Fig. 2
Fig. 3
A private house billiard-room need not be so large as a club-room, but it is essential that it should be as airy as possible, and—a most important point—it ought, if possible, to be the usual smoking-room of the house, so that it may be regularly inhabited. If this point is neglected, and the room is intended solely for billiards, a time may come when it may be left severely alone for two or three months, and the cushions will probably suffer from cold and want of play. If, however, the room be made comfortable and attractive, it will be constantly lived in, and the cushions kept at an equable temperature. Besides, the fact of the table being at hand and ready will of itself induce more play.
All this, of course, means that at one end or other of the table there must be considerably more than the regulation six feet. If one is going to build, thirty or thirty-two feet for length, and twenty feet for breadth, will give plenty of space for billiards and smoking, and be more satisfactory in the long run than a room twenty-four by eighteen at the outside.
Fig. 4
If the plan of the house precludes the possibility of a room of this size, it should be remembered that very excellent billiard-rooms of corrugated iron, lined with felt and match-boarding, can be put up alongside a house if the requisite space can be found for them. It is also worth while to remember that thirty feet by twenty feet looks a very small plot when measured on the lawn, so that many a disused and forgotten corner might serve as a site for a noble billiard-room.
Such a room Mr. W. H. Fowler, the well-known amateur, has erected in Taunton by the side of his house. It is thirty-four feet by thirty-three feet, and is roughly of this shape (fig. 4).
The system of ventilation seems so excellent that, at my request, Mr. Samson, the architect of the room, has kindly sent me drawings which are shown under ‘Ventilation,’ and which will, no doubt, make clear what is obscure in this description.