Early Sash Window / Shutters RESEARCH

[rhrwilliams]

Hello Friends

Ok so a long winded thread which will appeal to a select few, but any construction details / pictures / thoughts would be appreciated.

I have a potential window replacement project on a farmhouse in East Sussex. The building was built between 1720 and 1750. Although the building looks sad at the moment. I am sure there is a lovely Georgian house hiding there somewhere. Currently I am undertaking general historical research and looking for any useful contributions. Particularly if anyone has photos from similar period buildings (early Georgian Farmhouses) with sash windows and shutters. I am very well aquatinted with town houses in London and this sort of building, but less so with cottages and country farmhouses... Vernacular stuff.

The House


I have concluded the windows must have been sash windows to the front and iron casements to the rear. I have concluded this as there is evidence of iron casements to the rear. My theory on the sash on the front is because the openings are too long for casements as the proportions would be incorrect. The proportions are correct however for sliding sashes. There are other windows in the area that I could find of a similar period for moulding detail etc.

The masonry have no brickwork reveals / sash pockets, in addition to this the construction age (pre 1750) would indicate the windows were of the type that were planted in a square opening. Examples below of buildings of 1720 (4 over 4) and 1740 (6 over 6) ; The 6 over 6 being a modest house, the 4 over 4 being a very prominent building in London.




Firstly then; how are these type of windows not in pockets fixed in ? I have seen in a old txt they were just wedged in with folding wedges but how is this practically done, as would you not see the wedges from outside as there is not tolerance as the windows need to be basically scribed in ? In the examples of the 1740 window above, these were not wedged in but sat on iron lugs in the masonry. I cant imagine iron lugs was a common practice.

Next cills...The two examples above do not have cills at all in the sense they do not project over the masonry. This is very common of this era in lower quality buildings and I have surveyed lots and lots of buildings with no cills and the windows are still perfectly serviceable. BUT is a groove or drip put in the cill even though it does not project.

Does anyone have any early txt's drawings particularly relating to these early type of sash ?

Shutters. There is no evidence of internal shutters.......but I like shutters. I do not doubt that shutters would be rare in country cottages / lower quality houses, but does anyone have any examples ? I have lots of examples of 9" walls in London with this type of early windows and the shutters are usually made up of about 4 leaves a side and are very delicate, and formed together with a panelled room. A couple more examples, these are mainly townhouses of varying quality.

This house is actually in Margate and is a fantastic 1st rate Georgian house - the shutters are about 15mm thick !


Super slimline shutters


Painted over shutters (Same house as the 1720 Townhouses pictured earlier)


Anyone re-made traditional shutters/ sashes of this era ? Anyone have any nice info / txt's drawings examples to point me towards ?

Thanks

Richard

 

[Jacob]

Here's my generic sash window drawing. I did loads of these and used this as a default pattern where appropriate. In fact they come with many variations, smaller sections down to 12mm glazing bars and many bigger sections, different glazing arrangements etc.
What they all have in common is being fitted in a rebate behind the face masonry, showing just a thin edge of the sash box front linings.
Your photos show retro fitted sashes in openings without a rebate - neither very practical nor elegant but quite common - people preferred the functional sash rather than the various earlier casement types of window.
If your cottage doesn't have rebates for the sash boxes then it wasn't built for sashes. It would have had timber and/or iron frames perhaps with leaded lights. A common mixture was timber frame, mullion and transom with leaded lights in 3 panels and just a single iron framed opener in the 4th - often blacksmith made.
When the fashion for sashes took off big time (1790 and onwards) whole facades would be rebuilt with a neat Georgian design, but leaving the jumble of an older building behind. Sometimes low ceilinged 3 storied houses would be converted into taller roomed 2 stories, new facade but old behind with stone mullioned window opening filled in. It's very common - you walk down a Georgian street but round the back the ghosts of earlier buildings are still visible.
Best of luck!

PS just a detail - I got into the habit of moving the step in the cill back under the bottom rail of the bottom sash , because it makes a better
weathering detail.
PPS a common variation on smaller windows was to take half inch or so off the top and bottom rails - making them 32 and 56 ish.

 

[rhrwilliams]

Thank you for the detail Jacob. Very useful and very well drawn.

I do not disagree that the house I am doing research for may well have had iron casements. Especially as the house is the accommodation for a Blacksmiths forge also built between 1720-1750. I did think the opening size however would produce a very strange size casement as I have drawn a few variations. I also cannot find another house with iron casement on the front locally. The rest of windows on the house (where there is evidence of metal casements) are more squat and more the type and size of opening you would expect to see with a casement.

None of these sashes pictured are retrofit and pre 1740 ish this is how sashes were generally (in domestic houses) installed (In London and the south east and my experience looking at these buildings anyway). There are swaves of streets and squares in London with windows installed in this way, mainly pre 174/50. They are not all replacements. Lord North Street for example (1720) where one of the photos in my initial post has a whole street and surrounding sq of this era with these windows installed in this way. Definitely no pocket. Also most of the pre 1740's houses in Spittalfields are fitted in this way and you can see lots of pictures of these as they are well documented on the inter web.

The sash being in a pocket was apparently a result of the great fire of London, where it made it compulsory to firstly recess the sash, then to build it in pockets. Design development probably had a lot to do with it too. Although it was part of the building act that after 1709 the sashes should be recessed 4 inch, in reality this did not happen on all buildings (The 1720 building for example and all the houses in Westminster around Lord North St, and many of the houses in Spittalfields). Some houses pre 1740 also did have pockets.....but not all.

This is just a picture from a England Heritage book on development of sashes.


I only really have knowledge of London and South East areas to be honest though and it may be different for different regions.

 

[Jacob]

I still think they were retro fitted. They would most likely be replaced fairly often as not putting them into a rebate is just not practical and they wouldn't weather at all well. There was a massive shift in fashion with the falling price of glass and you can see the alterations in buildings all over the country. I've seen sash windows retro fitted to Hebridean black houses which previously had no windows at all
I suppose it may be that builders simply hadn't caught up as there was also a lot of very poor jerry building - Georgians were noted for it - thin decorative facades on speedily built brick buildings.
I don't think fashions were all that regional either - sashes at Chatsworth set the pattern early on and it was repeated all over the British Empire.

I also cannot find another house with iron casement on the front locally.

Cast iron isn't too durable so many would be short lived. There's a pattern of casement window which I think of as the "Shropshire" window because that's where I first noticed them. It's as I described above - a tall window with timber transom and mullion divided into 4 panels, 2 small ones above. Mixed materials - sometimes leaded, or cast iron, or blacksmith made wrought iron openers. A bit like this below , though again there are many variations. The most common variation being a smaller cottage version without the transom - just the bottom two panels.

 

[Mike Jordan]

I've had an interest in these for a number of years ever since my father taught me how to replace the cords in the Windows of the terraced house we lived in at about age twelve. There are regional differences in the "standard".windows between north and south of the country, it seems that the width of the glazing bars tends to be thicker the further north you go although is not a definite rule even in Windows many years old. You can find many examples of the Windows being installed in plain square openings close by other buildings where they are set I reveal. It is definitely a case of the quality houses on the main roads being built to a better standard with windows set in reveal while the nearby workers cottages are showing the full width of the frame in a square opening. There are many different indications of quality of construction, the sills are normally made of quality hardwood together with the meeting rails in better quality work, I have seen the type of fixing which looks like a cut nail with a flattened end with a screw hole in the exposed end.
I have made Windows with an extended head and sill for building into place in extensions to period properties but I have never seen this method used in old houses, they all seem to have the Windows secured with folding wedges at the ends of the heads and sills. My thought is that this type of window has always been comparatively expensive and builders preferred to install them when the brick work was complete to avoid expensive damage as the building work progressed.
If you can obtain a copy of Riley's Manual of Carpentry & Joinery you will find all you need to know on the subject. It's been out of print for years but can still be found second hand.

 

[Jacob]

......My thought is that this type of window has always been comparatively expensive and builders preferred to install them when the brick work was complete to avoid expensive damage as the building work progressed......

It's much easier to fit after the brickwork is finished but the builder would need an accurate former to build round which would increase cost I suppose. They are also delightfully easy to remove - prise off the architraves, inner linings etc, pull out the wedges and they fall into the room. Which means they are better restored on the work bench and not in situ.

 

[RobinBHM]

Ive come across very very few box sash windows that are set in between brickwork rather than set behind the outside skin.

It could be the case that they are from an earlier period and had a much shorter life span being far more exposed to the weather.

Im not sure that new box sashes fitted in between on your farmhouse would be very attractive, even if historically accurate.

It would be nice if the one above the front door is reinstated even if it has to be a dummy and blacked out on the inside -I assume its been blocked up to suit interior layout.

 

[rhrwilliams]

I think we shall have to agree to disagree on the pocket thing. The examples I have posted are not shoddy examples of buildings with low quality replacement windows - they are grade II* listed houses in London and were built that way circa 1720 for wealthy people at that time. There is not one of them either, there are streets and streets of them. The other example (red brick) was my own house , again which was in a terrace of many, which I took the windows out of and refitted hence I know they were on iron lugs and there were definitely no pockets.

By Iron I assumed they would be wrought iron with leaded casements like the remainder of the house as you have said (likely not cast) but I still cant imagine how they would look right given the long opening size. I did some sketches to see what they would look like. Left is sashes. Right iron casements with leaded lights. The proportions of the casements just look wrong to me. That is not of course to say they weren't there ! I might try the local archives to see if any pictures exist or anything like that.



No the "blocked up window" is just an architectural feature which is common on Georgian buildings for symmetry. Internal layout is original and the relief is behind a spine wall.

So top and bottom wedged is the usual method of wedging into place ? The only ones I have refitted as per above were on iron lugs. I'm not a builder / joinery by the way.

Anyone done any with shutters too they have pics of ?

 

[Mike Jordan]

There are at least three types of internal shutters. The most common type fold into and form part of the panelled side linings, or. If the walls of the building are not thick enough, they can be made to lie flat to the inside face of the wall. The most sophisticated to my mind are the ones which are concealed beneath a hinged window board and slide up to cover the inside face of the window just like the glazed sashes. They run in similar channels and gave sash cords and counter weights.
The book I mentioned above shows all three kinds in some detail.

 

[rhrwilliams]

Thanks for this - there is an electronic copy of the book if anyone wants it.

http://www.woodworkslibrary.com/reposit ... oinery.pdf

 

[Jacob]

There are at least three types of internal shutters. The most common type fold into and form part of the panelled side linings, or. If the walls of the building are not thick enough, they can be made to lie flat to the inside face of the wall. The most sophisticated to my mind are the ones which are concealed beneath a hinged window board and slide up to cover the inside face of the window just like the glazed sashes. They run in similar channels and gave sash cords and counter weights.
The book I mentioned above shows all three kinds in some detail.

I did a set of them in an old rectory. They dropped down below floor level into the basement (tall windows!). It was a problem because being thinner than a light (20mm ish instead of 44 ish) they had to have a narrower weight box with long thin weights. Even then they couldn't pass each other so the two shutters had to be raised and lowered in the right sequence.

 

[AndyT]

Possibly the most frequently mentioned text on the early development of sash windows is by Hentie Louw and Robert Crayford, in "Architectural History" Vol. 41 (1998). If you have the necessary access privileges, you can read the whole thing here http://www.jstor.org/stable/1568649?seq ... b_contents

Looking at the question of fitting wood to wall when windows finished flush with the front, they do mention, from building accounts, payments to masons to make good the stonework to accommodate the sash windows, which were secured with iron holdfasts nailed into wooden plugs in the masonry.

They do cite cases where this sort of construction failed to keep the weather out, and expensive remedial work was needed.

They mention Moxon - who I presume you have read - as describing the way that older, solid-framed windows could be mortared in to the brickwork. They say that this could still be done with early sashes which had solid frames (with weights in ploughed or bored hollows) but was not practical for windows whose boxes were framed up from boards.

 

[rhrwilliams]

Thanks for that. How do you get permissions or do you have to buy it ? I have the moxon book but I don't remember any bits about windows. Ill have another look tonight...

The 1720's window had iron lugs they were like rods pinned through sash box into masonry. With the plaster removed internally the sashes rattled.

Jacob - windows sound excellent - any pics ?

Here are some of an old rectory near Watford that are similar to the ones you have made (I think). The word rectory reminded me of it...The back and side windows had these and the fronts full shutters. They are very nice and a little flap opens up on the internal cill - sorry for rubbish photo but you get the general idea.

 

[dickm]

Fascinating thread. My family came from the bit where Shropshire/Herefordshire and (the then) Radnorshire meet up and the original family farm had those sliding sash shutters sinking into the box below the window. The family subsequently moved into part of a Georgian rectory, with folding sashes that folded back against the angled reveals. In both cases, the actual sash windows were set back from the front face.

Diamond pane casements were very common in the area, mainly in stone cottages from 19th century.

 

[AndyT]

Going back to the question of how a sash window was fixed into the masonry when the window opening was just square, with no rebate... Bristol was later than other places in abandoning the practice of having the whole of the woodwork exposed, despite the experience of London and the Great Fire. There are quite a lot of examples easily visible; they will have been restored but not altered.

Your picture from the English Heritage book shows an extra piece of wood framing the window box, flushed up to the masonry, in the two earliest styles. This would frame the sash box and cover up any gaps left where the box was not as big as the opening.

Here's an example of this from Bristol. It's dark outside now, but Google Street View is clear enough to show how this extra bit of wood looks. I can't embed the iframe but clicking on the link should take you to a close-up view of a house in Orchard Street, built about 1722.

https://goo.gl/maps/Sg6kip1GeLF2

 

[Jacob]

....

Jacob - windows sound excellent - any pics ? ...

Last lot weren't sashes but they were spectacular so I've posted snaps anyway!

 

[dickm]

Wow; that is some window, Jacob! Brilliant work.

 

[Jacob]

Wow; that is some window, Jacob! Brilliant work.

Ten - not just one!

 

[RossJarvis]

I thought I had a vague memory of reading that some law was introduced, possibly in London that instituted for masonry to close over the front of window edges. Prior to this I think frames would often be full width to the masonry hole. For the life of me I can't remember where I read this or what the detail was. It was somewhere in an article proposing that sliding sash windows rose in popularity at some time and replaced a lot of casement windows, which were the norm. I think it may indicate that not all sash windows when original equipment were installed into rebates, but that a lot of sash windows were retro-fitted.

Incidentally I reglazed a sliding sash on Friday. This has re-inforced my experience that all wooden windows over 5 years old have some rot in them (Admittedly these were Victorian/Edwardian). Some seem to have more rot than good wood. I would only really recommend plastic these days, even though it pains me because I don't think anyone is going to do the maintenance required to stop the rot getting in. I repainted some 10 year old sliding sashes last Summer, they were starting to rot!! I think this was the first repaint since installation and it didn't seem to have been done properly then.

 

[rhrwilliams]

That's a serious window !!! Very impressive . Is it a 90% remake ? The top arched glazing bar looks old ?