An Essay On British Cottage Architecture Being An Attempt To Perpetuate On Principle That Peculiar Mode Of Building Which Was Originally The Effect Of Chance

The Idea of the Cottage in English Architecture is a history of the late Georgian phenomenon of the architect-designed cottage and the architectural discourse that articulated it. It is a study of small buildings built on country estates, and not so small buildings built in picturesque rural settings, resort towns and suburban developments. At the heart of the English idea of the cottage is the Classical notion of retreat from the city to the countryside. This idea was adopted and adapted by the Augustan-infused culture of eighteenth-century England where it gained popularity with writers, artists, architects and their wealthy patrons who from the later eighteenth century commissioned retreats, gate-lodges, estate workers' housing and seaside villas designed to 'appear as cottages'. The enthusiasm for cottages within polite society did not last. By the mid-nineteenth century, cottage-related building and book publishing had slowed and the idea of the cottage itself was eventually lost beneath the Tudor barge-boards and decorative chimneystacks of the Historic Revival. And yet while both designer and consumer have changed over time, the idea of the cottage as the ideal rural retreat continues to resonate through English architecture and English culture.

Whereas the past decades have seen a profound reconsideration of eighteenth-century visual culture, the architecture of that century has undergone little evaluation. Its study, unlike that of the early modern period or the twentieth century, has continued to use essentially the same methods and ideas over the last fifty years. Articulating British Classicism reconsiders the traditional historiography of British eighteenth-century architecture as it was shaped after World War II, and brings together for the first time a variety of new perspectives on British classicism in the period. Drawing on current thinking about the eighteenth century from a range of disciplines, the book examines such topics as social and gender identities, colonialization and commercialization, notions of the rural, urban and suburban, as well as issues of theory and historiography. Canonical constructions of Georgian architecture are explored, including current evaluations of the continental intellectual background, the relationship with mid seventeenth-century Stuart court classicism and the development of the subject in the twentieth century.

Each of these Analysing Architecture Notebooks is devoted to a particular theme in understanding the rich and varied workings of architecture. They can be thought of as addenda to the foundation volume Analysing Architecture, which first appeared in 1997 and has subsequently been enlarged in three further editions. Examining these extra themes as a series of Notebooks, rather than as additional chapters in future editions, allows greater space for more detailed exploration of a wider variety of examples, whilst avoiding the risk of the original book becoming unwieldy. Metaphor is the most powerful component of the poetry of architecture. It has been a significant factor in architecture since the earliest periods of human history, when people were finding ways to give order and meaning to the world in which we live. It is arguable that architecture began with the realisation of metaphor in physical form, and that subsequent movements – from Greek to Gothic, Renaissance to Modern, Victorian to Vernacular... – have all been driven by the emergence or rediscovery of different metaphors by which architecture might be generated.

This book extends the concept of British vernacular architecture beyond its traditional base of pre-modern domestic and industrial architecture to embrace other buildings such as places of worship, villas, hospitals, suburban semis and post-war mass housing. Engaging with wider issues of social and cultural history, this book is of use to anyone with an interest in architectural history. Presented in an essentially chronological sequence, from the medieval to the post-war, diverse fresh viewpoints in the chapters of this book reinforce understanding of how building design emerges not just from individual agency, that is architects, but also from the collective traditions of society.