«Sir, Lambeth, November 14th, 1840. "First, the foundation is laid with Penrynn granite from Cornwall, which rises to the level of the ground, therefore little seen. Secondly, above this is used Fogg-Tor granite from Dartmoor, in Devonshire, (with which we are also building the Nelson pillar in Trafalgar-square, London ;) then follow some courses of Irish granite from Dalkey near Dublin, of which many of the public edifices in that city are built. The whole sub-basement being then finished with the best blue fine-grained granite from Aberdeen, in Scotland, decidedly the most durable of any sent to London. The superstructure of the Houses of Parliament we are building with Bolsover moor-stone, from near Chesterfield, Derbyshire, an exceedingly fine-grained magnesian limestone, composed chiefly of carbonate of lime and carbonate of magnesia, semi-crystalline, of a warm, yellowish brown colour, well suited for Gothic work (Tudor architecture) on that account; carves well, and carries a fine arris, and from its peculiar clear texture will polish like marble.* Bolsover quarries are the property of Lord Bathurst and the Duke of Leeds. "Yours very truly, "T. GRISSELL." DISSERTATION VII. A CAUTION WHERE WE OUGHT NOT TO BUILD A HOUSE. "He that builds a fair house upon an ill site committeth himself to prison. Neither do I reckon it an ill site only where the air is unwholesome, but likewise where the air is unequal; as you shall see many fine seats set upon a knap of ground environed with high hills round about it, whereby the heat of the sun is pent in and the wind gathereth as in troughs; so as you shall have, and that suddenly, as great diversity of heat and cold as if you dwelt in several places."-LORD BACON'S Essays. Many places are objectionable on which to build a house, in consequence of their being unhealthy: such is that of Stow in the Would, in Gloucestershire, where it is said the inhabitants want fire, water, and earth.+ Then it is evident that a house built within the proximity of marshes is particularly unhealthy from the vapours or mephitic air which infest the vicinity after nightfall:+ such are the fens of Lincolnshire, where the exhalations are not only poisonous, but the waters so brackish that the inhabitants are obliged to make reservoirs for rainwater for their daily use. In such situations as this, people are liable to dangerous malignant fevers, agues, asthma, influenza, rheumatics, and other painful disorders from the fogs. To the unwholesomeness of such a place the great observer of nature thus alludes: 66 May all the infection that the sun sucks up From bogs, fens, flats, on Prospero fall, and make him By inchmeal a diseasc.”—SHAKSPERE's Tempest. Lord Bacon has enumerated several things which are objectionable in a site for a country-house; such, he says, are "ill ways, ill markets, and, if you will consult with Momus, ill neighbours.§ I speak not of many more, want of water, want of wood, shade, and shelter, want of fruitfulness, and mixture of grounds; want of places at some distance for sports, as hunting, hawking, and for races. Too near the sea, too remote, having the commodity of navigable rivers, or the discommodity of * This appears to be the same kind of stone as was used in building Bolsover Castle, erected in 1633.—(A.) + Moule's English Counties, Gloucestershire, vol. ii. p. 34. The vicinity about marshy and stagnant waters is a most improper site for a dwelling; for independently of the malaria which issues from these waters, especially in summer, they create an atmospheric dampness, which communicates itself to the surrounding dwellings, and is the great cause of epidemical disorders. "Plagues Rise from the putrid watery element § I remember, says Sir Henry Wotton, I know well how to sort unless I call it political, by no means to build too near a great neighbour, which were in truth to be as unpleasantly seated on the earth as Mercurie is in the heavens, for the most part ever in combustion or obscurity under brighter beams than his own.-(Sir Henry Wotton's Elements of Architecture, 1624.) their overflowing; too far off from great cities, which may hinder business, or too near them, which lurcheth all provisions, and maketh everything dear. When a man hath a great living laid together, so it is good to know them and think of them, that a man may take as many as he can; and if he have several dwellings, that he sort them, so that what he wants in the one he may find in the other Lucullus answered Pompey well, who when he saw his stately galleries and rooms so large and lightsome in one of his country-houses, said, 'Surely an excellent place for summer, but how do you do in winter?' Lucullus answered, Why, do you not think me as wise as some fowls are that change their abode towards the winter."" The top of a hill is an improper place to erect a house upon, for here it will be bleak in the winter, unless there is another hill at some small distance behind to form a screen and to protect the edifice. Nor is the bottom of a hill a proper place, for there it will receive the rains copiously as they descend from the upland in the rear, soaking the very foundations, keeping it always damp, and chilling the vitals of the occupants. Neither is the north side of a hill a proper site; for here the sun does not shine, which is required to air and ventilate the rooms by day, and to draw off the dew which has fallen during the night. Such situations will ever be damp and dreary, exposed to cold and piercing winds, rendering such habitations unhealthy, cheerless, and insupportable during the winter season. Neither should a mansion be erected where the air is unequal or the climate too variable; or where the salubrity of the place is ever likely to become contaminated from any particular local circumstances which it may not be in our power to prevent: this has been the result with those places which were once the most healthful.+ Such was Baiæ, the healthiest place in Italy during the reign of Augustus, when it was the resort of Virgil and Horace; but the successor of Augustus was destined, to taste the bitters of despotism, and to drain the cup to the very dregs. Then Baia became the receptacle of profligacy and effeminacy, of lust and cruelty, as far beyond the bounds of nature as the power of the imperial. masters was above human control. The beauties of nature were tarnished by the foulness of vice, and the virtuous man turned away from scenes which he could not behold without disgust and horror. Silius, Martial, Statius courted the muse in vain on that shore which had inspired the strains of Virgil. They attempted to celebrate the beauties of Baiæ, but the subject was degraded, and their strains were forced and inharmonious. Baiæ and its retreats, defiled by obscenity and stained with blood, were doomed to devastation; and earthquakes, war, and pestilence were employed in succession to waste its fields and depopulate its shores: the pompous villas were gradually levelled in the dust; its seats and alcoves swallowed up in the sea; its salubrious waters were turned into pools of infection; and its gales, that once breathed health and perfumes, now wafted poison Again, a house being exposed to particular winds is a material point to be taken into consideration; for a house that is wholly unprotected, particularly on the north and north-east sides, can never be a suitable habitation for a family. Art may, indeed, accomplish much in preventing the evils resulting from an injudicious situation. Trees are the best for this purpose, and the most ornamental shelter; but they are of slow growth, and consequently the evil may be experienced before the remedy can be brought into actual operation. It is therefore of no minor importance that we should consider well the greater or less exposure of the situation before it be finally determined upon as the site of a country residence.(Architectus.) + In Italy, at some distance from Rome, a wood which was cut down and sold to the French in the time of war, affected the air of the city so far as to render some of the hills, formerly remarkably salubrious, afterwards places subject to agues and fevers, by exposing them to the winds that blow from the marshes on the shore. This wood consisted of oak, ilex, myrtle, and box, which were peculiarly refreshing, not from its shade only, but by the perfumes that exhaled on all sides from its odoriferous shrubs.-(Eustace's Italy.) Alexander Pope, in one of his epistles, speaks of a person who, at an immense expense, cut through a lofty hill to obtain a view from his house, that this let in the north wind, and he was then obliged to abandon his mansion altogether.-(Ibid.) Senec. Ep. i. v. and death; the towns, forsaken by the inhabitants, gradually sunk to ruin, and the most delicious region the sun beheld in its course is now a desert, and seems destined to expiate, in ages of silence and desolation, the crimes of the last degenerate Romans.* A house is not well situated on the east side of a hill, although it has the early advantage of the morning sun, to exhale the vapours that have fallen in dews during the night; and certainly the earlier the damps are drawn up in the morning the healthier the spot will be; neither will the sun long continue here, and the wind from this point is very pernicious to health, which is known by experience to many an asthmatic person. It also blights vegetation, blossoms, and young fruits. In the Levant this wind is particularly stormy and boisterous, and is even counted noxious in Arabia: it is what our mariners call a Levanter, and is the same called in the Acts of the Apostles Euroclydon, by which St. Paul and his companions were wrecked on the island of Melita. A house built on a spot where it long continues damp after rain, and such is always the case where it is clayey, and houses in a town situated on the south side of the street or a square facing the north, are not so healthy as those on the opposite side: in the former the footpaths are seldom long dry during the winter months, which produces chilliness within the house; even snow on this side will lie for weeks together, while on either of the other sides of the square it seldom remains long. A house-built near the property of another person, where there are mineral streams, or rank and poisonous weeds growing in abundance, but which we have not the power of removing, such as hemlock, henbane, and aconite-all plants that affect the air-is far from eligible.+ Hills on the east and south side are the most inconveniently situated, and where there is a naked rock immediately behind or in the rear of the house, though it may be picturesque, it will produce vertigo and lassitude: the rock containing much smooth surface will reflect the heat of the sun's rays on the house, and renuer it a sweating-bath at night. Now though all smooth surfaces reflect the most heat when exposed to the sun, yet they attract the most damp and throw out the cold in the absence of the sun in winter. It is further necessary to remark, that *The present unwholesomeness of Baix and its bay must be ascribed partly to the same cause as that of the lakes Agnano and Averno, and partly to the streams and sources, once collected on the hills behind it in aqueducts and reservoirs, now spreading and oozing down the declivities and settling in the hollow below. In a warm climate all stagnant water becomes putrid during the hot months: this inconvenience might easily be remedied, and will without doubt, when the government becomes more active and the taste of the Neapolitan gentry more rural.—(Eustace.) In a warm country stagnant water and swampy grounds, the unavoidable effects of inundations, emit vapours that never fail to produce infection: so virulent was the pestilence at one time in Rome, occasioned by an overflowing of the Tiber, which deluged the country and flooded the streets, that in a procession in which Gregory the Great marched at the head of the people against the northern invaders, he had the mortification to see seventy of his flock fall down and expire in his presence. The same effect was once produced in the Gulf of Corinth by a similar cause: every autumn, the exhalations from the swamps and marshes at the mouth of the Achelas are carried up the country, which in the calm and sultry months of summer remain suspended in the air, and have considerable effect on its salubrity.—(A.) In the Maremma of Italy, where, from the nakedness and sandiness of the earth, the scanty and stunted clumps of trees are a mere mockery of shade and verdure, are sulphurous and brackish springs, and on every side foul exhalations rising from the volcanic soil. It is even hurtful here to close the eyes in sleep, for there is disease in the damp and noxious particles after sunset and early in the morning. During the extreme heat of noon these fœtid mists are seen to rise from the pestilent and forsaken valleys, carrying death in their track. They are caused partly by the sulphurous nature of the land, and partly, as in the Campagna near Rome, from a long-neglected and putrid soil and decayed vegetation. The appearance of the few peasants that inhabit the Campagna is frightful and disgusting: distorted features, dark-yellow complexion, livid eyes and lips, in short, all the symptoms of dropsy, jaundice, and agues seem united in their persons, with intermitting fevers, typhus, and phthisical symptoms. Few natives of Sienna visit the pestilential districts of Maremma without remembering the melancholy fate of Madonna Pia, who died in this climate.—(B.) Even in England, where the summer-heat is so moderate, and of much shorter duration, and where the wind blows strong from one point or other ten months out of the twelve, the fens, marshes, and lowlands in Essex, Cambridgeshire, and Lincolnshire, diffuse their influence wide enough to enable us to calculate its effects in hotter climates.-(R. B.) + Virgil, Georgic ii. 1. 184. If a person was to visit where those weeds grow after nightfall, the effluvia from them would be seriously felt, as all noxious vapours are then the strongest. This shows us that a neighbourhood should be well examined before we build our house, for after we begin it will be folly to complain of what we should have before observed. -(Architectus.) a house would be ill situated in a valley, because there it will be liable to have fogs hovering about it in winter, as well as being exposed, both up and down the valley, to the drafts in the winter season. The chimneys will also be liable to smoke in winter; and in summer, if the valley lies north and south, it will be exposed to the reflecting heat from the sloping ground; and if situated east and west, it will, on the other hand, be impossible to live there and enjoy health.* Houses built in hollows, encircled by mountains or hills, like a concave bowl, are thus concealed in obscurity; while the earth is here always impregnated with rains, which settle and send forth unwholesome vapours; for when the wind ceases to blow here, the air will become gross and sickly through stagnation, and the provisions carried into houses so situated soon become corrupted with moisture, and animal food becomes tainted, which is one proof of the quality of bad air in these places. If, on the one hand, the sun can penetrate into those valleys or hollows, the reflection of its rays will create excessive heats, and if not, on the other hand, a perpetual shade, which in summer will render the inhabitants indolent through lassitude, and in the winter subject them to violent shivering colds. A damp and low situation near a river, is of all others perhaps the most to be avoided; for here neither beauty of style in the building nor taste in the ornamental department, nor judgment in the construction of the requisite conveniences can in any degree compensate for those evils which are the invariable results of a low and damp situation.† Health, to maintain which is always a primary object with those who expend their fortunes in the erection of a country residence, may be daily and hourly sacrificed, and property be injured by the imperceptible destruction of the internal decorations, furniture, and wearing apparel. Extensive repairs are constantly required, and one injury or dilapidation is no sooner remedied than another presents itself, engendered by the dampness of the situation. Finally, a house should never be built on a barren spot, as was the case, I well remember, some years ago, near Blackheath in Kent, where Sir Gregory Page erected a mansion: it was a regular and superb pile, in the Italian style of architecture; but the glebe was unfertile, nor had the house any distant prospect worthy of notice, for the principal front, elevated with an upper portico, faced a common wild, where no rivulet glided by, no picturesque landscape or refreshing shade from the piercing sunbeams-everything was sunk into lowness and one uncultivated scene. The house, in the end, was abandoned, and afterwards levelled with the ground. * A house placed on a knoll at the head of a valley is sometimes to be met with in the country; here it is injurious to health, the inhabitants being exposed to perpetual change of cold from a current of air which always augments in force in proportion as the passage through which it runs is diminished. The law of this augmentation is, that the air's force is compounded of its swiftness and density, and as these are increased so will the force of the wind. Thus if any quantity of air moves with twice the swiftness of a similar quantity it will have twice its force, but if at the same time that it is twice as swift it moves through twice a smaller tube, and the sides of the canal give no resistance to its motion, it will have four times its force. This, however, is not entirely the case, for the sides of the tube give a resistance and retard its motion in a proportion that is not easily calculated. From this increase of the wind's density in blowing through narrow passages, it is that we find the storms so very violent that sometimes blow between two neighbouring hills. It is from this that when caught in long arcades opening at one end, or the passage of a house where the front and back doors are open, having a draft through, the wind blows with great force along them. From this increased density it is that we meet with such cold blasts at the corners of streets. In short, whatever diminishes its bulk without taking entirely away from its motion, increases the vehemence of the wind.-(Goldsmith's Philosophy, vol. ii.) + A house built in low or flat grounds by a river side makes work for the physicians, apothecaries, surgeons, coffin and grave-makers.-(Sir Balthazar Gerbier's Counsel to all Builders.) L L DISSERTATION VIII. ADVICE WHERE TO BUILD A HOUSE. "Enchanting site! where every rural sweet, Around new objects prompt the excursive lay, For nature charms such blest retreat."-ARCHITECTUS. As to the noblemen and gentlemen's mansions in England, they are variously seated over the whole kingdom, although they abound more in some counties than in others. In France the châteaux are chiefly confined to the south and suburbs of Paris; in Italy the villas are crowded together in certain fashionable regions. Thus, while the vicinity of Rome, the Alban Mount, the banks of the Tiber, and of the Anio, the Arno, and all Campania and its coast, seem to have been covered with seats, the recesses of the Sabine hills, and the windings of the Apennines, though as beautiful and much cooler, and probably more salubrious, were almost deserted. Horace mentions only one neighbour, Cervius, who perhaps existed only in verse; and the younger Pliny tells us, that his friends from the neighbouring towns occasionally broke in upon his studies with a seasonable interruption, an expression which seems to imply that there were few or no villas immediately near.* Horace has given a pleasing account of the situation, prospect, and healthiness of his Sabine farm, addressed to his patron Quinctius, in his sixteenth epistle : "Ask not, good Quinctius, if my farm maintain A chain of mountains, with a vale divide, In selecting a good situation for a house, two essential things are to be considered, after those of air, water, and the soil. First, a pleasing accompaniment of home scenery, with which the architecture * Horat. Sat. lib. ii. 6. Pliny, Epist. lib. ix. ep. 36. "Nulla necessitas toga," says the latter in another epistle, speaking of some villa, lib. v. epist. 6. "Nemo arcessitor ex proximo." |