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Not all gorgeous Georgians

Greg Pullen cocks a gentle snook at early Georgian architecture thinking it rather plain.

Article by: Greg Pullen
Publish date: 18th November 2009

Firstly, let me start with a blunt warning. Early Georgian architecture is perhaps one of the most over-rated styles the British have ever produced. Safe, repetitive and usually not even that well built. It is cosy cappuccino and milk chocolate for the masses in a world crying out for espresso and dark, bitter chocolate.

In the August issue I suggested the start of the eighteenth century saw the Baroque cuckolded by Palladianism, as a nervous and puritan England returned to a quiet and modest style in the face of an increasingly restless world. While the fashion in clothing and interiors became ever more flamboyant, the outside of houses became sober and plain. If you were lucky enough to be rich, now was not the time to boast about it; after all, the French Revolution and American Independence were just around the corner.

The Eighteenth century also saw the rise of the professional architect. Design and appearance became paramount, with the eccentric John Wood the Elder claiming the orders of architecture had been handed down from God. Everyone was blindly copying the 200 year old works of Palladio, but without his flair. An obsession with symmetry and proportion led to many a bricked up window as an original feature, perhaps hiding a staircase or fireplace inside the house. So never look at bricked up windows and spout on about window tax, because that predates the Georgians who could have left out the window opening altogether – it was their compulsive need to have a regular façade that led to these odd, but usually original, features.

So early Georgian Architecture is easily identified by being plain, perfectly proportioned and even on the grandest buildings having very little in the way of decoration.  Plain stonework was most loved and admired, but roads were in their infancy so local materials still ruled the roost. Even so, timber framed houses were a dying breed because oak was so scarce its use was banned in domestic buildings, and anyway brick was so much better and now widely available from your local clay pit.

And if you used brick, boy was this a chance to show off. An easy way to spot a Georgian building is to look at the pointing, that is the mortar joints between stone but more often brick. Bricks were handmade and often crudely shaped, although much the same size as we use today. To make the brickwork appear finer you could rub the bricks down to get straight edges and sharp corners, but this takes forever so was usually reserved for window arches or doorways where the work was structurally valuable and most likely to be noticed. A good second best was “tuck pointing”, where the bricks were laid in mortar coloured with brick dust, and then a fine line of white mortar was tucked in to give the appearance of fine rubbed brickwork. Once you know this you’ll suddenly notice
it everywhere.

And for stonework, especially finely cut ashlar, the mortar joints will be almost invisible. This obsession with plain facades extended to the dreaded parapet wall which rises up to hide the roof and guarantee damp patches on ceilings. It’s also worth remembering that in towns especially much of what looks Georgian will be a refaced older house. The world might have been a topsy-turvy place, but England was at the top of the pecking order and that meant some people at least had money.

Luckily, money brings confidence, and that can bring greatness. John Wood the Younger was a far greater architect than his dad, and nice as Bath’s Circus is, in the end it’s just a copy of the Roman Coliseum. Junior’s Royal Crescent broke the rules – literally, by tearing open the circle to give an open crescent overlooking parkland. And instead of deep and meaningful carvings there were urns and swags and fun; the Baroque was creeping
back in.

The master of the new style was Robert Adam, a Scotsman who was unashamedly romantic. Then came John Nash whose work was truly Picturesque, a style so important it gets a capital P. Spotting the fun and games in a building points you to the late Georgian cum Regency period – say 1780ish to 1830. Yes, you can look at the ever thinner glazing bars, but stuff like windows and chimneys are dangerous territory when guessing a buildings age because they’re comparatively easy to change. The way a parapet wall runs or carving on structural stonework are not.
The other thing to remember about the Georgian period is that people read the catalogues and style books of the great architects, and could easily copy them. So when stucco (a render for crude stone or brickwork that mimics ashlar) appeared in the late Eighteenth Century its use quickly became widespread.

And after a century long hiatus, British architecture was firmly back on track. Where the landscape architects (most famously Capability Brown) had gone, with their artfully contrived “ natural” gardens, house builders could safely return. The Picturesque, probably the most important style in our history, had arrived with a cherry-picking ethos that abandoned symmetry and order to give us everything from brand new ruins to fabulous reinventions of the Gothic. Yes, 300 years after the Tudors had abandoned what was seen as the style of their church, lords and masters, here it was again. This time however it was on a modest, more human, scale and neatly dovetailed into the (preferably rural) surroundings. Brighton Pavilion, a fabulous piece of Regency whimsy, is a great example of this pick and mix style that paved the way for the Victorians as we’ll see in the January issue.