Charles Brooking

 

Windows before the sash window

Charles Brooking is a fascinating and knowledgeable collector of architectural detail, The Brooking Collection of Architectural Detail, and as Surveyors we find his lifelong quest to collect British building details unique, informative and valuable and a collection that must be kept intact for years to come. If you need help and advice with regard to building surveys, structural surveys, structural reports, engineers reports, specific defects report, dilapidations or any other property matters please free phone 0800 298 5424.

The following is one of a series of interviews with Charles Brooking, Historic and Listed Buildings Detail Expert, The Brooking Collection of Architectural Detail and a Surveyor where we have recorded his comments and various aspects that have affected windows and doors and other collectibles. The interviews outline how his collection started and built over the years and gives an insight into the amazing architectural features housed in his fine collection.

Surveyor : What were the windows like in the UK before the sliding sash window?

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Early windows without glass and with glass

Charles Brooking : Well, most windows in the UK were the classical designs and the proportions of that type of building, e.g. the Palace of Whitehall, Banqueting House, designed by Indigo Jones. When that was built, that façade, that part of the Palace wasn't completed, the cross window or the four light transom window was fitted. Basically it was a window with a central cross with two smaller lights at the top and two larger ones at the bottom with one side hung casement, in wrought iron. Wrought iron was the normal material for opening lights. The French popularised the use of timber for opening lights.

Surveyor : In Britain if you were wealthy enough to go for full glass, it would have been in wrought iron?

Charles Brooking : Yes, it would have been within a wrought iron frame and held before the introduction of crown glass. Until the larger sheets became available it was basically held together by a series of lead panes that were a series of small panes or lattice panes, rectangular panes.

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Crown glass defined

Crown glass was the popular glass of the late 17 th century although still not glass as we know it now as it was formed from a flattened disk of glass and was often uneven with thicker sections which were usually put into the window with a thicker end at the base.

Interestingly, it is said that this thicker glass at the base has fed the myth of glass windows that the glass in windows is not solid and moves.

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Please see our articles on

Glass

Sliding sash window problems

Windows and The Great Fire of London

 

Surveyor : What sort of size were these panes?

Charles Brooking : Well that depends upon the period. They grew in size from the 16th century onwards and by the late 17th or something like that.

Surveyor: We have a period of the glass getting larger, still within a metal casement and then the timber sliding sash appearing?

Charles Brooking : A timber window appearing and of course comments being made by foreigners about the ill fitting English casements which were draughty and weren't effective.

Surveyor : When did York windows come into it?

Charles Brooking : Everyone asks this. It is a tremendous fascination. They developed alongside the sliding sashes it is believed in the late 17th century and in every talk I have given, somebody asks about a Yorkshire light. They have got a tremendous public appeal.

Surveyor: They are actually horizontal? 

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York window Crux frame building

Charles Brooking : Yes, they are horizontal windows and are hard to weather as you know as a Surveyor. You've got the sill detail which naturally traps water. They used to use little pegs sometimes to guide the windows so the water could run away however there was always a problem with the sill detail.

Surveyor: But where did they fit in? Did they fit in after wrought iron?

Charles Brooking : They came after wrought iron along with the development of the sliding sash in the late 17th early 18th century and although wrought iron windows went on being made, the fashionable wealthy families started using timber sashes.

1666 Sash
1709 sash
1774 sash

Surveyor: So the earlier remaining windows that we can see in this country would be in a wrought iron casement and they would have smaller glass?

Charles Brooking : Yes, smaller panes of glass with lead canes and they would be fitted on pintle hinges, which are basically a hinge which you can, putting it crudely, you can actually lift the window off of the hinges. You could take the window away or take it off. 

Surveyor: Have I heard correctly, I don't know if it's just a rumour that people did literally take their windows with them when they moved?

Charles Brooking : Well glass was an expensive commodity and earlier on that was the case and that's probably one of the reasons why you had these pintle hinges but they were used for doors as well. The pintle was driven into the oak or set into the stone and the wrought iron window, the blacksmith would make it with hinges which wrapped around that pintle and when you think they had lasted sometimes for three hundred years it's incredible. The two ran in tandem.

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Surveyor : Which two ran in tandem? Charles Brooking : They went on making wrought iron casements for smaller properties and they went one being made in the traditional way, right up until the mid 19th century. I was aware of this too in the early days and actually the book written by Gertrude Jekyll on the Old English Household Life featured a picture of one of these wrought iron casements and the glass diamond quarries and this was an important feature of my early collecting career, the fact that I wanted to illustrate all of these different features. Blacksmiths used to have their own designs and their own patterns and of course every region had its own peculiarities and designs. One thing my tutor drilled into me, was the importance of the aspect of class of this country, the importance of it, and how it affected architecture, but also what a little snob I was, because I was so conscious of it! A lot of buildings I went round were ill conceived and mean spirited because they were built for labourers cheaply and this is something I picked up going round all these sites.

If you found this article on The Brooking Collection of Architectural Detail interesting you may also be interested in the following articles on our website

Cheap surveys or being wrongly advised by your building surveyor

Can you trust a Surveyors Valuation

Buying property at auction

Building surveys or structural surveys

 

References: TheBrookingCollection.com DartfordArchive.org.uk IHBC.org.uk ProjectBook.co.u

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