by Trevor Yorke
Stone was an alternative but masonry was expensive due to the time and special skills required to quarry, prepare and transport it, while brick was only reintroduced in the later Middle Ages and then as a luxury product for the rich. Rough stones or rubble were used for walls or just the footings of modest houses in areas where they could be easily extracted or collected, while cob (a similar mix to daub but dried out in blocks and stacked in thick walls with a protective white covering) was popular in Devon and parts of Buckinghamshire. With the growth in population and relative wealth there was an increase in building activity known as the Great Rebuilding, starting off in the later 16th century in the south and reaching the more remote northern and western areas in the 18th and 19th centuries. A larger number of people, successful merchants and traders in towns and yeoman farmers in the country, could afford more permanent houses built of local stone and brick. However, much of the new housing continued to be timber framed, even in London where this had been banned from 1605.
FIG 3.4: WELSH ROW, NANTWICH, CHESHIRE: Timber-framed structures, as in the foreground, were replaced by more fire resistant brick structures, as in the rear of the picture. This also reflected the move to classical styling, which made a sudden and dramatic change to the structure of English houses in the 17th and 18th centuries.
By the 18th century the new building regulations, changing fashions and the declining number and quality of trees, due to increased shipbuilding, made timber framed structures rare and usually only for poorer rural housing. However, the improved road and river transport later in the century caused other materials to become cheaper and more widely available and new ideas and fashions could be more rapidly spread. Standardisation of elements like bricks and sash windows and the availability of well designed and fashionable houses in pattern books meant that the same house could be built in any part of the country although variation in local stone or the colour of bricks still gave it some regionalisation. Other elements of vernacular architecture were retained, especially in details like metalwork, which were still supplied by local craftsmen, and bricks, which were made at local works, but for most of the houses featured in this book their appearance was guided by national fashions and trends rather than by regional traditions.
Materials
STONE
The most desirable material for houses was stone, especially finely cut masonry or ashlar. Accurately squared blocks of limestone and sandstone with the narrowest of joints produced a permanent, fireproof and refined exterior that suited the classical taste of the time. Larger scale quarrying and improved transport had by the 18th century made stone more widely available, being used for even cheaper terrace housing in areas close to extraction but only better quality houses further away. In most ordinary houses built of stone, rubble or irregular blocks were used, which with a partly cut or completely rough surface was cheaper. It was also common for the façade of better houses to be finished in ashlar but the sides and other walls to be built from rubble to save costs.
FIG 3.5: A map of England showing the main areas where sandstones, limestones and granites were used for house building, with additional captions highlighting places where other excavated materials could be found.
FIG 3.6: Three finishes of stone. Ashlar was common on the finest houses, rubble could be found down the sides and back of the same houses or on cheaper buildings, and rusticated was a finish often carved out for the lower storey of Palladian styled houses and imitated later in stucco on many Regency buildings.
Limestone was used in some of the most notable Georgian buildings. It is a sedimentary rock, that is one made from sediments built up over millennia in prehistoric seas with the type of deposits and tiny creatures trapped within determining its characteristics (for instance Oolitic limestone, which is used in the Cotswolds, is named after tiny sea creatures called oolites within it). Later impurities gave them their various colours. Portland stone, a greyish limestone, was used in some of our finest buildings, the creamy coloured Bath stone was used in this city and surrounding areas, rusty yellow to brown stone is distinctive of the Cotswolds, Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire, while steel grey limestone was used further north in the Peak District and Pennines.
Sandstone is also sedimentary but formed with deposits of fine rock particles in ancient desert conditions or river deltas, making a soft, less durable rock but with great variations in texture. One of the hardest types was millstone grit containing particles of minerals like quartz, which were found in the Peak District and South Pennines, but there were many other softer types widely used in building in areas like Carlisle and the North East, Lancashire and Cheshire, Sussex, the West Midlands and Shropshire.
FIG 3.7: Although many houses appear to be of solid stone, the ashlar façade in this example is only a veneer with cheaper brick used for the main part of the wall.
FIG 3.8: Smaller and softer stones like the flint in the left-hand picture and clunch, a hard chalk, on the right needed brickwork to make the corners and sometimes form horizontal bands in the wall.
Both of these stones were relatively easily cut and shaped using saws and chisels and are referred to as freestones. Harder igneous rocks (those that are formed from ancient flows of magma) are generally termed granites and are mainly found in wall construction in Cornwall, Devon and Cumbria.
In areas with poor supplies of these building stones and suitable timber, other deposits were used. Flints, very hard dark-grey irregular nodules found in chalk, were the main component for walls in parts of East Anglia and southern England where the chalk it is found in is near the surface, although red brick made up the corners and openings. Clunch, a harder type of chalk, was used in a similar way in the same areas. Pebbles found along south and eastern coastal regions and larger cobbles in the North West and Humberside were also used. In this period these irregular stones were generally utilised in the cheaper terraces and cottages.
FIG 3.9: BEDFORD SQUARE, LONDON: If you could not use the real thing, then artificial stone was available, the most notable being Coade stone used for details like capitals and keystones or whole doorways as in this example. It was sold by Eleanor Coade from 1769 to her death in 1821 and although it continued to be made for a few decades afterwards, its composition remained a secret although it is now believed to be a type of ceramic.
STUCCO
If you could not afford the real thing, then you could apply a render to your house so it appeared to be of stone. During the late 18th century and Regency period a wide variety of renders were available although they are all generally referred to as stucco. Most were types of cements patented and marketed under titles like Roman Cement or Portland Cement, the latter patented in 1824 and named as such because it imitated the fashionable grey Portland stone. It was used sometimes just for details on the façade, other times for the ground floor, with deep horizontal lines to imitate rough hewn stone found in the base of classical temples. It became more widespread in the early 19th century as a covering for the whole house, some with fine lines to imply ashlar masonry, and can still be found in spa towns such as Cheltenham, seaside resorts such as Brighton and most notably in Nash’s Regents Park development. Although most houses are now painted in whites and creams, at the time the finish was more likely to be in a more subdued beige or grey to match the colour of the quality stone it sought to imitate.
The problem with stucco is that not all variants worked and some fell off after a short period. It could also be used to cover up a wall of poor quality construction and the use of cheap bricks behind it gave it a bad reputation in many people’s eyes.
Fig 3.10: Houses might have just the lower storey covered in stucco (left) or the entire façade (right).
FIG 3.11: The surface of the render could simply be incised with narrow lines imitating fine masonry (left), formed with deep horizontal grooves to create a rusticated base to the house (middle) or left plain with the stucco used to make decorative features like the frieze and cornice (right).
The most popular material for houses was brick. No longer was it a luxury product for the finest gentry houses, its widespread use gave permanence and fireproofing to all levels of housing, although the quality varied. Bricks were produced locally, mostly at a growing number of brickworks, but sometimes they were made on the site of the house from clay dug in the immediate area, as had been the traditional way. The content of the clay, its preparation and position in the kiln affected the properties of the brick. Good quality bricks, which were required for the fine jointed work on the front of a house, demanded the best clay, with unwanted impurities removed, and they were fired in the hottest part of the kiln. Less well fired and poorer quality products were used for side and internal walls while overheated bricks, which turned grey/blue, could be used in decorative patterns.
Soft bricks known as rubbers were also important as they could be sanded down or carved to produce fine decorative work like the lintels above windows. Regional variations in the clay resulted in different colour bricks, for instance deep reds in Staffordshire, yellow stock bricks in London, greys around Reading and paler off-whites in Cambridgeshire. Red brick had been the fashionable choice in the previous century and continued to be widely used in this period but after around 1750, builders, especially in London, preferred colours such as beiges, creams or greys which imitated stone.
Bricks were hand-made so the finished shape is not always as sharp edged as the later 19th century types. Bricks from around 1800, and increasingly so in the Victorian period, had a recess called a frog on the top or on both top and bottom, which is useful to note if dating walls as earlier bricks were usually flat surfaced. Size had varied in early brick buildings but in the 17th century dimensions of 9" x 4" x 3" were generally adopted. In order to raise money in the wake of the American War of Independence a brick tax was levied on the total number used in a house from 1784. It was therefore an advantage if the brick was larger – to reduce the overall quantity and hence the amount levied – and larger bricks up to 10 inches long were produced (brick tax was abolished in 1851).
FIG 3.12: Rubbers were fine quality bricks that could be sanded down to make precisely shaped forms like this arch, with the narrowest gaps between them.
Bonding was the arrangement of the bricks in the wall, creating different patterns of headers (the short end of the brick) and stretchers (the long side) on the exposed surface. Flemish bond was the most popular, with alternate headers and stretchers along each course or layer of bricks; in cheaper variations a number of courses of stretchers between one of mixed was inserted, reducing the number of bricks used. English bond had fallen from favour and was not widely used until its revival in the late 19th century, while header bond was needed to produce smooth curves, as on bay windows.
The mortar between the bricks was usually lime-based throughout this period although some cement-based types did appear in the Regency era. Although not as strong as cement mortars, lime-based types allow moist -ure to pass through and this property matched by the bricks of the age means that the walls in effect breathe, an important thing to remember when repairing old houses as modern products do not, and can damage brickwork if used. Pointing is the visible finish of the mortar on the face of the wall and in this period was usually flush with the brickwork. When good quality bricks were used the gap between them could be very fine, where cheaper bricks with uneven shape or rough edges were used the gap was larger. There were methods in the trade to make a house look more refined: one type was tuck pointing, where the wet mortar was coloured to match the surrounding brick and a fine line was incised into it and filled with light coloured mortar so that it looked as if better quality bricks had been used (see Fig 3.15).
FIG 3.13: Bricks from this period were hand-made so have slightly rough textures and edges, unlike later Victorian machine-made types, which have a more consistent surface and sharper corners. The surface of the example on the right has worn away to reveal the impurities that remain from the original clay, a local character lacking in mass-produced bricks.
FIG 3.14: Sections of wall showing the outer surface pattern and the arrangement of brick in the wall of the different bonds. Flemish bond and the garden wall variant, where extra stretchers were inserted to reduce costs, were the most popular. English and stretcher bonds are rare in this period, while header bond was generally only used to create curved walls in a bow or bay window.
FIG 3.15: An example of tuck pointing where the rough edged bricks with wide joints had the mortar coloured to match the brick (the irregular dark grey lines in the photo). A thin bead of lime putty was then inserted into it to give the impression of fine jointed brickwork.
General Structure
The construction of the main structure of the house became increasingly controlled by Building Acts throughout the Georgian period. The early legislation going back to the previous century was for London but often became good practice elsewhere. The main change was the exclusive use of stone and brick for the external walls and the removal of wooden features such as exposed sash boxes and cornices from the face of the building so that fire could not spread easily from house to house. It was the 1774 Building Act drafted by leading architects that first aimed to control the standard of construction and fire prevention nationwide. Despite the elegant appearance of Georgian houses many were poorly built and complete collapse was not uncommon, so this new legislation not only imposed more stringent guidelines for fire prevention but also attempted some form of quality control. Cheap materials, shallow foundations and poor methods of construction were still to be found, especially on the small terraces and back to backs of the working classes, which were being erected in increasing quantity after this Act. The term ‘jerry building’ (from a nautical term for temporary rigging) was first coined in the Regency period to describe the shortcuts still made by builders at all levels of housing.
WALLS AND FLOORS
Brick and masonry walls of this date are nearly always solid with only small gaps, depending on the bonding, and not with a cavity as in more modern housing. The depth was around 9 inches, the length of a single brick, on smaller houses but in medium and larger terraces it was thicker than this on the lower floors, around 2 to 2½ bricks deep, tapering away as it reached the attic where it was usually 1 brick deep. It was also common for the quality bricks used on the façade to be only a thin veneer, with the main body of the wall behind constructed of cheaper versions (see Fig 3.16), as was typical on stone and stucco-faced terraces. Party and rear walls, which were out of sight, were also constructed from these cheaper bricks.
Internal divisions were only usually of brick where they had to carry a substantial load, at the lower levels or as a main load-bearing wall in larger houses. Most walls inside the house were made from a timber frame with laths and plaster applied (see Fig 5.17 – plaster and laths on brick). Foundations were often shallow, with the brickwork splaying out at the base, and there was rarely any form of damp course in the lower stages of the wall above. Basements were common in medium and large houses and offered some protection against damp, especially when the kitchen fireplace was sited there.
FIG 3.16: Although the exterior of a house may appear to have been built from fine quality bricks, builders who were always looking for ways of cutting costs often used these more expensive types as an outer facing, with the main body of the wall constructed from cheaper types. In this example most of the headers on the outer face have been cut in half as a further economy measure, with just the occasional full length one to tie the outer and inner parts together.
Floors could be solid at ground level (sometimes even where there was a basement below, which would have a brick, vaulted ceiling to support the floor above) with a marble or other polished stone surface in the finest houses. In the cheapest houses it might be no more than quarry tiled, or composed of bricks on end, or in some just beaten earth. Most floors in the house consisted of wooden joists running from one side to the other and
resting upon steps or sockets in the walls, with the planks nailed at right angles on top (you can always tell the direction of hidden joists as they will be at right angles to the floorboards). The floorboards tend to be wide at this date, although thinner boards could be seen in better quality and later houses, with pine from the Baltics becoming widespread towards the end of the period.
WINDOWS AND DOORS
The principal change to the structure of windows and doors in this period came from the imposition of fire regulations and the use of the relatively new sash window. Devised in the late 17th century in England and the Netherlands, the vertical sliding sash window gave a flexible way of controlling ventilation throughout the seasons as well as proportions that were best suited to the new classical styled façades that were becoming fashionable. The two sashes, wooden frames subdivided by glazing bars, were set within slots in an outer box (sash box) so that they could be raised or dropped independently of each other by pulleys and weights hidden within (see Fig 3.17). In smaller housing the sashes were not usually hung but held in place by wedges or slid horizontally, especially on top floors (Yorkshire sash, see Fig 4.31.2, 4.31.4 and 4.31.18).
FIG 3.17: A drawing of a sash window showing its inner workings and how it was recessed behind the outer brickwork after the 1774 Building Act.
FIG 3.18: The left hand example shows an earlier sash window flush with the wall, as could still be found in some early Georgian houses. The example in the central picture is recessed back 4 inches but with the outer box still exposed, as first imposed in London in 1709. The right hand example is fitted as dictated by the 1774 Building Act, with the box hidden behind the brick wall. Note also how the later example has finer glazing bars.
