A guide to the choice of a site for residential purposes : high-lying, dry sites remedial and preventive of disease, and promotive of health and the enjoyment of life, from the evidence of a wide range of eminent authorities in therapeutics, climatology, etc. : considerations founded on geological facts and the benefits derived from residence on high-lying sites on the chalk, which alone, of all sub-soils in the Home Counties, can always be relied upon for dryness, even in an elevated situation / by a member of the Geologists' Association.
- Gilford, William.
- Date:
- 1887
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A guide to the choice of a site for residential purposes : high-lying, dry sites remedial and preventive of disease, and promotive of health and the enjoyment of life, from the evidence of a wide range of eminent authorities in therapeutics, climatology, etc. : considerations founded on geological facts and the benefits derived from residence on high-lying sites on the chalk, which alone, of all sub-soils in the Home Counties, can always be relied upon for dryness, even in an elevated situation / by a member of the Geologists' Association. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
![to drawing-room windows over the exquisite undulating summits of the Surrey hills. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the monastic ideal of a low site in a rich valley still dominated the minds of the English squirearchy. So the Evelyns planted their brand-new mansion in the very hollow of the tiny dale, and simply threw away for ever the exquisite view they might otherwise have obtained from every window of the big house. What was their loss is our gain ; for though to its inmates Wot- ton House must be thereby the less beautiful and habitable, to those who look down upon it from the hill-side above it forms at present a most charming element in a delicious landscape. The fact is, no house can at once both see the picture and be the picture. We nowadays, for the most part, elect for seeing it; the Elizabethan builders preferred rather to make their house a bit of it,—the central factor in the total prospect. Wotton House looks out only upon a courtyard on one side, and upon a garden on the other. It has wholly sacrificed its pos- sible view, but in doing so it has made itself a lovely object in everybody else's view from the adjoining brows. A certain sug- gestive air of snugness and comfort, indeed, clings always to these old-fashioned mansions, nestling close, with smoke-wreathed chimneys, in their combe-like hollows. Professor Tyndall has long since taught us, to be sure, that on grounds of health we ought sedulously to avoid such snug quarters, where the germs of microscopic or morbid organisms literally swarm in the stag- nant air. But as a mere picture, and for somebody else to live in, nothing could be more charming than situations such as that of Ford Abbey or of Wotton House, planted daintily in the exact middle of a sweet small valley. It was very foolish, no doubt, to stick a house in such an extremely low and damp position, but how very thankful we ought all to be (who do not live in it) for that picturesque foolishness of mediseval monks and Tudor architects.— ]^'(?/^;/ House,'' Magazine of Art March 1887. ''Dryness, a free circulation of air, a full exposure to the sun, are the material conditions to be attended to in choosing](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22302669_0024.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
