BUILDING BRIEFING:

Edwardian Houses

Style and structure

In this second article of a four-part series for Letting Update, Trevor Yorke outlines some of the issues when dealing with Edwardian houses.

For such a short period of time between the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, it is surprising that it developed such a distinctive character. In literature and film, images of young men in straw boaters and blazers with ladies twirling lace umbrellas to shelter them from seemingly endless hot summers are immediately associated with the Edwardian period (the summers were actually pretty poor!). The housing, which acts as a backdrop to these dramas, is also unique with black and white timber cladding, rich red bricks and bright painted balconies, helping to create a scene which is a clear break from the dark industrial image of Victorian Britain.

Inequality 

Reality, of course, was very different, especially for the poor, with perhaps more than a quarter of the population living in what we would regard as slums. It is a credit to the Edwardians that they began to tackle these problems inherited from the previous century, as Asquith and Lloyd George set legislation in place to begin reining in the vast inequality that existed in society.

Private individuals and some local authorities began large scale housing projects aimed at relieving these problem areas. The most notable was the founding of Letchworth as the world’s first garden city, a concept of a new settlement complete with modern factories, retail, and administration centre with housing for all classes radiating from them. It inspired others to form garden suburbs, more modest communities with estates laid out in a similar way featuring green spaces, hedgerows and trees, bringing the village into the town!

The key problem that hampered the success of these schemes was that the final cost of the individual house and the rent, which would be charged by the landowner, was too much for the people it was intended to liberate. Competitions were held to try and create cheaper houses through simplified designs, mass produced materials and new types of construction. Although they had limited immediate success, the experiments set in place ideas that would benefit post-war Britain. Part of the problem was that houses were still largely built on a small scale by local builders using tried and tested methods and quality materials, with little opportunity and willingness to economise. The benefit today is that these houses, erected for the more successful members of the working classes and the rapidly growing middle, are probably the finest ever built for the mass market.

Picture: An Edwardian terrace, with labels highlighting some of the features distinctive to this period.

Arts and crafts

The styles and structural forms of Edwardian houses did not just appear overnight, and it should be seen as a continuation of those which were built in the last decade of the 19th century. The greatest influence came from revivalist architects working in the 1870s and 80s, who, rather than just copying details directly from historic buildings, took the spirit of old timber framed and brick manor and farm houses and created new forms, which reflected rather than mimicked them. The Queen Anne style, with its upright buildings of fine red brick, Dutch gables and white framed windows, as well as the revival of vernacular forms with black and white timber, hanging wall tiles, weatherboarding and rough finish renders used to clad houses, which today are generally referred to as ‘arts and crafts’, were both popular. By the 1890s speculative builders were providing many of these details on the terraces and larger detached houses for the more fashion conscious middle classes. The Edwardians also had a love for white painted woodwork with delicate fretwork and turned balusters featured on porches and balconies. Richly coloured patterned glass in the upper part of windows continued the cheerful theme with Art Nouveau designs of stylised foliage a distinctive form.

Behind these facades the structure of building had changed from those produced fifty years earlier. Houses were taller with higher ceilings. Basements and cellars had fallen from favour and two storey rear extensions with bathrooms in the upper room on better class housing (an additional bedroom in others) provided a better working environment for servants (even a modest middle class family would expect to have a live-in maid). Large bay windows, the full height of the facade, were a prominent display designed to impress and lighten the interior. Terraces were now stepped back from the pavement with a small front garden and brick wall proudly marking the limits of the property. Doorways could be recessed a couple of feet into the house or set under a porch, which ran the full length of the facade, with black and white, terracotta or beige ceramic tiles fitted on the step and along the hall within (often buried under later vinyl and carpet).

Foundations

Big improvements have been made to the foundations in the last decades of the 19th century. In the past the wall could simply be built upon levelled subsoil, with only the better class of house having the load spread by stone slabs or stepped brickwork. By the Edwardian period concrete was being used for some footings on which the wall, still stepped out at this date, would be built. The ground floor was raised off the earth and vents fitted in external walls to permit a flow of air underneath, to reduce the chances of rising damp effecting the timber joists. This important system is one of the most common to fail, simply because the vents on the outside get blocked up or the ground level has risen due to later garden landscaping. It is essential to clear these, especially at the rear where on terraces there was usually only one. Problems can also occur under the floor where rubbish dumped during later work can obstruct the flow under internal and sleeper walls, the latter being short ones which ran under the centre of the rooms and, as they were often solid, the flow of air could only get through the gaps between the joists.

A section through the foundations of one type of Edwardian house showing how the ground floor was raised above the earth with air bricks permitting a flow of air underneath to reduce damp

Walls

Walls were still usually solid, one brick length in depth, and now frequently laid out in English bond, with alternate courses of headers (short end of the brick) and stretchers (the longer sides). By the Edwardian period it was usual to have some form of damp proof membrane in the external walls (see below) with the ground floor joists either set into the wall above or resting on a step in the brickwork, the former method sometimes liable to damp penetrating through the wall and into the ends. The facade was usually built with good quality dense bricks and set in lime mortar. This combination can cause problems as the smooth impenetrable surface of the brick concentrates the rain into the soft pointing, which can get worn away over time and cause problems with damp penetrating within. Down the sides, however, cheaper common bricks were usually used and as most terraces still had a utilitarian yard at the rear the parts overlooking it were built in the same material.

Upper storeys were often covered with hanging tiles or render, either with fine stones mixed in known as roughcast or with larger stones flicked onto its wet top coat called pebbledash. These forms of external cladding add an extra layer of protection, but can be prone to flaking away if the original mix was not correct or there has been movement in the structure. It is also important to make sure any external render has not been applied all the way to the floor allowing water to work up behind and avoid the damp proof course.

Roofs and chimneys

It was typical for chimneys to be set directly above the fireplace in this period, with a stack appearing halfway down the roof at the front and rear, sometimes with decorative arrangements of brickwork. The upper edge of flashing is vulnerable to rain penetration and being partly out of sight does not make inspection easy. Most roofs were steep pitched and usually covered with clay tiles or sometimes still slate, with clay or terracotta ridge tiles. The Edwardian love of decorative woodwork could extend to the bargeboards on exposed gable ends and these, along with railings and porches, will usually require some attention, especially rotting on little-used balconies.

Windows

The windows fitted in this period are distinctive and a sudden change from the conventional sash window, which had dominated for over 200 years. From the 1890s those sashes, which were still fitted, had an upper section subdivided by glazing bars to imitate 18th century types, but had the bottom half clear with a large single pane of glass giving an uninterrupted view outside. This compromise fitted in with the contemporary styles, but increasingly casement windows with a hinged opening section began to be fitted. These were wooden framed with a clear main part and a small flap window at the top, which was usually filled with patterned coloured glass. This new type of window was also distinctive because they were no longer recessed behind brickwork, but were flush with the outer surface of the wall or even protruded out from it.

The Edwardian legacy is undervalued – it was an incredibly short period in which vast social changes were set in place and the need for better housing for a large section of the population was first tackled. The houses built that survive today make an attractive and solid investment, but were still, like their Victorian predecessors, out of reach of the poor. It was not until after the First World War that the authorities at last added some financial backing to schemes, which started clearing the slums. The houses, like those for the private market, were very different from the Edwardian terrace, and will be covered in the next article.

 The next article in this series will study houses from the 1930s era, and the maintenance issues that they present to modern day owners and occupants.