On the Choice of Style in Building a House 
are so framed 
and enforced 
as to secure a 
certain uni¬ 
formity of de¬ 
sign, monoto¬ 
nous perhaps, 
but decent, 
orderly and 
quiet. Here, 
and especially 
in our subur¬ 
ban communi¬ 
ties, so little 
harmony of 
style is seen 
that it is clearly 
a case of each 
one for him¬ 
self and the 
devil take the 
hindermost. 
LOCAL TRADI¬ 
TIONS AND 
MATERIALS 
Had we definite local traditions in the art of build¬ 
ing, we might make some steady advance, building 
in the way of our fathers but better and more beau¬ 
tifully. In the States of the Atlantic seaboard, there 
were once such traditions, but we have broken with 
them and the return to them must be made with con¬ 
scious effort, an effort that results in our Colonial 
revival. But, for the most part, throughout our land 
there is no local way of building that rises above the 
commonplace. This is partly due to the fact that 
we are no longer compelled to use the materials that 
the neighborhood of the building offers. Time was, 
and that not a hundred years ago, when lacking 
water transportation, such materials had to be used. 
And so strongly marked is the influence of that use of 
local materials that, to take an example from Great 
Britain, one familiar with its cottages might, if 
dropped down at random anywhere in the Island, 
make from them alone a shrewd guess as to his 
whereabouts. Thus, if he saw such a cottage 
as that at Stanton, he would know that he was 
on that band of limestone that extends from 
Somerset to the dales of Yorkshire, and he might 
well pick out this particular cottage as a good 
specimen of the type that prevails in the Cots- 
wold District. If the house were of a soft, warm 
sandstone, he might know that he had fallen in 
Cheshire or Shropshire, or Hereford. Even there, 
he might see half-timbered cottages of great beauty, 
but by the way in which the timber is used, he would 
be very sure that he was not in Kent or Sussex, where 
half-timber work equally abounds. And now let us 
take as an example of the influence of material upon 
construction, and therefore upon style, such a Kent¬ 
ish cottage as that near Penshurst, and let us sum¬ 
marize the description of the construction of such 
a building given in Dawber’s book on “The Cottages 
of Kent and Sussex.” As shown in the construc¬ 
tional diagram, upon a brick or stone base a 
heavy sill piece was laid, and upon this upright storey 
posts, eight or nine inches square, were fixed. These 
at the angles were larger and formed of the butt of a 
tree placed root upwards, with the top part curving 
diagonally outwards to carry the angle post of the 
upper storey. On these uprights rested another 
large timber, a sort of sill piece for the second storey. 
On this in turn rested the beams of the second floor, 
their ends projecting some eighteen inches and carry¬ 
ing the overhanging second storey wall, which was 
constructed like that of the first. Ihe divisions 
between the uprights were filled with wattles or 
laths and chopped straw and clay, or sometimes 
even with bricks, and the surface plastered flush 
with the face of the timbers. 
Such a method of construction, direct and truthful 
and beautiful as it is, bas defects in the shrinkage 
of its timbers and consequent openness to the ele¬ 
ments, so grave that houses thus built have, in 
many cases, been protected at a later date by 
tile hanging or sometimes by exterior plastering 
or by weather-boarding. So that it often happens 
if we hunt beneath such protection, we find the 
original half-timber cottage intact. Such a method 
of construction is obviously impossible for us to-day. 
6 3 
ST. FAGAN S CASTLE, CARDIFF, FROM THE HIGHER POND 
