The Snob Value of "Georgian" Architecture, Picture of the Week 31 August 2012t

This wonderful shell canopy, over the front door of a relatively modest Buckinghamshire town house, dates from between 1702 and 1714, the reign of Queen Anne. The frontage of the house, with its elegant eighteen pane sash windows, is the same age while the interior structure is even older. Today these qualities, together with the rarity of such domestic scale Queen Anne architecture means the house is Grade II * listed, so it rates above your average listed building.

The interior had been much altered over the centuries and many of the internal elements are hard to date. The panelling, which covers walls in all the tall front rooms, is in pine and was always intended to be painted. This panelling, it has been suggested, is early Victorian and almost modern compared to the rest of the house.  The central half-timbered section, with much lower ceilings and chestnut floorboards has huge medieval timbers and the stable at the rear, which has been converted into a studio flat, may have been Tudor, though such agricultural buildings are almost impossible to date accurately. English Heritage, in the spirit of not committing itself, describes the house as ‘early 18^th century on earlier building’. Yet this very unusual property, although well known in its locality as 'the Queen Anne house', is being advertised for sale as a ‘Georgian home'.

Georgian is synonymous with the elegance of Regency terraces in London and Bath, so apparently even such an exquisite ancestor of the Georgian style as this is lumped under the more easily marketable label. The Georgian period began after Queen Anne, with the accession of her Hanoverian cousin George I and the celebrated Regency period only ran from 1811 to 1820, beginning almost a century after the Queen Anne period.

Queen Anne herself was the last in the Stuart line of the monarchy, which had run for 111 years after the death of Tudor Queen Elizabeth I, admittedly with an eleven year break for the Republic led by Oliver Cromwell.  Anne was the Protestant younger daughter of Catholic King James II and succeeded to the throne, after her sister Queen Mary II died of smallpox and Mary’s husband William III (William of Orange) survived his wife by only a few years. Their marriage had produced no heirs. Poor Queen Anne had no heirs either; her tragedy was to see every one of her many children die in infancy.

At a glance these stylish sash windows could look Georgian, though of course the proportions would be different on each floor of a comparable Georgian house. However the counter-weighted, sliding-sash window first appeared in the late sixteen-hundreds and after being used at the newly built and very grand Chatsworth House, it became all the rage. By the reign of Queen Anne the fashion had trickled down to much smaller scale homes, as in this case. The Baroque shell canopy displays the tastes of the preceding century and the overall effect is not Georgian.

If you try to research the Queen Anne style of building between 1702 and 1714, there seems to be little which is distinctive; a number of large Baroque buildings are referred to, but no very domestic scale architecture.  The brevity of Queen Anne’s reign meant there was little time for a distinctive architectural style to become widely established, however a number of genuine examples do exist. For example, in addition to this exquisite provincial town house there are the beautiful and much more substantial town houses, which in many ways look like a larger version, on Queen Anne’s Gate overlooking St. James’ Park in London.


Then in Chichester there is Pallant House, an even grander mansion which now houses an art gallery.  (http://pallant.org.uk/visiting/chichester-arts/chichester-arts

All these buildings have similarities, with their high, eighteen pane sash windows and tall, grandiose doorways. All are recognised as architecturally important and are listed buildings. They also all demonstrate that in the early seventeen-hundreds architecture was moving from the excesses of the high baroque towards the now familiar (though then highly modern) elegance of the Georgian.

This town house was the height of modernity in around 1710.  Inside, the high ceilinged, panelled entrance hall has wide oak floorboards and via two quarter-landings the staircase climbs elegantly to the first floor, only to be lost on a pokey landing. The frontage of the house, perhaps yearning towards its grander cousins, was built for show, but not with enough money to quite achieve this objective.  

Despite the desire to impress, the blanked out window over the front door was probably to avoid paying window tax, which had been introduced in the reign of William and Mary. The window appears to have never been fully instated; inside it lacks detailing including the internal panelled shutters which give privacy and security to the other windows on the front façade. A smaller and older leaded light at the back of the landing had also been blocked up. Once restored it gave much improved lighting to the staircase.

Another problem when looking for the architectural style of Queen Anne arose during the Victorian period. In 1870 there began a certain rebellion against the excesses of the Gothic revival and a different, eclectic style which nodded towards Dutch urban and the Arts and Crafts movement evolved. This was favoured by architects including Norman Shaw and John James Stevenson and was, for some not exactly logical reasons to do with a Thackeray novel and a fashion for early eighteenth century furniture, named the Queen Anne style. American architects then took that British Victorian eclecticism and build elaborate ‘Queen Anne Style’ spired and shingled edifices which are so far removed from the simplicity of this genuine Queen Anne house as to seem ludicrous.

So, returning to the question of why an up-market estate agency would market a delightful, rare, listed building as something which it is not, there would seem to be several possible explanations. Is it due to commercialism; the Georgian label is seen as both superior and familiar so is therefore more marketable than other periods? Or perhaps the Victorians are to blame, for their distracting eclecticism.

However I suspect that the probable explanation is blind ignorance. The sequence of the British monarchy hasn't been taught in British schools for years and most people couldn’t name any British Queen apart from the Elizabeths I and II and possibly Victoria or Boudicca. Whatever the reason, the inaccuracy is inexcusable. Estate agents, who can earn large sums of money selling historic, listed buildings, ought to know what they are talking about and yet often they simply don’t.

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