Appendix E
Extract from Russell Taylor Architects article on Georgian Spatial Ordering
AN EXEMPLAR OF GEORGIAN SPATIAL ORDERING – Jun 15
All houses have some rooms that are more important than others – a living room is more important
than a third bedroom, for example. In Georgian houses the ranking of rooms into orders of
importance was particularly marked and it is vital that this concept is understood when restoring or
repairing a Georgian house. It will not do to select something and apply it everywhere, that was not
the Georgian way. Most obviously the hierarchy is seen in the height of the rooms and the windows
facing the street, the most important floor being the first floor, the next the ground floor, and so on.
The discovery of an unusually complete set of decorative details in a London townhouse highlights
how a hierarchical ordering ran through every part of a house – every chimneypiece was different;
different floors had different cornices, doors and architraves, dado rails and skirtings. But then
within each floor further distinctions were made by the degree of elaboration of the decorative
elements and the arrangement of the rooms themselves.
The house was built in 1773. Its plan is the ubiquitous “London plan” – a large room at the front
(facing the street) and a smaller room with the stairs beside it at the back. The arrangement of such
houses is so common and so well-known that one can with confidence assign the original function)
to every room on each floor.
The first floor front room, the Drawing Room , is the largest room in the house with the tallest
ceiling height. It is the grandest room, the pinnacle of the hierarchy. In the 18th or 19th century,
guests invited to 13 Ely Place would arrive at the front door and be admitted into the Hall and
Stairs; from there they would ascend to the first floor (the piano nobile) and the Drawing Room.
For dinner, the guests would go back downstairs to the Dining Room on the ground floor. After
dinner every one would withdraw to the Drawing Room – the ladies first followed sometime later
by the gentlemen – where the remainder of the evening would be spent. The guests would spend
longer in the Drawing Room than they would in the Dining Room.
With the Front Drawing Room as the pinnacle the other parts of the hierarchy can be assigned in
descending order:
Front Drawing Room (1st Fl)
Dining Room (Gnd Fl)
Hall and Stairs (Gnd & 1st Fl)
Back Drawing Room (1st Fl)
Ante Room (Gnd Fl)
Chamber 1, front (2nd Fl)
Chamber 2, back (2nd Fl)
Upper Stairs (2nd & 3rd Fl)
Chamber 3, front (3rd Fl)
Chamber 4, back (3rd Fl)
Chamber 5, front side (3rd Fl)
Kitchen (Bmnt)
Other basement rooms
Vaults
As a general rule the more detail a feature contains the higher its status, because, of course, more
detail means more work and more work means higher cost.
In Conclusion
The hierarchy within a Georgian house is more complex than a differentiation between the rooms
seen by guests and those used by the family, it runs through everything. Clearly cost played a part
but it was not as simple as spending the most on the most important parts and saving elsewhere:
hierarchy mattered and it mattered because of the instinctive Georgian adherence to the principles
of Classicism. In a tradition extending back to Vitruvius in the first century BC the principle of
“decorum” – style and decoration appropriate for a particular function and status – was followed.
The result is the variety and harmony within a certain uniformity that is the prized quality of
Georgian architecture.
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