from outside.

The more easily this air can come in the less keen will be the draught. It is not sufficiently realized that what has to be done is not to exclude cold air, which is impossible in a room with a fire, but to admit it in the way which will give the best ventilation with

the least discomfort. In planning the room the furniFurniture. ture should always be arranged and drawn in, to make sure that provision has been made for work and rest, for meals and play. Many a room is ruined because the dresser, the table, and the settle, have not been tried in on the plan.

Bay Windows.

Windows facing the street are much less depressing if slightly bayed to invite a peep up and down as well as across; a projection of a few inches in the centre, with some advantage taken of the thickness of the wall to set back the sides, will suffice to add very much to the outlook.*

With regard to windows, doors, cupboards, and all Fittings. other fittings, it should not be forgotten that when a quantity is required, as is usually the case in housing schemes, no extra cost is entailed by having them well designed, and of good proportions. Money is often spent in bad ornament, which but detracts from the appearance of the buildings; but an elegant mould or shaping costs no more than a vulgar one, and a well proportioned door or mantel is as easily made as one ill-proportioned. That nothing can be spent on the ornamentation of artisans' cottages is no excuse whatever for their being ugly. Plain and simple they must be, but a plain and simple building well designed may be very far from ugly. After the living-room, the sleeping-rooms must be reBedrooms. garded as next in importance, for these will be occupied all the night. Of these it is only needful to say that they should be as large as can be provided, and as well ventilated as possible. There should be plenty of windows, easily opened, and everything possible done to encourage the opening of them. If the rooms can be arranged so that there shall be a comfortable corner between fire and window, where a quiet hour with book or pen can be spent, this is very desirable. For there is no real reason why the accommodation of the small house should not be increased by a more general use of the bedrooms for these purposes.

Larder.

A small larder with direct light and ventilation should be provided for every cottage, the window of which should not be exposed to the heat of the sun. A cupboard in the living-room, even when ventilated, is hardly a fit place in which to keep food.t

Scullery.

A scullery, to relieve the living-room from the more dirty work, should be the next consideration. This must have a glazed, well-drained sink, under an opening window. If the washing is to be done in each cottage, there must be a copper or set-pot and space for a small mangle to stand. When it can be arranged, a little cooking-stove, just large enough to be used in hot weather, will be a boon. But it is not well to put the main cooking-stove in the scullery, for the result will inevitably be

*See Plates VI. and VIII.

† See Plates VI. and VIII.

that, for the greater part of the year, the family will live with the fire, in the tiny scullery, and the more airy living-room will be left vacant, and will, in fact, become a parlor.

However desirable a parlor may be, it cannot be said Parlor. to be necessary to health or family life; nor can it be compared in importance with those rooms and offices which we have been considering. There can be no possible doubt that until any cottage has been provided with a living-room large enough to be healthy, comfortable, and convenient, it is worse than folly to take space from that living-room, where it will be used every day and every hour, to form a parlor, where it will only be used once or twice a week.

If this is true of the parlor, how much more true is it of the passage? To cut a piece three feet wide off the end of a small room, for the very doubtful advantage of having two doors between the inmates and the fresh air, or to obtain the occasional convenience it may be for a visitor or member of the family to be able to pass in or out without being observed, is surely an extreme instance of valu. able room and air space sacrificed to thoughtless custom and foolish pride.* Any one who has known what it is to occupy a large airy house-place will not readily sacrifice its advantages for either a need. less parlor or a useless passage. For the question is not whether it is an advantage to have either a passage or parlor in addition to a decent living-room, but whether it is worth while to have either at the sacrifice of the living-room. A desire to imitate the middleclass house is at the bottom of the modern tendency to cut the cottage up into a series of minute compartments.

In small houses, such as we are considering, the 500 or Stairs and so cubic feet of air space which are usually shut up in Landing. a staircase and landing, would be much more useful if thrown open to the living-room. That there is any advantage at all, either to that room or to the bedrooms, in having this "buffer state" of stagnant air between them, seems extremely doubtful; while there can be no doubt at all of the immense gain of having an extra 500 feet of air in a room which contains, perhaps, only 1,400 feet altogether, and many rooms contain less. The space should in any case have ventilation, and direct light is, of course, desirable. The extra height which would be obtained by throwing stairs and landing open to the living-room would greatly help in keeping that room well ventilated, as also would the possibility of having a window open so far from the occupied parts of the room.

Coals, etc.

To complete the self-contained cottage, there must be found some place for coals, some small receptacle for ashes and rubbish, to be emptied every few days, and a water-closet or properly fitted earth-closet. A porch opening from the scullery provides a suitable place for these, so that, while within the main building, they may still be entirely in the outside air. The facility afforded for inspection, and the general tendency which even the less enthusiastic have to keep clean the outside which shows, would prove valuable advantages of this plan.t

* Compare Plate V. with Plates VI. and VIII.

+ See Plates VI. and VIII.

And

A bathroom for every cottage is an ideal which some Bathroom. day will surely come to be regarded as essential. In small tenements where the cost of this ideal may still be prohibitive, there seems no reason why there should not be provided at least a bathroom to each quadrangle. One of the great advantages of substituting open courts for narrow streets would be the ease with which some little corporate feeling might be fostered in them. In municipal housing schemes, which spring from the co-operative effort of the whole town or city, it Co-operation. would seem specially fitting that something should be done to foster associated action among the tenants. the more urgent because it is only by such association that we can the monuide for the many some of the most desirable conveniences of life which wealth now enables the few to secure for themselves individually. We have already pointed out what advantage would arise from the associated use and enjoyment of the small plots of land which are all that can be given to each cottage. It has been found quite practicable in very many flat-dwellings to have a considerable amount of associated usage of wash-houses, sculleries, drying-grounds, etc., even among the most unenlightened tenants. There is no reason why the same arrange,ement should not be made with cottages. Quadrangles lend themselves peculiarly to the provision of small laundries, baths, reading-rortoms, and other such simple and easily managed co-operative efforts. d

A well-fitted wash-house having a plentiful supply of Wash-house. hot and cold water laid on to all the tubs, a proper washing and wringing machine, and a heatused drying closet, is out of the reach of even the well-to-do cottagocer. But there is no reason why one or two such should not be prosa;ided for each court of houses; no reason why every little scullery shoteuld be blocked up with inadequate washing appliances; why every woman should have to spend a whole day toiling at the weekly wash whihich she could do with less labor in an hour or two if she had the use ei of proper apparatus; or why every living-room should be encumberaned with clothes-horses or made uncomfortable with steam.* The capite al cost that would be saved by not providing space for, and fitting washing appliances in all the sculleries, would pay for the one cooperative wash-house. And a very small addition to the rent would allow for the provision of hot water and heat for drying. To such a laundry should be attached a small room divided from Play-room. it by a glazed screen, where little children could play under the mother's observation. The want of such a place prevents many a mother from using a public laundry, as also does the distance from home, and the necessity of conveying clothes to and fro through the public streets, objections which would not be present in the case of the quadrangle with its small laundry. One or two baths, heated from the same source, could be provided; and it might be found possible to lay on a hot water supply to each cottage from the same centre. This has been done by the Liverpool Corporation in their Dryden

Baths and Hot Water.

* See Plate VIII.

street houses, where a constant supply of hot water is provided to every sink at a charge of twopence per week to each tenement. This arrangement would greatly simplify the problem of providing baths to each house, as it would save the cost of the separate hot water installations. It is very desirable that a bath should have hot water attached, but one with cold water only is a great advance on none at all; and, in plans for artizans' houses, every alternative arrangement should be well considered, and every effort made to provide a bath of some sort. A bath-room adjacent to the scullery, or even a bath placed in the scullery, may sometimes be contrived when space on the bedroom floor is out of the question. And there are several alternative arrangements for getting a supply of hot water from the copper or side boiler direct into the bath. Where, however, a bath-room to each house is out of the question, one or two baths could easily be worked in connection with the laundry.* Add to these a recreation or reading-room (also being tried at the Dryden-street houses) and there would be in each quadrangle a small co-operative centre, the attendance on which might easily be arranged to be undertaken by the tenant of the next cottage, for a small payment.

Communal
Centre.

Such a centre would, by associated effort, provide for each cottager many advantages which he could not hope to secure for himself by his individual effort, and all for the payment of a few pence per week extra rent. Beginning with the laundry and baths, the most necessary and well-tried items, such co-operative centres would undoubtedly grow, as experience taught the tenants the advantage of association in domestic work; the common-room to supply somewhat the place of the individual parlor, the bakehouse, and even the common kitchen would be matters only of time and the growth of self-restraint, and the cooperative spirit. As the communal centre grows in importance, it will begin to affect our architecture, forming a striking feature in each court and giving a more complete sense of unity to it. At some point it may become worth while to have a covered way from the cottages to the common rooms-care being taken, of course, to put this only where it will not shade any sun from the house. But this is, perhaps, wandering too far into the future, leaving the immediately possible for the ideally desirable. None the less, it is along these lines that we must look for any solution of the housing question in town suburbs which shall be satisfactory from the point of view of health and economy, and at the same time afford some opportunity for the gradual development of a simple dignity and beauty in the cottage, which assuredly is necessary, not only to the proper growth of the gentler and finer instincts of men, but to the producing of that indefinable something which makes the difference between a mere shelter and a home.

See Plate VIII.

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