CHAPTER 8

Yards and Gardens

FIG 8.1: The rears of even spacious urban terrace houses were not a space for leisure. They were usually yards with service rooms and mews in the largest examples or small paved yards with a privy, coal and ash bins and a water butt, as in this example, at the back of a medium sized Georgian terrace.

The area immediately outside the Georgian and Regency houses differed in many ways from those of today, not only in appearance but also because of attitudes towards it. Gardening was not the popular hobby now enjoyed by practically everyone, with every tiny space turned over to greenery and flowers – in fact it did not exist as a pastime at all. The upper and middle classes would never be seen getting their hands dirty and the working masses rarely had the space to do so and then only if the activity involved foodstuffs or livestock. It was not until the later Victorian period, when flushing toilets and earth closets were re-housed within a rear extension and drainage improved, that respectable people started to regard their garden as a place to cultivate plants and flowers.

FIG 8.2: CAVENDISH SQUARE, LONDON: The square was a later planned development (rather than houses being built around an existing open space, park or village green) provided by the builder as space for the tenants of the surrounding houses to meet respectable society and as a safe sanctuary for children to play under the guidance of a parent or nanny. It was usually gated and railed off to keep unwanted visitors out.

There was also an emphasis on the front of the house, which was a public place to be looked upon by passers by and from which the householders could gaze at those outside. There was little of our current obsession for privacy as the house was very much a venue for respectable society. Pavements for promenading and enclosed squares of greenery in front of larger urban terraces were used as we might our rear gardens today, while the backs of most terraces in this period were dark, damp spaces for the services where the owner would rarely venture.

THE FRONTS

The front of most Georgian houses directly abutted the pavement outside, although some larger examples were set slightly back behind railings with steps leading up to the front door. Later in the period it became common for the façade to be positioned behind a railed off well called the ‘area’, which provided improved lighting into the basement and a discreet entrance down the steps for servants and deliveries. This also gave the owners increased privacy as it became fashionable for staff to be more out of sight of guests.

This later arrangement meant that the basement was often only partly underground, a half basement, which reduced excavation costs for the builder and the front door was now raised up a set of steps, making a more imposing entrance. However, in many cases, the spoil from the foundations was used to build up the street in front, providing a space under the pavement for cellars accessed from the area of each house. At least one of these would have housed coal, which delivery men would drop down a chute set in the pavement with a removable metal cover to close it off when not in use, still a common sight today along many such terraces.

Railings were a common sight in front of larger houses, usually to prevent people falling into the area but also as a decorative feature. Most from this period were of simple designs with a single horizontal bar along the top and the bases of each vertical set into a raised sill or directly into the ground (later types or modern replacements usually have a horizontal bar top and bottom). With improved casting in the first decades of the 19th century more elaborate and delicate designs were available. In these days before street lighting (although some early gas lamps did appear towards the end of the Regency period) torches were used by footmen to light lanterns and were put out by conical snuffers, while lamps suspended in metal rings over the steps or at the side provided additional light (see Fig 4.35).

FIG 8.3: Circular metal covers set in the pavement can still be found above the old chutes down which coal was poured into the storage cellar below. This indicates that the road was built up from spoil dug out from the house foundations and a rise in height can sometimes be found where it meets older roads on the original ground level.

THE REARS

Most urban houses had little more than a paved or gravel yard at the rear. This walled space, sometimes backing onto a rear passageway, but other times accessed only through the house, was essential for the storage of the basic services. Coal for the fires and ranges was kept here when there was not a suitable cellar elsewhere, and the ash, which the average house produced in vast quantities, was also stored in the yard. The privy, usually no more than a hole in planks of wood suspended above a cesspit or, in later properties, above drains leading off into a local watercourse, was also here although the owners of the house would use the closets or chamber pots indoors and the servants would carry them outside for emptying. As running water on tap was a rarity until the Regency period most houses had water butts collecting the rain via guttering, usually for washing rather than drinking, and if there was space there might also be room for drying laundry.

FIG 8.4: BLACK COUNTRY MUSEUM, DUDLEY, WEST MIDLANDS: The privy, bog house or jakes was typically a tall brick structure with a hole cut into a set of planks providing the seat above a cesspit or drains. Cesspits were filled with either earth or ash and were emptied out by nightsoil men a few times a year.

FIG 8.5: The mews, which ran along the rear road at the back of large houses, was used for storing the owner’s carriage and horses, usually with a second storey above for the staff. Most examples today have become garages or have been sold off and converted into homes or flats. In other later examples (bottom right) service rooms like the kitchen were sited out here.

Larger urban houses, especially later in the period, would have many of the services housed out here in rear extensions or separate buildings. Kitchens, sculleries and, in the largest houses, a laundry or even brewhouse could be found where space permitted. It was also common on most big terraced houses to have a mews along the rear, backing onto a private road. These were the double garages of their day where horses and carriages could be stabled on the ground floor with room for the staff above. Most of these have been sold off and converted into flats or garages in the 20th century but, as such, have retained their overall structure, often with the cobbled back lane.

Although the rear of most houses was an odorous place, a few houses were fortunate enough to have space for a private garden especially early in the period before land prices shot up. The owner in this period, however, would only admire and use it for recreation and leave maintenance to a gardener. The largest detached or terraced houses could have had room for a walled garden with space to grow produce for use in the kitchen and at the rear for a conservatory or extension for an additional room. It was more likely that a small flat rectangular space would be provided with beds and gravel paths for the owners when the services could be housed in or around the house and there was good drainage for the privy. Later in the Regency period the square at the front, around which the terraces were arranged, provided a similar role.

FIG 8.6: Gardens at the rear were not common but did exist in some of the largest houses, as in these examples restored from records and excavations at The Circus, Bath (left) and Pickford’s House, Derby (right).