The British Empire at its Zenith by A. J. Christopher

Author:A. J. Christopher [Christopher, A. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781351171519
Google: CkMiEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-03-16T01:32:18+00:00

Domestic Architecture

In the range of domestic buildings, the colonies did not emulate British design so closely. Even the early settler cities built before the transport revolution of the 1860s and 1870s were rarely so constrained for space that high-density multi-storey housing was deemed necessary. The inner terrace housing of Sydney, Toronto and other settler cities was rarely as extensive or cramped as schemes undertaken in London or English provincial cities. The availability of space enabled those with only moderate means to acquire a plot which provided a garden. Thus terraces were often only single storeyed, while where possible houses were completely detached. Consequently even working-class suburbs took on a more spacious aspect than their British counterparts. At the other end of the scale the movement to villadom was virtually universal, with most of the more important towns and cities developing the highly exotic styles of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. The bungalow, originating as a peasant’s hut in Bengal, became the house for European residence in India, and through complex transfers of ideas became accepted as the house style for Europeans in the colonies, whether in Kenya or Australia (King, 1984). Thus even the colonial concept of a ‘house’ changed from that of the metropole.

In outward appearance buildings thus departed from British styles fairly rapidly. Building stone presented a problem in many cities, while bricks were often of poor quality requiring plastering and painting. Wood was extensively used for construction in parts of Australia, Canada and New Zealand, while corrugated iron proved to be a valuable addition to building materials in regions deficient in suitable wood, stone or clay. Roofing in slate was rare, although the major wool ports such as Sydney and Port Elizabeth imported slate in ballast from vessels returning to Great Britain with colonial cargoes. However, timber and corrugated iron dominated as roofing materials. Other adopted building features such as verandahs in hot climates and pitched roofs for snowy winters resulted in a marked range of styles developing from the single origin.

Within the settler colonies comparatively little was adopted from the experience of the majority of indigenous peoples for the construction of permanent as opposed to temporary houses. Maori motifs and timber construction methods are an exception to this statement. It was other immigrant peoples, other Europeans and the Asian communities which contributed to the diversification of styles. The two most important non-British European overseas communities were the French in Canada and the Dutch in South Africa (Picton-Seymour, 1977). Both, in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, had developed building styles derived from their countries of origin but adapted to the conditions of the colonies. Thus French mansard roofs and turrets and Cape-Dutch gables were adopted as distinctive features by other settlers in Canada and South Africa, respectively. French styles in Canada made few concessions to the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture of the continent, in order to preserve a distinctive identity. The Chateau Frontenac Hotel in Quebec built in 1890 with its later central tower

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