Where, when and by whom were semi-detached houses first built? | Notes and Queries (original) (raw)
Where, when and by whom were semi-detached houses first built?
- I DO NOT know where the first semi-detached house was built but I have it on reliable authority that the second one was built just next door to the first.
George James, Shepperton, Middx. - THE ORIGIN of the semi-detached house, at least in London, is explained in The Book of London, which I edited for Weidenfeld last year. The Georgian terrace held sway until the last decade of the 18th century, when inflationary pressures pushed up building costs and left some terraces uncompleted - similar to the problems today in Docklands. Building houses in self-contained pairs meant that it was easier to stop when the money ran out. The architect and developer, Michael Searles, is credited with London's earliest semis, built in Kennington Park Road in the early 1790s. He followed these with a development in Greenwich and the Paragon in Blackheath. Then, as now, south London was at the cutting edge of innovation.
Michael Leapman, London SW8. - MICHAEL Leapman is nearly there - but not quite. Architect Michael Searles (a Greenwich man) may well have been inspired by the pair of houses built in Blackheath in 1776 by Thoman Gayfere and John Groves, both of Westminster.The houses, which stand today on the west edge of the Heath and are known as Lydia and Sherwell are, by legend, the first semi-detached houses certainly in London. That is, if you take the meaning of semi-detached to be two houses consciously-designed to look from a distance like one. Pevsner/Cherry in their book, London 2: South, give the Gayfere/Groves houses the accolade. It is a credit which we at the Blackheath Society will stoutly defend. Searles's first semis followed about 30 years later. But if it is the terrace form in question then Searles is your man.
Neil Rhind for The Blackheath Society, London SE5. - SORRY Blackheath! Richard Gillow of Lancaster (1734-1811) was designing 'semis' or pairs of houses in that town as early as 1758/9, in Moor Lane. The earliest identifiable surviving pair is that built in 1760 at Fleet Bridge (now facing the bus station and partly demolished) for Captain Henry Fell. These are very similar to a pair in St Leonardsgate which may be the buildings designed by Gillow in 1765/6 for Edward Salisbury. Captain Fell occupied one of his houses himself but the others were built to be let. Gillow obtained estimates of £110 for building William Braithwaite's houses in Moor Lane in 1759 and reckoned they would let for £4 per annum each. Pace Pevsner, no legend here: the evidence is in the Gillow archives in Westminster Public Library. Richard Gillow was the son of the founder of the cabinet-making dynasty, and seems to have studied architecture in London. From 1757 to the 1770s he provided designs for numerous public and private buildings in the Lancaster area. The architectural work of Richard Gillow was the subject of my dissertation at Cambridge in 1982. I used the Gillow archives to establish beyond doubt that Richard Gillow designed a considerable number of buildings in this period.
P A Harrison, London SW16. - SORRY, Blackheath! Sorry, Richard Gillow of Lancaster. What must surely be counted as the first pair of semi-detached houses, nos 808-810 Tottenham High Road, London N17, date from 1715-1725 - thus predating Gillow's work by something like 50 years. This pair of houses makes a noble and remarkably balanced visual ensemble still, despite later shopfronts. For an illustration see Dan Cruickshank and Peter Wyld's fascinating London: the Art of Georgian Building.
Philip Maher, Marston, Oxford. - IT WAS always my belief that the semi-detached dwelling originated in the ancient Inca civilisation of South America. This novel idea greatly impressed the Spanish Conquistadores, who brought the concept to Europe in the 16th century, and gave it the name 'Casa Doble.'
Vaughan R Hully, Warley, W Midlands. - SUMMERSON'S Georgian London states that the Eyre Estate in St John's Wood 'was the first part of London, and indeed of any other town, to abandon the terrace house for the semi-detached villa - a revolution of striking significance and far-reaching effect.' One reason why the semi-detached house was so frequently built between the wars was that motor buses could still operate profitably in new, less densely developed suburbs where passenger loadings would have been too low to justify building new tramways and railways. Another reason was that Town and Country Planning zoning introduced in new suburbs from 1909 onwards provided for different residential areas to be developed at varying densities, usually between four and 12 houses per acre. Plots in the middle zones were too small for detached houses but too large for terraces and therefore most suitable for semi-detached houses. The archetypal outer London semi may appear more prevalent than it really is because some developers erected semi-detached houses on the principal main road frontages but built terraces in the hinterland.
John Tarling, London SW15. - THE semi-detached houses identified by your correspondents are all far too modern. Here in Cornwall we have a pair of semis dating from the Roman occupation of Britain, in the second and third centuries AD. The stone-walled village of Chysauster near Penzance had the remains of a house which clearly takes the form of two semi-detached dwellings.
D Stewart, Helston, Cornwall. - I THINK Warwick can go one better than Blackheath, Lancaster and Tottenham in that it can boast a pair of semi-detached houses which date from the late l69Os. The impressive building, which stands near the site of the old Northgate into the town, looks like one house, but is in fact two, divided by a central carriageway.
Amanda Clarke, Warwick. - IF a semi-detached house is one which was designed as a symmetrically arranged pair there are several surviving examples in Coventry, dating back at least to the 14th century. Nos 169-170 Spon Street, Coventry, which was repaired under the supervision of the architect F W B Charles in 1969-70 for the City of Coventry under the Spon Street Townscape scheme, is a good example of 14th-century date. Further along Spon Street is a 16th-century three-storey pair of town houses from 8-10 Much Park Street which was dismantled and reconstructed by Mr Charles on its present site in 1971-74. Both these examples had houses built up against them, as the street frontage filled up and we feel sure that there must be many earlier examples which have become absorbed within later terraced development along urban streets. On the principle of originally detached, subsequently attached, we would be interested in hearing how common this type of 'semi' was in medieval towns.
George Dem idowicz, Conservation Officer, City of Coventry.
