Monday, August 24, 2015

Langton by Spilsby, Lincolnshire


What shape is a house?

I checked the Pevsner Buildings of England volume on Lincolnshire before setting out to find the severe classical church of Langton by Spilsby, all red brick and box pews, but I didn’t notice the book’s two lines on this nearby cottage: ‘E of the church an eminently picturesque cottage orné,* circular, with a conical, thatched, overhanging roof.’ Fortunately this eye-catching product of the Picturesque movement was the first thing I did notice when I pulled up by the church.

Pevsner gets it right, more or less. He might have mentioned the mud and stud construction, the Gothic pointed windows, the elaborate pattern of the glazing bars (a mix of elongated octagons and lozenges), and the fact that the roof overhang is supported by slender columns, but we get the idea. There’s an odd thing though. Would you call this cottage circular? Its footprint seems to me octagonal, with fairly crisp corners to the wall and a column at each corner. The thatched roof smooths out the shape, as thatched roofs do, but still has more or less obvious facets. By the time your eye reaches the top of the roof, you’re gazing at an elliptical chimney pot. So: Circular? Octagonal? Metamorphic, perhaps.

There have been at least three big houses at Langton – an old hall, a rebuild of 1822 that didn’t work out because of bad foundations and was demolished, and a third, a Victorian hall, that has also been pulled down. This small but striking cottage, perhaps built in the early-19th century to please the owner of the estate and house servants or farm workers, has outlived them all, a survivor in a quiet lane by the church and the ubiquitous Lincolnshire farms.

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* Cottage orné Rustic house of picturesque design, as the English Heritage definition has it. Cottages ornés were built in the 18th and 19th centuries and have features such as polygonal plans, thatched roofs, pointed or quatrefoil windows, and ornate or rustic woodwork.

6 comments:

Billy Blue Eyes said...

Nice looking house though I have seen a similar type at Sulham near Pangbourne

Stephen Barker said...

I remember the cottage. I had gone to see the church, which is a very fine Eighteenth Century building and was surprised and delighted to see this as well.

Philip Wilkinson said...

Thank you both for your comments. Stephen: Yes, I too was heading for the church.

bazza said...

What an oddity! I presume from it's excellent condition that it is occupied? It seems that a great deal of time and trouble was gone to in designing and building this lovely cottage.
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Philip Wilkinson said...

Yes, Bazza, it's occupied. It is an oddity, but there was quite a fashion for cottages like this in the late-18th and early-19th centuries, and you still come across them now and then.

Chris said...

I used to live in the village in the 1960s, and a photographic postcard describes the cottage orne as the village Post Office, though I don't remember calling there for stamps, so that must have been before my time.