372 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



exercised by persons having for the most part an interest in urbanizing 

 the district — jobbers in residential land ripe for development, trades- 

 men, contractors and local builders — have been used as an instrument 

 to prevent the erection of dwellings suitable for agricultural laborers 

 and to tie the hands of landowners willing to provide such dwellings. 

 JSTo better example of this can be adduced than Mr. Wilfred Blunt's 

 own case. Having himself experimented with an iron bungalow which 

 he found singularly comfortable and commodious, he directed his 

 estate carpenter to erect on his property in the New Forest where there 

 are no builders' by-laws, two cottages, intending should they prove 

 successful to make them the model for cottage building in Sussex. 

 And highly successful they proved. He found they could be erected 

 at the cost of £130 for a building covering 700 feet area, with a 

 verandah of 240 feet more and an outbuilding containing washhouse 

 and closets — " as snug and sanitary a home as any poor man could 

 wish to inhabit, for there was a fireplace in every room, roof ventila- 

 tion and ample door and window space." 



But when Mr. Wilfred Blunt came to Sussex, where the London 

 building by-laws are in force, there was a lion, and a very fierce lion, 

 in the path. The plan of a cottage was submitted to the rural council 

 and no objection was taken to it until the building materials had been 

 deposited on the ground. Then, however, notice was given that the 

 plan was disapproved by the council as violating the by-law. This 

 notice, Mr. Wilfred Blunt thought it his duty to disregard, and went 

 on with the cottage, which cost £130, and which, with an additional 

 quarter of an acre of land, he could let without loss at 2s. 6d. a week 

 or Is. a week less than an old cottage it replaced. But alas for rural 

 economy ! The builder was summoned for building with other than 

 bricks and mortar, and an action was brought against Mr. Wilfred 

 Blunt, as a result of which a continuing penalty of two shillings a day 

 was inflicted on him until the model cottage was pulled down. 



It is clear that a check must be administered to rustic Bumbledom, 

 and a stop put to the application to purely agricultural areas of regula- 

 tions intended for towns, and which in towns have had an altogether 

 salutary effect in preventing the construction of unsafe and insanitary 

 houses. But I can not go as far as some who have urged that there 

 should be no by-laws in country districts, or that such by-laws should 

 not apply to any new building on a freehold property where such build- 

 ing is more than a given number of yards from other dwellings or past 

 the property of adjacent owners. In regard to sanitary arrangements, 

 by-laws seem to us as necessary in the country as in the town. It is 

 not licence, but reasonable liberty that is wanted; not looseness, but 

 elasticity, and it is to be hoped that this will be realized in the model 

 code of by-laws for rural districts promised by Mr. Walter Long, and 



