THE HOUSE AND ITS EQUIPMENT. 



DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE OF TO-DAY 



The New Renaissance 



of English House-building The Smzllish House Arts iinl Crafts Mt)\ cm&amp;lt;*nt 

 (itirdcn Design Relations &amp;lt;&amp;gt;j Architect and ( lien/. 



THE history ol the English race is very clearly written in its domestic architecture. \Ye arc a 

 home-loving people, and from the earliest settled times \ve have given serious attention to the 

 art ol house-building. Well into the last century our traditions were practically unbroken, 

 and it is possible to date without much difficulty every house that was built up to that tune, 

 and to trace from their houses the changes and developments in the in inner of lile of the people 

 who lived in them. These changes were slow and leisurely, as became a quiet and naturally rather 

 conservative people. Railways, more than anything else, killed this traditional art, but there were, of 

 course, many other contributory causes. The nineteenth century began an era of change in the outlook 

 and the modi ol lile of the whole country. Communities which from time immemorial had lived remote 

 Irom the greater centres of activity, content in their seclusion, suddenly found themselves caught in the 

 stream of modern 

 developments, a n d 

 t h e i r pleasant, 

 uneventful existence 

 r u d e 1 y i n v a d e d . 

 1 lome industries 

 \\cre transplanted to 

 l.ictories. a n d t h e 

 .raftsman h a d t o 

 .:ivc way to the 

 mechanic. I t w a s 

 exciting, but no sort 

 of time for the 

 further development 

 of traditional archi 

 tecture. In the 

 sixties and seventies 

 we bewail to set lie 

 down attain, but by 

 that time traditional 

 a re h i t e c t u r e was 

 practically dead. 



This is very 

 rough-and-ready his 

 tory, but it is near 

 e n o u g h for t h e 

 purpose of dating 

 with more or less 



accuracy the renaissance of English domestic architecture. The pioneers of this renaissance 

 Norman Shaw, Nestield, Philip Webb, Devey and some few others each picked up the thread of traditional 

 design arbitrarily and gave to his buildings a personal character, so that their designs, although based on 

 old work, were in no sense mere copies ; they aimed at catching the spirit of the old building rather than 

 at the literal reproduction of any defined style. This was the starting-point of the great development 

 that has taken place in domestic architecture during the last forty years. Circumstances were favourable. 

 The great commercial activity of the period produced almost a new class men who from small beginnings 

 had made large fortunes and were fired with an ambition to &quot; found a family.&quot; Their first step towards 

 this object was to buy land and build a house. Since that time to the present day almost every note in 

 the possible scale of house design has been struck. We were asked forty years ago to invent a new style, 

 and we have invented a dozen. We, have had houses recalling the buildings of the seventeenth and 



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I. -&quot; THK SMALLISH HOTS! 



