This chapter deals with:

• the doors, windows and internal features of your house
• and how they can give you clues to help you to date the property.

DOORS

Has a door been moved? Look at the shape of the door and its surroundings. Are there any steps? This may hint that the door has been moved. In older properties you might even see where a door has been bricked up, in much the same way that you see bricked-up windows. In the mid-seventeenth century higher ceilings became fashionable, and the easiest way to raise the ceiling was to dig out the earthen floor – so steps going down to the front entrance may hint at a change like this. In the nineteenth century it was more fashionable to have a raised ground floor above a basement, with steps leading up to the front door.

Doors, windows and any ironwork (such as guttering) were usually painted the same colour; the finish tended to be matt or semi-gloss until the Edwardian period. Earlier doors weren’t painted at all. Georgian doors and windows were usually painted black or dark green, while some eighteenth-century doors were painted bright blue.

Batten doors

The earliest doors were simple planked or ‘batten’ doors – that is, a row of vertical planks, with a series of planks fixed horizontally to the back of the door. There may be an arch on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century doors. As a rule of thumb the flatter the arch, the later the door. Doors from Tudor and earlier periods tend to be lower than modern doors, simply because people were shorter then. Some early doors are large enough for a man on horseback to ride through, and then a smaller door known as a ‘wicket’ door, big enough for someone to walk through, is cut into the door.

Panelled doors

Panelled doors were introduced in the late 1500s and became more widespread in the 1600s. They tended to have square heads rather than arched. The earliest ones had two raised panels; by the eighteenth century six panels was the norm (see pictures 5.2 and 5.3 for examples).

By the mid-nineteenth century doors had four panels (the two longest ones at the top) with a rectangular window above them and by the end of the nineteenth century windows within doors (often stained glass) were fashionable.

Door surrounds

Tudor doorways often have stone or brick mouldings above the door – these were meant to stop rain falling down the wall onto the door. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries these mouldings became more geometrical, and by the 1750s doors started to have pediments and pilasters.

Pediments are low-pitched triangular gables over the top of a door; they became popular from the eighteenth century.

Pilasters are flattened columns which frame doors or windows.

Porticoes are where the entrance has columns supporting a roof.

In the eighteenth century fanlights above doors tended to have wooden glazing bars; wood didn’t weather well, so the wooden glazing bars were often replaced by lead or wrought iron. Towards the end of the eighteenth century fanlights became mass-produced with designs such as spider-webs or loops (see picture 5.3 above). In the nineteenth century these became fancier still with flower or heart motifs.

Porches may be an addition to the property rather than an original feature. Early porches were simply lean-to roofs on brackets. By the eighteenth century they evolved into porticoes and pediments, and in the nineteenth century cast-iron or trellis porches were fashionable.

WINDOWS

Note how many windows there are. This may be useful if you’re checking window tax records, though obviously if the house has been altered the number of windows may vary in the records. Are any of the windows bricked up? This might have been a way to avoid window tax, or it might simply show that the house was altered so the window was no longer needed. Georgian builders sometimes included ‘fake’ windows so the facade of the house would look symmetrical. An example of a bricked-up window is in picture 4.7 on page 43.

Look at the position and shape of the windows. If they’re symmetrical on one side of the house, but are of a different shape or asymmetrical on the other side, the house may have been altered.

Medieval and Tudor windows tend to be rectangular with the longest edge horizontal. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was often a projected weather mould, known as a rainhood, hood mould or label mould, built over the top of the window.

From the late seventeenth century vertical windows were more fashionable and medieval windows were sometimes ripped out and replaced. Whatever the age of the property, replacement windows may be more modern than the rest of the house.

Sash windows became popular in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. By 1820 the standard sash windows had 12 panes (i.e. two rows of three panes in each sash). Glazing bars became thinner between the seventeenth and nineteenth century.

Mullioned windows

Mullioned windows have a vertical bar known as a pier made of stone or wood which divides the opening into ‘lights’. These tend to be the earliest type of windows, and the lights are narrow because of the way glass was produced (see page 68). In the earliest houses the windows were unglazed, or glazed with horn and draughts were kept out by shutters.

Casement windows

Casement windows are hinged either at the top or the bottom. They usually open outwards, though may open inwards. See picture 4.12 for an example of a casement window.

Sash windows

The earliest sash windows, from around the 1680s, didn’t have pulleys; you simply pushed the window up and wedged it open. Boxes with pulleys, ropes and weights to hold the window open were introduced next. In 1709 there was legislation in London so that all windows in new properties had to be set back into the wall rather than being flush with it, to help avoid the spread of fire: this is sometimes referred to as ‘rebating’ the window from the brickwork. This legislation extended to the rest of the country in 1820, so the position of the sash (i.e. set flush to the window or set back about four inches) may help you with dating. Earlier sash windows tend to have wider glazing bars.

When sheet glass became more widely available from the mid-nineteenth century, the number of panes in sash windows tended to reduce from 12 to four. Because there were fewer glazing bars the windows were weaker, so by the 1800s sash windows had ‘horns’ projecting from the end of the vertical frames to make them stronger. By the twentieth century there was just one pane in each sash – one at the top and one at the bottom.

In picture 5.8 on page 66, of Garsett House, at the top you can see an example of sash windows set flush against the wall; the house dates from 1589. (Picture 5.4 on page 61 is also of Garsett House – the portico is an addition to the building rather than an original feature.)

Venetian windows

These are three-part windows, with a central archway flanked by two narrower rectangular windows. They were popular in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. They are also known as Palladian windows, after the sixteenth-century Italian architect Andrea Palladio.

Oriel windows

Oriel windows project from the upper storey of a building. They are similar to a bay window, but are supported by brackets and don’t go all the way down to the ground level. They’re usually rectangular or half-cylindrical (i.e. like a bow window), and they were often placed over the entrance or gateway to the building. They were first used in the fifteenth century and were popular in Tudor and Gothic architecture; there was also a revival in the late nineteenth century.

Dormer windows

Dormer windows are set into a small gable projecting from a sloping roof. Earlier dormers (from the mid-seventeenth century) are likely to be placed lower down the roof, resting on the eaves.

Bay windows

Bay windows project out from the building and extend down to ground level. They can have angled sides, as in the windows in picture 5.9 above, straight sides, or, when the whole window is curved, it’s known as a bow window. Bow windows were popular from the middle of the eighteenth century, especially in shops. In 1878 a building act stated that bay windows were not to extend more than 3 feet (about 90cm) from the front of the house, and they had to take up less than 60% of the house’s frontage – so it could be worth measuring any bay windows in your property as an aid to dating the window, provided of course that the builder stuck to the rules!

GLASS

Look also at the panes of glass in the windows. Are they plate glass, are they stained or plain and are there any fanlights, i.e. panels just above a door?

Glass was made as cylinders (also known as ‘broad glass’) until the eighteenth century. The glass was blown into a sphere then stretched into a cylinder; the ends of the cylinder were removed, then the cylinder was slit and flattened out. The glass was then cut into small panes (set into square or diamond leads). Glass made in this way may look slightly green or grey and may have bubbles in it.

Crown or Normandy glass was produced next, where the glass was blown into a sphere, cut open, then spun against a wooden surface until it stretched. It was cut into squares once cooled and the ‘bull’s eye’ at the centre was thrown out. The contemporary use of bull’s eye glass reflects modern rather than period taste!

Mechanisation of the cylinder method meant that glass producers could make larger panes. Plate glass was also perfected by making thicker crown glass and then polishing it until the flaws had gone. Plate glass was developed in the 1830s and became more widespread from the mid-1800s onwards. This meant that older windows with smaller panes and more glazing bars were replaced by modern windows with large panes of glass.

Stained glass was popular in the early nineteenth century – particularly used in fanlights, front doors and hall windows – and remained popular until the 1930s.

INTERNAL FEATURES

Coving and skirting

Coving is the concave surface at the junction of a ceiling and wall; skirting is the wooden strip at the bottom of an internal wall. They both tend to be very ornate in mid-Victorian and high status houses.

Dado rails

These rails, made of wood, are roughly halfway up the walls; the lower part of the wall is often panelled. They were originally put up to protect the walls from furniture, which was arranged round edges of rooms in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. When furniture began to be grouped in the middle of the room, in Victorian times, the dado rails were seen as decorative. However, from about 1870 their use declined, and by the late 1800s they only tended to be put in areas where there was likely to be damage to the walls, such as halls and stairs, where servants might knock buckets of coal or water against the walls.

Picture rails

There were used mainly from the mid-1800s in rooms with higher ceilings; their function was to separate off a frieze on the wall. By the Edwardian period the picture rails had moved down to the level of the top of the door. In the 1920s and 1930s, the picture rails were often replaced by a narrow shelf that was used to display plates.

Mill House originally had high-level picture rails, however they may have been added after the house was built.

Fireplaces

Before the nineteenth century fireplaces tended to be open and there was a large gap between the grate which held the fire and the mouth of the chimney flue. Burning logs were held up by a pair of iron bars known as firedogs. With inglenook fireplaces, people took their chairs much closer to the fire and were able to avoid draughts. There may be bread ovens built into the wall, or a niche for the salt cupboard (stored near the fire to keep the contents dry). Open fireplaces had a revival in the 1860s when the Gothic style became fashionable.

By the early 1800s most fireplaces had a cast-iron hob grate. The coal was burned in the hob, and the ash fell through the front and bottom bars into the cavity below. Air flow couldn’t be controlled, so the heating wasn’t particularly efficient. However, they became popular again in the Queen Anne revival in the late 1800s. Cast-iron fireplaces were blackleaded: blacklead was spread thinly onto the surface and then polished to a sheen. The alternative was a coat of matt black paint followed by waxing.

The register grate – sometimes known as the Rumford grate – was introduced in the nineteenth century; the angled cheeks (or sides) of the grate deflected heat into the room. They were normally made in one piece from cast iron, although tiled cheeks were fashionable between 1880 and 1900. There was also a moveable plate in the flue which helped to control air flow. As with hob grates, register grates were made of cast iron and were either blackleaded or painted and waxed.

The surround of the fire could be made from brick, stone, marble or slate. Slate was sometimes painted or enamelled to make it look like marble. Wood became more popular from around 1900.

The hearth itself tended to be made from stone, marble, slate or tile.

Flooring

The earliest floors were made of beaten earth, covered with rushes. From there, the floors may have been replaced by flagstones, and by the seventeenth century brick and tile floors were the norm. Timber floors are more likely to date from the eighteenth century.

Staircases

The earliest staircases were simply ladders. The next development was triangular-shaped blocks of wood that were nailed to long stretchers of timber, then set at an angle. Sometimes there was panelling on the open side.

As flooring was introduced at first-floor level into hall houses, newel stairs developed: these were spiral stairs set around a central post. They were normally inserted near a chimney stack, though some were built in special stair turrets.

During the seventeenth century frame stairs were introduced. These had treads and risers, and the dog-leg stair, which turned at 180 degrees at a half-landing, developed from there. These stairs tended to be ‘closed string’ – that is, the treads and risers were hidden behind the piece of wood supporting the stairs so they couldn’t be seen from the side of the staircase. ‘Cut-string’ stairs developed during the late eighteenth century, where the treads projected from the piece of wood supporting the stairs and were visible from the side of the staircase.

Balusters could be plain or decorated. Wooden barley-sugar balusters were popular throughout the eighteenth century, and wrought iron balusters were developed during the same period, becoming simple and very slender by the Regency period.

CASE STUDY: MILL HOUSE, ATTLEBOROUGH

Mill House is set back from the High Street along a narrow driveway. Its neighbours are two prefabricated pre-war bungalows and a telephone exchange: the latter was built in the 1970s on the site of the old stables. At the back of the plot, where there used to be an orchard, there is a modern housing development. So there are no clues to the house from the environment.

The house is made of brick, tile and slate, though some internal walls are clay lump. The windows and front door were replaced in the late 1990s. but the original windows at the front were sash windows with pulleys. with the windows set back rather than flush, and those at the side and back of the house were casement windows.

The symmetry of the front elevation hints at classical style, dating from the earlier half of the nineteenth century.

The side and back of the house are more of a puzzle. The windows are casement, rather than sash, and they’re not quite symmetrically placed. The arches immediately above the windows at the side and back are of rubbed brick, whereas the arches above the ground-floor windows at the front of the house have a smooth stucco finish. The top left-hand window on the gable is lower than the right, reflecting the fact that the internal floor at the back of the house is lower than the front at both ground and first-floor level. The roof at the front of the house is tiled in slate, whereas the back is in clay pantile – and the front is actually a few inches wider than the back. Internally, the back of the house has lower ceilings and floors than the front.

It would be tempting to speculate that the back and front of the house were built at different times. However, the roof is of a well-known type (catslide – see page 49) and there is no evidence of any joins in the brickwork. Plus, if the back of the house was an addition, the only place the stairs could have been was in the downstairs hall, leading up at a very steep angle to the landing between the three bedrooms: when the wallpaper in the hall was stripped back to bare walls in the 1970s there was no sign of any studwork from former stairs.

My view is that the house was refaced at some point in the 1800s. The original roof at the front was probably clay pantile, but was changed to slate because slate was expensive and made the property appear ‘grander’. Beneath the stucco voussoirs over the windows and door at the front it’s entirely possible that there is rubbed brick, as there is at the side and back of the house: again, the slight refacing would have made the house seem grander to clients. The fact that the house is slightly wider at the front than at the back supports the view that the house was refaced.

It’s also possible that part of the house was used as an office, either for the mill or for the stables. There is a stone at the front of the house on the corner nearest to the driveway, which may have been used as a mounting block for horse-riders.