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Specimen of a Plan.

stances, or according to some tastes, even for the actual circumstances of that house. But it combines as many conveniences or desiderata as could be combined in a house of that size, and with the entrance necessarily at the west. It was tempting to try to dispense with the wing altogether, but it would have wasted room instead of saving it, besides other evils. The length of the hall and of the whole house might be reduced 15' by omitting one of the small rooms behind and another in front, all the way up, making five altogether, and of course the general dimensions might be reduced a little also, so as to make the ground covered by the main house about 5000 sq. ft., instead of nearly 7000, in which case it would hardly be called a large one.

Again the plan may be varied by putting bays at the south end of the dining room and library instead of the drawing room (but not to all three) and making that a long room with three windows in front, and then the fire place must be at the long side opposite the windows, unless you wish to spoil the room and make it like a common London drawing room; for a long room with the fire at the end is practically little better than a square room of the same width. And you may have a narrow passage to a garden door in the south front, instead of the one out of the dining room and the door window in the drawing room. All these variations are consistent with the principle of this plan, and some persons may like one and some another.

You may be puzzled with the peculiar shape of kitchen and ask why it did not simply include the larder beside it and not project southward as it does, making that angle in the passage, and the kitchen an odd shape. The object was to get the door looking eastward towards the wing, and not southward, and so

Kitchen and Back Passages.

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to keep kitchen smells out of the house, while the kitchen itself is as near as it can be to the dining room, and also to the servants' hall. When the wind is west kitchen smells will blow away from the house, and the east wind cannot blow them into the house, but up the chimney and ventilator. If you observe the shelf behind the dining room wall opposite the kitchen, you will see how so small a thing as that may affect the whole plan. Also you see the back passage leads to the front door and library, so that servants need only cross the hall to come to the drawing room and the two small adjacent rooms, through the door under the stairs, and the distance from the pantry is only a few yards. The billiard room is over the kitchen and larder, except the projecting piece of kitchen where there is an arch in a 14 inch wall, carrying solid wall above. A cast iron. tank 25' x 6' x 7', therefore holding 6560 gallons, lies over that part of the upper passage, leaving a good headway under, though it is all below the roof spouts. This is possible from there being three stories in that part of the house. There is another similar tank at the west end of the same passage, or rather beyond it, over the western W.C. There is a small hard water cistern in the N.E. small room of the wing, where are the steps into the clockroom.

The clock tower becomes hexagonal above the wing roof, so as to present one face to the dining room and the dressing room over it and to the front garden, and another to the kitchen-garden and stables behind the house. No more dials were wanted. There is a short spire above. The attic windows both in house and wing are dormers. Those of the house look southward over the lantern, the passage having the northern windows, that the rooms may have the sun. The partition of course

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is wood, as there is no wall under it. The men's bedrooms are in the wing, which has a staircase from the garden door; and you observe a kind of private staircase to the bedroom and dressing room of the master and mistress, so that the servants may go there without coming into the front gallery and stairs. This curtails the dressing room a little, but leaves it quite large enough, 16× 16'. The W.C. in it has an external window, which is essential, and there is just room for it over the wing roof; and that small matter also required some scheming and a little shifting of the whole wing northward. There is a luggage door close to the back stairs, which is now common and very useful to avoid knocking the best walls with those huge arks of ladies' dresses for a three days visit, and the loading of carriages at the front door. I should mention that both the kitchen and the billiard room are higher than the other back rooms, but not too high to prevent there being a large attic over the billiard room, which may be a children's play room if it is wanted, where unlimited noise may be made.

The drawing room bay of five windows is not carried up because it would make an awkward shape to divide into a bedroom and dressing room. The wall is carried by a tubular iron beam, so as to leave a flat ceiling underneath. The front door is set back to leave a porch, with a tall open doorway, instead of a projecting porch outside. There are cellars, and some small rooms with windows under the wing, which covers 2080 square feet; and as the ground falls in that direction, there is a sliding entrance for casks under the clock tower straight into the middle passage. Those windows look up a bank in the ground, like that of Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, not into a narrow enclosed

Porch to drive under.

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area as usual. The other windows looking into the garden have the lower panes of fluted glass and the sill too high to see over sitting. The lower windows of the front rooms of the house are all 10' high and the sills 3' above the floor, except that the eastern one of the drawing room bay has a dwarf door under it, with a few steps into the garden.

Carriage Porches.-Not only are the grand external flights of steps of the last century, with a basement floor of low rooms, abandoned, but instead of having to mount in the wet, we have sometimes now porticoes and porches for carriages to drive under. They are called porticoes in the Italian style and porches in Gothic; at least that is the only difference that I know. The once fashionable form of a portico as high as the house, in imitation of a Greek temple, has at last been perceived to be the worst possible form of it, as it is too high to prevent rain from blowing in and the platform is in a constant slop in rain; and it darkens the room over the hall. Accordingly lower ones of the height of one story are now generally used, and are convenient enough when the approach is straight and easy. But they too are apt to darken the hall unless it has windows beyond the portico. Of all abominations in window-planning, hall windows down to the ground are the worst I have seen, both in appearance outside and for lighting and general effect inside. These porticoes require some care in construction, if they are in the Classical style, with a pretence of single stones forming lintels long enough for carriages to drive under, which must be at least 8 ft. clear. No such stones are to be got, and therefore they must really depend on iron beams inserted somehow to carry them.

I did indeed know one case where a London archi

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A very successful Carriage Porch.

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tect thought he had overcome that difficulty by dovetailing the stones endways. I happened to visit the place just before this portico was finished, and when I learnt how it was done I said, then there will be a pretty smash there some day.' The very day the props were removed the whole thing fell and killed one of the men I had been talking to. I see by the newspaper report of it, which I kept, that that conversation was mentioned at the inquest (which I should have gone to if I had known in time), but nevertheless an intelligent coroner and jury found a verdict of accidental death.' The architect, by way of putting a good face on the matter, called on the contractor to rebuild it; but luckily he had before protested against it to the employer, who had the sense to stop the repetition of it. I have seen smaller porticoes in London houses built of bricks, without either a bar of iron or any kind of support except from the cement, which may either stand or crack as it may happen. Large external cornices built in the same way may almost be said to be chronically falling. Gothic porches built with arches and real vaulting are of course safe against this calamity, provided they are sufficiently buttressed at the corners, and do not look disposed to burst for want of it, like the Albert memorial in Hyde Park. But in these days of iron and glass surely the best way is to make a projecting glass roof wide enough to cover a carriage at the front door (allowing for a step outside) which will neither darken the hall nor have pillars to drive against. Such things are certainly difficult to make handsome, but I suppose architects will not avow themselves incapable of doing so.

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Stairs. Passing from external to internal stairs, it is wonderful how often one hears the old joke realized

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