Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Building Acts and Builders' Pattern Topics
The Building Acts, which only applied in London, following the Great Fire
were, to a degree, nationally influential as their interpretation and enactment
affected the fashion for the popular use of brick and how it was subsequently
structurally and decoratively applied. This was not only reflected in the choice
and articulation of gauged work, but in establishing the first strictly Georgian
house out of its late seventeenth-century roots.
Summerson (1947, 52) states:
Continued fear of conflagrations prompted a Statute of 1707, which abolished
the prominent wooden eaves-cornices which were such a striking feature of the
streets and squares of the Restoration….
By the London Building Act of 1709, timber window frames, instead of being
almost on the same plane as the brick face, were to be set back 4 ins (102 mm).
The more stringent and effective London Building Act of 1774 virtually pro-
hibited the use of exposed timber work on buildings, stating that entire fronts
were to be of brick, stone, burnt clay, artificial stone, or stucco.
These and other Acts, and the influence of numerous pattern topics, gradu-
ally led to the standardisation of architectural design and, in turn, the compo-
nents themselves; even the bricks. This influence of pattern topics on Georgian
architecture was considerable, providing builders with sufficient knowledge to
erect a building to the satisfaction of the client. Publications also gave tech-
nical guidance to skilled craftsmen; examples include
The City and Country
Builder's and Workman's Treasury of Designs
by Batty Langley (1740), and
The
Complete Body of Architecture
by Isaac Ware (1756). These enabled building own-
ers to become more conversant with details of proposed works, a consequence
of which was the erection of many fine buildings spoilt only by the repetition
of detail. R. Campbell in
The London Tradesman
of 1747 warns of the perils of
master bricklayers designing and building.
'A master bricklayer thinks himself capable to raise a brick house without the tui-
tion of an architect…It is no new thing in London for these master builders to
build themselves out of their own houses, and fix themselves in gaol with their
own materials' (Lynch, 1994, 51)
Despite this cautionary note, Amery (1974, 12-13) emphasises the importance
of pattern topics to eighteenth-century domestic architecture which:
… between 1715 and 1730, was stable and uniform. The Palladian gospel had
been spread by the pattern topics. These topics were compiled by carpenters like
William Half-penny of Twickenham or the carpenter/architect, Batty Langley,
