The history of the house 1

The internal layout of a traditional Mongolian yurt

The arrangement is based on strict conventions.

The back of the yurt is the most honourable position, the door is the least honourable

The left half is masculine, the right half is feminine

The yurt is symbolically divided in quarters

The fire in the middle, with a hole in the roof above it, makes a ‘vertical axis’, connecting the earth to the sky

As modern objects were introduced during the twentieth century, they were allocated places that corresponded to the traditional ordering system of gender and status.

The yurt shows a number of features which are usually significant in the way that houses are organised, and which make a theme in the history of the house.

Gender: men and women have their own spaces

‘Clean’ and ‘Unclean’ persons, animals and activities are separated

Hierarchy: even in a single space, the gradient of importance is marked, often by the position of the fire and the relationship to the door

A reconstruction of a north European longhouse. Animals were kept in at night at one end, and people occupied the other end.Note the doorways opposite each other on the long side

The earliest surviving timber houses in Britain date from around the year 1300.All of them are based on a hall as the principal room.The hall is organised with a particular set of relationships corresponding to the social structures of the household. The following generalisations apply to houses up to the mid 1550s

The entrance is always in the long side of the houseThere is another outside door opposite the front door, making a passage, called a ‘cross passage’.

A visitor needs to make a right-angled turn to enter the hall. The turn can be to left or right.

The fire is in the centre of the hall floor.

There is a table across the far end wall, where the head of the household sits in the centre, with his back to the wall.

The ‘Wealden House’ is one of several house types popular in the period 1350-1500.

Status was conveyed more by the fine quality of the timbers and the crafttsmanship and decoration of the timber frame than by the number of rooms

There is no attempt to be ‘original’. The design has rules, but it is not symmetrical at any point.

The house will always be one room ‘deep’, and have three ‘cells’ along its long axis

The ‘high end’ and the ‘low end’ make a hierarchical structuring of space.

The fire is an important part of the structuring, although not related to any walls or partitions.

With changes in society, houses in England became more varied, but retained many characteristics from earlier periods

The house was still only one room deep, with separate roofs for each element in the plan

The hall was close to the main door

Not all the rooms had a fireplace

Symmetry came by accident if at all

The ‘Vernacular Threshold’

Historically, vernacualr building has existed in most cultures, but it is not the same as ‘primitive’ building. Ronald Brunskill has defined the ‘’Vernacular threshold’ as the point at which a building crosses from the primitive (a sort of ‘do-it-yourself’ way of building) into the vernacular, which is the work of skilled builders.There is also the ‘polite threshold’ which describes the point at which a building cannot be described as vernacular any more, because it begins to show the signs of architectural ideas acquired from a learned culture, usually one which imitates the buildings of ancient Rome, which involve symmetry of plan and elevation and certain kinds of decoration and ornament which will be drawn first on paper and then made by the craftsman.

The Villa Emo at Fanzolo, near Venice, by Andrea Palladio, 1561-5.This design shows the impact of ancient Roman architecture on house design in Italy, combined with a practical approach to use and response to climate

The plan of the Villa Emo shows symmetry and axial organisation.The entrance is very important, but the rooms have no hierarchy or specific functions.

Coleshill House, Berkshire, 1649-50 (destroyed by fire 1952).A north European modification of classical rules, with a High roof and big chimneys.Like Palladio’s villas, it is a free-standing volume, raised on a basement storey containing kitchens etc.

Coleshill is special as one of the first English houses to includecorridors as an important feature, giving greater privacy from servants and other members of the household.

Chiswick House, designed by Lord Burlington, 1725A variation on designs by Palladio and other Italian architects.This house can be visited in West London.

A London terrace house of about 1670-1700. The variation instorey heights, the three or two-bay front and the sunken basement remained typical features of London houses until the 1870s.

A ground floor plan of the same house type.Each floor could be occupied By a separate household, with The front room for receiving visitors, and the back room more private, giving access to the closet projecting from the back of the house.

A house of about 1820, in Keats Grove, Hampstead, named after the famous poetwho lived there.This is a simple version of an urban terrace, with a front garden to suit its suburban situation.

Plans and elevations of the houses in Keats Grove.The corridors and circulation spaces are reduced to a minimum. These are very simple dwellings.

Blaise Hamlet, near BristolArchitect John Nash, 1811

The rediscovery of the Cottage as a charming reminder of rustic simplicity.

Big chimneys, gables and A variety of different materials are typical of the desire to be as unlike classical models as possible.

A cottage designed by an architect following the lead of John Nash. These ‘Gothick’ windows were never found on real vernacular houses, nor were they planned with a symmetrical front door.

A page from House Architecture by J. J. Stevenson, 1877.A Victorian architect complains about The pretentiousness of the suburban Villa, based on Palladio but somewhat altered in the handing-down.The same basic plan would serve for villas in several alternative styles.Note the increased compartmentalisationof the rooms.

Plans of typical ‘Bye-Law’ houses from the late 1870sOnwards. No basement. ‘Handed’ pairs of houses joined as terraceBay window a prominent featureAll bedrooms upstairs. Three is the minimum.Large rear extension.

This is the typical front elevation of a bye-law house, built Between the 1870s and the early 1900s. These were better-builtand more healthy than previous houses, but tended to be crammed into monotonous streets with no open spaces.

The next wave of house-building Began after 1900, and the typical twentieth century suburban housedeveloped with a wider frontage than the bye-law house and a flat back.The typical plan form was semi-detached,which allowed for coal deliveries to the rear of the house.The plan and general shape of these houses remained constant up to the Second World War.