Chapter 3: The House that Fagg built

What were the stages of the construction of the house? This was the first house to be built in what was to become Exmouth Place, and initially the site must have had to be prepared. Fagg must have decided the exact height at which he wished the house to stand in relation to the West Hill behind and West Hill House to the side. Prior to this, the West Hill on its seaward side had a gently sloping incline, as still followed by the footpath that ascends it between Exmouth House and West Hill House. Fagg evidently decided that the house should be tucked into the hill, perhaps to protect it from the prevailing westerly winds. To achieve this, a level terrace on which to construct the house had to be produced, which meant cutting away a huge section of the hillside, leaving a vertical cliff face behind, which was then bricked up: this great wall is a striking feature which remains to this day.

Rear wall

At the north-east corner of the property, the brick wall turns at slightly more than right angles to contain the cliff and to flank the first stage of the footpath from Hill Street up to the West Hill: this presumably turned north as at present to skirt the rear of the vast glasshouse next door that already existed at that point and that still survives (this was originally part of the curtilage of West Hill House, but in the early Victorian period it was alienated and West Hill Villa was built to accompany it). On the other side of the property, at the south-western corner of the plot, the brickwork turns and extends at right-angles a couple of feet back into the face of the cliff. Then, a flanking wall about eight foot (2.5 metres) high was constructed, which ran from the wall fronting the cliff face to the rear of the house, thus completing the enclosure of the garden area between the house and the cliff. (The cliff must have been cut back to beyond the edge of the land that Fagg had acquired, thus allowing both the right-angled extension into the cliff and the construction of this wall, which clearly predates Exmouth Cottage: see chapter 4, below.)

Rear garden wall, south west view

It should be pointed out that this initial operation involved a huge amount of work, first in excavating the sandstone cliff and subsequently in the erection of brickwork to contain the new cliff face that was exposed and the flanking wall that was constructed on the eastern side of the property. According to my calculations, the area cleared represented a wedge of ground approximately 60 foot by 30 foot (18 by 9 metres), falling at an angle of about 45 degrees. In other words, some 27,000 cubic feet (765 cubic metres) of stone and rubble must have been removed, and allowance must also have had to be made for carting away and disposing of the resulting debris - though where it was taken is unfortunately unknown. As for the brickwork, the rear wall against the cliff face measures 56 foot (17 metres) in length and 16 foot (5 metres) in height, while the flank wall going down the eastern side of the property is equally substantial.

All these were significant costs, and clues as to how much outlay would have been involved are provided by Richard Elsam’s The Practical Builder’s Perpetual Price-Book, published in 1825, which offers much detail concerning every aspect of building quantities and costs, and of workmen’s wages in different parts of the country.18 From this it is apparent that the price of digging, which was calculated by the cubic yard (27 cubic feet), was somewhere between 18d and 2s per day for a labourer in a place like Hastings, while carting away the material cost 1s 6d for a distance of 25 yards and 4s for 1000 yards. As for bricklaying, this was calculated by the rod (16½ foot), and allowance had to be made for the cost of the bricks and mortar; for the scaffolding required; and for the wages of the skilled bricklayers who erected the walls, which Elsam calculates at 5s per day. Just preparing this platform for the house to be built on therefore represented quite a costly undertaking in itself.

18 Richard Elsam, The Practical Builder’s Perpetual Price-Book: Elucidating the Principles of Ascertaining the Correct Average Value of the Different Artificers’ Work Usually Employed in Building (London, 1825), pp. 89ff.