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ABSTEACT EEPORT OF AGRICULTURAL 
DISCUSSIONS. 
Meeiinj of Weekly Council, February 25, 1863. Mr, Eatmond 
Barker in the Chair. Lecture by Mr. John Taylor, junr., of 53, 
Parliaraent-strcet, 
Ox Materials for the Construction of Cottages. 
Mr. Taylor said he felt honoured by the request which was made 
to him to attend there to explain his various improvements in con- 
struction, and to show how far they are applicable to cottages for 
agricultural Labourers, and to agricultural buildings. He need not 
say anything to show the great necessity there was for improved 
cottages ; neither did he propose to exhibit any particular plan for 
cottages, except for the purpose of showing how his materials were 
introduced. Any attempt to draw a perfect model of a cottage must 
fail, because families are so differently constituted that no one plan can 
be imiversally applicable. He wished to speak of the general defects 
in cottage building, and more particulaidy of damp — the principal source 
of the diseases from which the dwellers in cottages suifer. Now, the 
description of cottage to which he wished first to allude was a cottage 
with three bedrooms, a kitchen or living-room on the ground floor, and 
a washhouse or scullery. In the plan exhibited there is in the centre 
a party-wall ; a gable in front, and a gable at the back, that is to 
say, a common lean-to roof. The timbers lean fi"om the centre of the 
roof doT\-n on to the side-wall. Thus wore avoided all intricacies of roof, 
and a great deal of expense. There were no valleys or gutters, but 
along the side-wall vras a single rain-water trough, and all the water 
ran down through one pipe into a water-butt. The fi-araing of the roof 
was the simplest, and it was a perfectly square building, presenting 
the smallest external siu^aco — a great object in our very damp climate. 
Another plan of cottages was one which he designed only last week, 
and was going to erect at Bishop's Waltham for the use of workmen 
there. This was a modification of the former plan. It would, he 
thought, be a mistake to build all cottages with three bedrooms. In 
some cases it was necessary to have three rooms, in others it was not. 
He had made a design for a pair of cottages in accordance with a sug- 
gestion of Mr. Frere, that it might be a very convenient arrangement 
to have a sleeping-room for boys on the ground-floor, midway between 
the two dwellings. He thought that when the cottage was erected 
there should be two doorways in the brickwork, and that one of them 
should be bricked up ; that door being open which commimicated with 
the cottage in which a third bedroom was required ; the other house 
would suffice for a man and his wife who had only small children. Up 
above was the girls' room, and in front the parents' room. The eleva- 
tion and construction of the roof were mainly the same as before. The 
next was a plan for some almshouses which he was about to erect for 
Colonel Harcoiu-t, in Sussex. 
VOL. XXIV, 2 0 
