Chapter 3: The House that Fagg built

Preparing the site
The well and the front terrace
The house: main structure
The roof
Original disposition of rooms
Overall cost

Original disposition of rooms

As for the disposition of access to the internal ground floor rooms, this has clearly been the subject of major alteration since the house was constructed, as needs to be explained in detail. When the house was originally built, the bottom of the staircase was evidently flanked by two doors, one going into the sitting room and the other into what is now the study. This was the only access to the sitting room, which evidently had a continuous solid wall towards what is now the dining room. This meant that the fashionable occupants of the house could enter the front door and go directly into the reception rooms, or upstairs, with access to the servants’ part of the house (i.e., the current dining room and kitchen) only being available by going round behind the stairs. Evidently connected with this was a bell system which came to light when the sitting room was redecorated in 2013; this involved a brass plate fixed to the inner corner of the chimney breast just under the cornice, which contained a swivel device that evidently linked to a bell-pull below and was connected to a wire which must have penetrated through the wall to the room behind, so that servants could be summoned from there when required (the remains of this device have been preserved). View image.


Although there is currently a doorway from the sitting room to the dining room, all the evidence suggests that this was not originally there. In fact, it is almost certain that the door currently in this position is the very door that originally connected the sitting room to the hallway, the original opening being blocked up when the new one was created. View image. For one thing, it would not have been feasible for the two doors to exist in juxtaposition with one another in these positions if the current door opened in the direction that it currently does (and there is no evidence that it has been reversed in direction). In addition, the existing door exactly matches that from the hallway to the study, with the same raised beading within each of its four panels on the dining room side as appear on the hallway side of the study door. It should be added that, when the sitting room was redecorated in 2013, the outline of the former door opening was clearly visible in the plaster, while the skirting has obviously had to be patched. It is also noteworthy that, on the dining room side, the door lacks an architrave.