I T takes a long time for a conservative people such
as ours to create a new style of architecture in any form, though it is beyond a doubt that we can be credited with the cotton mill. So, considering the very short period, a mere two centuries, and in many cases less, that the English as a body have taken to living, even for ,a part of the year, by the sea, it is not to be wondered at that we have not yet• evolved anything like an exact conception of the nature and form of the ideal seaside house. An architect will give plans for a "country house," or a shooting box, or a " week-en,1" house, or a Thames-side house, at once. But ask him for plans for a seaside house, and he would be puzzled. He would scarcely have Any views even as to the site. Perhaps for " architect " it would be fairer to say "prospective owner," because when the owner's views are hazy as to what he wants the architect can scarcely be expected to be more instructed. If a Thames-side house is required, for example, the owner knows that he will probably need a terraced garden, steps to the water, a dock for his steam launch, a boat- house, with perhaps a storeroom in the upper story for sails and gear, and a maximum of window and balcony looking towards the river. The common form of a sea- side house remains to be settled. There is not the slightest guidance to be had from the past, unless a model of a Roman seaside villa can be found in Vitruvius. Doubtless the houses which Horace had in mind when he censured the extravagance of the Roman millionaires, who made plat- forms 'for their marine villas 'at• the foot of the hills whose rocky slopes descended into the tideless Mediterranean, were as comfortable as they were expensive. But until the battle of Trafalgar took away the fear of Frenchmen and pirates, an Englishman would have been thought absolutely mad if he had built a good house close to the beach or on a cliff. The sea was an unpatrolled frontier. It is said that during the Napoleonic Wars no good house within miles of the sea would let. Bamborough Castle, the magnificent home of the Forgers, and later of Lord Crewe, Bishop of Durham, was defended by a battery of twenty guns, and the little acropolis of Lindisfarne Castle was added to and strength- ened to hold three or four cannon of the largest size. At Hythe, a military centre from ancient days, there is a good old manor house. It is said that the tourelles and remains of a moat as far from the sea as Palace House at Beaulieu were added partly as a defence' against a possible French raid; and we doubt if there was a single good house at Southsea outside the fortifications of Portsmouth. Eighty years ago there were only two bathing-machines at Ryde, which used to be drawn up into the street at evening. There are said to have been some bathing-machines nearly a century old at Sidmouth, one of the oldest of South Coast watering- places. But the house where the Duke of Kent lived was situated* up a glen, and was almost- invisible from the sea, though good seaside, lodging-housei (amongst the oldest in England) existed there at the tithe.
'It would be interesting to know who first made* the dis- covery that the sea air was wholesOme, a discovery followed by the building of Brighton; because there Were authorities who dwelt sadly on the "noxious smells" arising from the ocean, and deemed that damp sweating vapours from the Low Countries were wafted across it unpurified by the east winds, and.brought agues.
The manor - house at Sheringham, instead of facing the sea, as do all the new buildings in that delightful seaside "creation" on the site of a Norfolk fishing village, stands nearly two miles off, and turns its back uncompromisingly on the ocean. Nor can it be wondered at that even those who could build well and solidly shrank from facing the steady rush of gales from the sea in winter. Probably the largest mansion in England close to the ocean is Holkham, which is no solid and so massive that it looks as if specially designed to set the north-east winds at defiance.
With a free hand to design according to modern wants, the builder of the seaside house will probably keep his eye mainly on the hygienic aspect of the dwelling. Nine people out of ten look on the seaside just as our ancestors did on the inland "spa," and the Continent does on Homburg or Contrexeville, as a place to recruit in. The maximum of sea. air, sea-bathing, and sun is what is wanted. Small-boat sailing is now also a general and favourite amusement, to which motor-boats, if not too dangerous, will probably be added in no long time.
The cult of the sea is the one thing aimed at. You go there "to do yourself good," in the phrase of the votaries of Thetis the invigorator, and the house, to meet the wants of its inhabitants, is simply an adjunct to bathing, sitting on the beach, sun and air baths, sailing, and inhaling ozone. One of the latest theories about ozone is that, to get the most of it possible (the "noxious smells" of the early eighteenth century), it is best to be almost on a level with the sea, where all kinds of balsamic odours are given off by the contact of the air with the curling crests of the waves, and that the acme of health to be derived from sea air alone is to breathe it as you walk along the wet sands by the breakers' edge. It is quite clear, in any case, that by placing a house on the top of a cliff, though you enjoy plenty of wind, you do not get sea air in anything like the quantity and quality inhaled by living lower down. In fact, the more nearly the house is on a level with the waves, the more of this special virtue is obtainable.
There is a natural instinct to descend to the edge of the water.
It is common to children and adults, and is as old as the siege of Troy. Where else did a Grecian hero rather "down on his luck" ever go than to the breaking-place of the waves? He did not climb up on to a cliff, "hut went to walk along- side of the margin of the sea."
Almost the ideal seaside house is a long, one-storied bungalow on the last ridge of earth or sandhill (if the latter be not blown sand), just before the first ridge of the pebbles is reached. There should be a "cord road" of flat planks, laid crossways, to run boats down, or a spring-board on wheels, down to the edge of the water; and it should be possible to change into bathing clothes indoors, and walk straight down to the sea. There is, however, just a possibility that connoisseurs may discover that in designing a seaside house we may take a hint (the only one) from primitive man. Where there was not much tide or the tides recurred frequently (they do this every six hours in parts of the Channel) primitive man used to build a seaside house on piles. He does so still in New Guinea and up the creeks of some of the Malay islands, which enables him to sleep in the sea air as well as to live in it, and in order to bathe he jumps off the front-door steps: But there are not many places on our coast where the tide is accommo- dating enough to permit this, unless the house were built with a submersible lower story, like many piers. But the greater part of our shores lend themselves to the building of the one-storied bungalow, which may have either a very large balcony, or, better still, a roof made like a quarter-deck to sit on and look over the sea, adorned with boxes of flowers, and with everything else that can contrast in freshness with the prevailing atmosphere of salt and sand. Cliff houses are, of course, necessary where the shore is steep. But
in that case there should always be sloping terrace walks leading downwards gently to the beach. Even so, the climb up, when the fatigue of bathing begins to be felt, is rather exhausting for ladies and for children. A cheap and incon- spicuous " lift " for such sites is very much to be desired. Possibly the gas engine for electric light might be adapted in some fashion to do the haulage by accumulating energy. On the other baud, it must be admitted that cliff gardens are
sometimes among the most beautiful, as they are among the earliest, in England. Residents on the Cornish cliffs have in some cases enclosed story below story of the rock-faces, and converted each into a kind of banging garden, sheltered from the gales, full of rare and sub-tropical flowers, and with wonderful glimpses through the enclosing walls and connect- ing passages of heavy billows and foamy spray hundreds of feet below these little paradises in the serpentine and slate.
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