Posted by Mike Field on May 28, 2014 at 16:02:40 user mikefield.
In Reply to: Beckfoot Layout posted by Mike Dennis on May 28, 2014 at 10:37:50:
I've taken the liberty of combining Mike's two sheets into one smaller drawing, posted here, for simplicity of viewing.
I've looked at Mike's notes but not gone through them forensically, and nor am I familiar with English houses of any sort. But on first blush I would make these points --
* I think the internal passage around the larder looks unnecessarily complicated. Wouldn't the larder just be in the back corner of the kitchen?
* I can't imagine a house where the kitchen would open into the entrance hall. I think it more likely that the internal door from the kitchen would open into the passage.
* If there's a separate pantry it needs to be allowed for. (In Roger's drawing it's next to the larder, which seems a logical place for it.)
* The only reason I can think of that there would be two external doors from the kitchen was if there were an external wall between them, normal to the house wall, that divided the garden into two separate areas. Would the smaller of those doors have led to a walled kitchen garden perhaps, while the others led to, say, the stable-yard?
* In most houses of this vintage I suspect even the hardy English would have had a fireplace in bedrooms as well as living-rooms. More often than not they would have been placed back to back, so two fires shared one chimney structure (and in a two-storey house, sometimes four.) Certainly there would be a kitchen range anyway. So I think it's important that the fireplaces be located on the drawings. Do we know anything about the chimneys from the books?
* What about the servants' quarters and a separate flight of back stairs to access them?
* Mrs Blackett needs a way into her bedroom that doesn't require her having to climb a trellis... :)
* The box room (not shown here) might possibly have been under either flight of stairs, probably the front one.
I think it would be useful if you could show the stable and loft, stable-yard, kitchen garden, and the entrance gate on the plan as well Mike, along with the front lawn and the direction of the lake.
(And I do hope this doesn't all sound too negative.)