HOUSES AND GARDENS 



beauty is a joy for ever, but it is a saying which implies its converse that 

 an .ugly thing is a disgrace for ever and it may be noted how the com- 

 position of the word disgrace implies the shame one ought to feel in the 

 creation of an object devoid of grace. It is well that cottages should be as 

 cheap as careful and ingenious planning can make them. The time is passed 

 for those great unbroken roof-spaces or these massive chimneys like castle 

 towers which make so much for beauty in old cottages, but while in totally 

 ignoring the claims of beauty, it is an easy matter for any one to design a 

 cheap country cottage, the difficulty of the problem lies in achieving a build- 

 ing reasonable in cost, and not without that kind of beauty which will make 

 it seem at home in rural surroundings. 



It seems to be generally supposed by landowners who build cottages 

 that to be practically satisfactory they must needs be ugly, and that sanitary 

 cottages cannot possess any of those beauties which belong to old cottages 

 and farm-houses, or, if such beauties are possible, that they can only be 

 added by excessive cost. So widespread is this conviction that ugliness in build- 

 ing is generally accepted as evidence of practical qualities, of which it is held 

 to be the natural and inevitable outcome. And so the modern cottages which 

 are gradually destroying the beauty of English country, and which appear as 

 hideous ulcers on the fair face of many an ancient village, are supposed to 

 represent the inevitable result of modern progress instead of the ignorance 

 and callousness of their builders. And so the beautiful village streets, where 

 each cottage contributes its share to the whole effect, are gradually being 

 transformed into sordid slums. 



The only alternative to such ugliness of cottage building at present seems 

 to be the artistic community of model dwellings, where the earnestness and 

 reality of the ancient village is replaced by complacently picturesque semi- 

 detached cottages, which seem to constitute a sort of high-class suburbia, and 

 where all the superficial artistic features cannot compensate for the omission 

 of that real beauty which seems to be rather the unconscious outcome of 

 sound building than a quality which depends on the designing of front 

 elevations, picturesque half-timber work, and the like. 



Such buildings rarely appear as confessed cottages, but all seem to strive to 

 pose rather as little villas, and, on the whole, one seems to prefer the 

 unashamed ugliness of the average modern cottage to their shallow artistry. 

 It is, perhaps, needless to add that by the general public the modern artistic 

 community is taken at its own valuation, and its owner is content with the 

 minimum percentage on his outlay in the fond delusion that he has been 

 instrumental in producing an object-lesson in the art of cottage building. It 

 is only here and there, in isolated exceptional cases, that cottages are built 

 which are really cottages ; modest and unassuming, and without any taint of 

 the suburban villa or that underlined art which is everywhere accepted as an 

 evidence of the advance of modern architecture. 



The question of the cheap cottage has assumed such importance in recent 

 years that it seems desirable to include plans for a pair of cottages which 

 could be built in most country districts for not more than i"]$ each, and 

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