Sussex, England.]

[Illustration: XCI.
Worsley, Old Hall, England.]

[Illustration: XCII.
Speke Hall, England.]

[Illustration: XCIII.
Speke Hall, England.]

THE BROCHURE SERIES

OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION.

Vol. I. DECEMBER, 1895. No. 12.

ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSES.

[Illustration:
OLD HOUSE NEAR WARWICK. SKETCH BY WILSON EYRE, Jr.
From The Architectural Review, Vol. IV, No. 1.]

Mr. Wilson Eyre, Jr., in an article in _The Architectural Review_ for
January, which has been alluded to in our issue for October, and from
which we have borrowed the three charming illustrations reproduced from
his drawings, speaks as follows of English domestic architecture:

"There is much to be seen from the railroad in the way of long rambling
farmhouses and country houses of the modest kind, and there is much to
be gained by studying these for use in our own domestic architecture;
their average work is so much less pretentious, so much more homelike
than ours; their surroundings are studied so carefully, the garden
forming as much part of the house as the roof, and great pains being
taken that the garden wall, hedges, terraces, the little tea houses, in
fact all the immediate surroundings, should form a harmonious effect.
Photographs and measured drawings of the well-known and monumental
buildings are at hand whenever we need them, but no idea can be gained,
except from personal study, of the completeness and fitness of the
country houses and farmhouses and of their surroundings, their "flocks
of gables," the grouping and composition which through the most careful
study arrive at the entirely unstudied and almost haphazard effect, and
above all the impression produced that the building belongs to the spot
upon which it is built and to no other. This is what makes the English
domestic work better, to my mind, than any I have seen, and so well
worthy of study, especially by our American architects."

[Illustration:
OLD HOUSE, LICHFIELD. SKETCH BY WILSON EYRE, Esq.
From The Architectural Review, Vol. IV, No. 1.]

The one distinguishing characteristic upon which all observers agree
when comparing the houses of England with those of any other country is
the importance given to the idea of a "home." This idea of the family
life, more fully carried out by the Anglo-Saxon race than by any other,
has given rise to conditions differing essentially from those governing
the domestic architectur