Book IV. FARM- COTTAGES. 4.57 



*2884. In regard to the construction of cottages much information may be obtained 

 from a work entitled A Series of Plans for Cottages, by J. Wood of Hath. This author 

 lays down the following seven principles as the means of obviating the inconveniences to 

 which cottages, as usually built, are liable. 



2885 The cottage should be dry and healthy. This is effected by keeping the floor sixteen or eighteen 

 inches above the natural ground ; by building it clear of banks, on an open spot of ground, that has a 

 declivity or fall from the building; by having the rooms not less than eight feet high,— a height that will 

 keep them airv and healthv ; and by avoiding having chambers in the roof. 



28Si> They should be warm, cheerful, and comfortable. In order to attain these points, the walls should 

 bo of a sufficient thickness (if of stone, not less than sixteen inches; if of brick, at least a brick and a hall ) 

 to keep out the cold of the winter, or the excessive heat of the summer. The entrance should be screened, 

 that the room, on opening the door, may not be exposed to the open air. The rooms should receive their 

 light from the east, or the south, or from any point betwixt the east and the south : for, if they receive 

 their light from the north, they will be cold and cheerless ; if from the west, they will be so heated by the 

 summer's afternoon sun, as to become comfortless to the poor labourer, after a hard day's work : whereas, 

 on the contrary, receiving the light from the east or the south, they will be always warm and cheertul. 

 So like the feelings of men in a higher sphere are those of the poor cottager, that if his habitation be warm, 

 cheerful, and comfortable, he will return to it with gladness, and abide in it with pleasure. 



2887. They should be rendered convenient, by having a porch or shed, to screen the entrance, and to hold 

 the labourer's tools ; bv having a shed to serve as a pantry, and store-place for fuel ; by having a privy for 

 cleanliness and decency's sake ; by a proper disposition of the windows, doors, and chimneys ; by having 

 the stairs, where there is an upper floor, not less than three feet wide, the rise or height not more than 

 eight inches, and the tread or breadth not less than nine inches ; and, lastly, by proportioning the size of 

 the cottage to the family that is to inhabit it : there should be one lodging-room for the parents, another 

 for the female, and a third for the male children. It is melancholy, he says, to see a man and his wife, 

 and sometimes half a dozen children, crowded together in the same room, nay, often in the same bed; the 

 horror is still heightened, and the inconveniencv increased, at the time the woman is in child-bed, or in 

 case of illness, or of death ; indeed, whilst the children are young, under nine years of age, there is not 

 that offence to decency if they sleep in the same room with their parents, or if the boys and girls sleep 

 together, but after that age they should be kept apart . 



2888 Cottages should not be more than twelve feet wide in the clear, that being the greatest width that 

 it would be prudent to venture the rafters of the roof, with the collar-pieces only, without danger of 

 spreading the walls; and, by using collar-pieces, there can be fifteen inches in height of the root thrown 

 into the upper chambers, which will render dormar. windows useless. 



28*9. Cottages should be always built in pairs, either at a little distance from one another, or close 

 adjoining, so as to appear one building, that the inhabitants may be of assistance to each other, in case of 

 sickness, or any other accident. 



2890. For cconomi/, cottages should be built strong, and with the best of materials, and these materials 

 well put together ; the mortar must be well tempered and mixed, and lime not spared ; hollow walls bring 

 on decay, and harbour vermin ; and bad sappv timber soon reduces the cottage to a ruinous state. 

 Although cottages need not be fine, yet they should be regular; regularity will render them ornaments to 

 the country, intea.l of their being, as at present, disagreeable objects. 



28!>1. A piece of ground should be allotted to every cottage, proportionable to its size ; the cottage should 

 be built in the vicinity of a spring of water —a circumstance to be attended to; and if there be no spring, 

 let there be a well. 



2892. On the foregoing seven jmnciples he recommends all cottages to be built. They 

 may be divided' into four classes or degrees: first, cottages with one room; secondly, 

 cottages with two rooms; thirdly, cottages with three rooms; and, fourthly, cottages 

 with "four rooms: plans of each of which, having great merit in their distribution, may 

 be seen in his very able work. 



2893. An economical mode of constructing the walls of brick-built cottages is described 

 by Dearn, in a Tract on Hollow Walls (London, 1821). These walls are only nine 

 inches wide, and built hollow, by laying the courses alternately lengthwise on edge, and 

 crosswise on the broad face. Another description of hollow walls has been invented by 

 Silverlock of Chichester, and used by him in building garden walls (See Enci/c. of Gar- 

 dening), in which all the bricks are laid on edge, but alternately along and across the 

 wall ; or, in bricklayers' language, header and stretcher. Either of these modes suits 

 very well for cottages of one story ; and if well plastered inside the house, they will be 

 warmer and drier than solid walls even of fourteen inches' thickness. Hollow walls of 

 any height may be built by laying the bricks flatwise, and joining the outer and inner 

 four-inch, or single brick, walls, by cross bricks at moderate distances. 



2894. Mud walls, built in the French manner, or en jnse, are recommended by 

 Beatson, Crocker, and others, and also "walls composed of soft mire and straw ;" but 



these last we consider, with Wood, as the reverse of economical in the 

 end, and totally unfit for our climate and degree of civilisation. 



2895. An economical mode of forming staircases to cottages, is de- 

 scribed by Beatson, and has been adopted in a few places. Its merit 

 consists in occupying exactly half the room which is required for 

 stairs on the ordinary plan. This is effected by dividing every step into 

 two parts {fig. 431 a and b), and making one part double the height 

 of another. In ascending such a stair the left foot is set on the left 

 step (o), and the right foot on the right step [b], alternately to the top 

 of the stair. It is therefore clear, that as the steps for the right and for 

 the left foot are in the same line, and although neither foot rises each 

 x time higher than seven inches and a half above the other, yet every time 

 that one foot is moved, it rises fifteen inches higher than it was before. 

 Suppose in a stair of this kind, that each tread or breadth for the foot 

 is nine inches, and that each rise of the one foot above the other is seven inches 



T 



