SUBURBAN DEVELOPMENTS 



313 



FIG. 227. From a House, No. 282 Kennington Park Road, London. 



With the improved methods of road making which were 

 adopted at the end of the eighteenth century, there came greater 

 inducements for citizens to retire to the suburbs of London after 

 finishing their labours in town. Probably no great city had such 

 beautiful suburbs as those which surrounded London a hundred 

 years ago. They were full of fine trees embowering large houses 

 which stood in their own spacious grounds. But year by year 

 these remains of the past are disappearing, and their sites are 

 being covered with dwellings of a humbler kind, towards which 

 an immense population gravitates every evening. Yet in spite of 

 these changes there still remain, along most of the great roads 

 which lead out of London, houses of moderate size dating back 

 to some period of the eighteenth century or the early years of 

 the nineteenth. 



During the eighteenth century, especially as it grew older, 

 the play of fancy which marks the work of earlier times 

 diminished more and more. Consequently less interest attaches 

 to particular features than was the case in the days of Elizabeth, 

 James, and the Charleses. Chimneys and parapets had but 

 slight variety, and so also the windows, for the sash-window 

 has very little elasticity compared with the mullioned. Bay- 



