The ancient haunts of men have numberless tongues for those who know how to hear them speak.
It was not until some fifteen years of Mrs. Allingham’s career as a painter in water-colour had been accomplished that she found the subject with which her name has since been so inseparably linked. Looking through the ranks of her associates in the Art it is in rare instances that we encounter so complete a departure out of a long-practised groove, or one which has been so amply justified. But in selecting English Cottages and Homesteads, and peopling them with a comely tenantry, she happened upon a theme that was certain not only to obtain the suffrages of the ordinary exhibition visitors, but of those who add to seeing, admiration and acquisition. Thus it has come to pass that in the other fifteen years which have elapsed since she first began to paint them, “Mrs. Allingham’s Cottages” have become a household word amongst connoisseurs of English water-colours, and no representative collection has been deemed to be complete without an example of them.
This appreciation is very assuredly a sound one, as the value of these pictures does not consist solely in their beauty as works of Art, but in their recording in line and colour a most interesting but unfortunately vanishing phase of English domestic architecture. For the cottages are almost without exception veritable portraits, the artist (whilst naturally selecting those best suited to her purpose) having felt it a duty to present them with an accuracy of structural feature which is not always the case in creations of this kind, where the painter has had other views, and considered that he could improve his picture by an addition here and an omission there.
So many of Mrs. Allingham’s drawings of cottages have been taken from the counties of Surrey and Sussex, that it may interest not only the owners of those here reproduced, but others who possess similar subjects, to read a short description of the features that distinguish the buildings in these districts.
One is perhaps too apt to pass these lowlier habitations of our fellow-men, whether we see them in reality or in their counterfeits, without a thought as to their structure, or an idea that it is an evolution which has grown on very marked lines from primitive types, and which in almost every instance has been influenced by local surroundings.
In the early days of housebuilding the use of local materials was naturally a distinctive feature of dwellings of every kind, but more especially in those where expenditure had to be kept within narrow limits. But even in such a case the style of architecture affected in the better built houses influenced and may be traced in the more humble ones. Change amongst our forefathers was even less hastily assumed than in these days, and a style which experience had proved to be convenient was persevered in for generation after generation, individuality seldom having any play, although a necessary adaptation to the site gave to most buildings a distinction of their own. One of the earliest forms, and one still to be found even in buildings which have now descended to the use of yeomen’s dwellings, was that of a large central room having on one side of it the smaller living and sleeping rooms, and on the other the kitchens and servants’ apartments, the wings projecting sometimes both to back and front, sometimes only to the latter. In later times, as such a house fell into less well-to-do hands, necessity usually compelled the splitting-up of the house into various tenements, in which event the central room was generally divided into compartments, often into a complete dwelling. Types of this kind may be found in most villages in the south-eastern counties, and examples will be seen in “The Six Bells” ([Plate 57]) and the house at West Tarring, near Worthing ([Plate 51]), where the central portion falls back from the gabled ends. This arrangement of a central hall used for a living room, after going out of favour for some centuries, is curiously enough once more coming into fashion.
Local materials having, as we have said, much to do with the structure, the type of dwelling that we may expect to find in counties where wood was plentiful, and the cost of preparing and putting it on the ground less than that of quarrying, shaping, and carrying stone, is the picturesque, timber-formed cottage. Those interested in the plan of construction, which was always simple, of these will find full details in Mr. Guy Dawber’s Introduction to Old Cottages and Farm Houses in Kent and Sussex, as well as many illustrations of examples that occur in these counties.
The materials other than wood used for the framework, and which were necessary to fill up the interstices, were, in the better class of dwellings, bricks; in others, a consistency formed of chopped straw and clay, an outward symmetry of appearance being gained by a covering of plaster where it was not deemed advisable to protect the woodwork, and of boarding or tiles where the whole surface called for protection. Several of the cottages illustrated in this volume have been protected by these tilings on some part or another, perhaps only on a gable end, most often on the upper story, sometimes over the whole building, but of course, principally, where it was most exposed to the weather (see Cherry-Tree Cottage, [Plate 43]; Chiddingfold, [Plate 44]; Shottermill, [Plate 49]; and Valewood Farm, [Plate 50]). This purpose of the tile in the old houses, and its use only for protection, distinguishes them from the modern erections, where it is oftentimes affixed in the most haphazard style, and clearly without any idea of fitting it where it will be most serviceable.
The space in the interior was very irregularly apportioned, whilst the cubic space allotted to living rooms, both on the ground and first floors, was singularly insufficient for modern hygienic views. A reason for the small size of the rooms may have been that it enabled them to be more readily warmed, either by the heat given off by the closely-packed indwellers, or by the small wood fires which alone could be indulged in. Little use was made of the large space in the roof, but this omission adds much to the picturesqueness of the exterior, for the roofs gain in simplicity by their unbroken surface and treatment. It is somewhat astonishing that the old builders did not recognise this costly disregard of space.
The roofs, like the framework, testify to the geological formation and agricultural conditions of the district.