CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT 



THE HOLIDAY HOUSE 



HE term holiday house is here used to include all those 

 dwellings which are adapted to life in the country or at the 

 seaside during a holiday, when the formal routine and con- 

 ventionalities which have to some extent dictated the plan 

 of the permanent home are set aside for a freer and less 

 restricted existence. The possession of a little holiday house in some 

 favourite summer resort has many advantages, especially for those who 

 do not wish to occupy it during the popular period, when it may be let. 

 A house for this purpose should be as compact and simple as possible. 

 Its windows should all be provided with solid shutters, so that it cannot 

 be easily damaged when unoccupied. Its furniture should also be of the 

 simplest kind, without carpets, curtains, and other unnecessary fabrics, so 

 that even the most ruthless tenant of the furnished house will be unable to 

 injure it. 



Such a house should contain one large sitting-room, as well as four or 

 five bedrooms, bathroom, and the usual kitchen premises, reduced to their 

 simplest form, while a verandah or garden-room is an important feature in 

 the holiday house. 



In the general scheme of the house and its decoration, a wider scope for 

 fancy is admissible in a dwelling only occasionally occupied, which should 

 be adorned in a holiday mood. The general characteristics of the exterior 

 should be governed by locality, and here the seaside house demands a special 

 treatment, widely differing from that of the country cottage set among trees, 

 and local traditions of building should in all cases be carefully considered, so 

 that it does not appear as an importation of the town into the country. 

 There is something essentially illogical in following the common practice of 

 choosing some country site for its beauty, and then deliberately defacing that 

 beauty by the erection of a cockney villa, which calls itself a cottage ; or 

 perhaps constructing there one of those galvanised iron " artistic bungalows," 

 lined with match-boarding, as per catalogue. One finds these charming 

 structures gravely discussed in magazine articles. For a few pounds extra 

 a barge-board or a finial are added as an artistic finish, or aesthetic quality is 

 imparted by " breaking the line of the ridge." Or, again, one is shown how a 

 dwelling may be made out of three railway carriages, and various schemes are 

 illustrated for enlarging and disfiguring old country cottages. Mr. So-and-So 

 has constructed a tin bungalow of horrible aspect in the sacred solitudes of 

 the New Forest, for 230 js. 6d., and when he can afford another pound or 

 two, he will probably make the recognised concessions to the claims of art 

 involved in the addition of finials perhaps to the roof. And yet it is so easy 

 to construct the simplest kind of dwelling without offence to the artistic 

 sense, and the best course is to follow the local customs of the district, to 

 employ local labour and local materials. In many parts of the country 

 tarred weather-boarding, with roofs of pantile or thatch, are used for farm 

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