HOUSES AND GARDENS 



picturesqueness appears to be the outcome of practical requirements, rather 



than a quality pursued for its own sake. 



In the consideration of house plans there is a tendency to consider only 

 seriously the large house on the one hand and the labourer's cottage on the 

 other ; but, as I have already pointed out, the house which the average citizen 

 requires has hardly met with the attention it deserves, while its plan is the 

 outcome of a tradition which belongs essentially to the large house. The 

 study of house planning, it is contended, may best be approached by con- 

 sidering the central type of plan required for the ordinary type of house, and 

 showing how this may be expanded into the larger house and contracted if 

 need be to its minimum dimensions. It is suggested that the hall as the 

 central focus of the house would, in most cases, persist through the whole 

 scale from cottage to mansion, and that changes in plan will chiefly consist 

 in the modification of subsidiary apartments, the rooms required for the 

 various members of the family, the guests and the servants. The family 

 group, consisting of the parents and children, will demand for its 

 members, besides the necessary bedrooms, &c., private sitting-room for 

 master, mistress and children, while the accommodation for servants and 

 visitors will vary in direct ratio to the size of the house. A reduction in 

 size from a central type of plan will involve the elimination of separate 

 private family rooms, in which case it is desirable that the bedrooms in some 

 cases should be specially adapted for use as bed-sitting-rooms. 



As the house expands in size, and includes the almost continuous 

 presence of guests, the central hall with its adjoining rooms become more 

 public in their character, so that separate suites of rooms may be required 

 for family and guests, while the servants' quarters become correspondingly 

 increased and subdivided. These large houses, however, are not possible 

 for the average man ; and these and the labourer's cottage represent the 

 extremes of a scale of building of which the central type is the house of 

 average size for more than which few should seek, and which it should be 

 the triumph of the architect to make as perfect as restricted conditions 

 may admit. 



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