Height
I have been trawling through Rightmove, examining properties to write about and becoming increasingly irritated with the poor taste and total lack of imagination on view in English period houses. Property after property is as bland as possible. They may be lovely, full of light with well designed and maintained gardens, but there is a total lack of understanding of how to make use of the vertical plane. A period house after the last quarter of the 17th century and certainly by the first quarter of the 18th century, will have fairly high ceilings. The higher status the property the higher the ceilings and doors and windows. And yet neither modern interior designers who ‘do up’ the more expensive properties, nor Joe Bloggs, seems to have a clue about the ‘up’ part of ‘doing up’. Over and over again, even where period furniture is included in a decorative scheme or ordinary arrangement, it is small pieces, spaced out around the edge of a living room, at the bottom of tall walls
