Cranbrook, Kentdetails

“Kent, Sussex and Surrey are three of the most delightful counties in England, and three of the richest in cottages that depend for their distinctive character upon the effective use of three, four, and even five materials. A certain number of them are on somewhat similar lines to those in Shropshire and Herefordshire; but it is proposed here to consider more especially the examples of brick and timber, weather-boarding, tile-hanging, and tile roofs in West Kent and Surrey; those roofed with stone at Horsham and the surrounding neighbourhood; those of stone roofed with thatch, found in Sussex; those of flint and stone roofed with tile to the east of Kent; and some of those in Hampshire with tile-hanging and tile roofs. Roughly and briefly, the general character of the early ones is mediæval both in construction and feeling, while that of those later in date is classic in spirit, retaining much the same method of construction and workmanship. This classic – or, to be more accurate, Georgian – spirit which pervades so many of them asserts itself in the proportions, the unbroken eaves, the absence of dormers, and the subordination of the gables that generally break out of the roof at a low level, leaving the main roof uninterrupted between the large chimneys flanking the gable ends, or divided by one large stack in the middle. At Hollingbourne (see frontispiece) and at Witley (opposite page 38) is seen this horizontal character, and also in the cottage at Penshurst (page 20) and those in the foreground of the drawing of Goudhurst (page 17).” (pp. 11, 12)