HOUSES AND GARDENS 



it would be put whether the cottager would find it a handy place for 

 storing potatoes, for instance, or whether, as in an actual instance, the visitor 

 would find its dusty interior embellished by a slipper and an orange. If a 

 bathroom is introduced it should not be on the upper floor, unless connected 

 with a hot-water system arranged in connection with the kitchen fire. It is 

 better on the ground-floor, because, while it is easy to come downstairs it is 

 difficult and laborious to carry water upstairs to the bath. 



The best arrangement for the bath is, then, adjoining the scullery, so 

 arranged as to levels that the water heated in the boiler can be drawn off by 

 a tap placed directly over the bath. Both on account of the limited supply 

 of hot water as well as to economise space, the bath should not be five 

 or six feet long, but modelled on the sensible American bath-tub, which 

 allows of complete immersion with a limited water-supply. 



Where there is no hot-water system it is doubtful whether there is any- 

 thing to be gained by making the bath a fixture. It is much better to give 

 the cottager the option of where ablutions shall be performed, and in cold 

 weather in the case of the children, at any rate, the tub in front of the 

 kitchen fire can hardly be improved on. A few cottage plans are illustrated. 

 In those in which the cottages are shown as terraces, separate washhouses, earth- 

 closets and coal-sheds would be provided besides the accommodation shown 

 in the plan the washhouses being common to two or more of the cottages. 



The more advanced type of cottage plan the parlour cottage, as it may 

 be called is represented by the plan of the lodge at Falke Wood, and the pair 

 of cottages illustrated under the title of Elmwood Cottages.* 



In these the small parlour is so arranged that, divided from the living- 

 room by a wide doorway, it represents a recess in the house-place. 



Here, as in Boffin's Bower, the cottage housewife, who, like Mrs. Boffin, 

 wished to indulge in a higher flight, might define the elegances of the house- 

 hold by a chalk-line on the floor as Mrs. Boffin did. 



Crossing that frontier the more material male would tread with mincing 

 footsteps speak with bated breath ; and there on a Sunday the family would 

 assemble, and find perhaps a welcome relief from the workaday associations 

 of the kitchen. The district visitor and all those charitable and well- 

 meaning persons who have so little respect for the privacy of the cottager 

 would here be entertained in a portion of the house-place, which, while not 

 so entirely isolated and self-contained as the usual musty and ill-ventilated 

 cottage parlour is, would yet be sufficiently screened from the kitchen itself. 



In the kitchen the treatment of the range gives it something of the 

 broad and inviting character of the ingle and Jess of the repellent and 

 unhomely appearance of the modern utilitarian cooking-machine. As of 

 old pots hang suspended over the open fire, while broad hobs on each side 



* Since writing the above these cottages have been realised at the Letchworth Garden City, 

 where they were entered as No. 65 in the exhibition of cheap cottages. 



They were designed as a protest against the merely utilitarian ideals of modern building 

 generally, and the cottage exhibition in particular, and attempted to show how the beauty of the 

 old cottage it not incompatible with modern requirements. 

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