Happy are those who see beauty in modest spots

In 1893, the painter Camille Pissarro said, ‘Happy are those who see beauty in modest spots where others see nothing. Everything is beautiful, the whole secret lies in knowing how to interpret it.’

We are surrounded by beauty in the villages, towns and cities of Britain, but it is so widespread that we take it for granted. In light of the walk I’ve just been on – round Chiswick in west London by the Thames – I’ll try to point out some of this beauty that is all around us. The walk happens to be in London, but it could be anywhere in Britain where there are terraced houses; i.e. everywhere.

The point I want to get across is: you can date a terraced house by the depth of its window sills. The later a house is, the deeper its sills. 

Let’s begin at William Hogarth’s house, by Hogarth roundabout where the M4 begins. Look closely at this window in the painter’s old home. It’s not clear when the house was built but, because there’s no window sill there, it must be pre-1709.
 

If a window sill is four inches deep or more, then the house was built after the Great Fire of London – or, more precisely, after 1709, when legislation was passed to make buildings more fireproof. Earlier windows, like Hogarth’s, were flush, or nearly flush, with the brick facade of the house. As a result, flames licking the building had only to brush the wooden frame’s outside edge to consume the whole window, be drawn inside the room and set the entire place alight.

Add in jutting Tudor first floors oversailing the street – banned under Jacobean legislation – and pre-1666 London was one endlessly overlapping line of highly flammable dominoes. Torch a bakery in Pudding Lane and you torch 13,500 houses, 87 churches, 44 guildhalls, the Royal Exchange, the Custom House and St Paul’s Cathedral. The crypt of the cathedral – stuffed with paper from the local printers – burned for a week. The City was a moonscape, buried under four foot of hot ash.

Deeper window frames, stepped back from the wall, meant that just the bricks were scorched, and the interiors would survive such a catastrophe. 

Let’s now walk down from Hogarth’s house to the riverbank at Chiswick Mall, and you’ll see how later window sills looked. When you hit the mall, take a left and look out for Eynham House and Bedford House, built in the eighteenth century, after the 1709 act. So, they both have window sills but, also, look closely and you’ll see that there is a thick white timber frame visible all around each sash window. 

These timber frames disappeared from sight under another window sill act – in 1774. Under this one, the recessed timber sash frames now had to be hidden behind the bricks, where previously they displayed their outside edge. 

Walk a bit further down Chiswick Mall, or any post-1774 terrace in Britain – which means most terraces – and you’ll start to see the later buildings, with window sills set back four inches and their frames concealed. So, at the risk of repeating myself, remember:

1. Windows flush with the front wall, no window sills – pre-1709.
2. White frame edge exposed but set back, four inch-deep sills – between 1709 and 1774.
3. Four-inch window sills with white frame edge concealed – after 1774.

Start looking and you’ll see pretty sash windows – and the interesting history lesson that comes with them – all over Britain. Beauty in modest spots, as Pissarro put it.

Posted 07/07/2008 18:01:55 by Harry Mount with 0 comments.