118 Construction of Lantern. and a string. They will shut and keep close by their own weight, not being quite vertical. The top of the lantern should be of thick rough glass from " to g" thick * as it does not let the sun blaze in like smooth glass and does not sound so much under rain as thin glass, and is warmer and cooler. If the sides are high the top may be leaded, but if they are not high a lead top makes the lantern too dark for the hall to be pleasant, and in any case the light is best from the top. If there are no side windows of glass, the hall will be darkened in every snow, as it will lie on the top of the lantern till it is thawed off. But if lanterns are not carefully constructed they are liable to droop and then the rain settles in them and they fall into decay. The best way of carrying a long lantern over a hall is to put several beams boldly across, like the tiebeams of an open church roof of the tiebeam construction, which also has the advantage of holding the walls together instead of trying to push them out. House walls are seldom thick enough to carry a lantern on large brackets or hammer beams like church roofs. The only other strong construction is to carry long beams right through from the ceiling of the rooms on each side of the hall, strong enough to carry the lantern. But the other is the stronger way. Attempts * It is usual in plans and specifications to denote feet by ' and inches by" for shortness, as there is no danger of their being confounded with minutes and seconds of a degree, and I shall often follow that course, though not always. They have another much less reasonable habit which is calculated to puzzle anyone reading a specification: thus, if you read-Provide no. 3 grates for attics,' or 'no. 6 pegs in a closet,' these are not a peculiar kind of grates and pegs, so known to the trade, but it merely means 3 grates and 6 pegs. In like manner 'commercial gents' will not write a number in a letter without giving it you both in words and figures, and sometimes thus-twenty-nine, say 29,' as if you could say anything else. Lantern over Hall. 119 to do it by mere framing always end in drooping and failure, unless the lantern comes very close to the walls, as if it were an independent roof; and even then it requires some contrivance to carry the pressure vertically down to the walls without objectionable leverage, which is sure to tell in time. Then as to wasting room in the upper floor, it must be remembered that the only wasted space is the area of the 'well' contained within the stairs and gallery, since there must be passages of some kind to the rooms, and the gallery may save a second wall to form that passage: so that unless the hall is very large, it does not follow that this is a wasteful plan as to either space or cost of building in a moderately large house, and it is certainly a very convenient one if the rooms are judiciously arranged round the hall, as it gives people the smallest possible distances to travel, like an army moving upon inside lines, as they call it. There is however one apparent difficulty in it, and indeed in any plan for putting the large rooms which require to be high in the same block with small rooms and offices, to which such height is of no use, viz.: that you must either waste that height or else have a generally awkward change of level in what is absurdly called the first floor, being really the second: i.e. it is awkward unless it can be managed in the way I shall describe presently. That led to the common plan in large houses of the last century of putting all the superior rooms, both day and bed rooms, in one block of two high stories, and all the inferior rooms in another block of either two or three lower stories; so that you have what looks like two houses of differend kinds stuck together, the inferior one being generally set back or otherwise concealed as much as possible, but often very I 20 Basement Floors. imperfectly, being sometimes as large and as high as the principal block. Basements. Another common plan for the great houses in the Italian style of the last century was to put the offices in a low ground-floor story called the basement, with a gigantic external flight of steps to the front door and the hall and all the living rooms; and the inferior bedrooms in a fourth story or attic. This was perhaps the strongest case of sacrificing convenience to what was called architectural taste that we have ever had. The grand external staircase, often 30' wide, provided for getting people well rained on between the house and their carriages, and so led to their using some obscure door and stairs in the basement for real business if they could, and leaving the other for show. It was also far more inconvenient inside than having the offices on the level of the living rooms, and gradually involved the addition of a kitchen outside in order to get sufficient height for it and to keep the smell of cooking out of the house. That plan is now completely abandoned for country houses, where they have not the excuse of being confined to the smallest number of square feet that land speculators and builders will allow. The basement plan had however the advantage of lifting the living rooms out of the damp and into a better view. We now run into the opposite extreme of making our drawing room floors a continuation of the garden, and therefore just as damp as the old basements not actually sunk; and in one respect worse, for they had never windows down to the ground, which most architects give you now, and most ladies desire, with their usual contempt for the laws of nature. Two and Three Stories.-If you want to have some of the servants' rooms in the main house, without un Two and Three Stories together. 121 necessary height, and high reception rooms, the best way is to make the back of the house of three stories and the front of two. I have done that both in a parsonage of ordinary size and in a much larger house, and yet both of them are symmetrical in front, though of course the front and back are different, and the ends unsymmetrical enough to please the most vigorous and rigorous Gothicist. If the ground suggests it, the 'ground-floor back' may be a few steps lower than the front; and in that case the front and back rooms may be on the level of the alternate landings of the stairs; which has the advantage-but also some disadvantage in a small house of bringing all the rooms near together. In a house with reception rooms 14 or 15 feet high, the stairs are best divided into three flights, and the approach to all the back first floor' rooms may be at the second landing, 3 or 4 feet, i.e. 6 or 8 steps, below the front bedrooms. I have done this so that there are no odd steps off the regular stairs through the whole of a house 152 feet long inside. Odd steps in passages, or anywhere where they are not expected, are both inconvenient and dangerous. If a slight change of level cannot be avoided it is far better to make an easy slope, though no architect will ever do it voluntarily; but accidents sometimes teach people to lay down a slope afterwards, when it is sure to be more clumsy and conspicuous. Such a slope as I in 20, or the height of a single step run off in 10 feet, is hardly perceptible, and not the least inconvenient, I knew a lady who died of an unexpected step in a house where she was visiting, and the stumbling of Lord Lyndhurst over another in a public building led to the substitution of a slope which looks an ugly makeshift. The step was a mere architect's mistake originally. In 122 Principal Entrance. some modern houses, without the excuse of successive alterations which caused many of the inequalities in old houses, the architect seems to have aimed at making as many inequalities and surprises as possible in the level of rooms nominally on the same floor, as well as in the general plan and elevation and everything else, of which mode of building I expressed my opinion in the last chapter. Front Door. It is now generally agreed that the principal entrance is better not in the principal front of the house, or that front which contains the best rooms, which should be left private, looking into the garden. The entrance may be on any of the other sides according to local circumstances. If the kitchen and dining room are at the east end of the house, which they should be if possible, the entrance cannot well be between them, and therefore can only be either north or west, assuming the garden front to be south. In some cases however the entrance must be at the east and then you cannot have a back door from the dining room. Care should be taken to place the kitchen door so as not to invite the kitchen smells into the dining room or the rest of the house, but rather to send them the other way if possible: not that anything but great distance will keep them out if you will have a close range,' or any kind of 'patent kitchener,' whatever theoretical ventilation it may profess to have. You should also remember to allow space enough near the back dining room door for a large shelf or table to put dishes on; i.e. there must be more than a passage of the ordinary width; and such a small thing as that-or almost any other-may affect the plan throughout. In grand houses there is generally a place called a 'serving room,' or closet, with hot shelves in it; but I do not |