ANNMARIE ADAMS

CHARTERVII FEAND THE LANDSCAPE OF SOCIAL REFORM

oncernabout the desperateliving ership, it also enabled them to vote. The plan was conditions of industrial workers intended to reduce unemployment in the over- in Britain peaked in the 1830s and 1840s with crowded cities and at the same time offer a viable a severe economic depression and unprecedented alternativeto industrialcapitalism. housing shortages.1 Politicians, authors, and archi- Charterville and the other four Chartist estates tects, among others, used legislation, fiction, and were made possible through the establishment of buildings to illustrate viable alternatives to indus- the National Land Company. As described in a trial capitalism. Their method was to compile evi- handbill of 1847 (Fig. 1), the plan was for sub- dence on social evils and then to suggest reform scribers, mostly factory workers from industrial through an often radical reordering of the human centers, to pay weekly dues toward the purchase of and physical landscape. Embedded within this land being obtained by Feargus O'Connor, the Victorian social manifesto were numerous plans charismatic Irish leader of the movement. As the for utopian communities that offered a critique of handbill promised, the benefits, distributed by lot- existing conditions while at the same time pro- tery, included "good land," a "comfortablehouse," posing alternatives in comprehensible terms. The and a sum of money. A pile of manure was also town of Charterville, located in , En- supplied at the gate to each property; individual gland, was one such community, the product of leases were for life.4 Feargus O'Connor's Chartist Land Plan of 1842. But entailed much more than the The relict landscape of Chartervilleremains today Land Plan. As historian Dorothy Thompson has as an important reminder of the difficulty of rec- illustrated, it suggested an entire alternative cul- onciling political intentions with the design of the ture. Between 1838 and 1848 working people cultural landscape. from all over Britain joined forces to end the ex- Charterville was established in 1848 as the third ploitation of wage laborers by industrialistsand to of five Chartist settlements.2It consisted of a school extend voting rights to England's nonlandowning and seventy-eight small stone cottages constructed working class. It was one of the largest mass move- on individual lots of four acres or less along a ments in modern history, with more followers than major road from to Brize Norton.3 many of the groups that overthrew other Euro- The basic objective of the Chartist Land Plan pean governments in 1848.5 The People's Charter was to give working-class people access to land on of 1838, from which the movement drew its name, which they could live and grow their own food. established the official Chartist program. The Because political power was still tied to landown- group sought universal male suffrage, the aboli-

138 BUILDINGS AND REGIONS 139

am ,. _ 4_ r NATIONAL CHARTERVILLE

Source Tithe Apportlonment 1851 ORO Ms d d Minster Lovell LAND COMPANY. par PIOVZIIONALLYBZOITBlZD. SHIRES?1. 68. EACH.

The objectof tiis Companyis to enableWorking Men, for a triling sum, to obtain posseuiob of Land and Dwelling. upon such terms, that, by honourableand independentlabour, they ma mintain themseleesand familiesin comfortand respectability.

BENEFITSASSURED. A - School ad Meetng Room B- Wesleyan Methodist Chapel The followingare the benefit whichthe Companyguarantees to its memben: C-White Hart Inn HOLDER8OFTWO SLE8-A C OIFORTAILE HOUSE,TWO IOCES OFGOOD LAD, A) ?16. HOLDERSOFTHEE 8HAEI-A 81OUE, THLEE ACES, UID ?11.IO HOLD3EROFFOUR 8gIUE8-A HOUSE, FOUR AGCES, iDL e0. LEASESFOREVER WILL BE GRABNTED TOTHE OCCUPAT8. Thiu ensuring to them the vsaue of everyimprovement they may mahe upon their allotments. The Companyaffords great tfciliLieto those memberwho have the meansof purcehing theirallotment. The eant wiJ be moderte, aa it ill be regulatedby a chargeof S per cent uponthe capitalexpended. The Companyhaving been raeledinto existencefor the benefitof the WoUtwG CLAIsst, the Rules renble the pooret to vail themelres of its adventges, u the Sha may be paid by inotalmenteu low TIlt PiClt 1 will.E. TIEULE OrTE COFANT( iOE 4.) b rA I A cuabe obained of Ms WHEELER,the Secaryc, PR v.TTHE OFFICE, 83,DEAI STREET, 80HO, LODOI, ' J hcee membernmay be enrolled,and ev infrmatin obtaied ?.r- o-f k9 feii..,,,.._,, -, i I".m . - - . - ,, __ _ _- __ _ -14 . _ _ __ , , _#-s , 0 5 10 15 20 Fig. 1. Handbillissued by the National LandCompany in chains To Brnze 1847. (CourtesyOxoniensia and KateTiller) Norton

Fig. 2. Siteplan of Chartervilleas it existed in 1851. tion of property qualifications for members of Par- (CourtesyOxoniensia and KateTiller) liament, the payment of members, equal electoral districts, and annual parliaments. At the heart of Chartism lay the belief that access to political the inevitable failure of the movement. power provided the only chance to reform indus- O'Connor purchased three hundred acres of trial society. land near in June 1847 at a cost of more Although the political platform of Chartism ap- than ten thousand pounds sterling.6 The choice of pears radical, the architectural manifestations of site was unfortunate; there was no rail connection the Land Plan at Charterville were surprisingly or nearby market, and the soil was poor. In addi- conservative, reflecting an idyllic image of rural tion, the land was on high terrain, making water life and glorifying the individual. Productive labor difficult to obtain. Three wells supplied the entire occupied a central place in the plan of the Chartist estate. As historian Kate Tiller has said, "Just as cottage, but the site planning and exterior design the Chartists believed in access to the land as a of the buildings recalled times when workers en- God-given right, so their water-supply appropri- joyed little power. The architectureof Charterville ately came direct[ly] from heaven."7 reveals conservative aspects of Chartism that illus- The plan of Charterville (Fig. 2) was laid out trate, perhaps more clearly than other documents, by O'Connor and company director Christopher 140 PERSPECTIVES IN VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE, IV

Doyle.8 They located most of the cottages along the main road from Minster Lovell to Brize Nor- ton; similar lots were defined on two minor, per- pendicular streets. The school and eighteen houses were located on Upper Crescent, in the north, while Bushey Ground on the south was a cul-de- sac. Charterville was immediately popular despite the problems of isolation, limited land, and poor farming conditions. Workers inhabited the cot- tages within fourteen months.9 In the design of Charterville, O'Connor postu- lated a return to a completely agrarian society. He intended tenants to raise their own food and pro- vided no facilities for trade or communal labor. O'Connor warned in his book, A Practical Work on the Management of Small Farms, of the "igno- rant landlords . . . induced by as ignorant writers to adopt the large farm system." He insisted that two hundred acres farmed by one man would nev- er be as productive as fifty men working on plots of four acres each because of the distances involved in carrying manure and drawing produce. 0 There was much debate over whether four acres could support a family, particularly as many of the in- Fig. 3. O'Connor'splan for a cottage, publishedin 1847. LeedsUni- habitants had no previous farming experience. 1 NorthernStar, February 13, (Courtesy versityLibrary) A diagram of a Charterville cottage published by O'Connor in 1847 shows a three-room house with a row of service spaces in the rear (Fig. 3). A courtyard behind the main block of the house was places-"vulnerable, open, and occupied.'13 surrounded by outbuildings for animals and stor- The prominent position of the kitchen in the age. The plan presented clear functional zoning: cottage plan was consistent with the Chartist em- three main living spaces faced the street, less polite phasis on self-sufficient productive labor. In What domestic labor took place behind this zone, and May Be Done with Three Acres of Land, O'Con- the back of the building housed large-scale agri- nor had promised a weekly yield of 14 pounds of cultural labor. In the front, the large, central kitch- bacon, 1.5 stones of flour, 4.5 stones of potatoes, en stepped out from the main block of the house. 20 duck eggs, 2 pounds of honey, and a further The flanking rooms, intended as bedroom and income of 44 pounds sterling "aftera consumption sitting room, were accorded secondary positions and the best of good living."14 He believed that but were equal relative to the kitchen. Paneled this could be achieved with 157 days' labor. The doors separatedthese three interconnected rooms, large Chartist kitchen became the space where ten- each with its own fireplace. Entry to the house was ants processed the fruits of the land and presum- directly into the kitchen without a vestibule space ably realized the joys of family life and labor. or porch.12 Like Henry Glassie's kitchens of Bal- The builder of the Chartist cottage supplied the lymenone, the kitchens of Chartervillewere public kitchen with a store-cupboard, range, and dresser, BUILDINGS AND REGIONS 141 intending the space for more than cooking and designsfor many ruralhouses employing classical eating.15 Larger than the sitting room, the Char- language,but in his housesthe style was used as a tist kitchen probably acted as the primary space way of expressingthe plan on the exterior. As for family interaction and for entertaining visitors. George Hersey has explained, Loudon saw the Access to other parts of the household came only houseas a kind of "informationalappliance," and through the kitchen, and thus the space served as a he matchedspecific meanings to elementsof build- central circulation area mediating between private ings, suggestingthat windows, doors, chimneys, and public spaces, much like the central passage in and porchesacted as "signifiers,"communicating other house forms. messagesabout a building'sinterior layout.17 In In these ways the plan of the Chartist kitchen the Encyclopaediahe illustratedhouses in which was in keeping with the backward-looking politi- portionswere shiftedforward to expressthe loca- cal and social agendas of the Land Plan.16 The tions of major rooms, while the position of the Chartists equated power with access to the land; porch,he claimed,revealed the placeof the hall. In they guaranteed happy family life through self- Loudon'sterms the Chartistcottage was unfit and sufficiency and attempted to transferthe control of dishonest,using style as a costume. time from the factory to the home. The kitchen's To beginwith, the frontelevation of the Chartist prominent position, relative size, and accessibility cottage refers to a specific classicalplan type at to the yard and the land celebrated these values in odds with the layoutof the rooms. The three-part architecturalterms. divisionof the facadeand symmetricalplacement However, this aspect of the cottages was unin- of the windows are those of a Georgiancentral- telligible from the exterior; the elevation of the hall house with flanking living spaces. The ab- Chartist cottage obscured the message of the plan senceof a mediatingporch or vestibuleadds to the and in the process revealed one of the central con- expectationthat the spacemarked by the project- tradictions of O'Connor's politics. In plan the ing gableis a hallor passageway.The centralchim- stepping out of the central kitchen had served sev- ney rising from the kitchen furtherconfuses the eral purposes. It made the kitchen larger than the readingof the space;it just barelypeaks over the adjacent rooms and thus marked the prominence of the space in the life of the settlement. As the center of activity in the house, closely connected to public space, the kitchen recalled the hall of medi- eval houses and was therefore consistent with the nostalgic ideology of the Land Plan. When consid- ered in elevation, however, the Chartist kitchen, roofed by a projecting gable, translatedinto a clas- sical temple front. The smoothly rendered quoins emphasized the jut, and a small roof ventilator decorated the pediment. The Chartist cottage, from the street, was a tiny Palladian villa (Fig. 4). The potential of architectural features such as these to express, ratherthan to deny, the functions within a farmhouse had been highly developed and publicized by John Claudius Loudon by this time. L ,--S -- - In his Encyclopaedia of Cottage, Farm and Villa Fig. 4. The ChartistCottage, from the street,seemed to Architecture of 1833, Loudon had presented the be a miniaturePalladian villa. 142 PERSPECTIVES IN VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE, IV ridge of the main roof and is no more prominent farmers, this form of classicism was more often than the end chimneys. Loudon would have in- used for the houses of those who directed laborers sisted that the kitchen chimney be more robust, than for the houses of the workers themselves. 8 more decorated, and much taller than the less im- Palladianism was inconsistent with the larger portant end chimneys; he also would have differ- objectives of social reform in its glorification of the entiated the sitting room windows from those of individual, its domination of the landscape, and its the bedroom. Different room functions required clear reliance on historic precedent. The style suc- different signifiers in elevation; conversely, irreg- cinctly expressed, however, the conservative as- ular openings should represent irregularities in pects of O'Connor's Land Plan. Its adoption in the floor plan. Such expression, for Loudon, was the Chartist cottage was intended to assert the land- function of a building's elevation. owning status and consequent political power of Apart from this "dishonest"use of classical ele- the tenants by association with the great country ments in the elevation as a way of disguising the estates. Without challenging the existing rule of working life glorified in the plan, the classicism at landownership, O'Connor'sLand Plan simply pro- Charterville also connected the cottage to a tradi- vided a way for working people to support the tion that, at first glance, might seem in direct op- status quo. Modest Palladian villas on individual position to the larger sphere of Victorian social lots were the architecturalexpression of this con- reform (Fig. 5). During the eighteenth century, the servatism. classicism of Italian Renaissance architect Andrea The site plan of Charterville was an even more Palladio had been embraced by English architects potent material statement of this conservative ide- in their designs for large country estates as a way ology. Inefficient in both labor and materials, the of marking man's domination of the landscape; it dispersed arrangementof the estate, the generous was a mode associated exclusively with the Whig setback of the cottages from the street, and the aristocracy and was popularized by conservative, clear marking of territory by fences and gates glo- well-educated architects and patrons, notably Wil- rified the individual tenant rather than the cohe- liam Kent and Lord Burlington. Palladianismstood sion of the movement as a whole and pointed to the for a book-learned awareness of current fashion, contradictions in O'Connor's position on private and architects readily adopted it for the design of property. Becausethe vote was still tied to the land, ostentatious country villas. Although neoclassi- O'Connor saw the occupation of individual lots as cism has, at times, been appropriated to express critical to the intentions of Chartism. This was a the relatively independent status of gentlemen- divisive issue within the movement.19 Marx and

Fig. 5. Marble Hill House, built in 1724-1729 for ?,i~:.? HenriettaHoward, mis- tressof GeorgeII, is a superbexample of thePal- ...-- . ladianstyle. (David Brady) BUILDINGS AND REGIONS 143

Engels, whom O'Connor met in 1845, believed seems to be the architectural focus of the settle- that the private holding of land prevented major ment; individual lots are not differentiated. In changes in society. O'Connor's commitment to essence, the artist depicted a communal settlement private property, rather than land nationalization, where tenants might share large buildings and ex- was criticized as "encouraging selfish, narrow panses of land. In addition, the cottages in the views amongst the lucky holders of Land Com- drawing are much more attenuated than those pany plots, benefiting a few but not really getting actually built; that is, they are Gothic rather than to the heart of the problem."20 Palladian. The roof pitch is too steep, openings Although Chartism was a mass rebellion and its are too vertical, and the quoins have been omitted Land Plan was based on common ownership, its in most of the cottages. The artist even dared to architecture indicates the extent to which the plan decorate the windows of one cottage with pointed served only individuals. In Charterville there was arches rather than the classical frames actually no church, no market, no town hall, no palace of used in Charterville. All traces of classicism, even labor; there were only individual houses. The ar- the telltale central chimney, were omitted. The chitecture of the Chartist cottages was not at odds drawing was a fiction, but one that by its omissions with the ideology of the Land Plan. It revealed the reveals much truth. inherently reactionary posture of the vision. In fact, the artist saw Charterville as a manorial The presentation of Charterville in the press village, as part of the system of land division that underlined the complex message of its architec- had formed the core of the medieval English land- ture. One view of the settlement published at the scape. Like the Chartist cottages, the main blocks time in the popular press deviated from reality in of manorial houses had been set parallel to the several important ways, revealing how the archi- street without a mediating porch or entryway. The tecture of the largest radical movement in Britain manorial village was an appropriate model for might have been expected to look from a reform Charterville in that it had been an agrarian, self- point of view (Fig. 6). To begin with, the focus of sufficient system. The architecturehad an equaliz- the drawing on the school and the houses of Upper ing effect; each family had the same house. But in Crescent is deceptive. In the drawing the school the manorial system the towering presence of the

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Fig. 6. Drawingof Chartervillepublished in IllustratedLondon News 17 (October 12, 1850): 296. (Courtesyof the IllustratedLondon News PictureLibrary) 144 PERSPECTIVES IN VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE, IV manor house and/or church was a constant archi- tectural reminder of the serfs' limited power in the landscape. The land in the manorial system also played a fundamentally different role than in the politics of Chartism. Small holdings were forfeited in exchange for military protection from the lord. The land provided food and work but absolutely no political power. Like the Palladian references, the resemblance of the site plan to the manorial system recalled an oppressive period for workers. It served to dilute the more radical aspects of the vision and marked the divergence of the conser- vative and radical roots of Chartism. Charterville lasted only three years as a Chartist land settlement. When O'Connor attempted to ob- tain rents from the tenants to alleviate the finan- cial troubles of the company, the tenants refused to pay, insisting that they already owned their land. The classical architecture of their houses, as we have seen, supported their claim. The financial and legal basis of the Land Plan, however, were found unsound by a ParliamentarySelect Commit- tee. In 1851 the cottage properties at Charterville were sold. The changes made to the buildings in their re- suscitation as free-marketcommodities are telling. plan

The was A of a _ -= - ' plan changed drastically. plan scale ._ U=_ meters as used in the 1970s shows how the cottage (Fig. 7) Fig. 7. Plan of 69 Brize Norton Road from the 1970s. central room, the former Chartist kitchen, became (Oxfordshire Museums Service, courtesy Oxfordshire a sitting room-a place of show and tell rather Architectural and Historical Society) than the center of family production.21 The kitch- en, as we might expect, was reduced in size and status, remained intact. The meaning of classicism moved to the rear of the house. Next to it, in place survived the failure of Chartism unscathed. of the former washhouse, was a formal dining The Chartist cottages now sell for 150,000 room. pounds, the land is not farmed, and new, larger In contrast, the elevations were changed mini- houses awkwardly occupy the narrow spaces be- mally (Fig. 8). The symmetrically placed windows tween the original plots. The relativelyreactionary now truthfully expressed the functions within, as elevations of the building now truthfully express both side rooms became bedrooms. Small entry the equally conservative plan. Charterville is no vestibules were added to the fronts of many longer an ambiguous landscape; it speaks clearly houses, protecting the private realm within. Sev- of the values against which the Chartists rebelled. eral owners added stucco or other surface mate- The message, however, has come full circle. In rials in order to assert their individualism. The O'Connor's time occupation of the landscape was projected temple front, the sign of gentility and the measure of political power; ownership of a plot BUILDINGS AND REGIONS 145

Fig. 8. A Chartist cottage today. Many owners have added entries to their houses, emphasizing their classical forms.

of land ensured a vote. Today every citizen of Great tecture of Charterville underlines the notion that Britain over the age of eighteen can exercise a vote, power and freedom under industrialcapitalism en- and it is now the land itself that is inaccessible to tail more than the extension of the franchise. working-class people. Even the present-day archi-