Arts & Crafts movement

The Arts & Crafts movement began in the mid nineteenth century as an attempt to improve the quality of domestic interiors by reviving the applied arts. it should not be confused with its contemporary trend in exterior design known as the domestic, vernacular or Queen Anne revival. The key to the revival of the applied arts was that goods should be handmade. It was a reaction to the the first generation of factory-produced or machine-made products. The Great Exhibition of 1851 was a showcase of products such as roller-printed wallpapers and textiles woven on Jaquard looms. The Arts & Crafts movement, the Design Reform movement and the Aesthetic Movement all developed from this reaction.

Visitors to The Great Exhibition in 1851

The Arts & Crafts movement  was a grouping of exponents such as William Morris and the other designers who shared an abhorrence for what their hero, John Ruskin, had described as ‘soulless, repetitive industrialism’ (The Stones of Venice, 1851–3) and believed that inspiration should be sought from direct observation of what Ruskin called ‘the beauty of the natural world’. (in Letter I of Elements of Drawing)

John Ruskin the writer and critic who  inspired the Arts & Crafts movement

The movement began through the efforts of a number of individuals to develop alternatives to the ‘vast output of poor substitutes for good craftsmanship [which] was poured broadcast over the land’. (Ricardo H. in The Modern Home ed. Walter Shaw Sparrow, 1906 ) By 1881 the critic, Robert Eddis insisted that consumers should be more critical of the ‘ "products of common industry’: Ordinary English homes (of twenty years ago) were fitted out either in the dreariest monotony of common places or made gaudy with paper-hangings and floor coverings of vulgar colouring and design. The most formidable obstacle which lies in the way of any attempt to reform the arts of design in this country is, perhaps, the indifference with which people of even reputed taste are accustomed to regard the products of common industry.' (Decoration & Furniture of town houses, 1881)
  
The ‘products of common industry’ were cheap wallpapers, textiles and reproduction furniture. Morris himself explained that the Arts & Crafts movement had been necessary ‘because the applied arts had been “sick unto death”, and that this ‘forced us into taking up dropped line of tradition  and once more producing genuine organic art’. (Essays by members of Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society, 1893)
 
This ‘organic’ art would be created, it was believed, if the traditionally rigid distinction between Fine and Applied Arts, between designer and craftsman, was abolished. This approach encouraged architects to, as far as possible, to design the details of their interiors themselves rather than delegating the task; so architects like Phillip Webb designed many of the interior features of their houses. For example, at Standen, he designed all the fireplaces. ‘Organic’ art meant hand made artefacts should be used wherever possible, even bricks. In fact, this restricted the craftsman to handiwork.

The dining room at Standen, with fireplace and firescreen designed by Phillip Webb

In 1893 Walter Crane, the president of the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society, stated that ‘life is growing “uglier every day,” as Mr Morris puts it’. (ibid) He also expressed his fear that artists would be seduced by commercial considerations if they catered for the new middle-class market which had opened up through shops because  ‘if artists cease to be found among the crafts there is great danger that they will vanish from the arts also, become manufacturers and salesmen instead.’(ibid)  This statement reveals another aspect of the Arts & Crafts movement: that it preferred to produce for an exclusive market which could afford hand-made goods. In 1876, Morris had admitted to Sir Lowthian Bell,one of his clients, that he found himself ‘ministering to the swinish luxury of the rich’.

 A silver jamdish made by C. R. Ashbee’s Guild of Handicraft

The Arts & Crafts movement set up a number of enterprises to produce the hand-crafted designs it advocated. Not only did its adherents ignore the emerging middle-class market, but Crane even disdained the new retail outlets which made the applied arts accessible to this wider market, rejecting larger-scale production of goods for sale through shops such as Liberty’s as impersonal; it seemed absurd to him that an artist or craftsman should be expected to produce things of beauty for an impersonal and unknown public. The result was that the Arts & Crafts movement depended on one off commissions from rich patrons.

None of the other Arts & Crafts enterprises were as successful as Morris’ own company, Morris & Co. This survived through the support provided by Morris’ contacts such as G.F. Bodley and Philip Webb who brought it commissions to provide stained glass and, later, to furnish entire interiors such as Standen or Wightwick manor.

The drawing -room at Standen: a house in the country which is a showcase for the Arts & Crafts movement. It was designed by Phillip Webb and furnished by Morris & Co.

Various attempts were made to set up workshops to employ craftsmen, such as C. R. Ashbee’s Guild of Handicraft. The Arts and Crafts Exhibitions Society was formed to hold exhibitions, in 1888 and 1889, to boost these flagging enterprises. The Guild of Handicraft actually came into direct competition with Liberty’s because some of its artefacts were similar to Liberty’s Cymric range. Liberty’s was an outstandingly successful retail enterprise which catered for the emerging middle-class market. By 1880 it was importing ‘Eastern Art Manufactures’ such as Chinese and Japanese bronzes, enamels, jade, ceramics, embroideries and rugs. Its founder, Arthur Lasenby Liberty went on to commission fabrics, furniture, silver and pewter from designers such as Archibald Knox, Christopher Dresser and Silver Studio.

Coffee set from Liberty’s Cymric range (left); A display of Liberty fabrics (right)

Not even Roger Fry’s Omega Workshops lasted more than a few years despite the fact that, like Morris, Fry was well connected. Although the Arts & Crafts movement as a whole disdained shops and the middle-class market, Morris & Co. had a  shop on Regent Street and another outlet in Manchester. Morris’ wallpapers and a few other products such as their Sussex chair were truly popular. The German cultural attache, Herman Muthesius recorded that Morris’ early wallpaper designs, Daisy and Pomegranate, ‘are as popular today as they were forty-five years ago when they first appeared.’ (The English House, 1904) Morris reverted to the traditional craft-based technique of block printing and developed patterns suited to this. His greatest achievements were in pattern design: wallpapers from 1864, printed textiles from 1873 and carpets from 1875.

Morris & Co's Sussex chair; apart from Morris' wallpapers it was one of their few popular products

 

 Daisy, a William Morris wallpaper design (1864), 'as popular today as they were forty-five years ago when they first appeared.’ 

 A lamp standard made by  Roger Fry’s Omega Workshops

By 1900 the Arts & Crafts aversion to machine production had become a fashionable orthodoxy. But its proponents were being left behind by developments like the first Ideal Home Exhibition which was held in 1908. The Exhibition was sponsored by the Daily Mail. The paper and the Exhibition were designed to attract the middle classes, particularly clerks and women with a certain amount of disposable income. Moreover, innovations such as the telephone and electricity meant that change was inevitable. The introduction of electricity alone made a considerable difference to Edwardian interiors.

The designer, J.D. Sedding (1838-91), who exhibited at the first Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society show, had already conceded that it was unrealistic to imagine that the movement’s standards could be universally applied: ‘Let us not suppose that machinery will be discontinued. Manufacture cannot be organised on any other basis. We had better make life square with the facts, rather than rebel against the inevitable, in striving for the ideal’. Not even Arts & Crafts proponents objected to machine-made goods such as ceramic WCs or mechanical processes such as printing.

An electric light fitting designed by WAS Benson

After 1910 attitudes began to change even more rapidly, as demonstrated by the career of  W.A.S. Benson. Benson was Morris’s successor as chairman of Morris & Co. yet he also became a founding member of the Design & Industries Association (DIA). The DIA was founded in 1914–15 by designers, businessmen and industrialists. It slogan ‘Nothing Need be Ugly’ reflected a change in the way that products were designed and perceived by the public. Benson’s change of allegiance from Arts & Crafts to DIA reflected the gradual acceptance that machine production was an irreversible change that designers should work with rather than against.

Not all designers had been opposed to machinery. Christopher Dresser was an exact contemporary of Morris but he chose to work within the industrial system rather than against it. Dresser, and others such as Owen Jones, led the way towards professionalism in design. Dresser attended the London School of Design where he studied design and botany. The essence of design reform was based on the study of nature rather than copying earlier artworks. Unlike other designers, Dresser never became involved with architecture but worked in a commercial design studio. He produced designs for over fifty companies including the new retail outlets such as Liberty’s, for which he designed Clutha glass and Cordofan candlesticks. In 1899 he was described by The Studio magazine as ‘the greatest of commercial designers’. Liberty’s did not credit individual designers but they commissioned Archibald Knox and Rex Silver’s Silver Studio. Liberty’s Art Fabrics earned them the compliment that, in parts of Europe, Art Nouveau was known as ‘Stile Liberty’.

Clutha glass designed by Christopher Dresser

Cordofan candlestick designed by Christopher Dresser

By the Edwardian period, the new department stores were catering for the growing wealthy middle class; Selfridges, Harrods, Debenhams in London; Lewis’s and Paulden’s in Manchester. The introduction of hire-purchase extended the market further. Specialist shops such as Heals, Maples, and Waring & Gillow also became patrons of the applied arts. They did so by ordering whole ranges of goods which were designed to be sold through stores rather than the limited numbers of private commissions. Their goods were displayed in showrooms and illustrated in catalogues.

A drawing room from a Waring & Gillow’s catalogue (1910)

Dickens houses

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is an interesting source of information about period houses. Dickens’ writing is full of first hand observations drawn from his own experience. His illustrators also give us many details of both Regency and early Victorian interiors such as the way rooms were still lit by candles.

 A candlelit interior illustrated by George Cruikshank from Sketches by Boz (1836) 

Dickens’  earliest published work is a series of sketches of his contemporaries and their domestic arrangements during the early 1830s. His first short story, A dinner at Poplar Walk, appeared in Monthly Magazine in 1833 but was also included in his first book Sketches by Boz (1836). (Dickens used Boz  as a pen name but the book had the explanatory sub-title : Illustrative of Everyday Life and Everyday People). In the short story, he described a wealthy clerk,  Augustus Minns, who lives on the first floor of a house in Tavistock-street, Covent-Garden.

Mr Minns is invited to dinner by his cousin, a retired corn chandler who lives in a cottage in Poplar-walk, Stamford-hill. He travels by stage coach to the occasion where he joins his fellow guests in the first floor drawing room. From here they process down to a dining-room on the ground floor. It was relatively new development to have a permanent dining-room but it was old fashioned for a medium sized house to have a first floor drawing room.

a tea party in Camden town in which the kettle sits on the coals in the grate

The other domestic arrangements in these early sketches are more modest; in Miss Evans and the Eagle he describes a tea party in Camden town at which the kettle is boiled by placing it directly on the coals of an open hob grate. This would have been common practise in rooms where the occupants did not have access to a proper kitchen. George Cruikshank’s illustration shows a typical modest interior with a hearth rug over bare floor boards and light table and chairs which could be arranged for a meal or pushed back against the walls.

 

17 Buckingham Street. Dickens lived next door at number 15

Before the development of suburban railways brought about the building of outlying suburbs, renting a floor or a pair of rooms was a common arrangement. In 1831 Dickens himself lived in a pair of rooms in Buckingham Street. He was working as Parliamentary reporter for the Morning Chronicle. In David Copperfield  he installs David Copperfield in a singularly desirable, and compact set of chambers, forming a genteel residence for a young gentleman,  in Buckingham Street. It is at the top of the house and promised a view of the river. It consisted of a little half-blind entry where you could see hardly anything, a little stone-blind pantry where you could see nothing at all, a sitting-room, and a bedroom. The furniture was rather faded, but quite good enough for me; and, sure enough, the river was outside the windows.

 In The Mistaken Milliner a wedding party dine in Somers Town in a small house –no lodgings or vulgarity of that kind– four rooms and a delightful little wash-house at the end of the passage. The parlour has a beautiful Kidderminster carpet– six bran new cane-bottomed stained chairs–three wine glasses and a tumbler on each sideboard – farmer’s girl and farmer’s boy on the mantlepiece… long, white dimity curtains in the window

recreation of a Regency interior with a fitted carpet (Geffrye museum)

 This tells us that even modest interiors had fitted carpets. These came up to about a foot short of the walls. They were one of the first products of mechanised production for the mass market. Although Dickens praises it, by the middle of the century critics such as John Ruskin would deride the contents of that parlour as the products of  ‘soulless, repetitive industrialism’ 

48 Doughty Street, Dickens home from 1837-9 (now the Charles Dickens museum)

 Dickens’ own houses moved steadily up the social scale. About the time that The Pickwick Papers was published (1837) he moved into a large, (late Georgian) terraced house in Doughty Street (which is now the Charles Dickens museum).

A house in Devonshire Terrace. Dickens lived at number One 1839-1850

Characters like the Veneerings in Our Mutual Friend had to live in a newly built house because they were bran-new people in a bran-new house in a bran-new quarter of London.  People wanted houses with more rooms, especially bedrooms. In 1839, Dickens and his growing family moved to a larger newly built  house in Devonshire Terrace. This was in Paddington which was then a bran-new quarter of London. In fact, fashionable London was moving West so fast that Cruikshank drew a satirical cartoon entitled London Going out of Town - or - The March of Bricks and Mortar!'

London Going out of Town - or - The March of Bricks and Mortar!'

In 1851, Dickens moved to an even larger house, Tavistock House, in Tavistock Square. It was large enough for him to stage amateur theatricals in front of 90 people in the schoolroom. Here he wrote Bleak House,  Hard Times, Little Dorrit  and A Tale of Two Cities.

 Dickens at work in his final home, Gads Hill Place

 In 1857 he moved to Gads Hill Place in Kent, a (late Georgian) country house.

Regency: large & medium

The Regency period of domestic architecture  spanned a generation from 1810 to 1837. It was distinct from late Georgian although it was still flat fronted and classical in style. The Regency period was a time of mechanisation, innovation and abuse. During this period the effects of the industrial revolution began to really have an effect on both exteriors and interiors. Mechanisation affected the production of materials such as bricks, cast iron, fabrics and wallpaper. New developments were introduced including the villa suburb and semi-detached houses. But in fast growing industrial cities such as Birmingham and Manchester, the working classes, as they were first called at this time, were housed in overcrowded, unhygienic conditions.

Regent’s Street in 1822, designed by John Nash

The Prince Regent’s own patronage was influential. But it was not just his own taste for crimson & gold but the designs of his architect, John Nash, which had the greatest influence. In 1813 plans drawn up by Nash were submitted to Parliament. They proposed a development to link the Prince Regent’s own residence, Carlton House, with the Crown estate in Marylebone Park. The development would become Regent’s Street and Regent’s Park. But it was the residential terraces around the Park which would be the most widely copied. Nash also designed suburban estates of houses in their own grounds near the Park. These included the suburban villa development of St John’s Wood. To attract less wealthy residents who wished to enjoy this healthy environment, some of the villas were divided into two separate homes: semi-detached houses.

Park Crescent, in Regent’s Park, designed by John Nash

The residential terraces around the Park were emulated by the builder developers of Belgravia and fashionable London as it expanded westwards.  As well as London, large Regency houses were built in towns such as Brighton, Cheltenham and Bristol. 

The main difference between Regency houses and their late Georgian equivalents was in size. Regency large & medium sized houses were bigger, with more rooms, particularly bedrooms. The houses became taller by adding more floors but the front was given a strong horizontal emphasis by first floor balconies, heavy cornices and parapets.

large Regency houses in Eaton Square, built by Thomas Cubitt (c. 1832)

During the Regency period, typical large houses were still three bays (windows) wide.  Their additional rooms were accomodated on the additional storeys. The fronts continued to be classical in style but the taller houses lost the neat proportions of their late Georgian predecessors. Stucco began to be used much more extensively on exteriors; for decorative pilasters, architraves and cornices. Large Regency terraces used giant orders to assert their classicism. These were columns or pilasters running up both the first and second storeys to a horizontal cornice. They might be applied to blocks in the centre and at either end of the terrace. As well as the heavy cornice the facade was further divided horizontally by a rusticated stucco finish applied to the ground floor and a parapet rather than a blocking course at the attic storey. During this period, stucco was coloured to resemble local stone. This made it much darker than the cream or white it is painted today. External ironwork was ‘bronzed’; powdered copper was added to green paint to give an aged patina.

Another major difference was the half basement which raised the ground floor by several steps above the street level. As well as making the front look grander, it reduced the amount of excavation for the builders. The front door might be further emphasised by a portico with freestanding columns on either side.

Eaton Square provides excellent examples of Regency large terraced houses. They were built by Thomas Cubitt , a builder developer who preferred to call himself a master-builder rather than an architect. Writing in the early 1830s Dickens mentioned ‘Eaton Square then just building’ (Sketches by Boz). The end and centre blocks have giant orders. The houses all have half-basements and first floor balconies; the supporting iron girders can be seen underneath them.

There were also substantial changes in plan. Downstairs, the changes were all located towards the rear. The kitchen was moved out of the main body of the house into a large rear extension to avoid the ‘fry and fat smell’ in the reception rooms. A new service room appeared - the scullery. The piped water supply was located there and washing became separated from cooking. More space was now available at this level for other servants rooms.

Upstairs, the basic plan of the main house also changed - the drawing room was still on the first floor but the dining room became a standard feature on the ground floor.

The additional bedrooms gave girls and boys separate bedrooms. The families also employed more servants and they too needed accommodation.

As the rear extension became larger it provided a third main room for the family on the ground and first floors.  In many houses this additional space provided dressing rooms for master and mistress. The rear extension also accomodated a separate staircase for the servants.

 Regency medium sized houses in Chester Row (c.1838)

The facade of a Regency medium sized house shared as many features  as it could with the large houses - the use of stucco, heavy cornice and decorative ironwork. They were still only two bays (windows) wide so the front door and window on the ground floor remained offset rather than aligned with the windows above. In this they were similar to their predecessors but they might have a second storey.

The ground floor was often elevated and the steps and area protected by iron railings. The larger scale production of cast iron meant that more elaborate patterns were available at a lower price. The decorative ironwork featured forms like anthemion or heart and honeysuckle. The typical plan of a Regency medium changed to accomodate a small rear extension. On the ground floor this held a small closet room, in the basement the new scullery. The kitchen was still in the basement although it could be placed in the back, adjacent to the scullery. This allowed the front basement room to be used as an informal parlour. Some medium sized houses had a first floor drawing room with a dining room on the ground floor. In A dinner at Poplar Walk, published in 1833, Charles Dickens describes a dinner party in which the guests are received in a first floor drawing room; they process down to a dining room on the ground floor of a house in Stamford-hill. In modest mediums both drawing room and dining room were on the ground floor.

New periodicals on home decoration were published such as Ackerman’s Repository of the Arts (1809-28). They offered advice on colour schemes and furnishings: ‘colour schemes  should be harmonious with carpet colours, walls & furniture in unison or proper combination of the parts’. Warm reds were suitable for dining rooms and halls, green or blue for drawing rooms. Yellow was regarded as a controversial wall colour. After 1818 gold was regarded as extravagant.

From 1824 onwards a distinctive stripe became a feature of Regency interiors. By the 1830s machine woven cotton fabrics such as chintzes& callicoes were used for for bed hangings and curtains, loose covers and upholstery. They were relatively cheap and washable. Curtain rods or poles were popular and can be seen in many of the interiors illustrated in Dickens books.

recreation of a Regency drawing room (Geffrye museum)

 a George Cruikshank illustration of a modest drawing room from Sketches by Boz (1836)

Dickens' houses

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is an interesting source of information about period houses. Dickens’ writing is full of first hand observations as well as drawing on his own experience. His illustrators also give us many details of both Regency and early Victorian interiors such as the way rooms were still lit by candles.

 A candlelit interior illustrated by George Cruikshank from Sketches by Boz (1836) 

Dickens’  earliest published work is a series of sketches of his contemporaries and their domestic arrangements during the early 1830s. His first short story, A dinner at Poplar Walk, appeared in Monthly Magazine in 1833 but was also included in his first book Sketches by Boz (1836). (Dickens used Boz  as a pen name but the book had the explanatory sub-title : Illustrative of Everyday Life and Everyday People). In the short story, he described a wealthy clerk,  Augustus Minns, who lives on the first floor of a house in Tavistock-street, Covent-Garden.

Mr Minns is invited to dinner by his cousin, a retired corn chandler who lives in a cottage in Poplar-walk, Stamford-hill. He travels by stage coach to the occasion where he joins his fellow guests in the first floor drawing room. From here they process down to a dining-room on the ground floor. It was relatively new development to have a permanent dining-room but it was old fashioned for a medium sized house to have a first floor drawing room.

a tea party in Camden town in which the kettle sits on the coals in the grate

The other domestic arrangements in these early sketches are more modest; in Miss Evans and the Eagle he describes a tea party in Camden town at which the kettle is boiled by placing it directly on the coals of an open hob grate. This would have been common practise in rooms where the occupants did not have access to a proper kitchen. George Cruikshank’s illustration shows a typical modest interior with a hearth rug over bare floor boards and light table and chairs which could be arranged for a meal or pushed back against the walls.

17 Buckingham Street. Dickens lived next door at number 15

Before the development of suburban railways brought about the building of outlying suburbs; renting a floor or a pair of rooms was a common arrangement. In 1831 Dickens himself lived in a pair of rooms in Buckingham Street. He was working as Parliamentary reporter for the Morning Chronicle. In David Copperfield  he installs David Copperfield in a singularly desirable, and compact set of chambers, forming a genteel residence for a young gentleman,  in Buckingham Street. It is at the top of the house and promised a view of the river. It consisted of a little half-blind entry where you could see hardly anything, a little stone-blind pantry where you could see nothing at all, a sitting-room, and a bedroom. The furniture was rather faded, but quite good enough for me; and, sure enough, the river was outside the windows.

 In The Mistaken Milliner a wedding party dine in Somers Town in a small house –no lodgings or vulgarity of that kind– four rooms and a delightful little wash-house at the end of the passage. The parlour has a beautiful Kidderminster carpet– six bran new cane-bottomed stained chairs–three wine glasses and a tumbler on each sideboard – farmer’s girl and farmer’s boy on the mantlepiece… long, white dimity curtains in the window

recreation of a Regency interior with a fitted carpet (Geffrye museum)

 This tells us that even modest interiors had fitted carpets. These came up to about a foot short of the walls. They were one of the first products of mechanised production for the mass market. Although Dickens praises it, by the middle of the century critics such as John Ruskin would deride the contents of that parlour as the products of  ‘soulless, repetitive industrialism’ 

48 Doughty Street, Dickens home from 1837-9 (now the Charles Dickens museum)

 Dickens’ own houses moved steadily up the social scale. About the time that The Pickwick Papers was published (1837) he moved into a large, (late Georgian) terraced house in Doughty Street (which is now the Charles Dickens museum).

A house in Devonshire Terrace. Dickens lived at number One 1839-1850

Characters like the Veneerings in Our Mutual Friend had to live in a newly built house because they were bran-new people in a bran-new house in a bran-new quarter of London.  People wanted houses with more rooms, especially bedrooms. In 1839, Dickens and his growing family moved to a larger newly built  house in Devonshire Terrace. This was in Paddington which was then a bran-new quarter of London. In fact, fashionable London was moving West so fast that Cruikshank drew a satirical cartoon entitled 'London Going out of Town - or - The March of Bricks and Mortar!'

London Going out of Town - or - The March of Bricks and Mortar!'

In 1851, Dickens moved to an even larger house, Tavistock House, in Tavistock Square. It was large enough for him to stage amateur theatricals in front of 90 people in the schoolroom. Here he wrote Bleak House,  Hard Times, Little Dorrit  and A Tale of Two Cities.

 Tavistock House, Dickens' home from 1851-1857

 Dickens at work in his final home, Gads Hill Place

 In 1857 he moved to Gads Hill Place in Kent, a (late Georgian) country house.

Back to backs

by Richard Russell-Lawrence

A back to back in Birmingham

In the late Georgian period (1774-1810) Britain’s population was becoming more urban. The balance of the economy was changing from agriculture to industry. Industrial workers needed to live near their workshops and manufactories. New homes were required for workers in the growing towns such as Birmingham and Nottingham. During the 1770s a new type of house met this need: the back to back.

It was the same width as a small ‘through’ house (about 13 feet). It might also be two or three storeys high  but the major difference was that a back to back was only one room deep. The door opened into a kitchen living-room or ‘house-room’ on the ground floor. In the corner was a flight of steep stairs leading to the bedrooms above.  A kitchen range was set into the chimney breast but the bedrooms above seldom had fireplaces. A thin wall divided it from another house which faced the other way.

cutaway of pairs of back to backs

The  space to build them was found on small open spaces in towns which had previously been yards, gardens or folds. Alternatively, burgages, thin strips of land left over from the medieval system of farming, were built over as towns such as Leeds spread over nearby farmland. The cost of development was reduced by  cramming two dwellings onto plots with only a single street front.

The back to backs were built around a  communal yard, known as the ‘court’. This contained the communal facilities, the wash or ‘brew’ houses and the outside toilets known as privies. A wall might be built on the boundary of the property. Houses facing the street were regarded as more desirable than those facing the court. The rent was higher accordingly: Two shillings and sixpence per week compared with One and ten for a ‘back’ house. During the late Georgian period one side was left open which allowed both access and the removal of rubbish, ash from coal fires and cess from the shared privies.

burgages, narrow strips of land on which new urban houses were built

plan of a court showing the side open to the street

Soon back to backs became the most common form of urban housing in the growing industrial towns. Middle class businessmen & tradesmen lent money to builders to construct them. During the eighteenth century, buying & leasing small plots was both profitable and secure. The rent for a pair of back to backs was more than that of a single through house. The speculators sold them to investors who received annual rents of £5-6  for each house. Even members of the first building societies or building clubs built back-to-back houses for their own occupation. In 1787, rows of back-to-back cottages were erected by a building club in an area east of Vicar Lane in Leeds. The first back-to-backs in Nottingham were built in 1775.  By 1790 most of its 3,000 houses were back-to-backs. By 1841 the number had grown to 12,600. They were very small: the ‘house-room’ was just 12 by 11 feet but the yard was used for overflow if the weather allowed. They had other problems such as damp but to their occupants they were a home of their own. They were usually occupied by a single family of five. Conditions easily became insanitary especially during the Regency & Early Victorian period when the courts were closed by building on the open side. Access to the court was through a narrow tunnel. In Birmingham it was known as the ‘entry’. This could be as narrow as one foot six inches.

Above: detail from 1888 OS map of Birmingham

a Birmingham court, privies (right), wash house (left), entry (centre)

By 1801 the population of Birmingham had grown to 60,000; two thirds of them lived in back-to-backs. The 1888 Ordnance Survey map shows the centre of the town crammed with back to backs , mainly in closed courts near ‘Works’ with relatively few through houses. The National Trust has preserved some  back to backs which were in Court Number 15 of 20 on Hurst Street. Court Number 15 was built in the 1830s; during this period conditions in the courts were the worst due to overcrowding as the population of Birmingham grew to 522,000 in 1851. The communal privies were earth closets which were supposed to be emptied each week by ‘night men’. If this was not done they overflowed. This could infect the local water source which spread cholera and typhoid  in the closely  confined courts.  In Birmingham a major outbreak of Asiatic cholera in 1831-2 killed 32,000. In 1848-9 a further 64,000 died.

Above: a cellar entrance in Manchester

Some back-to-backs had cellars which were mainly used for storing coal but Liverpool and Manchester became notorious for their cellar dwellings. Insanitary conditions in towns threatened the entire population. As public awareness of this grew  some attempts were made to sanitise the courts. Ineffectual measures included lime washing 4-5 feet up the walls. The prevalent theory was that infectious disease was spread through inhaling bad air; known as ‘miasma’. Early legislation was aimed at improving ventilation by letting in more light and air. After the 1848 Public Health Act, conditions began to improve as local authorities passed by laws which specified minimum sizes for rooms, windows, street width, and standards for drainage & sanitation.

contemporary illustration of an insanitary, crowded court

The 1875 Public Health Act forced local authorities to act. In most towns it  was the end for back-to-backs. Somehow they continued to be built in Leeds and Bradford. The 1909 Housing and Town Planning Act effectively banned the building of back-to-backs. Leeds found a loophole as so many plots had already been granted planning permission so they continued to be built there until the 1930s. A  study, in 2008,  found that were  still approximately 19,500 back-to-backs in Leeds.   Elsewhere the new homes which replaced them were snapped up by the better off leaving  the courts still occupied.  The National Trust’s back to backs in Birmingham were lived in until the 1960s. Elsewhere, most back-to-backs have been demolished by slum clearances.

Buy The Book of the Edwardian and Interwar House by Richard Russell-Lawrence

Projectors!

Before the speculative builders of Georgian & Victorian England there were several famous or infamous seventeenth century entrepreneurs. At the time they were known as Projectors; men who undertook ‘projects’. We might call men like Nicholas Barbon or Thomas Neale ‘Wheeler Dealers’ or ‘Developers’. 
Nicholas Barbon (c1640 – c1699) was responsible for building much of the Middle Temple and surrounding streets including Essex Street, Buckingham Street and Devereux Court. He began in medecine as a physician but he abandoned it to take advantage of opportunities in business after the Great Fire of London (1666). Two lines of business were thriving: insurance and building. Barbon became involved in both. He borrowed money to hire gangs of workers to build on the sites of old aristocratic mansions such as Essex House, the present site of Essex Street  off the Strand. If necessary they demolished the building whether they had permission or not.

Above: Barbon houses in Buckingham Street

They built in the latest style: brick, flat fronted terraced houses which had sash windows with frames level with the front wall. They were also fitted with modest doorcases with rectangular fan lights. All these features conformed with the 1667 Rebuilding Act. The Act would have described them as ‘buildings of the second or third sort’ which were built on larger streets or main roads. The Act  was intended to prevent the ‘mischiefs’ caused by fire. But many of Barbon’s houses had parapets which actually anticipated the requirements of  the 1707 Act. The original style of Barbon houses can be appreciated in the Middle Temple Courts such as Pump Court and New Court which he also built. Although these were laid out as barristers’ chambers rather than dwelling houses, many Barbon houses have had their fronts altered or were rebuilt later under stricter regulations with stucco rendering or fully recessed windows. Due to the new system of leaseholds, seventeenth century houses were only intended to last as long as their leases but many of Barbon’s houses still stand perhaps because of the building regulations to which they were subject.

Above: a typical Barbon terrace in Holborn

Thomas Neale (1641 – 1699) was another developer or projector who was active nearby, north of Covent Garden. He is commemorated by Neale Street and Neale’s Yard. His houses survive above the shops in Neale Street. They are similar to Barbon’s houses ‘of the Second sort’ in brown brick with sash windows and parapets.

Above: a Neale terraced house above a shop in Neale Street. The window frames are as they were built.

Stuart: rare but relevant

Above: Houses showing the transition from timber framed to brick (c1614)

 Above: Classically styled terrace, attributed to Inigo Jones (c1641)

 Above: How builders copied the new classical style in bare brick (1658)

 Above: The oldest speculative buildings by Nicholas Barbon, in Crane Court off Fleet Street (c1670)

  Above: A prime example of the new style: Dr Johnson’s house, near Fleet Street built c.1700

Typical period houses from the Stuart period (1603-1714) are rare but relevant. During the Stuart period classical styles were first applied to typical houses and the brick built terrace replaced traditional forms of construction such as timber framed. Speculative builders began to supply the demand for urban houses in these new styles. The new style was flat fronted, brick, with sash windows.

The new developments were led by the outstanding Stuart architects, Inigo Jones and later, Christopher Wren. When the Edwardians rediscovered classical style they derived their forms from the Stuart period more than the later Georgian. The leading Edwardian architects called the Stuart period the English Renaissance, Edwin Lutyens referred to it as the ‘Wrenaissance’. Jones’ designs had the most influence on typical houses. In 1631 he designed the first brick built classical terrace for the Duke of Bedford’s development of Covent Garden. Only drawings of his terraces have survived. It was an example of really significant design because  speculative builders like Nicholas Barbon, were able to copy them.  Speculative builders would build the vast majority of Typical period houses. Speculative building was building in advance of demand, for rent.

 One of the earliest surviving classical terraces (c. 1641), in Lincoln’s Inn fields, is attributed to Inigo Jones. The oldest surviving brick-built terraced houses in London, on Newington Green (1658) show how the speculative builder made cheaper copies of features such as pilasters and capitals using bare brick. Speculators such as Nicholas Barbon and Thomas Neale turned the disaster of The Great Fire of London into an opportunity. The Fire destroyed  14,000 buildings (80% of the houses in the City of London). The Building Acts which followed specified that new houses should be built in brick or stone for the better preventing mischiefs that may happen by fire’. Successive Acts followed. The 1707 & 1709 Acts were passed during the reign of Queen Anne ( 1702-1714; as the daughter of James II, she, too, was a Stuart).
 Speculators like Barbon and Neale were pretty unscrupulous but they had to build in brick. Barbon built between the City and Westminster, around Fleet Street.  Neale built Neale Street , Neale’s Yard (Covent Garden) and Seven Dials. Above the colourful shops some of his speculative buildings still survive.
 My next post will describe Barbon’s houses in more detail.