BRITISH HISTORY

8/21/2014

Georgian Houses

After the Great Fire of London in 1666, an act of parliament was passed to ensure new homes were made from fire resistant materials, such as bricks and slate.
Georgian Architecture (1714 - 1830) 18th century
The Georgian period is the time when the Kings on the throne of England had the name George.
A typical Georgian house of the eighteenth century was elegant and formal in style.
During the Georgian times, there was a heavy tax on windows, as England needed money for war. The number of windows you had was a sign of your wealth - poor people often only had one window per floor. Some people bricked up windows to avoid the tax.

Senate House, Cambridge

Characteristics of Georgian houses

Pillars in the front of the house.
Square symmetrical shape.
A paneled front door in the centre
Tiled hipped roofs (A roof which slopes upward from all the sides of a building.)
The roof was often hidden behind a parapet, or low wall built around the edge of the roof.
Fan light above the door.
Paired chimneys.
Sash windows (windows which slide up and down).
The windows nearer the roof are smaller than the rest.


Pillars in the front of the house. Fan light above the door.	Sash window(windows which slide up and down.)


Square symmetrical shape.

8/20/2014

Victorian Architecture (1837 - 1901)
19th century

Victorian Houses | Inside Victorian Homes

The Victorian period is the time when Queen Victoria ruled Britain.
With the beginning of the railways and new manufacturing processes, previously locally produced building materials became available all over the country. This meant the end of all houses in the local area being built using the same building materials. Houses made of local stone, timber and straw could now, for example, be built of bricks from Bedfordshire and slate from North Wales.
The new mass produced bricks were cheaper and required less preparation and maintenance, so for the first time all over the country new mansions, chapels, cottages, barns and factories were made from the same material irrespective of region.

Despite the availability of these new products vast numbers of the working population in the countryside were still living in tiny cottages, hovels and shacks well into the 20th century. In towns poor people lived in back-to-back houses called terraced houses.

Terraced Houses

Rich Victorians favoured villas ( not the same as Roman villas), whilst the emerging middle classes of Victorian England lived in superior terraces with gardens back and front and a room for servants in the attic.