Earls Court Living
Earls Court properties
Click one of these topics relating to Earls Court properties .
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How Earls Court properties have changedSome of the more prestigious Earls Court properties from the Victorian era still remain as houses (usually owned by Middle Eastern oil princes). Many other Earls Court properties were converted to use as embassies. When you go to an embassy and consider the number of people working there, it is amazing to think that a single family would have occupied the house in Victorian times. Many Earls Court properties were originally stables. This is the case with all original mews properties which were built in streets behind the real Earls Court houses. The Victorians would recognise the facades of most Earls Court properties, but be amazed by the change in use behind. Most original Earls Court houses have now been converted into flats. |
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Building regulations for Earls Court propertiesThe laws introduced to prevent any recurrence of the Great Fire of London banned timber from the outside of all Earls Court properties, and required walls to be made of brick or stone. Such Earls Court properties would be far more durable than timbered lath and plaster houses of Tudor and Jacobean times. That is why if you look at the residential areas London it is as if houses were invented by the Georgians. The rules for building Earls Court properties severely restricted the use of wood to reduce fire risk. They couldn’t use wood near chimney flues. |
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Terraces of Earls Court properties in Georgian LondonMost Earls Court properties were built in terraces. Brick properties in terraces was a creation of the Georgian age. By the time Earls Court was being built up in the 19th century typical Earls Court properties were becoming fully stuccoed. The earliest Georgian terraces were uniform in style and symmetrical in layout. The facades of Earls Court properties incorporated classical pilasters, doors and windows crowned with pediments, and decorative mouldings. In the 1720s the “palace fronted terrace” came into fashion for Earls Court properties. The whole terrace was treated as one composition, with a long stuccoed front elevation with pilasters at intervals and a central pediment over the Earls Court properties in the middle.
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Earls Court properties round garden squaresMost Victorian developments of Earls Court properties followed a similar pattern. Houses were built in rows, along streets or round specially constructed squares. Earls Court properties might have small front areas, but not considerable front gardens. Most squares were constructed with the Earls Court properties grouped round it and facing onto it. But later Victorian developers, constructed estates with “hidden gardens” between the backs of the Earls Court properties and to which the houses had rear access. |
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Construction of Earls Court propertiesThe typical London town house was established during the Georgian period and remained more-or-less unchanged until the last quarter of the 19th century. The façade of Earls Court properties would be brick faced, with plain inset sash windows and doors, with a metal balcony at the first floor level. The main structure of such Earls Court properties was a rectangular box, built in stock-brick, and topped with a roof of Welsh slates. The roof of these Earls Court properties was either concealed behind a brick parapet or built in the form of a mansard with dormer windows. A timber frame formed the internal construction of all but the larger houses. The joists supporting the floors which ran between the front and back walls of such Earls Court properties were wood. So was the framework of the internal partition walls from the ground floor upwards. Brick walls were only used internally at basement level or to support a stone wall-hung staircase, or to give added structural support in particularly large Earls Court properties. |
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Size and height of Earls Court propertiesThe basic layout and construction of Earls Court properties did not change dramatically throughout the Victorian period. Partly this was because the design worked. There would be a basement with 3 to 5 storeys above. The earliest Earls Court properties had just one room to each floor. So if the frontage of such Earls Court properties was 24 feet wide, the house was usually 24 feet deep. In Georgian times, the standard design of a terraced house changed to the double pile house, meaning the house was two rooms deep on each floor. |
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Different types of Earls Court propertiesThe Building Act of 1774 classified new Earls Court properties into 4 “rates” depending on the value of the house. Each type of Earls Court properties had its own structural rules. (The poor were not to be as well protected as the rich.) “First rate” Earls Court properties had to have a minimum floor space of 900 square feet. “Second rate” Earls Court properties could be between 500 and 900 square feet. For “third rate” Earls Court properties it was 350 to 500 square feet and for “fourth rate” it was a minimum of 350 square feet. But although the minimum size of a house was specified, there was no restriction on the number of people who could live there. |
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The basements of Earls Court propertiesThe basements of Earls Court properties contained the kitchen, scullery and pantries, and ample storage for beer and wine was provided, usually in the centre of the house between the back and front basement rooms. The placing of the kitchen at this level of kept the principal rooms well away from any rising damp in the brick walls of Earls Court properties. |
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Ground floor of Earls Court propertiesIn early Georgian times it was normal for the ground floor of Earls Court properties to be for services and servants' accommodation and the first floor was the main floor or 'piano nobile'. But in the Regency period the ground floor of Earls Court properties became the main family floor. The ground storey contained the dining-room, at the side of a narrow entrance hall, and behind it a smaller parlour or morning-room. The dining-room of Earls Court properties might be a little deeper than the front rooms on the upper floors and was sometimes finished with a sideboard recess at its inner end. The rear parlour of Earls Court properties was usually narrower than the dining—room in order to accommodate the extra width of the stairs at the end of the hall. |
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Bedroom floors of Earls Court propertiesThe bedroom floors of Earls Court properties were usually similar in plan to the living room floors but were sometimes subdivided into smaller rooms, particularly on the top floor. In larger Earls Court properties the stair to the top floor might take the form of a small accommodation stair outside the main stairwell, and in such cases it was normally of timber construction. The owner’s bedroom would usually be on the second floor, with provision for children’s rooms and servants’ rooms on this or higher floors in accordance with the scale of the house. |
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