Charles Brooking

 

 

Victorian Architecture

charles brooking

Charles Brooking is a fascinating and knowledgeable collector of architectural detail, The Brooking Collection of Architectural Detail, and as Surveyors we find his lifelong quest to collect British building details unique, informative and valuable and a collection that must be kept intact for years to come. If you need help and advice with regard to building surveys, structural surveys, structural reports, engineers reports, specific defects report, dilapidations or any other property matters please free phone 0800 298 5424.

The following is one of a series of interviews with Charles Brooking, Historic and Listed Buildings Detail Expert, The Brooking Collection of Architectural Detail and a Surveyor where we have recorded his comments and various aspects that have affected windows and doors and other collectibles. The interviews outline how his collection started and built over the years and gives an insight into the amazing architectural features housed in his fine collection.

 

Surveyor: Is Victorian architecture a good example of how the class system works?

Charles Brooking : I became aware of this whole aspect of class and divisions within a house very early on when rescuing architectural details such as in Guildford, Surrey at No. 1 and 2 Dapdune Crescent . There were these two very large Gothic double villas, built in 1855-57 which were derelict from about about 1947 until 1972

Rescue defined

Charles Brooking defines a rescue as saving a window or door or staircase that would be doomed.

Charles Brooking was a pioneer in the rescue of architectural detailing as many years ago it was very much considered a strange and an unusual past time to want to rescue old parts of buildings with everything new and shiny being so important.

Surveyor : Please describe what a double villa is?

Charles Brooking : It's a semi-detached villa. They were upper middle class, with steps up to the front door, basements for the servants, first floor drawing rooms, dining room, hall, stairs, elegant staircase leading to the first and second floor, and that would be the ground floor, I should say the top of the cellar/basement, ground floor, first floor bedrooms.

Surveyor : Is that what divides the middle or upper middle class and upper class, buildings with servant's quarters?

Charles Brooking : Well, several things, but certainly middle classes kept servants and this is upper middle class, so you had the basement, at that stage you had kitchens in the basement, probably the housekeeper's room, butler's pantry, that sort of thing. I don't know if there was a butler there but these were houses built for, I suppose, prosperous middle classed commuters, who were doctors, or people like that, or people who lived in Guildford . The houses were built by a local builder and this particular pair of houses (some were Italianate) were actually Tudor revival, Tudor/Gothic with polygramatic brickwork (that's yellow brickwork round the windows and the corners, nice yellow brick arches, all rubbed and gauged). They also had hood mouldings in render, applied to the brickwork; render for the somewhat classical mouldings above the projecting oriel windows on the ground floor, which were quite shallow.

Surveyor : An oriel window is a bay window at high level?

Charles Brooking : Yes, that's right. They were very shallow and they had margin light sash windows.

charles brooking

Margin Light Defined

Margin Light is a window with margins round the borders and you've got those cross corners, with perhaps a rosette or glory style in cut glass, or enamel glass, or acid edge glass.

Surveyor: Was it waiting to be demolished?

Charles Brooking : It was waiting to be demolished from 1947 until 1972, and in 1960 it was derelict, teddy boys had been in there, all sorts of things, tramps. I remember going down to the basement through all this glass and barbed wire, it was all over, and seeing these barred windows, the servants rooms, the kitchens and then the servants staircase up to the first floor, the remains of the green beige door .

Surveyor: The kitchen was in the basement not the ground floor?

Charles Brooking : Yes, in the basement and overlooked the garden, which was...

Surveyor: Sorry, just to clarify: the servants quarters were in the basement and the ground floor and the owners were on the first floor?

Charles Brooking : The servants kitchen, all the servants areas of the house, in terms of the kitchen, scullery, everything of that nature was in the basement. I think, from what I remember, the actual servants bedrooms were probably on the second floor within the gables.

Surveyor: Which is the top floor? 

Charles Brooking : Top floor, yes. 

Surveyor: Basically they were at the bottom of the building and the top of the building.

charles brooking

Charles Brooking : The top of the building, this was quite usual, and this was very interesting because it's taught me about class and the grandeur and how the joinery differed as well, because I noticed then. This was very important in my understanding of the window joinery of this house and was in between my noticing the mouldings of my school in Chiddingfold and acquiring my first sash window.

I picked up all these glazing bars that were lying round in the garden, which had been broken out by the teddy boys, the vandals, and I noticed their different mouldings and they were quite elegant all of them, but the smarter ones, in terms of polite rooms, were a sort of Gothic moulding and the simpler ones were a Grecian ovelo, which, of course, in some houses was itself quite elegant. 

charles brooking

However because this was an upper middle class house, the Gothic of the polite rooms, e.g. the first or the ground floor, then when you got higher you had a Grecian ovelo. This was different to the ovelo in the servant's quarters, which was more compressed and not quite so slanted. It was very clearly defined throughout.

Surveyor : Can you explain what an ovelo is?

Charles Brooking :

Ovelo Defined

Basically an ovelo is a quarter of a circle if it's a square ovelo, a true circle with fillets, which are projecting pieces at each side.

Surveyor : Where are these used?

Charles Brooking : These are used on stonework and windows, mainly joinery, and on doors as well.

Surveyor: Whereabouts on a window? 

Charles Brooking : Around the edge of the frame on the inside. Sometimes externally on top windows and town halls and public buildings, where they want to express the decorative surface externally, for appearance and grandeur.

Surveyor : And within houses?

Charles Brooking : In houses they are internally 98% of the time. They are a very important feature, they add a great deal to a window 's aesthetic appeal and, of course, it's reflective qualities; the sunlight falls on the mouldings and adds depth, which is lost in modern joinery because it's much flatter and you've lost all that character. This is the indefinable something that agents talk about, because having all those mouldings reflects light and creates a visual interest for the eye to rest on, rather than just your very plain magnet, rectangular or bevelled mouldings of today.

It was seeing these that I realised had something and I just became fascinated. So it was this house which formed a very important pivotal part of my developing interest, way before my tutor, way back in 1960/61, along with the early sash window interest.

Surveyor: It's just occurred to me, you mention magnet as a modern manufacturer of windows.

charles brooking

Charles Brooking : Yes.

Surveyor: In days gone by were there similar manufacturers of sliding sash windows?

Charles Brooking : There was, by the 1870's/1880's, joinery first who were diversifying and producing ranges of windows and there are books, I suppose catalogues that deal with sliding sashes. They weren't mass produced, they were, but they were mostly made to order by a major contract, but there were firms who actually sold bay windows, for instance. 

Surveyor : In Guildford was there a manufacturer of sliding sash windows?

Charles Brooking : There would have been joinery works, local builders used joinery works that had their own style and made windows for a builder and perhaps other builders. Some builders had their own joinery works and they used their own pattern of sash forms and you could recognise the builder's work. Going full circle, back to Sydenham Road and Bright Hill, I wanted a complete sash window with horns, which epitomised Victorian buildings and, indeed, this builder's work who'd built Hill Place .

Then the fun started, because it was quite an interesting story. The foreman, again this awful foreman, we went down with my tutor, I'll never forget it, and he was there and he said that if you want one of them windows, it's a fiver mate, nothing less than that! They're hard to get out and I'm not spending no time getting the window out when I can be knockin' the building down, because I've gotta get this lot down for the Guildford Borough Council , they want it down by end of August, so, that's up to you mate.

I thought blow that we can't spend five pounds on that! We went back the following day after my lesson. 

It was 1968, back when five pounds was a lot of money!

charles brooking

There was a very nice chap on the site and he came down saying that he had something to show us and he took us into the bottom house in Hill Place, which was built in 1876, where there was a complete, unchanged, complete, I say complete but it'd been boarded up, kitchen range was there in its entirety and all the fireplaces , with their fenders and iron, all left, the furniture, the lot.

My tutor asked me if I would like part of that range? - it's the range or the window, which would you like? I thought I can't have the complete range, it weighs a tonne, but I'll take the door. I rescued the door and was told if we come back later on that night, we've got to smash all those windows out with a pickaxe, he would do a deal! If they smash the windows out with a pickaxe he would get the box frame out, hide it down the side in the alleyway and put the sashes with it from another window!

So, you can imagine the scene. My father comes home from the office, had a busy day at Berkeley Square House, running all the overseas companies for British Leyland. He comes home, ready for a sherry and a chat and I'm standing by the front door saying oh daddy can we go down later on tonight and rescue a window from Sydenham Road ?

So, with my mother suggesting we take the dog for a walk at the same time in the estate car, (quite a big estate car with the dog in the back), we go down park at the bottom of Hill Place, walk up and heave this sash window where it had been left it, heave it out the alleyway and then get the sashes; it weighed a tonne!

Surveyor : Do you still have this sash?

Charles Brooking : No, I had a big refining process in 1975 and I thought, as it was so altered and chopped, I saved the pulleys, sectioned it - I had to be selective. 

I got it back home, and my father was quite angry by this time anyway, and it was quite awkward because it was very heavy, it was about six foot high this window by about two foot six. It was six and six, made like that for reasons of economy. There we go, back to class structure, if you like. These windows by that time were old fashioned, or revivals, but in this case the builder used smaller sheets of glass because it was basically an artisan sort of dwelling, as it were, a labourer's dwelling. And although they had quite a lot of artistry, I suppose, he used quite a lot of nice detailing in terms of the Bargate stone and the brick quoins. The joinery was good quality but not special.

At the back of the houses there were just outward opening casements, four higher panes, rather like French casements, again for cheapness, which is not common, big windows, but not that well made. A lot of them had fallen apart before the houses were vacated and must have been nailed together and cheaply repaired. The sashes at the front were good quality in terms of, in my point of view, because they had horns and they showed an early mass produced, in the terms of joinery works, window. But I hadn't appreciated their sheer scale. The weights were about, I suppose about 9lb each, the window was six foot high and the poor dog was alright because he had room, just about, at the end and there we were trying to push the boot down. People were coming out the pub drunk and that sort of thing: Cor, what you playing at mate?' Father was highly embarrassed. We had permission from the foreman, but not quite, because of this other chap, it was all rather iffy!

charles brooking

We got home and my parents were having a staff flat built above our double garage in 1968 for the housekeeper, and it so happened the glazers were coming that week. So, the glazers were very friendly and I managed to chat to them and they re-glazed the window for me, however the glazing bars were very damaged. I had to, sort of, psychologically make the best of a bad deal. I really wanted a perfect window and to show it with all its original glass, and there were some there like that but, of course, it was out of my control. I got the worst deal, the window sashes were pretty though.

If you found this article on The Brooking Collection of Architectural Detail interesting you may also be interested in the following articles on our website.

Windows, and the Great Fire of London

Glass

Damp surveying to a different standard

Compare surveys

 

References: TheBrookingCollection.com DartfordArchive.org.uk IHBC.org.uk ProjectBook.co.uk

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