STUPID BUILDING BY-LAWS.
It.CHORUS of complaint is making itself heard on the subject of the building by-laws now being enforced in rural districts. Most people have noticed that in a pretty old village the new cottages are usually hideous. But as no one who does not actually do the building or pay for it comes in contact with the source of the mischief, it has been able to do its work of defacing the villages, stopping the erection of cheap cottages, and binding heavy burdens on
the owners of barns and granaries, stables and sheds, quietly and unquestioned. The usual "last straw" which has broken down the patience of owners or would-be builders is the issue by the Local Government Board of "Model By-laws," in which are embodied for adoption by District Councils the ideals which the taste and experience of the average suburban builder and parish surveyor might be supposed to evolve for the rigid control of every form of building, build- ing material, road, roof, or drain, in the very varied and different conditions of rural England. The District Councils copy these "models," and it is their adoption, at a time when thousands of men of wealth and taste are either buying land in the country or building and improving on it, which has caused the protest. Several excellent articles have been devoted to these stupid rules and their results in the pages of Country Life, where illustrations of the various good, cheap, and pretty cottages, barns, and buildings of the last three centuries are published to show how durable, pic- turesque, and altogether suitable were the old modes of building, now forbidden by the Local Government Board. It is impossible in one article to cover the long list of things tabooed or de- manded, but the following are instances showing the inter- ference in the ordinary man's right to do what lie likes with his own. Four good cottages were to be built in a village where the class of accommodation was very bad. Before a brick could be laid complete and elaborate plans had to be sent in to the District Council. The site was 150 ft. from the road, and each cottage had a strip of garden in front. There were no village drains at all, and the cottages were isolated. But the Council, acting on by-laws made to suit suburban property, where there are two separate sets of drainage nn ler the road, one for the house drains, and the other for the rain water, and a regular dust-removal system, for which in towns access is required to the back of the house- nfused to allow the cottages to be built. The reasons given will show the incubus this kind of thing is be- coming. or we should not quote this typical example. The plans were rejected—(1) Because the names of adjoining owners were not given. (2) Because there was no ventilation to the drains. (The drains were only from the cottage sink.) (3) No dumb well. (4) The cottages must be "set back" 21 ft. from the adjoining property. (Fancy this in a country meadow.) (5) The rain-water must not be connected with the drains: (This meant that the water from the roof and the sink might not run in the same pipe.) (6) There was no road at the back for the purpose of removing refuse,—i.e.. for taking away ashes and potato peelings. A_ud lastly, there were no division hedges marked between the cottage gardens !
Other plans were rejected because they did not show full sections of all parts, as if they were not expensive enough already. But the above instructive list shows a few—and only a few—of the cast-iron restrictions on building in the country before the owner has even chosen his material, or asked the local authorities what sized rooms he is permitted to make or live in. It has been said that an Englishman's house is his castle. Apparently the fraaners of the model by-laws have taken this au pied de la lettre, for he is not to be per- mitted to make his walls, or his roof, or even his barns or his sheds, of anything which would not resist an incendiary, or serve to line the cotmtersca.rp of a fortress. Even his window- frames may not project, or even be flush with the wall, as all the pretty old window-frames were, partly to avoid exposure of the edges, and partly to gain space in- side. The framers of the by-laws have visions of an immense
c )nflagration, in which tongues of flame will lick the faces of the i ,olated rustic brick and timber cottage, and catching the win- d ,w-frames. consume it. In sayizig brick and timber we are daing the by-laws an injustice. They are far too rigorously drawn ta let any timber appear in the walls at all. The brick and timber building, probably the prettiest, the cheapest, and the most durable, for its cost, of any in England, is never more to be permitted. Many of the most beautiful old houses in Surrey, and almost all the cottages, are built of this setting of bricks in a timber frame. The good effect and cheapness of this kind of building cannot be exceeded. It was used commonly as early as 1500, and much which is still standing is a good deal earlier. Exquisite examples of granaries, dovecotes, stables, barns, and other buildings made of this, and roofed with flat tile, may be seen in most Southern counties. The base of the walls was generally solid brick for as high as a man could lay the bricks when standing on the ground. The timber frame was then set up, and the interstices filled in with the good red bricks, or sometimes plaster and brick alternated, the material for all three being found on the spot. In order to get the ornamental effect, in ipith of the by-laws, some architects set sham boarding on the faces of the walls! None of the pretty wooden oriels commonly seen in old houses may now be added to a new one. In fact, if any one takes a walk down any particularly charming old village with a sheaf of the "Model By-laws" in his hand he will find first, to quote the old lists which children follow when trying what is to be their future home by the aid of the seeds on a grass flower, that each and every building, "house, castle, cottage, pigstye, barn." is either absolutely illegal, and would instantly be con- demned if it showed its wicked proportions on paper, or con- tains so many contraventions of the laws that nearly every bit of it ought to be "taken out" and new windows, roofs, tiles, or ceilings put in. Let us take a nice Surrey village built upon a sandstone rock, and another in Devonshire, where the clay for wall-building abounds, and examine a few of the cottages from the point of view of the Local Govern- ment Board. The first cottage stands on a sand-rock. It is built of what looks like plaster and timber, and has quantities of roses growing up the walls, to which they are fastened by nails driven into the timber frames. This cottage ia con: detained fundamentally. The builders who set it up in 1605 broke a law before they laid a brick. For the law says : "Every person who shall erect a new domestic building shall cause the whole ground surface and site of that building to be properly asphalted, or covered with a layer of good cement-concrete rammed solid." It is true the ground is sand-rock. But there is the law, and. as Mr. llgortiboy's cook said, "rich and pore must abide by it." The next pair of cottages have been built in the bottom of a sunny corner, where the stone was excavated years ago from the hill. side. The garden flowers are early, for it is beautifully sheltered. But the law would fetch them out of that, for it is enacted that "all excavated sites from which earth, gravel, stones. &c., have been removed, shall be filled up before being built on." If the builder of this cottage had first filled the quarry up with dust-hole rubbish and built on that he would have had the law on his side.
Down the street in the Surrey village are cottages with all their top story built of timber, with pretty wooden barge- hoards; and others built half of timber from the base, with the upper parts hung with tiles, like scales, lapping over on the sides exposed to the wet winds. Then there are three or four with thatched roofs, and most of them have low rooms, below the regulation height, but with windows that give sufficient light, and also ventilate them well. The latter would all be condemned if any one wished to build similar cottages. But it is no use going into details, for the whole place, from one end of the village to the other, is all dreadfully illegal, stock, lock, and barrel. For every house is built of material which will burn, and the new country cottage, pigstye, and barn is to be incombustible. "All new buildings must be enclosed with walls constructed of brick, stone, or other hard and incombustible material." The practical effect of the clause is that stone and brick are the only two building materials to be permitted in any part of the country, however remote, rustic, or picturesque. There are to he no more thatched roofs, even for barns, for the rules apply to every building, and not to houses only. There are to be no more of the lath and plaster or wattle and dab houses, barns, and cottages. The soft-chalk cottages of Wiltshiae are never to be revived. There are to be no more houses of weather boarding (we believe there are some of these still in Southwark hundreds of years old, and half the barns of Suffolk and very many cottages are partly built of it), and all the warm old " cob " houses and sheds seen in Devon are to be the last of their race. The rules are not only highly objectionable from the point of view of the picturesque, and of the congruity of our country buildings with their surroundings. Hideous as the brick and elate cottages are, there might be aomething, to be said for them did they provide better acaommodation, and if the rules as to the height of rooms and windows were essential to or improved health. But th.ey do not, and the houses are
not more comfortable than the good class of cottages of old days. They are also far more expensive. All the best archi- tects who are building for men of means and taste in the country desire, and prefer to use, the local material, whatever it may be. For cottages in Suffolk or Berkshire, the timber and brick, or wattle and dab—it is covered with plaster and whitewash, but the interior is often woven of sticks cut green from the fence three hundred years ago—and in Wiltshire, chalk ; and in Devon, the "cob," a mixture of clay and straw, with a wash of pink or white, are the natural building stuffs of the land. They are the cheapest, and they answer the pur- pose. The clay houses are beautifully warm, and the thatch suits them exactly. The present writer once lived for three weeks in the middle of winter in a large brick-floored, thatched cottage in which there was not a door, window- frame, or piece of furniture, except the beds, which was not a century old. Constant outdoor life, shooting or fishing, made warm and comfortable quarters very necessary. But this old cottage of timber and brick, thatch and wattle, was as com- fortable as any reasonable man or woman could desire.
Again, we know of a villa owner who has just built a new cottage of black weather boards which violates every clause of the "Model By-laws"—they do not yet apply in his parish— and yet has a cottage which is eminently livable, healthy, roomy, watertight, and cheap.
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