By-pass Variegated is a term coined by the cartoonist and architectural historian Osbert Lancaster in his 1938 book Pillar to Post. It represents the ribbon development of houses in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s, in a mish-mash of architectural styles.
Before 1947 there was no systematic legal control of property development in Britain: landowners could in general build as they wished on their land. [1] Between the First and Second World Wars speculative builders bought large tracts of land alongside new arterial roads and built mile after mile of mostly semi-detached, and some detached, houses. They were built as cheaply as possible, allowing people with modest incomes to buy a home for the first time, rather than rent. In the inter-war period owner-occupation in Britain rose from 10 to 32 per cent. [2] In a 2010 study of Britain in the 1930s, Juliet Gardiner gives an example of a working-class couple buying a new house of this kind in Hornchurch, Essex for £495. [3]
In Lancaster's view, houses in the "By-pass Variegated" style were badly designed from both the practical and the aesthetic point of view, combining "the maximum of inconvenience" of layout with an incongruous mixture of old styles jumbled together in the façades, combining features copied from Art Nouveau, Modernism, Stockbroker's Tudor, Pont Street Dutch, Romanesque and other styles. [4] He added that the historical details were "in almost every case the worst features of the style from which they were filched". [4]
In addition to the internal inconveniences and the external aesthetic considerations, Lancaster remarked on "the skill with which the houses are disposed that insures that the largest possible area of countryside is ruined with the minimum of expense". [4] He also criticised the typical layout that gave each householder "a clear view into the most private offices of his next-door neighbour" and a disregard for natural light in the construction of the principal rooms. [4]
Like several other coinages in Pillar to Post, "By-pass Variegated" has been taken up by later writers. It appears in the journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects; [5] The Guardian used it in its 2015 survey A History of Cities in 50 Buildings. [6] In the London Review of Books , Rosemary Hill ranks the term with "Stockbroker's Tudor" as having passed into the language. [7] In The New Statesman , Stephen Calloway included "By-pass Variegated" in Lancaster's "pin-point-sharp litany of names still widely used today", along with Kensington Italianate, Municipal Gothic, Pont Street Dutch, Wimbledon Transitional, Pseudish and Stockbrokers' Tudor. [8] The term has been translated into German as "Stadtumgehungsstil". [9]
The Jacobethan architectural style, also known as Jacobean Revival, is the mixed national Renaissance revival style that was made popular in England from the late 1820s, which derived most of its inspiration and its repertory from the English Renaissance (1550–1625), with elements of Elizabethan and Jacobean.
A villa is a type of house that was originally an ancient Roman upper class country house. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the fall of the Roman Republic, villas became small farming compounds, which were increasingly fortified in Late Antiquity, sometimes transferred to the Church for reuse as a monastery. Then they gradually re-evolved through the Middle Ages into elegant upper-class country homes. In the early modern period, any comfortable detached house with a garden near a city or town was likely to be described as a villa; most survivals have now been engulfed by suburbia. In modern parlance, "villa" can refer to various types and sizes of residences, ranging from the suburban semi-detached double villa to, in some countries, especially around the Mediterranean, residences of above average size in the countryside.
A semi-detached house is a single family duplex dwelling house that shares one common wall with the next house. The name distinguishes this style of house from detached houses, with no shared walls, and terraced houses, with a shared wall on both sides. Often, semi-detached houses are built in pairs in which each house's layout is a mirror image of the other's.
A terrace, terraced house (UK), or townhouse (US) is a kind of medium-density housing that first started in 16th century Europe with a row of joined houses sharing side walls. In the United States and Canada these are sometimes known as row houses or row homes.
The year 1835 in architecture involved some significant architectural events and new buildings.
Osbert Lancaster's Drayneflete Revealed, is an illustrated book on architectural style.
The Vyne is a Grade I listed 16th-century country house in the parish of Sherborne St John, near Basingstoke, in Hampshire, England. The house was first built circa 1500–10 in the Tudor style by William Sandys, 1st Baron Sandys, Lord Chamberlain to King Henry VIII. In the 17th century it was transformed to resemble a classical mansion. Today, although much reduced in size, the house retains its Tudor chapel, with contemporary stained glass. The classical portico on the north front was added in 1654 to the design of John Webb, a pupil of Inigo Jones, and is notable as the first portico in English domestic architecture.
Tudor Revival architecture, also known as mock Tudor in the UK, first manifested in domestic architecture in the United Kingdom in the latter half of the 19th century. Based on revival of aspects that were perceived as Tudor architecture, in reality it usually took the style of English vernacular architecture of the Middle Ages that had survived into the Tudor period.
Sir Osbert Lancaster was an English cartoonist, architectural historian, stage designer and author. He was known for his cartoons in the British press, and for his lifelong work to inform the general public about good buildings and architectural heritage.
The Architectural Review is a monthly international architectural magazine. It has been published in London since 1896. Its articles cover the built environment – which includes landscape, building design, interior design and urbanism – as well as theory of these subjects.
A snout house is a house with a protruding garage that takes up most of the street frontage. This layout is worked into many styles of houses, including single-family houses, duplexes and other multifamily structures.
A Shakespeare garden is a themed garden that cultivates some or all of the 175 plants mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare. In English-speaking countries, particularly the United States, these are often public gardens associated with parks, universities, and Shakespeare festivals. Shakespeare gardens are sites of cultural, educational, and romantic interest and can be locations for outdoor weddings.
Edward Graham Paley, usually known as E. G. Paley, was an English architect who practised in Lancaster, Lancashire, in the second half of the 19th century. After leaving school in 1838, he went to Lancaster to become a pupil of Edmund Sharpe, and in 1845 he joined Sharpe as a partner. Sharpe retired from the practice in 1851, leaving Paley as the sole principal. In 1868, Hubert Austin joined him as a partner, and in 1886, Paley's son, Henry, also became a partner. This partnership continued until Paley's death in 1895.
Pont Street is a fashionable street in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, traversing the areas of Knightsbridge and Belgravia. The street is not far from the Knightsbridge department store Harrods to its north-west. The street crosses Sloane Street in the middle, with Beauchamp Place to the west and Cadogan Place, and Chesham Place, to the east, eventually leading to Belgrave Square. On the west side, Hans Place leads off the street to the north and Cadogan Square to the south.
Strawberry Hill House—often called simply Strawberry Hill—is a Gothic Revival villa that was built in Twickenham, London, by Horace Walpole (1717–1797) from 1749 onward. It is a typical example of the "Strawberry Hill Gothic" style of architecture, and it prefigured the nineteenth-century Gothic Revival.
Tigbourne Court is an Arts and Crafts style country house in Wormley, Surrey, England, 1 mile (1.6 km) south of Witley. It was designed by architect Edwin Lutyens, using a mixture of 17th-century style vernacular architecture and classical elements, and has been called "probably his best" building, for its architectural geometry, wit and texture. It was completed in 1901. English Heritage have designated it a Grade I listed building.
Pont Street Dutch is a term coined by Osbert Lancaster to describe an architectural style typified by the large red brick gabled houses built in the 1880s in Pont Street and adjacent areas such as Hans Place and Cadogan Gardens in Knightsbridge, London. The description first appeared in Lancaster's Pillar to Post, published in 1938, and was subsequently adopted by other architectural writers. Nikolaus Pevsner writes of the style as "tall, sparingly decorated red brick mansions for very wealthy occupants, in the semi-Dutch, semi-Queen-Anne style of Shaw or George & Peto".
Marchese Piero Luigi Carlo Maria Malacrida de Saint-August was an Italian aristocrat, playboy and London-based interior designer. The Malacrida family were from Lombardy and a Palazzo Malacrida still exists in Morbegno, Lombardy. The property passed to another family in 1820 and is currently in the hands of the municipality.
Stockbroker's Tudor, sometimes alternatively Stockbrokers Tudor or Stockbroker Tudor, was a term coined by the architectural historian and cartoonist Osbert Lancaster for a style of house that became popular in Britain in the first half of the 20th century, employing pastiche Tudor features on the façades of houses, before and during the development of suburban Metroland.
Curzon Street Baroque is a 20th-century inter-war Baroque revival style. It manifested itself principally as a form of interior design popular in the homes of Britain's wealthy and well-born intellectual elite. Its name was coined by the English cartoonist and author Osbert Lancaster, as Curzon Street in Mayfair was an address popular with London high society. While previous forms of Baroque interior design had relied on French 18th-century furnishings, in this form it was more often than not the heavier and more solid furniture of Italy, Spain, and southern Germany that came to symbolise the furnishings of new fashion.