54 
House Garden 
roof line, anything available in the way of 
textured building materials—simple enough. 
But when you come to do it, it is not simple 
at all, and the house has not only completely 
missed being “English”—it is not even a 
good American house, which it might 
otherwise have been. 
What is the answer? In essence it is quite 
simple, and lies in the fact that English 
country houses are English. If this seems 
like a trick answer, I hasten to amplify it by 
saying that the things which make for the 
real character of the English country house 
are not things which can be copied. They 
are not plans or roof lines, or bricks or slates 
or stone or anything so definite. It is true 
that the English have a good many local and 
peculiar building materials which we have 
not—but the difference does not lie in these. 
We have all kinds of brick, plenty of 
rough, shaggy slates, we can do anything 
we like with stucco and plaster, and oak 
timbers can be hewn by us as well as by any 
other builders. We can make and install 
casement ^windows—in fact we are up to 
anything, and up to a lot of things that some 
of the other countries are not on to at all. 
The difference comes in the spirit of the 
thing, and that is the very point seldom 
recognized by the materialist, and scornfully 
discounted by him when someone points 
it out. 
What, then, is the spirit of the English 
country house? What makes it different 
A traditional local style rendered in the 
traditional local stone are seen conjoined 
in “ Drakestone'’, Darslcy, typical of the 
English country house manner. Oswald 
P. Milne £? Paul Phipps, architects 
Even a modern house 
may have a fine flavor 
of old age if it is de¬ 
signed by Sir Edwin 
Lutyens, the greatest 
of English architects 
This remodeled Eng¬ 
lish house is an 
ancient house with 
additions in keeping 
with the old work. 
E. G. Allen, architect 
