Page:An Encyclopædia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture and Furniture.djvu/78

54 disagreeable effect is, in a great measure, removed, the moment any purpose of utility is discovered ; or even when the contiguity of other houses, or some peculiarity in the shape of ground, allows us to imagine, that some reasonable motive may have existed in the artist's mind, though we may be unable to trace it. An irregular castellated edifice, set down on a dead flat, conveys an idea of whim or of folly in the designer ; and it would convey this idea still more strongly than it does, were it not that the imitation of something else, which we have previously seen with pleasure, makes the absurdity less revolting. The same, or yet greater irregularity, would not only satisfy, but delight the eye, in an ancient citadel, whose ground-work and elevations followed the rugged surface and fantastic projections of the rock on which it is built. The oblique position of a window in a house, would be intolerable ; but utility, or rather necessity, reconciles the eye to it at once, in the cabin of a ship." — Stewart's Philosophical Essays, p. 240.

Design XII. — ''A Dwelling of Two Stories for a Man and his Wife, with a Servant and Two or Three Children, with a Cow-house and Pigsty. ''

121. Accommodation. This may be considered a comfortable dwelling for a gardener or bailiff in Britain ; or for a small proprietor in America, or Australia.

89

It contains, on the ground-floor, an entrance lobby, a ; staircase, b ; kitchen, c ; parlour, d ; tool-house or office for paying men, e ; pantry and dairy, f ; back kitchen, g ; shed for wood and fuel, h ; dusthole, i ; privy. k ; and cow-house, with hen-house over, l. The cow-house is connected with a court-yard, which contains a shed for hay and straw, piggeries, and dung- pit, with a manure well, connected with the privy. The platform, on three sides of this dwelling, forms a handsome walk, from which there is a door into the court-yard. The bed-room floor contains a best bed-room, m ; a second bed-room, n ; a third bed-room, o ; and a stair, p.

90

122. Construction. The walls may be of brick, or stone, or of brick Hogging plastered externally, as shown in the elevation ; care being taken, whatever material may be used, that the colour is neither a glaring red, nor a glaring white. The roof may be covered with reeds, or with combed wheat straw (straw from which the ears of grain have been cut, or combed off, in consequence of which, the culms are unbruised by the flail). The intersecting lines shown at the ridge of the roof, and which may appear to many, not accustomed to see reed-covered buildings, as a mere ornament at the fancy of the thatcher, are formed by rods, generally of hazel, for the pur- pose of keeping down 'the layer of reeds, which are spread across the ridge tree of the roof. The intersecting rods, fig. 89, q, are kept in their places by the horizontal rods, r r ; and these are fastened to the thatch, by staples, or spits, or broaches, s, which are nothing more than short pieces of rod, previously well steeped in water, to render them flexible, bent in the form of a staple hook, and stuck in the thatch or reeds. The forked piece of wood represented on the upper part of the gable end, should only be employed if the