 Post-War Housing, 1945-1960s - Flats
13 Post-War Housing, 1960s Low Rise

1 Georgian Architecture - Introduction

Wherever you happen to be London, Bath or Bristol,

Edinburgh or Dublin there is no mistaking Georgian housing
(photo shows a late Georgian terrace c1790). Uniformity,
symmetry and a careful attention to proportion both in the
overall arrangement and in the detail characterised
eighteenth century domestic architecture. We also describe
the style today as classical. It was inspired by the
architecture of ancient Greece and Rome that had been
rediscovered during the Renaissance of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries and re-codified by Andrea Palladio (150980) in Italy in the 1570s; and then re-interpreted again for the
Georgian builder by eighteenth century British architects and
writers such as William Chambers and Isaac Ware. Palladian
taste promoted order and uniformity...as Ware stated, There
ought to be...a uniformity of all the parts first to the whole
building and next to each other.
Guided by the published rules and conventions of Palladian architecture, Georgian house
builders swept away centuries of vernacular house building rooted in local traditions and
materials: timber framed construction, gabled roofs and casement windows and other
features of the vernacular disappeared in the first few decades of the eighteenth century.
The new style can be traced back to mid-seventeenth century London, to Inigo Jones (15731652) and his design for Covent Garden, a Palladian inspired formal square of the 1630s.
Then following the Great Fire of 1666, large-scale speculative building of classically
influenced brick town houses commenced in London and by the end of the seventeenth
century similar developments were under way elsewhere. In Bristol, then one of the largest
and most important provincial cities, one of the first brick houses in the city was completed in
1701 in a new formal square soon to be named after Queen Anne (1701-14). The building of
these first Georgian streets and squares represented the beginnings of large-scale suburban
development in Britain. Noxious trades were usually excluded from these new
developments by the terms of the original building leases. Developed by speculative builders
for wealthy clients the Georgian suburb was intended to be purely residential. These were
the first fashionable suburbs containing streets, squares, circles and crescents of elegant
terraced houses which exemplified the best of Georgian good taste: a combination of
judicious restraint with exquisite detailing of the doors and windows.

38 Queen Square, Bristol, c. 1703 with

29 Queen Square, Bristol, 1709-11 with
moulded string courses at each level and alternate segmental and triangular stone
wooden modillioned eaves cornice.
pediments over the ground and first floor

windows.
The terraced house arose from the need of the speculative builder to squeeze as many
houses as possible into one street. So the typical Georgian town house was tall and narrow
with a long narrow garden or court behind and for the largest houses a coach house or
stable at the rear of the plot served by a subsidiary road or mews. The back yard usually
contained a privy or bog house - a primitive sanitary arrangement set over a cess-pit or bog
hole. All houses except the poorest had basements containing a kitchen, a back kitchen or
scullery and various stores - pantry, larder and storage for coal. The coal store often
extended under the pavement so that the coal could be delivered without entering the
basement: the circular cast-iron coal hole covers remain a feature of the pavements in many
Georgian streets.
At the front the basement often looked onto a deep void below the street called the area
which often contained area steps which provided a tradesmens entrance directly into the
kitchen. The plan of the house was usually extremely simple with one room at the back and
one at the front on each floor with a passage and staircase at one side although inevitably
there were many minor variations on this plan. The party walls of the houses usually
contained the chimney flues which added strength to the structure. Large houses would
contain up to twenty-five or more individual flues which were swept of soot by young
climbing boys.

Outside areas where good building stone was available, brick was
the universal Georgian building material. In London the bricks of
good, hard quality used for the outer walls were known as stocks
whilst poorly made place bricks which included as much ash as clay
were used for cheapness sake for the unseen work of party walls
and partitions. The stocks used in and around London were of two
colours: grey and red, the latter being a trifle more costly and often
used for lintels and window arches whilst the grey bricks were
preferred for walling in general. In the latter part of the century
London stocks were almost uniformly a pale, yellowish brown. A
fourth more expensive type of brick was the cutting brick, a crimson
brick of very fine sandy quality and capable of accurate cutting
hence the name - but they were also known as rubbing brick or
Windsor brick. In the best work these were used instead of red
stocks for window arches and decorative dressings (photo shows
rubbed brick window arch c1740). The Georgian bricklayer almost
invariably laid his bricks in Flemish bond in which the headers and
stretchers alternated in each course. After bricks timber was the
Georgian builders chief material: Baltic fir and oak were widely used
and from about 1720 mahogany was used for the more expensive
items of joinery, such as interior doors and the beautifully crafted
handrails of Georgian stairways. For the paving of the halls of large
houses, Purbeck stone was often specified often with little diamonds
of black Namur marble at the crossing of the joints. The principal
rooms were distinguished by white marble fireplaces which
contained freestanding stove grates of burnished steel and brass
and ornate ceiling plasterwork. Rubbed brick window arch,
Bridgnorth, Shropshire, c. 1740

2 Georgian Architecture - Theory of Design

Georgian theories of proportion and symmetry governing the design

of the faade were developed in the early eighteenth century and
derived from the classical temples of Ancient Greece and Rome.
Adapting Palladios principles, the Neo-Palladians created a system
of proportions and ratios based on the square and circle (or cube and
sphere). The square, in particular was considered the key to
architectural beauty: and Robert Morris (1703-54) in his Lectures on
Architecture of 1734 and 1736 established seven ideal proportions,
all based on the cube. Proportions based on squares were used to
determine window openings and the system of window openings
relative to wall areas, thus if the house was three bays wide (the
usual width of the Georgian town house) then the space occupied by
the first and second floor windows would usually be made roughly a
square. Picture shows Dowry Square, Bristol, c1750.
For the Pallladian faade this system of proportions was combined with the architectural
elements of the Roman temple consisting of a rusticated basement, columns or pilasters,
entablature (including the cornice and pediment) and attic. Five types of columns with the
superstructure they supported known as the Five Orders were used to determine the
adornment of the faade (see drawing below). The Five Orders were the Tuscan, Doric,
Ionic, Corinthian and Composite and were easily distinguished by the particular carving of
the capitals and their individual proportions. The Orders were applied to a building for
decorative purposes and also to order the design of the facade. The Orders were either
applied to the facade or implied by dividing the facade in height according to the divisions of
an individual column. Even where the main architectural components of the temple were
absent their presence could be implied by the use of certain details. Thus a cornice or even
a flat string course was used to suggest the location of the entablature, or a sill band or
string course at first floor level could be used to indicate the line of the column base while
another above the ground floor windows could be used to indicate the junction between the
column pedestal and temple podium. In a three storey high house, for example, the temple
composition was implied by the ground floor storey corresponding to the area of the podium
while the two stories above fell within the area of the column shaft. For the largest and
grandest terraced block the temple formula provided further inspiration for the front. By
adding a pediment over the centre the row was given a palace-like front. Now the overall
unity of the design was more important than the facades of individual houses. John Wood
(1704-5) adopted the palace front for the north side of Queen Square in Bath, started in
1728, and thereafter the pediment was widely used.

The Five Orders of Ancient

Architecture, from left:
Tuscan, Doric, Ionic,
Composite and Corinthian.

Albermarle Row, Hotwells,

1763. A uniform row of
seven houses with the
central one raised slightly

Georgian town houses, St

Marys Street, Bridgnorth,
c1740

From Nicholsons New

Practical Builder, c1824

forward to form the central

feature with a pediment.

If Palladianism encouraged uniformity and consistency there was still, nevertheless,

considerable scope for the details of the faade - particularly of the proportions and placing
of windows and the designs of door cases - to evolve during the eighteenth century. Taste
and fashion and building controls were the two chief determining factors. In order to reduce
the risk of fire in 1707 a Building Act was passed which banned the prominent eaves
cornices, which had risen to popularity in Restoration London. Instead, the roof was half
hidden by a parapet wall with a cornice of brick, stone. Two years later another act laid down
that the window frames, instead of being nearly in the same plane as the brick face were to
be set back four inches leaving a reveal of brickwork which gave a sense of solidity to the
walls. The early eighteenth century also saw the widespread adoption of sash windows
replacing casement windows. The sash, a Dutch invention had been known for many years
but its popularity only dates from Queen Annes time. Unlike casements, sash windows could
be opened without disrupting the classical facade. The two sliding frames usually contained
six panes of hand blown crown glass and these usually varied in proportion according to the
dimensions of the window.
In the late seventeenth century, the ground floor was often treated as the principle storey but
in houses of early eighteenth century date the ground and first floor windows are often found
to be roughly the same size while second floor attic rooms were lit by square windows. The
piers between the windows of early eighteenth century houses were often considerably
narrower than the openings although the early Palladians favoured the reverse ratio with the
piers being considerably wider than the windows. Later the width of window openings and
piers was almost invariably fixed at between three feet five or six inches. By the mideighteenth century, the first floor was established as the main floor the piano nobile - and
had the highest ceilings and tallest windows. By the mid-eighteenth century first floor
windows were usually a double square and sometimes given further pre-eminence by the
use of architraves and full entablatures as in Bath and Bristol. Then in the late eighteenth
century the principle floor returned to ground level.
The main entrance formed the dominant ornamental feature of the facade although doors
were only placed symmetrically on detached houses. In the terraced house, the door was
almost invariably placed at one side of the facade so that a two bay room the parlour
could be located to the side of the entrance and hallway. Early eighteenth century porticos
were generally made with heavy brackets supporting a hood, sometimes in the form of a
shell. In the 1720s and 1730s, Palladian designs based on the temple were widely used for
door cases with pillars supporting an entablature and pediment variously of segmental
(curved) or broken form. In London, porticos were commonly made of white Portland stone
which contrasted with the brick walls. Doors were usually of six panels. Early doors were tall
and filled the entire opening but in the 1720s the fan light a semi-circular window over the
door - first appeared as a means of allowing light to enter the hall. The entrance of many
Georgian town houses was further embellished by delicate wrought-iron work including area
railings and supports for oil lamps which arched over the entrance.

6 King Street, Bristol, c1720 with scalloped Oil lamp holder, from Pynes Costume of
shell hood supported by carved and
England, 1809
scrolled consoles.

3 Georgian Architecture - Developments

From the 1760s the strict conventions of Palladianism were challenged

and then modified by a new breed of professional architects of whom the
greatest were Robert Adam (1728-92), his younger brother James (173294), Sir William Chambers (1723-96) and James Wyatt (1746-1813).
Robert Adam was the leading force in creating a new style, spending
several years abroad and examining sites of antiquity at first hand. He
denounced the eternal repetition of the same traditional classical elements
and brought a greater degree of flexibility to the interpretation of classical
architecture. Inspired by his study of the ruins of Diocletians Palace in
Dalmatia, he also introduced a new range of decorative motifs. The result
was a new architectural style which is generally known as Neo-classical or
even simply as Adams style. It was characterised by buildings with light,
elegant lines unbound by strict classical proportion. Adam treated
ornament freely introducing delicate swags and ribbons into his interiors
which were painted in delicate greens and blues, lilacs, dove greys and
faint yellows. The fan light was a prominent feature of Adams style. They
were at the peak of their popularity between 1760 and 1780 when they
consisted of a complex pattern in iron and lead typically of spokes
radiating outwards from a central floret and decorated with swags and
garlands. Windows were taller with thinner glazing bars. Lower down the
social scale, smaller houses were built to precisely the same proportions
only on a reduced scale. The distinctions were codified in the great
Building Act of 1774 which aimed at preventing poor quality construction
and reducing the risk of fire. By the Act, houses were categorised or rated
according to value and floor area. Each rate had its own code of structural
requirements as regards foundations, external and party walls.

First rate house (from Second rate house

Nicholson 1823)

Third rate house

Fourth rate house

From the middle of the century, bay windows which had been out of fashion since the early
seventeenth century began to reappear. Many were confined to the ground floor parlour
beside the front door and were frequently of timber construction. The roofs of early Georgian
houses were tiled but towards the end of the eighteenth century Welsh slate was widely
adopted. After 1750, water closets were installed in the best houses: Robert and James
Adam installed them in Osterly House and Syon House, London, in the early 1760s. From
about the same time the freestanding stove grate was replaced by cast-iron hob grates
which filled the chimney opening. These were usually cast with the delicate neo-classical
motifs popularised by the Adams Bothers who were directly responsible for the designs
found on the grates made by the famous Carron Foundry in Scotland in the late eighteenth
century.

Granby Hill, Hotwells, Bristol, 1789

Adams style cast-iron hob grate, 1798

4 Regency

The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 saw the beginning of a

twenty year long building boom and of a new style of architecture
which took its name from the Regency of the Prince of Wales, later
George IV, which lasted from 1811-1820. In London large impressive
terraces were built by John Nash (1752-1835) the Prince Regents
leading architect - and subsequently Thomas Cubbitt. Elsewhere, in
Brighton, Cheltenham and Leamington Spa, for example, the building
of Regency housing was on a scale large enough to give these towns
and other genteel spa and seaside places an enduring Regency
character. As in London, large, handsome terraces remained a

popular form of housing for the well-to-do. In basic plan these

continued to follow the traditional eighteenth century layout with a
basement service area but the Regency period was also notable for
the rise of the detached and semi-detached villa. In the context of
British domestic architecture the term dated from the 1820s when
Nash included picturesque villas in his development of Regents Park
although separate dwellings had been seen in St Johns Wood as
early the 1790s. Builders continued to follow well proven Georgian
principles of design and construction - as exemplified by writers such
as Nicholson in 1823-5 - but from the early 1800s, house building
took several new directions which were to give Regency architecture
its own particular identity.
Regency architecture was, above all, typified by the use of stucco in
preference to exposed brickwork (above right). Stucco is a general
term used for various kinds of cement coating applied to the external
wall of a building. Its use dated from around the time of the Building
Act of 1774 when various patent stuccos were introduced; they were
used sparingly until Nash popularised their use in his fashionable
developments in London. Several new formulas for artificial cements
were developed in the early nineteenth century when the use of
stucco rapidly increased as means of imitating stone; all respectable
stucco buildings of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century were
carefully scored with horizontal and vertical lines to represent stone
jointing. The simplicity of a uniform stuccoed facade painted white,
cream or buff provided the perfect foil to the use of plain, slightly
projecting bands and restrained ornament. For large terraces like
Carlton House Terrace begun by John Nash in 1827 - the Orders
were still applied. Their facades continued to be arranged in the
grand Roman manner with giant columns and pilasters although the
use of smaller accents of ornament came to typify Regency
architecture.
Georgian proportions continued to determine window proportions,
thin glazing bars still divided sash windows into twelve or more
rectangular panes. Doorways continued to be surmounted by fan
lights: semi-circular designs were still found but many were now
rectangular with delicate vertical muntins which were either arched or
angled in imitation of Gothic window tracery. In terraces, the top of
the facade was finished in typical Georgian style with an elegant
parapet hiding a low roof. These were either pitched at right angles to
the front with a central valley or were of mansard construction in
which case they were aligned to the ridge and tall enough to contain
attic rooms with dormer windows looking out over the parapet. Villas
were often given low pitched roofs of gabled or hipped construction
with wide projecting eaves. Welsh slate was now the preferred
roofing material and formed a striking contrast with the walls when
these were of pale coloured stucco.
Some terraces notably some of those close to the sea front at
Brighton were built with large sweeping bays so that every house
had at least a glimpse of the sea and elsewhere the slightly curved
bow windows became another feature of Regency architecture.
Delicate balconies of wrought or cast-iron with curving metal roofs
resembling Chinese pagodas became popular at first floor level.

French windows, which were really glazed doors, opened on to the

balconies or in the case of villas were placed in rear ground floor
rooms to provide direct access to the garden.
Regency housing represented a new type of classical architecture which drew on a wider
range of sources than ever previously seen. It represented a challenge to the straight jacket
of Georgian Palladianism and the first break with classical restraint can be traced to the
emergence of the Picturesque movement in the 1790s. Through the Picturesque, traditional
vernacular English forms, continental styles from Italy, France and Switzerland and more
exotic elements such as Indian verandas and domed towers were incorporated in Regency
domestic architecture from Nashs fantastical Brighton Pavilion of 1815-23 to the cosy
cottages of Blaise Hamlet near Bristol which Nash also conceived in about 1810. Then from
the early 1800s, through the work of architects such as Robert Smirke (1781-1867), a
fashion for Grecian inspired ornament emerged. Greek Revival architecture found its best
expression in large public buildings but it also found its way into suburban villa development
where large detached and semi-detached houses were built with fluted pilasters and ionic
capitals supporting pediments and window surrounds and porches dressed with delicately
carved Greek inspired motifs. Another strong influence which appeared from the 1820s was
the Gothic which had first appeared in the mid-eighteenth century. It was a style best suited
to the small villa or cottage where a delightfully picturesque effect was achieved by placing
doorways and windows in ogee or early Tudor, four pointed arched openings. The windows
were filled with delicate Gothic arched glazing bars and leaded lights. These styles were
brought together and popularised by writers such as Francis Goodwin and John Claudius
Loudon (1783-1843). Loudons highly influential Encyclopaedia of Cottage, Farm and Villa
Architecture and Furniture, first published in 1833, contained over 2,000 designs for houses
in a variety of romantic styles: Grecian, Gothic, Old English, Swiss chalet style and others.
For the supporters of Georgian architecture the appearance of these guides marked a
turning point in British architecture the start of a descent into chaos - as the conventions
of Georgian architecture were swept away.

Double Cottage, Blaise

Regency Grecian,
Hamlet, Henbury, Bristol, by
Buckingham Vale, Clifton,
John Nash and George
Bristol, c1840
Repton, c1810

Cottages in the Gothic style

from J.C. Loudon, Cottage,
Farm & Villa Architecture,
1833

5 Victorian Architecture - Introduction

Regency architecture survived Victorias accession in 1837 and houses with Regency
characteristics continued to be built through the 1840s but gradually and imperceptibly,
Victorian architecture emerged as a style of its own, shaped by rapid population growth, the
influence of new technologies and new materials and also, the intellectual input of theorists
such as Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-52), John Ruskin (1819-1900) and William
Morris (1834-96). But first population: during Victorias reign, Britains population doubled

with the urban based proportion increasing from 54% in 1851 to 79% by 1911. The result
was a massive expansion of towns to which the speculative builder responded building
suburbs which were sharply delineated by class. Working class districts were built cheek-byjowl with the collieries, mills and factories which provided employment for their inhabitants.
The housing generally consisted of rows of tightly packed terraces: although no longer
fashionable after the 1850s, the terraced house remained the builders solution to the
demand for cheap urban housing until the early 1900s. Cheap on land and materials they
were either built back-to-back so that the rooms had no rear windows or as through
houses - which usually had a two storey rear extension containing the kitchen and a small
third bedroom and with a privy (or W.C) and coal shed in the back yard. Whilst the back-tobacks and the poorest through houses were completely devoid of any embellishment or
ornament, bay windows, moulded brickwork and other details were added to larger terraces
which commanded higher rents and pretensions to respectability. But there was no mistaking
the true Victorian middle class dwelling. Whether detached or semi detached, these solidly
built and substantial houses were large enough to accommodate resident servants, the
employment of at least one being a clear indicator of middle class status.

Back-to-back houses Through terraced

from Woodsettton, houses with parapet
south Staffordshire, facade, Barton Hill,
c. 1850s, rebuilt at
Bristol, c1875
the Black Country
Living Museum,
Dudley.

Through terraced
houses, Albion
Terrace, Chester

Whilst a typical working class house contained between four and

six rooms, a large middle class villa of the 1850s or 1860s could
contain twelve rooms or more with separate family and service
areas. The family rooms included bedrooms with adjacent
dressing rooms, a W.C. but rarely a bathroom, large reception
rooms with high ceilings, elaborate moulded plaster cornices and
marble fireplaces. The servants were usually accommodated in
attic rooms whilst the service area continued to occupy a
basement containing kitchen, scullery, pantry and larder - a
separate servants W.C. - and in the largest, a housekeepers
room or servants hall. The houses were private and respectable.
They were usually given names which reinforced their grandeur
and respectability Albion, Richmond and Belmont Villa, for
example, and they were usually set back from the road in gardens
which, for the first time since the middle ages, became an
important part of the urban home environment.

6 Victorian - Style

Hallway of through
terraced house,
Bedminster, Bristol,
c1890

The range of styles available to the Victorian architect helped underline the separateness
and individuality of the larger Victorian house. From the 1830s, Gothic emerged as the
greatest challenge to the dominance of Classical styles. Through the influence of Pugin
whose True Principles of Gothic Architecture was published in 1841, a more serious and
analytical approach to the use of medieval Gothic architecture emerged. Then in 1851-3, the
art critic, John Ruskin, published The Stones of Venice. This became a key text for the High
Victorian Gothic of the middle decades of the century and through Ruskins influence
elements of the Italian Gothic including pointed arched window surrounds, elaborate
polychrome brickwork and carved stone decoration, was brought into the leafy suburbs of
Victorian Britain. Italian architecture of the sixteenth century was another style which was
widely used for large suburban houses in the middle of the century. It had its roots in
Regency architecture when Nash had experimented with a semi rustic Italianate villa style
and was further developed and popularised in the 1830s by Sir Charles Barry who drew
heavily on the buildings of the Italian Renaissance. Osborne House, on the Isle of Wight,
designed by Cubitt, for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and completed in 1851 was the
grandest example and provided the inspiration for many large villas built in the 1850s and
1860s. Typical features included a square, belvedere tower, deep projecting eaves, roof
balustrades and round arched windows. Other styles found included the Northern European
typified by the use of the curved or Dutch gable the French Baroque which contributed
the mansard roof - and Elizabethan and Jacobean which contributed features borrowed from
the typical Jacobethan large house, including towering chimneys, mullioned windows and
four pointed arched front door ways.

Italianate villa, c1860

Italianate villa, c1870

Belvedere tower on a villa of

c1860, Clifton. Bristol

These various styles posed a major challenge to the Neo-Palladian

rules of geometry and proportion: in place of broad sweeps of wall
surface with windows cut in simply and sharply, there was a new
emphasis on anything picturesque on the, charming character of
the irregular. Architectural historians write of the Battle of the Styles
but it was usual for an architect to select a particular architectural
style according to the whim of the client. Styles were also
amalgamated and motifs mixed so freely in a profusion of detail that it
can be difficult to identify between the various revivals. But whatever
the choice or mix of styles, the popularity of certain features provided
some common characteristics. Large bay windows often of two or
three stories with heavily ornate surrounds became a dominant
feature of the facade after 1850.The bay window contributed to the
picturesque quality of the front but from the inside it offered more
space and light and better views. The halving of the window tax in
1832 and its repeal altogether in 1851 encouraged the use of large
windows. They were usually filled with large areas of glass thanks to
the perfection of Improved Cylinder Glass by Robert Lucas Chance

in 1832.
Sash windows remained standard in the mid-Victorian house but the
availability of large sheets of cheap glass resulted in larger individual
panes and fewer glazing bars. An entire sash could be filled with one
sheet of glass and being heavier the frame of the sash had to be
made thicker and strengthened with full mortise and tenon joints at
the corners giving rise to the horns, the vertical extensions to the
styles, which appeared on sashes after about 1840. On larger early
and mid-Victorian houses, the windows were often fitted with internal
wooden shutters whilst roller blinds which kept direct sun light out of
rooms were frequently added to the exterior; many of the ornate
wooden blind boxes survive and can be seen framing the upper part
of the window opening. The prominence of the front bay had a
curious effect on the position of the front door of larger mid-Victorian
houses: it was sometimes found relegated to a less prominent
position - even a side wall. By the 1850s the commonest type of front
door had four panels in place of the typical Georgian six panel door.
Door furniture tended to be heavily ornate and made of cast-iron and
following the introduction of the penny post in 1840 usually included a
letter box.
Roofs became another integral part of the facade. They were
generally pitched steeper and through using hips and gables
embellished with elaborate wooden barge boards and ornate ridge
tiles and finials. Multi storey bays were usually given their own steep
roofs joined to the front pitch of the main roof. Slate remained the
commonest roofing material across much of the country. Chimneys
were also now regarded as a positive feature of the overall design:
they were generally tall and decorated with projecting courses of
brickwork, stone carving and other ornament reflecting the overall
style of the house. This extended to the chimney pots which were
made in a wide range of decorative designs, each with their own
particular names such as crowns and bishops; some incorporated
elaborate projections to counter down draughts. All these features, of
course, added to the picturesque quality of the architecture which
was further enhanced by a return after the mid-century to the use of
undisguised red brick and in stone areas, rubble walls. From the
1860s, the use of ornamental brick and terracotta clay baked at
very high temperatures to produce a material claimed to be stronger
than brick or stone became popular for detailed embellishments
although later generations were to condemn the Victorian love of
manufactured detail ornament.

7 Late Victorian and Edwardian Architecture - Change

Gradually, a reaction set in to the mixed classical and Gothic styles of mid-Victorian
architecture and to the artificiality and perceived ugliness - of machine made building parts
and fittings. The result was the emergence of the Arts and Crafts Movement which created a
new aesthetic approach in all fields of design based on a search for greater truthfulness
and simplicity in design. In domestic architecture it led to the rise of a new style frequently
referred to as the Old English Revival. This can be traced to the building of the Red House
at Bexley Heath, Kent, designed by Philip Webb (1831-1915) for William Morris in 1859.
Rejecting machine made decoration, Morris and his circle of friends made some of the

fittings - including the stained glass and tiles - themselves. The house was built of red brick
with a high pitched, red tiled roof and incorporated such romantic features as a turret, oriel
windows and gables. It marked a return to the vernacular tradition of building and became, in
the words of John Cloag, the progenitor of a new school of domestic architecture. Much
imitated, it became a dominant influence on the so-called stock broker belt housing large
detached houses built mainly in southern commuter villages like Gerrards Cross,
Buckinghamshire up to 1939.
In the 1890s, a new interpretation of the Old English Revival emerged
through the work of C.F.A. Voysey (1857-1941) and Sir Edwin
Lutyens (1869-1944). In some of his country houses, Lutyens
combined classical style with the use of local materials as at
Heathcote, Yorkshire. The houses of Voysey and his followers built in
the early 1900s for wealthy clients struck a modern look with their low
ceilinged rooms, horizontal windows, roofs sweeping almost down to
ground level and white rough cast or pebble dash walls, although
Voysey always saw himself as an architect working firmly within the
traditions of English vernacular architecture; his use of pebble dash,
for example, came from the traditional harling of Scotland and
Cumbria. The photo on the right shows The White House by Dare
Bryan after C. F. A. Voysey, Leigh Woods, N. Somerset, 1901.
Another widely found late Victorian style is generally known as the Queen Anne Revival. It
was developed by the architects, W. Eden Nesfield (1835-1888) and J. J. Stevenson (18311908), in the late 1860s although it is more usually associated with the building of Bedford
Park, Chiswick by R. Norman Shaw (1831-1912) between 1875 and 1881. The style also
borrowed details, such as tile hanging, from vernacular architectural traditions but it also
marked a return to more symmetrical classical compositions using English and Dutch
Renaissance details and the use of red brick relieved by white painted woodwork. With its
winding tree lined roads, Bedford Park has been hailed as the first garden suburb. The
houses were individually built and incorporated a number of important technological
developments which emerged after 1870. Chief amongst these was the introduction of
improved sanitary arrangements including properly trapped and ventilated house drains and
the inclusion of a bathroom in the first floor plan. Another departure from long established
conventions was the abandonment of the basement service wing in favour of a kitchen
located on the ground floor.

Queen Anne style semi

detached villas, c1890

Queen Anne style houses, Downs Park East, Henleaze,

c1895, Henleaze
c1910

From the 1880s through to the early 1900s, Shaws work was much
imitated by speculative builders for middle class housing and large,
fussy, red brick houses with porches, wooden verandas, small
window panes in the upper sashes - and the occasional Dutch gable became a familiar part of the outer suburbs of London and other
large towns and cities. Stained glass became popular for front doors
and porches while the floor and dados of porches and hallways were
often finished in decorative tiles which were produced in huge

quantities from the 1870s. After 1905, pargetting decorative relief

plasterwork - recalling the seventeenth century domestic architecture
of Essex and Suffolk pebble dash and half timbered gables became
popular. In the hands of speculative builders, suburban villas began
to look like enlarged cottages. Although roofs were prominent,
houses were generally not as tall and there was now a greater
horizontal look to the facade. Plans tended to be squarer and without
a basement the main living rooms now had direct access to the
garden.
Some of these features found their way down to the better quality
artisan terraced house built around 1900. Often with their own name
in imitation of the larger house, these were villas within a terrace;
they provided homes for the upwardly mobile artisan and clerk like
the fictitious Mr Pooter of The Laurels, Holloway, London. Terraced
houses of between four and six rooms remained the answer for mass
urban housing. Typically laid out in straight, monotonous streets with
little open space and erected by small builders employing local
methods and material they still exhibited considerable local and
regional variety. From the 1870s, national and local legislation aimed
at improving public health at least ensured that basic standards of
construction, sanitation and adequate space front and back - were
maintained.

8 Between the Wars, 1918-1939 - Part One

The First World War marked a watershed in British house
construction. For the first time, the large-scale provision of working
class housing became the responsibility of the state while the building
of middle class homes for owner occupiers was subject to new
pressures, such as the arrival of electricity, the rise of the motor car
and the expansion of a servantless lower middle class. The building
of both the new council estates and the development of middle class
suburbs by private developers in the interwar period was heavily
influenced by the Tudor Walters Report published by the Local
Government Board in 1918. This drew heavily on the garden city
movement which had emerged in the the late nineteenth century
through the building of model industrial villages like Port Sunlight and
the publication in 1898 of the seminal Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to
Real Reform by Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928). Together with expert
opinion provided by specialist groups including womens
organisations, the report set the die for the creation of entirely new
house types.
House building had come to a virtual standstill during the war creating
an acute shortage of housing nationwide. The government acted with
a Housing Act in 1919 which required local authorities to assess their
housing needs and make good the deficiency with the assistance of a
generous government subsidy. The Addison Act was replaced by
housing acts of 1923 and 1924 and further acts which promoted the
construction of council houses were passed in the 1930s. The design
of the council estates followed the principles laid out by Raymond
Unwin (1863-1940), the chief author of the Tudor Walters Report and
a leading exponent of the garden city movement; he had been one of

the chief architects of Letchworth, Hertfordshire, the worlds first

garden city, founded in 1903. The estates were to incorporate a mix
of house types in a relaxed setting with no more than twelve an acre.
The idea was to create a garden village or garden suburb - and so
many 1920s council houses were built in a simple cottage style with
gabled, red tiled roofs, brick walls combined with white render or
pebble dash and horizontal casement windows. Houses were built in
pairs or in short terraces runs of up to about five houses. They were
generally low and wide, roofs were hipped and chimneys low and
squat. Gardens, front and back, were usually of generous
dimensions.
The Neo-Georgian style which had appeared before 1914 was also
widely used for the council estates; it was typified by the use of red
brick and simple Georgian style door cases. The plan of the typical
interwar council house was generally rectangular: the rear extension,
typical of Victorian terraced houses was abandoned to ensure the
back received as much light as the front. Houses divided into parlour
and non-parlour types but they were all provided with a scullery, bath
and indoor W.C.
There were also experiments with non-traditional building methods
such as the use of metal frames, cast-iron or concrete - as a means
of reducing costs although these constructional techniques brought
their own problems such as poor insulation and condensation. The
photo on the right shows a pair of cast-iron council houses, Dudley,
1925, reconstructed at the Black Country Living Museum, Dudley.
The council estates built as a consequence of slum clearance
projects in the 1930s saw standards of accommodation drop with the
building of more non-parlour houses. If the creation of the council
estates was in part, a Utopian vision to create a healthy, pleasant
home environment for ordinary people, the economies imposed on
the quality of the houses resulted heavy criticism of the monotony of
the architecture and the setting. By the mid-1930s some large
authorities, including the London County Council, Liverpool,
Manchester and Leeds turned instead to the building of council flats.
By the late 1920s, the flat movement was beginning to gain strong
support from architects of the Modern Movement who were inspired
by the large workmens flats built in Vienna in the 1920s. Gradually
the idea of living in multi-storey accommodation began to gain
acceptance and in London, flat building exceeded cottage building for
the first time in 1936.
By 1939, 1.1 million council houses had been built but this figure was
outstripped by the 2.8 million middle class homes built by speculative
builders from 1923 when private house building resumed after the
war. The rate of building increased in the early thirties reaching a
peak in 1936 when 370,000 houses were completed. The
commonest house type was the three bedroom semi-detached house
although developments often included detached houses and
bungalows.
The bungalow came into its own between the wars. Whilst some
were built in pairs, the detached bungalow was common and this
provided an affordable way of achieving the goal of living in a
detached home. They were also claimed to be less expensive to
furnish and cheaper to run than a conventional house. There were

also bungalows with a bedroom or two in the roof lit by a dormer

window in the roof. Like the council house, the typical privately built
semi adopted a rectangular plan with a small kitchen often called a
kitchenette within the main block. A serving hatch was another
innovation of the time, linking the kitchen with the dining room whilst
the latter usually had French windows opening to the back garden.
Occasionally the kitchen was located in a rear extension but this was
always of one floor. Generally the houses were low and wide and of
just one storey the first floor containing three bedrooms and
bathroom with the W.C. often located in a separate room. Introduced
from the United States in the late twenties, coloured bathroom suites
became popular in the 1930s finished in a range of colours including
pink, green, and primrose yellow and for the avant-garde, black.

9 Between the Wars, 1918-1939 - Part Two

The overriding style of the typical thirties semi was retrospective
borrowing heavily from traditional vernacular motifs. Today it is
frequently described as Tudorbethan or Tudoresque but at the time
it was much derided by architectural critics. In 1938, Osbert
Lancaster(1908-86) wrote of the By-pass Variegated house and
condemned the infernal amalgam of past styles so commonly seen.
The dominant feature was the front bay usually of two stories
which was surmounted by a large prominent gable typically dressed
with barge boards and fake timber framing in imitation of sixteenth
and seventeenth century vernacular housing.
The bays were variously square edged or set at an angle (canted).
Curved bays were also popular either tucked under deep projecting
eaves or surmounted by a projecting gable supported from below by
open timber brackets. An oriel window was commonly used for the
small third bedroom over the front door whilst halls and landings were
well lit by small widows on the ground floor variously shaped
square, round or diamond and long vertical windows over the stairs.
Breaking with some two hundred years of formal architectural
practice, the sash window was abandoned in favour of casement
windows with top hung upper lights in stout timber frames.
The casements were typically painted cream contrasting with frames
painted a darker colour such as mid-green or chocolate brown. There
was another window in the front door: these were variously round,
square, square with a wavy arched top or commonly of a horizontal
oval (with a drip rail above) and arranged over long vertical panels.
There were usually long vertical glazed panels either side of the door
and the whole ensemble was commonly placed in a large, round
arched, open porch and this, along with the timbered gable and bay
window, forms one of the most recognisable stylistic components of a
privately built thirties house. Many of the windows were decorated
with leaded lights and stained glass which was usually combined with
wavy or rippled glass. Much 1930s stained glass was in the modern
style, relying on bold splashes of colour in geometric lead work: a
popular design consisting of long rays of contrasting coloured glass
spreading outwards from a small rising sun of red or yellow glass
although a Tudor galleon tossed on stormy seas was another widely

found motif which, of course, struck a more traditional note. From the
general run of the Tudorbethan house, a few were given a pseudoGothic finish by substituting an embattled parapet for the usual gable.
So, there was extraordinary variety to privately built inter-war housing
not only from one development to the next - but very often in the
same road as builders deliberately widened the choice of houses
available for sale. And yet, apart from the few houses finished in local
stone, it is impossible to attribute any regional pattern to any of these
styles.
The timber framing of the typical thirties semi had no structural
function. Most houses were built of brick and notwithstanding a few
well publicised exceptions the quality of construction was excellent.
This was the period when cavity wall construction became standard
and walls in stretcher bond laid with Portland cement in place of
traditional lime mortar. But these were no glory days for the humble
brick. The days of the locally handmade brick which gave such
character and charm to Georgian and Victorian houses were
replaced by mass produced bricks such as the harsh, pinkish Fletton.
Large expanses of brick were frowned upon so first floors were often
rendered or covered in pebble dash - that is, pea shingle which was
thrown against the final render coat. Alternatively, the shingle was
mixed in with the render to create rough cast. Some houses were
covered entirely in pebble dash which arguably looked as harsh as
the red brick underneath. However, brick could be used decoratively
to help create the retrospective character of the thirties house with
brick nogging that is, brick infill in a timber frame.
Alternatively, the bays were clad in tile hanging, another vernacular
tradition. The roofs were usually of hipped construction although in
the late 1930s, inspired by Hollywood, green tiles enjoyed some
popularity. Recalling the work of Voysey, some roof gables swept
down to ground level with a mass of Tudor style black and white
timber framing to contain the porch.
Whilst the typical interwar middle class house was smaller than its Edwardian and Victorian
forbears and its exterior styling often looked backwards, many aspects of the interior design
reflected contemporary needs. Fewer middle class employed servants so the house was
designed to be labour saving. Whilst the earliest council houses were usually lit by gas and
built with solid fuel ranges, virtually all privately built housing was supplied with electricity
from new. Interior fittings such as the all-tiled fireplaces and interior joinery were largely free
of relief ornamentation which could harbour dust. Reflecting the rapid increase in car
ownership in the 1930s, some houses were built with a garage to the side; typically these
had roofs and wooden doors with glazed upper panels which complemented the main
facade.
10 Between the Wars, 1918-1939 - Part Three
The cosy semi-rural world of the Tudoresque villa was rudely shattered by a challenge from
the aggressive, uncompromising Modern Movement. This was a European reaction to
traditional styles which emerged in the 1920s, led by architects such as Le Corbusier (18871965), Walter Gropius (1883-1969) and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, (1886-1969). They
rejected historical styles and any architectural decoration or whimsy. Ornament of any kind
was to be banished as architecture searched for a purity and simplicity of design based on
sheer functionalism. In achieving this traditional building techniques were abandoned in
favour of reinforced concrete which enabled the architect to break all conventions of design.
Cantilevered upper floors, large picture windows and flat roofs and the whole finished in

stark white were the hall marks of the movement.

Some striking houses were built in the style such as High and
Over (right) in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, designed by the New
Zealand architect, Amyas Connell (1901-80). Completed in 1929 and
followed by several similar houses, High and Over received critical
acclaim from within the architectural profession but never caught the
popular imagination.
The Modern Movement never suited the British psyche or the
weather: it was seen as too impersonal and large areas of glass were
either to hot or too cold for the English climate. Nevertheless, a few
middle class apartment blocks around greater London were built in
the Modern Style and some elements were applied to houses of
conventional construction. To John Betjeman these were not
modern, only jazz, with their flat, green tiled roofs, white rendered
walls and wide metal windows which curved around corners (right).
These, the so called suntrap windows have given their name to this
distinctive house type. The Suntrap house, however, never
represented more than a minor footnote in the history of thirties
suburbia, always something of a curiosity and ultimately, signifying
the failure of the Modern Movement to win widespread acceptance
before 1939.
11 Post-War Housing, 1945-1960s - Introduction
Another world war and another cessation in house building brought
another watershed in British house design. House building slowed to
a virtual standstill between 1939 and 1945. At the end of the war,
slums remained a problem in many large towns and cities and
through enemy action 475,000 houses had been destroyed or made
uninhabitable. In many towns and cities, temporary accommodation
was provided by pre-fabricated houses. Altogether 156,000 prefabs
were assembled using innovative materials such as steel and
aluminiumand proved a successful and popular house type. Although
many well outlived their life expectancy, pre-fabs were only ever
intended as a temporary measure and for the new post-war
government the provision of new council housing was a top priority.
Local authority house building resumed in 1946 and of the 2.5 million
new houses and flats built up to 1957, 75% were local authority
owned.
The building of council houses in the post war era was shaped by a
new approach to town planning enshrined in the Greater London
Plan of 1944 - a blue print for post-war reconstruction by Professor
Patrick Abercrombie (1879-1957). Out of this came the idea of
neighbourhood units and the new town movement which revived the
idea of the garden city which had been lost in the building of the interwar council estates. In 1945 a New Towns Committee created

government-sponsored corporations which were given power to

acquire land within a defined, designated area, to establish new
towns and the New Towns Act passed the following year provided the
government with the power to implement these plans. The result was
the creation of twenty two new towns between 1946 and 1972, many
serving as satellite towns to Greater London.
The creation of new local authority estates and the new towns took place in a mood of
optimism where Modernist architects were given the opportunity to demonstrate that their
rational, planned architecture would create a bright new, Utopian world of clean, functional
towns. Post-war house construction was also shaped by two housing reports: the Dudley
Report of 1944 and the Parker Morris report, Homes for Today and Tomorrow published in
1961. The post-war era also saw a sharp rise in property owning, rising from 26% of all
householders in England and Wales in 1945 to 49% by 1970. In this period the gap between
standards of housing between professional and manual workers narrowed and increasingly
there was growing conformity between private and public house types in terms of space and
amenities. Bungalows remained popular in the private sector: they came to typify post war
suburbia in dormitory areas like the Wirral and in many coastal developments. Stylistically,
there were still differences between the public and privately built houses. Inevitably, greater
variety of styles and types of dwelling were to be found in private developments and now,
some forty years on, houses of the 1950s and 1960s are beginning to acquire a period
character of their own.
The post-war estate layout was founded on the principle of the neighbourhood unit a
planning concept which promoted the development of self-contained communities. As a
reaction to the social homogeneity and physical monotony of the typical pre-war council
estate the neighbourhood unit was intended to incorporate a wider social mix and a greater
variety of house types. It was hoped that the neighbourhood units would foster, a cooperative spirit between the social classes...to overcome the social and civic difficulties from
which the large city suffers. Some neighbourhood units were built phoenix-like out of the
slums they replaced as part of urban regeneration schemes, whilst others like many prewar council estates - were built on new green-field sites on the edges of towns.
A greater variety of house types typified the neighbourhood unit and
included blocks and flats as well as the three bedroom semidetached house. Some houses were made of conventional brick
construction but to reduce building costs, others were made of nontraditional methods of construction such as precast reinforced
concrete. These were available as propriety brands such as the
Cornish, Unity, Woolaway and Reema - developed and marketed
by different builders. Largely made from concrete panels reinforced
with steel and either bolted together or made constructed with a steel
frame. The design of the houses was generally plainer and simpler,
roofs were pitched lower. Through the recommendations contained in
the Dudley Report, post-war council houses were provided with more
space and better services including better storage facilities. In some
of the new towns and council estates built in the 1950s a new type of
house layout known as the Radburn layout was introduced which
aimed to separate vehicular and pedestrian access. The orthodox
street frontage was abandoned in favour of the use of road access by
cul de sacs with access to the front door by a pedestrian foot path
across a small open grassed areas with no obvious boundaries
between individual properties.
12 Post-War Housing, 1945-1960s - Flats

The 1950s witnessed a decline in the traditional semi and a rise in

the numbers of flats and maisonettes built by local authorities. Blocks
of flats or maisonettes were either low often being four stories high
in a variety of shapes, such as T-blocks, Y-blocks and cruciform
blocks - or point blocks, that is, tall buildings standing alone from
their surroundings. The first high rise block was the ten storey block,
The Lawn at Harlow, Essex, designed by Frederick Gibberd (190884) and completed in 1951. The building of blocks of five or more
stories accounted for just 9% of local authority building between
1953 and 1959 but increased in the early 1960s to reach a peak of
26% in 1966. High rise flats represented an architectural ideal of
architects and planners who had come under the influence of the
Modern Movement and pioneers such as Le Corbusier and Walter
Gropius in the 1930s.
The high density, vertical city was to replace the outward expansion
of the conventional city which threatened the surrounding
countryside. By the mid-1950s government policy to extend green
belt nationwide and a new subsidy arrangement by which for the first
time grants increased with blocks of more than six stories led to the
adoption of tall point blocks of up to twenty two storeys in Sheffield
and Salford. In Glasgow and London some exceeded thirty stories:
Trellick Tower, North Kensington, designed by Ern Goldfinger
(1902-87) and completed in 1972 has thirty one stories containing
217 flats and is ninety eight metres (322 ft) tall.
More information on high rise housing can be found in the System
Building Topic (from Home Page)
Another key aspect of the tower block vision was the Brutalist style
of architecture. The name came from the Fench, beton brut or raw
concrete - and was coined by the British architects, Alison Smithson
(1928-93) and Peter Smithson (1923-2003) in 1954. The Brutalists
favoured stark and striking tower blocks with large sections of
exposed concrete. Concrete was an integral part of the tower block
design. It offered boundless flexibility to the building designers, it was
economical it could be poured on site and, moreover, it was
believed to be long-lasting, if not indestructible. Brutalist architecture
relied for its visual impact effect on sheer mass and large expanses
of rough, grey concrete. Structural honesty and functionalism, in line
with Le Corbusiers original philosophy of the 1920s, guided the
Brutalist architects. Where decoration was found, it usually consisted
of sections of wall filled with abstract designs in tiles, random
stonework or coloured plastics but the overall visual effect of a typical
block was created by the seemingly endless repetition of the
individual dwelling marked by their large picture windows and
shallow balconies. Some towers were linked by flying corridors to
service blocks containing laundries or, as at Trellick Tower (right), to
a separate full height tower containing the lifts and services.
Cumbernauld, a new town in Lanarkshire begun in 1955 was built as
a Corbusian concrete utopia and in Sheffield, Park Hill, a massive
Brutalist concrete structure built on a hill overlooking the centre of
the city was intended to signal the rejuvenation of the town and
provide quality homes in a deprived area. Built in 1961, Park Hill was
designed by two young Modernist architects, Ivor Smith and Jack

Lynn. It consisted of huge snake-like blocks containing 995

dwellings, housing over two thousand people. The front door of each
apartment opened onto a twelve-feet wide access deck or 'street' which ran from one side of the complex to the other. Bridges carried
the street through the entire scheme enabling milk floats to pass
from door to door. The architects were keen to preserve a sense of
community and as the lobby space in other Modernist blocks tended
to become a no-man's land, serving neither public needs nor offering
privacy to residents, it was hoped that the 'streets' would solve this
problem whilst preserving something of the atmosphere of traditional
street life. So that the residents' individuality would not be smothered
by the gargantuan surroundings, different coloured linoleum was laid
at each doorstep. But attempts to create a sense of community
within the bleak, concrete environment of large, concrete blocks
failed and developments such as Cumbernauld New Town and Park
Hill came to be almost universally loathed. Mounting criticism of their
social and visual short comings and the structural failure of Ronan
Point a twenty three-storied prefabricated concrete tower block in
Newham, London in 1968 caused a strong reaction against the
building of more high-rise blocks. After 1970, the concrete tower
block was no longer seen as a workable model for urban
regeneration although several blocks including The Lawn, Trellick
Tower and the Park Hill complex have been given listed status by
English Heritage.
13 Post-War Housing, 1960s Low Rise
The Parker Morris report of 1961 recommended standards for all new homes, public and
private which reflected changing patterns of living with more informality in the way space in
the house was used. The main recommendations were for more living and circulation space
and better heating throughout the house so that all spaces could be used freely. The idea of
a parlour set aside for best was abandoned in favour of two living spaces, one for private or
quiet activity and the other for eating although the latter could be part of an enlarged kitchen.
The kitchen was to be extensively fitted and provided with plenty of space for storage and
the use of electric domestic appliances, such as washing machines and refrigerators. These
recommendations were made mandatory for public sector housing in 1967 and briefly for
local authority housing in 1969 and although they were never made mandatory for private
housing their influence was widely felt.
In the private sector there was a marked trend towards a growth in
the size of operations with large building firms such as Taylor
Woodrow, Laing and Wimpey using architects to bring high standards
of construction and design to the privately built post-war house.
Typical features of the plan included garages linked or integrated with
the main house covered but open fronted parking spaces were
marketed as car-ports; some halls were spacious and well lit with
low horizontal or long vertical windows and overlooked by gallery
landings. Other features of the interior included L-shaped open living
areas with space for dining area at one end and opening through
french windows to a paved sitting-out area, the patio; a downstairs
W.C or small study was often incorporated in the downstairs plan. In
keeping with the Parker Morris report, some kitchens contained a
dining space so that they became family rooms whilst there was
much emphasis on the luxury fitted kitchen with a stainless steel sink
and work tops.

Exterior styling varied but there were, nevertheless, common

characteristics which give sixties housing an identity of its own. Plain,
flat wall surfaces with large oblong picture windows were typical.
The windows usually had robust wooden frames with opening top
lights. Front doors were usually glazed in small glazed panels,
usually with rippled glass whilst the woodwork was painted a light
colour: white, pale sky blue or primrose yellow were popular. Some
roofs were flat but the typical sixties house has a low pitched roof
with an end gable finished with a prominent but unadorned barge
board painted white. Roof tiles were generally of brown or grey
concrete and although red brick walls were found on 1960s housing,
light brown, grey or buff coloured bricks were widely favoured.
Claddings of tiles (usually of concrete), white painted boarding
applied between the ground and first windows typified the 1960s
house and continued to be popular into the 1970s.
The external design of some houses took their inspiration from Scandinavian models and
these are instantly recognisable for their steeply pitched roof - gable to the front - filled with
vertical timbers and sweeping almost to the ground. The same effect was often continued
inside with pine panelled kitchens and timbered ceilings. Also popular in the 1960s were
neo-Georgian style characterised by red brick walls, pedimented porches, small paned
windows and fake louvered shutters. A larger style was sometimes called the Colonial with
double garages under a colonnaded facade incorporating bow windows and concrete urns.
For the first time in five hundred years the roof line of many new houses was unbroken by
chimney stacks. From the early sixties, following the recommendations of the Parker Morris
report houses most new houses were built new with full or partial central heating; moreover,
the use of open coal fires had declined since the passing of the Clean Air Act in 1956. Some
houses retained an open fireplace as a feature with a prominent end gable flue sometimes
built or at least clad - in stone to add character to the house whilst in the living room, the
fireplace opening was surrounded in stonework: In the later 1960s, Cotswold stone
fireplaces became popular, regardless of the underlying local geology. The grate often
contained a back boiler capable of heating two or three radiators and a towel rail although
after 1960 oil fired central heating systems were widely adopted. Comfort, convenience and
efficiency in the utilisation of space and the consumption of energy - were now established
as the chief factors shaping the future of urban house design.