CORRESPONDENCE.

THE MODEL HIINDRED-GIIINEA COTTAGE AT MERROW.

pro roe Eorror or ram ”Srsorrror."1 SIB.,—As your large sale of the plans and specification would seem sufficient evidence of the practical interest taken by readers of the Spectator in the hundred-guinea cottage that I recently built for Mr. Strachey at Merrow Common, I feel that they may like to know the following facts.

Dr. Pierce, Medical Officer of Health of the Guildford Rural District, in which Marrow is situated, in his annual Reporl' to his Board, just issued, makes the subjoined statements

"Interesting experiments in cheap cottage construction have been carried out on a small plot of ground adjoining Marrow Common by Mr. St. Loe Strachey. I was instructed by the Council to report on the wooden cottage first erected, and as to whether cottages of a similar nature would be suitable for the working classes.

After endeavouring to point out its good and bad features, I concluded the report as follows : ' Whilst the wooden cottage can, subject to the defects mentioned, be passed ea satisfactory from a health point of view, I must, in case such approval might be taken as recommending the general adoption of this plan of cottage in rural districts, add the reservation, that I consider a more artistic, and substantial structure should be aimed at, even at an increased cost. I am aware that this cottage is a praiseworthy attempt at a cheap cottage, but I am strongly of opinion that the present day difficulty caused by the disparity between the high cost of con- struction and the low wages of the workers should not be bridged over by the erection of unsatisfactory dwellings, which in a few years' time it may be necessary to supersede.' Three other single cottages allot different design have since been erected on the same plot, and no doubt good value for the money spent on them, but characterized in nearly all details by cheap- ness of materials and the omission of many items usually con- sidered necessary from the points of view of sanitation and convenience.

It is claimed that they are at least dry, and hence preferable to many of the old damp cottages in existence. This is true (except in the case of one of the cottages, the concrete floor of the living room in which remains very damp after several weeks' occupation)—but many of the old cottages have one feature which is rarely copied in modern cottages; and that is roominess. We are too much governed by the arbitrary limit of 300 cubic feet per person legally required in common lodging-houses, but there is very little doubt that the tendency in the future will be to demand a larger area both in the living and the bedrooms. I would put forward a strong plea that in the designing of cottages this feature should not be overlooked and that both in the design and construction the probable demands of sanitation in the immediate future, las far as they can be gauged from present tendencies, should be borne in mind.

Although one must cordially welcome every effort to solve the Rural Housing problem, I cannot believe that this solution is to be found in attempting to build a £100 cottage, which really means the reduction of the cost of materials and construction to the lowest limit of habitability. Efforts should rather be concen- trated on finding ways and means to erect the best class of cottage.

Experience shows that good and substantial cottages, even when built in numbers by contract, cannot be erected in this part of the country under from £175 and £200 each, and it is probable that the labourers' cottages, put up by the large estates in the district, cost still more.

It may reasonably be asked why should the rural worker be required to put up with a cheap and unsatisfactory cottage. It is not as if the country were impoverished and utterly unable to provide for its rural population except by makeshift methods. The situation appears to me to be that, owing to the want of uniformity in the working of our economic laws, a great disparity has arisen between the means of the labourer on the one hand and the rent of his cottage and the cost of living on the other. The State, if anybody, is answerable for this disparity.

It would be unjust and prejudicial to the health of the worker.

to rely on the 'unhampered process of our economic laws' to

rectify matters, for this might take generations. Prompt assist- ance is therefore called for either from Local Authorities or the State—if only as a temporary measure. Conditions may alter after a time in such a way as to enable private enterprise again to build cottages as in the past, or better still, it may become the general custom for all employers of labour to house their employees. The much-vaunted remedy, of raising the agricultural labourer's wages by a few shillings, would only be a partial solution, if at all, for even then a new cottage let at an economic rent would take one-third of his wages."

While, as the architect of the cheapest of the cottages thus condemned, I was considering the best answer to Dr. Pierce's criticisms—which, though in fact perhaps mistaken, are of course perfectly fair—I received the following letter from the tenant of the cottage in question. It was, I need hardly say, quite unsolicited Dram dont know if you have seen this in the Weekly Press [a local Surrey paper, published at Guildford, containing Dr. Pierce's Report] and I dont know if it interests you but I just thought this. It is not fair to pick our cottages to pieces like this. I should just like to say, as they have picked on my cottage especially, that my floor certainly is not perfectly dry but it is not wet enough to harm any of us and if I had not such little children and could have left it uncovered during the summer it would be quite dry in a few weeks, also if I could put matting down instead of linoleum it would be dry. Then again it [i.e., Dr. Pierce's Report] says about roominess. What fault can they find with the size of my beautiful bedrooms ? I have also my living room which everyone admires for its size also its cheerfulness. And then convenience. I have a downstair cup- board, shelves, larder, and water laid on, also draining board. Where is the omission in this ? and again sanitation our lavatory [meaning sanitary pail closet] is as good as all country lavatorys and so is our drain in fact a good deal better than some and here I should like to say both myself and my family have had better health since we have been here than we had for months before. I should like to have the Photo of my cottage my bonnie children and ourselves taken and put in every paper in England saying we are the proud occupiers. Also I should like to say before we came here we lived in one of the old-fashioned cottages which they [i.e., Dr. Pierce] talk about. We had 3 small bedrooms 1 had no fireplace and only a very narrow window 2 of the bedrooms put together would not be as large as my childrens bedroom here. We had no sitting room. All our water we had to draw from a well over 100 ft. deep and a filthy earth lavatory and for this we paid Os. a week and rates and not one room as large as we have here and ugly as sin to look at. It was also very damp. One bed which my children had to lie on was sopping wet all the winter. None of that here. Look here Sir I wish I could put all this in a letter and put in this paper but I am not clever enough to put it together pro- perly and I expect it costs money but perhaps you could. Every day we live to be more thankful to Mr. — and we are very happy here and it do leave us with a chance to get food after we have paid our rent and no rates to follow and our cottage is not ugly. Wait till we can get the fences up and the flowers all nice, and our windows all as they should be and then ours will be as pretty as any cottage costing double. Please Sir excuse this liberty but I felt so indignant I must write to somebody and I thought you were the best gentleman and I hope you will build ever so many more for the sake of other mothers like me. Thank- ing you I remain yours respectfully, — Model Cottage, Marrow Common."

This spirited and practical letter—" unedited " save in the matter of stops and bracketed explanations—is perhaps the most potent answer that could well be given to the detractors of this cottage in particular, and the cheap cottage movement in general. The opinion of the actual inhabitants of the cottages is perhaps no less worthy our attention than that of Officers of Health.

It might be pointed out that the wife and mother who wrote the letter has no special cause to speak smoothly to me. Our sole intercourse was with reference to a temporarily smoky chimney whilst she was still deep in the chaotic horrors of a rain-soaked move-in. Introductions under such conditions are not calculated to lead to further intercourse of a genial sort. The letter, however, speaks for itself, and needs no

[About two hundred and fifty copies of plane, details, specification, and quantities of the hundred-guinea cottage were printed—to be sold at 2s. 6d. per set for the benefit of the Rural Housing Association, of 4 Tavistock Square, W.C. Some thirty copies are still in hand.—En. Spectator.]