Morphology,micromorphology and typo-morphology:

the English semi-detached house

Peter J. LarkhamBirmingham City University

Introduction: why the semi?

A broad range of academic interest (even if critical!)

Academic and professional critiques

“…the outskirts of Banbury were a sorry sight, for the sturdy stone heart of the old market town by the Cherwell is besieged on all sides by semi-detached monstrosities whose growth has recently received fresh impetus from new industrial expansion” (Rolt, 1944, p. 50)

Academic and professional critiques

“a wilderness of semi-detached houses in sham-rural streets are indeed something more than a chaos of romantic individualism in themselves: they are the physical expression of the prime social evil of the age. Everywhere individualism is supreme: and the Street and the Town, those two units in which the quality of man’s mass association has always been so clearly symbolised, unmistakeably illustrate it – by their very absence” (Sharp, 1936, p. 87).

Academic and professional critiques

The semi-detached is “perhaps the least satisfactory building unit in the world” (Patrick Abercrombie, 1939, p. xix)

“Suburbia is a dirty word. This is natural enough for, with rare exceptions, the appearance of Britain’s suburbia is at best dull, and at worst hideous” (Edwards, 1981, p. 1)

Social attitudes?

“The only fault of the house is that it is semi-detached.”“Oh, Aunt Sarah! You don’t mean that you expect me to live in a semi-detached house?”“Why not, dear, if it suits you in all other respects?”“Why, because I should hate my semi-detachment, or whatever the occupants of the other half of the house may call themselves.”

(E. Eden (1859) The semi-detached house, p. 1)

Osbert Lancaster’s “By-pass variegated”

“Semi-detached” as a work of art!

By Michael Landy, at the Tate Gallery, 2004

Semi-detached suburbia is relatively low density, therefore threatened by contemporary planning policies and development economics (this photo is 1991)

Typology and type; morphology and micromorphology

According to Cannigia and Maffei:

Type:

“During a moment of greater civil continuity, builders, guided by their spontaneous consciousness, can produce an object ‘without thinking twice’, only unconsciously conditioned by their cultural background. That object [building] will be determined out of previous experiences in their civil surroundings” (p. 50)

According to Cannigia and Maffei:

Building Type:

“… buildings with a certain function in common … or, less generally, buildings with a similar structural-distributive plan … or … [used to systematize buildings] unitarily characterizing buildings with the same purpose and similar architectural characteristics” (p. 50).

“In other words, if we see that two or more houses have similar characteristics, we label them together and say that these houses belong to the same ‘building type’” (p. 51).

In the Italian typo-morphological approach, therefore,

Type is usually identified by a posteriori analysis; but similar houses, leading to the identification of a “type”, may be “produced in such a way because their builders would not have been capable of producing them differently … each house corresponds to the house concept in force at the time in which each of them was built” (p. 52).

“Type is, therefore, the conception of the building produced” (p. 54).

In the Italian typo-morphological approach, therefore,

“Type cognition necessitates another further definition, typological process. If we examine several historical building types in the same cultural area, we perceive progressive differentiation among them, more marked in very old buildings and less so in more recent buildings” (p. 54).

“In actual fact, the contribution of widespread changes can only be read at prolonged intervals, comparing a new order to its previous ones” (p. 55).

Perhaps more confusingly,

“Type can be defined as a heritage of common, transmittable characters pre-existent to the formation of the organism, governing the generation of the single elements and the structure of their relationship. Type is not definable by a simple statistical recurrence of certain requisites; it is not an abstract model, but rather a synthesis of the original characters of a building; it is the materialization of a persistent set of notions, principles, and characters inherited on a collective basis and accepted by a civilization throughout its history” (Strappa, 1998, p. 92).

Perhaps more helpfully,

“The concept of building type is the mental tool used to facilitate orientation in the intriguing stratified layers of the [urban] fabric” (Petruccioli, 1998, p. 12).

“The birth of a type is conditioned by the fact that a series of buildings share an obvious functional and formal analogy among themselves. In the process of comparing or selectively superimposing individual forms for the determination of the type, the identifying characteristic of specific buildings is eliminated and only the common elements remain which then appear in the whole series” (Petruccioli, 1998, p. 11, after Argan)

More generally,

“Type” is defined as • “a kind, class or category, the constituents of which share similar

characteristics” .• “a subidivision of a particular class”• “the general form, plan or design distinguishing a particular group”“Typology” is• “the study of types in archaeology, biology etc.”

(Collins English Dictionary)

What is “the semi”?

The archetypal English semi-detached house?

“Britain’s most popular house type” (Jensen, 2007, front cover)

The “universal plan” semi – although architectural styles vary!

But a semi-detached pair does not have to be symmetrical!

But some can be single-storey

Or only just separated!

Just because buildings are physically attached does not mean that they were built at the same time nor that they should be considered

as a “semi-detached pair”

Conversion of detached to semi-detached (built 1734, Manningham)

York

Three (or more) houses, of the same floor plan as a semi-detached pair, form a terrace

And a single, again of the same floor plan, is detached

Detached, but unusally obviously a “half-semi” design!

Detached or semi-detached? Often in close proximity, of same design, not constrained by site. So what factors affect this choice?

Or even the decision to build semi-detached or terraced (these are in very close proximity)

The impact of extensions(affect character but not “type”?)

Alterations in 1994 certainly affected character! (centre)(half-timbering subsequently removed)

Over-extended?

If everyone extends to the property boundaries, does this create a terrace?

Different plan forms

Semis can be double-fronted (or more) (that on extreme right has lost its right-hand chimney)

Double fronted but entrances on side wall: these are maisonettes (4 dwellings per block)

Centre bay, centre chimney, entrances at side of front elevation

Centre entrance, habitable rooms and chimneys at sides

Centre entrances

(chimneys usually at sides!)

Symmetrical, but centre bays projecting. Entrances on side walls

Garages at centre, though entrances differ

Turning the street corner

Coping with hills

Dates (and styles)

“Every house is different!” (Wates, advertisement, c. 1938)

A timeline of styles (Jensen, 2007)

Variation in Wates house designs (company brochure c. 1938)

The earliest semis?

In 2008 there was a robust debate on the Guardian website seeking to identify the first semis.• Michael Searles, early 1790s, Kennington Park• T. Gayfere & J. Groves, 1776, Blackheath (in Pevsner & Cherry)

• Richard Gillow, 1758/9, Moor Lane• Unknown, c. 1715-25, 808-810 Tottenham High Road• Unknown, 1690s, Northgate, Warwick• Unknown, late mediaeval? now 169-170 Spon Street, Coventry (via the

city’s Conservation Officer)

Very early!

Classical (early Victorian)

Mid-Late Victorian

Edwardian

1920s

Reminiscent of Edwardian pre-war

Local Authority-built, smaller, lacks detailing

Cast iron, immediately post-First World War

1930s

Reminiscent of Edwardian pre-war/1920s

Modern(e), twentieth-century inter-war

1950s/60s

Post-war ‘experimental’

(very) contemporary

Recently constructed

Chingford, 1993

Internal layouts

The typo-morphological approach?

Typically, typo-morphological studies have shown a (perhaps idealised) diagram of the development of the “type’s” plan over time.

A typological process?

Front

Living room (parlour)

Dining room

Service (hallway, stairs, landing)

Kitchen

Front

Living room (parlour)

Dining room

Service (hallway, stairs, landing)

Kitchen

Front

Living room (parlour)

Dining room

Service (hallway, stairs, landing)

Kitchen

Bays – optional front/back, could be lower only

Front

Living room (parlour)

Dining room

Service (hallway, stairs, landing)

Kitchen

Bays – optional front/back, could be lower only

Adjoining semi could be attached to either side

Double-fronted, large service area (kitchen, scullery, wash-house, toilet etc)Primarily early (eg Victorian)

Single living room (2-up, 2-down), early, low status

Universal plan, common from First World War

Stairs between living & dining rooms, primarily early

Double-fronted, large service area (kitchen, scullery, wash-house, toilet etc)Primarily early (eg Victorian)

Single living room (2-up, 2-down), early, low status

Universal plan, common from First World War

With garage, and perhaps “outhouse”, either side, from c. 1930/35

Double-fronted, large service area (kitchen, scullery, wash-house, toilet etc)Primarily early (eg Victorian)

Single living room (2-up, 2-down), early, low status

Universal plan, common from First World War

With garage, and perhaps “outhouse”, either side, from c. 1930/35

May be detached, in rear garden

Post-war, particularly 1980s onwards

“Cloakroom” (toilet – paralleling the fashion for more en suites upstairs!)

Post-war, particularly 1980s onwards

New construction but, increasingly, conversions

Open plan, “kitchen/diner”

Open plan, “lounge/diner”

Area layouts

Perhaps the “urban morphology” scale?Certainly we could recognise “morphological regions”; patterns in streets, plots, buildings (forms, details, even land uses?)

Edgware, London, c. 1935

Morphological areas, regions, plan units, morphotopes?

Conclusions

• This has not been a systematic analysis; although much of the pictorial evidence comes from within a 3-mile radius within Birmingham.

• We can develop a chronology/geography (what was built where and when) but this relates more closely to (superficial) architectural style and fashion than to plan form.

• Key factors include• Market (what is fashionable, what will sell)• Funding (availability of purchase funding for individuals; private letting;

financing of social housing)• Land availability (outward expansion in inter-war period; new settlements;

“densification” from mid-1980s)• National housing/density standards (especially after both World Wars)• Social status: the “parlour” 2-room plan• Social status + technological change: providing garages for motor cars

• Is there a typological process at work?• I cover a period of some 150+ years, analogous to some recent examples of

typological analysis• But there is little evidence of systematic diachronic change in plan form: even

garage additions are varied by time, location/developer, status etc.• Some very modern semis are very similar in plan form and architectural style to those of,

say, 80 years ago; almost “universal plan”.

• Question: what is the impact of planning and housing policy on typology of the semi-detached over the second half of this period?

So: does the concept of typological process relate to the English semi? Let’s discuss!