The dignified terrace

click photo to enlarge

Between about 1725 and 1735 the building speculator, John Simmons, erected a row of seven houses along the east side of Grosvenor Square, London. They were designed in such a way that the central house was larger than the others with a pediment and rusticated quoins. The house at each end of the row was also emphasised, but to a lesser extent. The result was that the terrace looked like a single, large and expensive building. This idea was then developed by the builder/architect, Edward Shepeard, on the north side of the square. His row of houses had the appearance of a fashionable, Palladian villa. At the same time, in Bath, John Wood the Elder (1704-1754) surpassed these efforts with a grand design on the north side of Queen Square. It too had a central pediment, but also a rusticated ground floor, a piano nobile emphasised by Corinthian pilasters, and embellished end blocks. It looked every bit the grand Palladian house of the sort that was appearing on country estates throughout the British Isles. This idea was expanded by Wood, his son and other architects with fine crescents and circuses, and soon such developments - long facades composed as a piece but actually subdivided into a row of dwellings - were appearing all over the country. The basic idea had been taken from Italian Renaissance designs, but these British architects made it very much their own.

Though buildings composed in this way were generally associated with prestigious developments such as those found in the London squares, humbler efforts began to appear too. In fact, as the grand terrace was adapted to a less wealthy clientele, the utilitarian, working- and middle-class terrace was often elevated to the point where the trajectories of the two forms met. I came across one such example a while ago in Long Sutton, Lincolnshire. The terrace of four houses at 22-28 Market Street were built around 1820. The composition is symmetrical with the carriage archway marking the centre point. Four arched doorways indicate the four dwellings, and it is quite obvious which windows belong to which house, with the exception of those over the central arch. Presumably the dwellings to the left and right of this are slightly larger than those at each end: the possession of four first storey windows and an extra dormer window compared with the three of the others proclaim this. Looking at the chimneys it appears that each property has a full stack and half a stack, though the leftmost gable stack has been removed.

This facade is very much a, later, middling cost, provincial essay in the terrace as a single composition. It lacks the grandeur of the examples cited above, and there is a certain awkwardness to its proportions. The first floor windows seem too squashed together to me and I'd like to see the outer doors not quite so close to the edge of the facade. In fact, I'm surprised that the main elevation wasn't visually "closed" by pilasters on the extreme left and right. It's a device that was popular at this time, is evident on a few buildings in the street (see smaller photograph), and would help here. The panelling of the doors themselves is very odd, not to say clumsy, as is their rather skimped surrounds and the inelegant fanlights above. And yet I can't help but feel that though the terrace is the work of a builder rather than an architect, the row does have a certain style, presence and interest that adds a slightly decayed, artisan grace to the street in which it stands.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The appeal of Regency buildings

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I like Georgian buildings. In Lincolnshire they are relatively common and their good sense, fine proportions, and the way they fit comfortably into a streetscape or the countryside is always a pleasure to behold. I'm more choosy about Victorian buildings. The innovation for innovation's sake is sometimes fun but other times wearisome. The heaviness of a lot of the buildings and details can jar. As can the machine-like details of stonework, terracotta etc. However, when a Victorian architect is on song the muscular vigour of a building can be very winning.

In English architectural history there is a short period between the Georgian and Victorian ages, the Regency, that is longer than the period from 1811-1820 when the Prince Regent ruled in place of his unfit father, George III. In terms of building style it is usually thought of as spanning the years from about 1800 until around 1830. The characteristics of the fashionable buildings of those years owes more to Georgian architecture than the Victorian that followed but clearly differs and is very easily spotted once your eye has learnt what to look for.

"Elegant" is the word that, for me, best describes Regency buildings, especially town houses. They have a spare, stripped, light look where fine details contrast with smooth, blank (often light coloured) areas. Doors and windows that are round-topped are common, and often these are set into a larger, recessed round-topped blank arch. Shutters were fashionable and still remain on many buildings. Balconies with delicate iron-work railings can often be seen at first-floor windows. The Georgian tradition of the size of window indicating the importance of the rooms behind continues, and the top of the buildings are usually "closed" with smaller windows. Flat columnar pilasters frequently divide or frame building facades, though the simplified "capitals" that surmount them would be as foreign to a Georgian architect as they would be to one from ancient Greece or Rome. Tall, shallow, bow-fronted bays are a fairly sure sign of a Regency building, as are strongly projecting eaves on long brackets. There is a great emphasis on the main facade at the expense of the back of the building, though that is a feature of most Georgian and Victorian town houses too.

Many of these characteristics can be seen in Rutland Terrace in Stamford, Lincolnshire (above and yesterday's post), and those that don't can be found in the buildings of this period elsewhere in the town. My criticisms in the previous post of the builders' changes across the whole facade during the years in which they built the terrace notwithstanding, I do like much that is on offer here. There are certainly many worse solutions to relatively high density urban living.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 120mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Speculators and Rutland Terrace

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In theory there's nothing wrong with the idea of speculatively built private housing. The notion that someone puts up the money, has houses built, then advertises and sells them to members at the public for a profit has much to commend it, and most new housing does follow this model. However, in practice - and I speak only of the UK here - it can leave much to be desired.

The danger, as I see it, is that the pursuit of profit leads the speculator to produce housing that is sub-standard in materials and design, and aesthetically banal or just downright bad. It's not difficult to find examples that display one or more, and sometimes all, of these features. In fact, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) last year called much new UK housing "shameful shoebox homes" because they are simply too small for people to live in comfortably, and lack the space to hold both people and the furnishings and possessions that are common today. That's not to say that all housing is bad, there is plenty that is well-built, commodious and looks good. However, too much is none of these things. When you look back at the history of housing you find that speculative building often resulted in this mix of good and bad, with bad being far too common. New, low-cost, privately built housing was so bad in the early years of the twentieth century that in 1919 parliament passed the Housing, Town Planning, &c. Act, a provision of which required local authorities to build housing. This they did, usually to a higher standard than the private sector, showing what could and should be achieved with limited funds.

I was reflecting on this when I was photographing Rutland Terrace in Stamford, Lincolnshire, recently. This row of twenty houses was speculatively built for a relatively wealthy clientele between 1829 and 1831, during the period that architectural historians refer to as the Regency. (In architecture the period extends to the onset of Queen Victoria's reign). What struck me was that the builder(s) started at the east and created a white stucco facade with a balcony at each first floor window, then built a middle section faced in Ancaster stone with a tall, covered balcony, and finally completed the western end also in stone, but with balconies that spanned the first floor windows of each property. In other words within architectural constraints - type and size of doors and windows, overall size etc - they deliberately introduced difference in the long facade. Was it whim or the following of fashion that caused this change? Whatever the reason it makes for a rather odd appearance, and is a departure from the usual co-ordinated, overall design of such terraces. In fact, it reminded me of the way builders today often construct the same house design across a site but differentiate one from the other by the colour of bricks or the shade of roof tile that they use.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 60mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/1250 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -1.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On