The Englishman's House: A Practical Guide for Selecting and Building a House

by C. J. Richardson

The attic floor.

gentleman’s dressing-room, g is the principal staircase containing the servants’ staircase, h, within it; o is the lift. At the back of the building is a colonnade commanding a view of the country, and beneath is the terrace, with its balustrading and steps to the garden.

The one pair floor contains only four large bed-rooms a, a, and two dressing-rooms b, b. One dressing-room, that in front, could have been converted into a pleasant morning room; each of the two principal bedrooms in the front could easily have been formed into two; a small dressing-room taken out of each. Terraces were in front of these two rooms, the small circular bow-window opening on to them; the principal staircase only led to this floor. The servants’ staircase led to the attics.

This floor contained three large servants’ rooms, with two small octagon rooms. It was proposed to form the front rooms into one, with a circular roof, covered with scroll work and flowers, in the form of a garden-bower, similar to the gallery ceiling at Burton Agnes in Yorkshire. In this ceiling there are about a dozen varieties of flowers and bunches of leaves, which were placed in a scroll-stem in various positions so as to vary the pattern. The flowers and leaves could have been painted in their natural colours. These rooms, however, could not be spared, so it was proposed to turn the two octagon rooms into what may be termed garden-bower rooms, and to attempt growing dwarf fruit-trees in them, as practised in Germany. The roofs of these rooms were to be constructed in iron and glass, and covered internally with wire trellis-work, the warming to be effected with flue pedestals, two in each room, one taking the kitchen flue and the other house flues, the corresponding pedestal in the other room to have the remaining flues in that side of the building. The illustration on page 242 shows a plan and section of one of these rooms.

The tower in the centre of the back front contained a cistern for the supply of the house; the closets beneath could have Moule’s earth system applied to them, the earth to be brought up by the lift o, dried in the bower rooms, and deposited in an enclosure in the tower room from which it could descend to the closets.

It may be here remarked that the closets throughout the whole of these designs are in such a position that the dry-earth system could be easily applied to each. In cottages that have the flues in an external wall, and where this system is introduced, the earth deposit should be placed against the flue, and the closet adjoining.

The lift o, shown in the plans, connects every floor with the basement; it permits coals and other heavy articles to be lifted up, receives the speaking tubes leading to the basement and children’s day-room, and any bell wires that may be required.

Plan and section of garden bower-rooms.