Understanding Cottages by John Constable
CHAPTER 1
- UNDERSTANDING THE COTTAGE DREAM.
As we advance into
this new millennium it is natural that we should feel some nostalgia for the
times we leave behind. As our traditional direction changes, we may ask what is
worth holding on to. To gain a wider perspective, we need to look back over the
path which has brought us into this 21st century, for then we will be better
able to decide what is important to us.
To dreamers, like
myself, there still seems to be an England somewhere just out of reach; an
England of which our knowledge is hereditary. It is the traditional country we
would escape to if only we had the time to find it. We remember the childhood
glimpses we had of this England of sensible order, of country lanes, and
wholesome food - an England of awakening spring, and sunlit summer,
leaf-drifting autumns, and the Christmas landscape of winter.
The people who
live in this England are not greedy or pretentious, but simple, trustworthy
people, among whom we would be able to relax and drop our guard; an England
where it would be safe for us to become like them. It is an England of
cottages, from a time which we believe was better.
It is this England
that dreamers still believe in and hope to locate the hidden fragments of, some
day. As a seeker after a decent and simple life, the dreamer's duty can only be
to keep alive a vision of that traditional dream; for it seems to remain our
only worthwhile heritage.
The beauty of the
countryside, and the cottage homes which are a part of that beauty, fill us
with an ache of enchantment; the light streaming over a hill, the dark mystery
of shadowy woods, the wide, cold, reflected light from snow. My namesake must
have felt these things: they are in his paintings. Thomas Hardy must have known
this enchantment: it is in his words. Everyone who responds to the work of
country writers and artists knows that ache of enchantment, and also knows
regret at the passing of so much of that heart lifting beauty. For, however
contemptible the social exploitation of the past, the British countryside was
exquisitely beautiful, and it has become progressively less exquisite. We can
at least be sure that the past was a more beautiful place.
A cottage has an
irregularity and colouring which fits it snugly into
the landscape - as much a piece of nature as the trees. In the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries England must have been exceptionally beautiful, a green
countryside bright with wild flowers and dark woods. Since that time this
bright world has been gradually changed by industry and commerce, greed and
complacency, factory farming and continuous road building. Modern expediency
has relentlessly altered England, until we can barely imagine what once was.
So much has
already been written about cottages, from sentimental nostalgia to complicated
structural details, that it becomes easy to forget that the cottages we are left
with represent only a late stage in the continuing evolution of the human need
for shelter; as families became more settled, temporary shelters developed into
cottage homes. Many of these cottage homes were built at the climax of
pre-industrial Britain, before we changed from an organic to a technological
culture. The skills and values of that simpler life have been replaced by
sophisticated equipment and theories. It is this idea of a cottage home that
has led my thoughts away from the beaten track, in a search for the source of
the yearning that many of us feel when we attempt to reach for the
possibilities that cottage life seems to suggest.
'Hovel' best
describes the early shelters of the poor. In contrast, a cottage is built of
substantial materials, in a sturdy architectural style which is meant to last
and form a more permanent home. Those buildings that remain today, and which we
look upon as cottages, were often the homes of yeomen farmers, freemen with
their own land - the early middle class. It is impossible to apply a precise
definition to the intangible complexity of what we mean by 'a cottage'; emotion
and nostalgia play a part in our recognition of this building. In 'The Cottage
Homes of England', published in 1909, Stewart Dick wrote:
'In
one respect the old cottages are like ballads; we have no idea who their
authors were. They belong to the countryside, and seem just to have grown
there, tinged and coloured by all the local
influences of soil and climate.
One
cannot turn back the hands on the dial, but little wonder if, amid the noise
and turmoil of modern life, we yearn for the peaceful stillness of earlier
days. It is this quiet atmosphere that still haunts the old cottage. It is the
symbol of the simple life.
We
shall find in its structure links connecting it with older and more primitive
dwellings; curious survivals of days long before the dawn of English history.
Indeed its growth is a gradual evolution from the primitive homes of the early
Britons.'
While the builders
of minsters and manor houses worried about the relative advantages of
Renaissance or Gothic styles, the ordinary people were building for use. In the
tradition of their forefathers, they quietly and simply built the valuable
heritage of cottage England. Local materials led local craftsmen in a natural
direction, to serve the requirements of the people of their own time. The needs
of the local community brought into being particular methods. Pride in their
work encouraged the craftsmen to create refinements; these were always kept
practical by the limited means available, thus restraining any unwarranted
sophistication. In satisfying local needs with the materials available,
traditions were established which were accepted as apart of the locality. J. B.
Priestley wrote in 'English Journey' published in 1939:
'If
you told a Cotswold man to build you a house, he knew thank God - no other way
of building houses. There are still some old Cotswold masons who work in that
tradition and could work in no other. In their hands the stone flowers
naturally into those mullions. They can see Cotswold houses already stirring in
the very quarries. I say these men exist, but there are not many of them and
they grow old and feeble.'
And so the rural
cottage came into being; it was built to serve a purpose in the countryside to
which it belonged.
1912 'The Village
Homes of England' by Sydney Jones:
'These
buildings are fraught with an appeal to the mind and have a
significance deeper than is conveyed by mere terms of stone, of brick,
of timber. They stand for much that is peculiarly and characteristically
English. They are records of lives well spent; they tell of contented
possession, of love of home, and country, and memory; they have witnessed the
passing of generations of the nation's countrymen and live on as outward
symbols of their intellectual life. With them are associated those ideas of
order, of security and comfort, that result from the observance of
long-established custom and usage; they bear witness to well-settled beliefs
transmitted from father to son. The old oaks and high elms, the green common
fringed by hedgerows, the stile and ancient right-of-way, seem no more the
natural growth of time and the soil than do the old rustic dwellings, that bear
the marks of antiquity upon them and date back through many ages. It is this
sense of settled stability, this association with times far distant from the present, that ever appeal to the imagination and
sentiment....
The
old cottages, as we see them, are the result of a variety of influences and
fulfill many conditions which make for good architecture. Ever present there is
a feeling for harmony. The harmony that should exist between a building and its
surroundings is probably nowhere better illustrated than in the cottages. Set
amid natural scenes, in rich valleys, or clustering on the hillsides, they seem
part of the landscape; no conflicting note meets the eye, and building
blends with building and with the environment....
Different
neighbourhoods developed styles of building, very local, and expressive of the
life of the native community. Difficulties of communication prevented
interchange of idea, and each district shows its own inherent peculiarities
unaffected by outside influences. As generation succeeded generation, local
styles were adopted to suit new conditions or fresh methods, but radical
changes were unknown. An intense conservatism prevailed, and care was taken not
to break down hastily that which had been devised by previous generations and
had stood the test of time: in their own works the craftsmen built in faith,
not for themselves, but for the future....
Old
workmen, still living, can remember the lingering of the old traditions; can
tell of methods employed, and patterns used, which had their birth in medieval
times. The newer styles spent themselves upon the mansions of the rich, on
public buildings, and in the towns, and it was left to builders of small houses
and unambitious, homely cottages to keep alive and reproduce the ancient and
native practices of the land.'
Written before the
First World War, how much of the world Sydney Jones' writes about can we recognise as lost to us in our
time. After the war this feeling for the past was expressed architecturally in
'Mock Tudor' and other traditional reproductions, imitated with modern
materials and methods. The instinctive workmanship and graceful craft of the
old village carpenters could only have been recaptured by a return to a simpler
philosophy of life. Standardized and economical mass production gives us the
comparative plenty that has destroyed that old life. The value of natural
cottages' lies in their power to represent and inspire another path, an
alternative wisdom, and different values. Every person
whose deepest sensibilities respond to this invitation, instinctively feels the
worth of those alternative values.
It was not until
the start of the twentieth century that any real appreciation of the value and
beauty of the little English cottage was born; 'Only a cottage', dismissed the importance
of vernacular (small, local, traditional) architecture in the story of English
building, and social history. Over the years caring writers,
and many others who saw the passing of something of value, have made these
points: Cottages have beauty - they are a natural part of our landscape
heritage - they are worthpreserving.
1910 'Vanishing
England.' by P.H.Ditchfield and F.Roe:
'The
charm and poetry of the country walk are destroyed by motoring demons. The
elder England, too, is vanishing in the modes, habits, and manners of her
people....
We
have tried together to gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be
lost; and though there may be much that we have not gathered, the examples
herein given of some of the treasures that are left may be useful in creating a
greater reverence for the work bequeathed to us by our forefathers, and in
strengthening the hands of those who would preserve them. Happily we are still
able to use the present participle, not the past. It is vanishing England, not
vanished, of which we treat; and if we can succeed in promoting an affection
for the relics of antiquity that time has spared, our labours will not have been in
vain or the object of this book unattained.'
It is something of
the substance of that elder England that my own efforts try to preserve, or
perhaps resurrect. The 'Vanishing England' of 1910 has long since vanished,
along with the modes, habits and manners of that time.
(1912 'The Cottages and Village life of Rural England.' by
P.H.Ditchfield.) Two years later, one of the authors of
'Vanishing England', wrote:
'Agitators
are eager to pull down our old cottages and erect new ones which lack all the
grace and charm of our old-fashioned dwellings. It is well to catch a glimpse
of rural England before the transformation comes and to preserve a record of
the beauties that for a time remain. No sentimental reason prompts the rescue
of many spots of sylvan beauty from the spoilers hand. No desire to preserve
picturesque objects merely because they are old. We wish to preserve the
traditional style of good building as far as it can be rescued after the lapse
of good taste which the last century witnessed.'
How I would have
treasured just one day to glimpse that rural England of 1912, before the
transformation. Alas! the spoilers hand took it away
long before I was born.
1928 In a speech
made by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin:
'No
country is more beautiful than England. And its charm is not only in the
perfection of its buildings which survive, but in its green seclusion, its
aloofness from noise, dirt and smoke.
That
beauty which has been saved through the centuries is the wealth and glory of
England, and there can be nothing more disastrous or wicked than to waste,
dissipate, or destroy in profligacy that priceless and irreplaceable heritage.
I
have been asked ... to undertake many reforms ... but to preserve the beauties
of our country, that is something worth living for.'
Here again is the
twentieth century's familiar and continuing story; the recognition of a
beautiful rural England, and a record of its destruction.
1929 'The Cottages
of England.' by Basil Oliver:
'Nothing
is more contemptible than the utterly selfish action of thoughtless
town-dwellers who buy up farm-labourers cottages merely to use them for summer
holidays and weekends. Even worse is the speculator who leaves a trail of
architectural victims, for the speculators' idea of restoration and
'improvement' is usually of a crude catch-penny order, cheap and shoddy. In the
words of architects' specifications he leaves 'all perfect on completion' but
the charm has vanished.'
1938 'The English
Cottage.' by Batsford and Fry:
'A
wider recognition is necessary of the extent of England's heritage in her old
cottages and the sturdy country stock that dwell in them. For both heritages
are wasting and in jeopardy; the cottages are being destroyed, the folk leaving
the country. It is for England to foster, cherish and preserve them both. If
she is unworthy, they will both, to her permanent detriment, vanish from the
face of the land....
Even
at the present time only a comparatively small minority respects the value and
beauty of the old cottages, both intrinsically and in relation to their
surroundings; and it seems urgently desirable, in such restless and ruthless
days, that their cause should enlist a wider range of sympathy, backed with
publicity and money, if those that remain are not to share the fate of so much
else that was beautiful in this country, and has been relegated with contempt
and indifference, to that busy bird of prey, the demolition contractor.'
Written just as a
fork in the road of civilization was looming, one way was signposted
'Reason', the other 'War', and it was down the latter way that world society
again plunged. Now we can never recover the possibilities that the reasonable
way offered - neither the beauty that was destroyed, nor the country ways that
were changed. As we start a new millennium, little of the old life is left; the
altered fragments of cottages have different residents. That they have
residents at all, suggests a yearning for a settled English life and some of
the simple peace that seems to permeate the structure of a cottage. During the
middle years of the last century, after the Second World War, what were left of
the old cottages were againtreasured.
1949 'Country
Cottages.' by Marshall Sisson:
'Perhaps
no element in the landscape contributes more to the essential character and acknowledged
charm of the English countryside than the old country cottages. They always
seem appropriate to their surroundings. Local materials were always used in
building and are largely responsible for the harmony between cottage and
landscape.'
1954 'English
Cottages and Farmhouses.' by Cook and Smith:
'Cottages
and farms are far more closely related to their surroundings than the grander
monuments of our countryside. Farm buildings and cottages are an integral part
of life as well as of landscape. But structures so intimately bound up with
essential seasonal and daily
labour are more subject to change than buildings consciously designed
as works of art; and it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that future
changes will tend more and more towards standardisation and the obliteration of
local character.'
These prophetic
words were written as profound changes were beginning to take a hold on the
agricultural industry, changes that were to wipe away the little that still
remained of the old ways and the country life they supported. The rural cottage
came in to being naturally; it was built to serve a purpose in the countryside
to which it belonged. As the agricultural changes started to destroy that
purpose, many cottages fell into disrepair, and finally crumbled back into the
land from which they had begun. Fortunately, before the new modernity could
completely wipe away the cottage homes of the old life, their beauty was again recognised. Often in the path of
new roads, railways, and factories, cottages were becoming fewer, their
scarcity making those that remained more valuable. Efforts to preserve what was
left of the old world were begun, and by the early part of the twentieth
century preservation societies had been organised. Eventually, these societies
were to become influential enough to bring about some legislative protection.
After the Second World War, redevelopment was to continue the destruction of
cottages for another twenty years; at the end of this time, the increasing
interest in these old buildings brought into being the 'open air buildings
museums'. Threatened cottages were carefully taken apart and rebuilt on the
museum site. also allowed the accumulation of built-on additions to be removed,
and the cottage to be restored to its original form. The only drawback is that
while representative cottages are preserved in this way, the idyll
cannot be. The lanes and the trees, the gardens, as well as the cottages were
precious; they were a part of an unspoiled landscape, without motorways and pylons,
without mechanical noise and worrisome sophistication. As J.R. Armstrong, the
founder of the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum at Singleton in Sussex, wrote in his 1979 book, 'Traditional Buildings':
'Although
re-erection on a new site is better than total destruction, it can only be
second best to preservation on the site for which the building was designed. On
the other hand it does enable buildings to be restored as originally built, and
their accessibility should lead to a greater realisation and
appreciation of the exceptionally rich heritage of small-scale traditional
buildings this country possesses, and to greater public interest in its
conservation.'
These museums are
a delight, they preserve interesting cottages in, as near as is possible, their
original condition. One can walk from exhibit to exhibit, seeing in an hour or
two a structural history, which it would be impossible to encompass without
this gathering and restoration. This is the scholarly and practical response to
the enchantment of cottages. My own response to this enchantment became the
cottages and landscape shown, and written about, in this book.
I have never
examined any cottage which has survived as it was first built. The manor house
of the fifteenth century may become a farmhouse two centuries later; and then,
repaired and divided out of all recognition, finally end its days as a row of
old fashioned cottages. These changes, along with the unpretentious additions
and repairs carried out as the need arose, are part of cottage life. While
traditional methods were followed, and locally originating materials were used,
change was as gradual and normal as the growth of a tree. Convenient concrete
blocks used to build an extension, plastic guttering, and large picture windows:
this is the way a cottage comes to an end of its natural growth and starts,
instead, to lose its identity.
1909
'The Cottage Homes of England'. by Stewart Dick. with
Illustrations by Helen Allingham. Writing about the cottage paintings, which
form the illustrations for this book, Stewart Dick comments:
'There
is no jarring note. Where the modern occupier has erected an ugly iron railing,
or cut through the beams of the framework in enlarging a window, or added a
corrugated iron roof to a lean-to, a judicious restoration has taken place, and
we seethe cottage not as it unfortunately now is, but as it used to be.'
The traditional
rural life that caused these cottages to be built has gone. That there was
beauty and value in that old life is not in dispute; but so great have been the
economic and consequent social changes, that a true vision of that old life
becomes ever harder to hold on to. Building museums, art, literature, anything
which is able to open a chink through which we can catch a glimpse of this lost
world and the opportunities that it once offered, must widen our perception of
the beauty and the possibilities that our rush into 'progress' turned away
from.
I found another
way to catch a glimpse of this lost world when, as a young man, I bought my
first miniature tree; not a 'bonsai', but a tree which, without any artificial
treatment, would grow naturally to no more than two feet (60 cm) high after
years of unrestricted growth.
This tree was to
become the key to the creation of an older world; an attempt to live in the
past and exercise the skills and traditions of an earlier time. I started to
experiment with the flora of a smaller world, its living woods and meadows, its
hedges and cottage gardens. I found it was possible to recreate the beauty of
the English countryside in miniature; to condense the elements and contours of
that traditional cottage world; to remake a living gateway through which I
could touch, and be involved in this traditional past. Here I could become a
stonemason, dauber, thatcher, carpenter or tile maker; I could become a
countryman living in a golden age. This is the way I was able to take the very
essence of our precious cottage history and bring it together in a new way. It
would be impossible to illustrate this book without this re-building.
I soon found that
there is a considerable difference in discovering how a cottage was built, and
finding out how to build it again, but smaller. Each cottage became an
individual obsession which took me over for a year or two.
I have explored
and enjoyed the lives of every cottage in this book, and through them I have
gained a real understanding of the word 'cottage'. As I built I was able to
experience, as profoundly as was possible, that knowledge which is at the very
heart of country cottage life. It is this experience which I have tried to
convey in this book, using the cottages in their landscape home as
illustrations.
To rebuild a
cottage, whatever the size, one must become thoroughly involved with its
structure; nothing can be guessed at; each beam and stone must lay correctly or the next will not. To make each cottage
would be time wasted if it was not that building exactly; if not correctly
built it would have no meaning. Time taken to build was the time necessary; the
methods and materials used were those that were traditional. The lives passed
within the cottage walls and the society which surrounded them became of such
interest to me that the more I learned, the more my understanding grew closer
to that of the old world; I began to see as the old cottagers saw. This
involvement gave mea deeper insight into the gentle lanes and rustic living
that had disappeared from our world, and into the possibilities for a simpler
and healthier society which we had lost; it is this that I have tried to
express within these pages.
The purpose of
this book is to present an overall picture of a lost rural beauty. Its chapters
range through Britain, selecting the highlights of that lost idyll. The
cottages, which are illustrated, trace the evolution of cottage construction
and of the materials used to build them. Both rural art and literature are
evoked, through Willy Lott's house, and Thomas Hardy's cottage. If this method
of preserving the past was seen as valuable, other people with a desire to hold
onto a tangible memory of the old ways, could safeguard each county's heritage
in a similar way. My previous book 'Landscapes in Miniature' details the trees,
plants and building methods. A Devonshire valley with cob cottages, Surrey, Yorkshire
- all could live again as they were instead of disappearing into the past to
become unknown to the children of this new millennium.
This is an
entirely different way of making a picture - a way which reflects and preserves
a factual representation of our rural heritage. An artist friend painted a
cottage scene from my landscape, a scene which was no longer available in the
outside world. Talking afterwards he said: 'The only fault I can find with your
landscape is that it is too perfect. When I paint a scene, I will paint the
warped fence and the sun bleached thatch.'
I pointed out that
this was a newly fenced landscape, with recently built cottages, and that time
and the weather would also warp its fences and bleach its thatch. It was then
that his perception changed; he saw that, although small, this was a real
landscape, one which was also subject to nature's influences. He had been too
closely associating what he saw with art, and particularly painting. In a
painting, time and the weather play no further part once the picture is
finished. Strangely, this finished cottage world also attracted tiny
butterflies which were appropriate to its size. I had never noticed these
miniature insects in any other situation. But it is the same autumn sunlight, that any artist delights in, which makes the amber
coloured leaves of this small natural landscape glow as though illumined from
within: and it is those same leaves which drift over winter paths and are
caught up in the pond ice, held in its icy pane.
From this same
artist friend, I bought a fine painting of a seventeenth century thatched
cottage which overlooked the village pond at Bishopstone, in Wiltshire: he had
painted this picture in1980.I had intended to research this same cottage with a
view to including it in my landscape; in the event it didn't really fit into
the theme I was following. On 3rd January 1994, there was a local newspaper
headline which read: 'Blaze Wrecks Paradise'. The story which followed told of
a fire that had left the cottage, the one my friend had painted, a charred
ruin. As one of the villagers said when interviewed: 'It's so sad that such an
old and irreplaceable building has been destroyed' - a sentiment I have heard
so many times about so many cottages. No conservation efforts can resist fire,
to which old cottages, fitted with electricity and modern heating are prone.
The little that is left of the old world will continue to diminish; and if we
are to retain any record of it every method to chronicle it must be used.
I have a book of
engravings by Birket Foster coupled with pieces from prose and poetry. This
book was published in 1896and is titled 'Pictures of Rustic Landscape'. In it
is a fragment by Mary Russell Mitford, called 'Violeting'. As I read this piece
I found that, remarkably, it seemed to be an exact description of the small
landscape which I had only recently completed, so I will end this chapter with
it:
'It
is a little sheltered scene, retiring, as it were, from the village; sunk
amidst higher lands, hills would be almost too grand a word: edged on one side
by one gay high-road, and intersected by another; and surrounded by a most
picturesque confusion of meadows, cottages, farms, and orchards; with a great
pond in one corner, unusually bright and clear, giving a delightful
cheerfulness and daylight to the picture. '