Evolution of Vernacular House Design
British Domestic Architecture Prior to the Industrial Revolution
Feb 24, 2009
Architectural history typically celebrates grand examples of domestic building, like Andrea Palladio’s Villa Rotunda, or the palaces and villas of the aristocracy constructed prior to the 19th century. Vernacular architecture refers to domestic buildings of lesser significance: cottages and farmhouses, barns and mills, inns and shops. These buildings in Britain were constructed according to local traditions and materials until the advent of the Industrial Revolution.
In the book Illustrated Handbook of Vernacular Architecture, author and architect R.W. Brunskill examines changes in domestic architecture in Britain over three or four centuries. The buildings he illustrates are the abodes of tenant farmers and employees of a manor house, or the larger homes of shopkeepers and wealthy tenant farmers.
Brunskill identifies four main floor plans for pre-industrial revolution vernacular architecture. What the plans share in common is the use of open fireplaces or hearths and spartan design. More modest homes like those of cottagers typically had two rooms at ground floor level, one for the family and the other reserved for service uses, including cooking areas, lodging cattle in winter or a weaver’s work space. Upstairs rooms would have been used for sleeping quarters.
Wealthier home owners like shopkeepers or minor gentry would have used the downstairs as the location for the salon or living area; a rear room housed either a bedroom or service area. Staircases to upstairs bedrooms were often tucked in next to the fireplace or in a far corner of the house.
In either case, whether the home of a cottager or yeoman, a longitudinal passage often ran the length of the house, leading to a yard where animals were raised and service uses were located. The hall plan is still used in contemporary domestic architecture.
Heating Sources in Vernacular Housing
Fireplaces were introduced in the 17th and 18th centuries to eliminate smoky interiors. Prior to their introduction, most homes had an open hearth over which food was cooked. Fire smoke was exhausted through a louver, gables or through chinks in a tiled roof.
The addition of fireplaces meant smoke from the fire could be contained. Flues and chimney stacks were added during the 18th and early 19th centuries ensuring proper smoke exhaust. Not every room in smaller homes had a fireplace, making these rooms chilly during the winter season.
Materials Used in Vernacular Architecture
Vernacular architecture used local building materials for construction purposes. If stone was plentiful, that was deployed. Walls might be assembled from rubble stone, flint or cobbles, laid in regular courses with mortar to tie the whole together. Tough, irregular masonry was most commonly used, however, with the heaviest stones being used at the base of the building.
Other materials found in pre-industrial revolution domestic architecture in Britain included brick, and combinations of timber and other materials: wattle and daub or brick for infilling walls, sometimes concealed beneath a cladding of tiles, weatherboard or lime wash on the exterior, and lath and plaster on the interior.
The use of ashlar, or cut stone, was limited even in larger domestic architecture to facing material. The sides and rear of such a building would still have been constructed using irregular stone.
Brunskill notes that to prevent buckling of the walls, heavy wooden floor beams were used to tie together opposite walls, and heavy tie beams were laid at the top of the walls to counter outward pressure. These beams were topped by self-balancing roof members triangulated to transmit loads vertically down the walls.
The industrial revolution brought mechanization to traditional building trades and prosperity to a growing middle class. In the course of a century, the two-room stone, timber frame or sod vernacular house had been replaced by a more spacious brick or wood-framed home in a town or city. The patterns of vernacular architecture remain a source of inspiration for designers and architects, as Christopher Alexander’s 1977 book, A Pattern Language demonstrates.
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