Stratford Hall, Part IV: Placing the Windows

Updated 8/26/2023

In the previous post* I wrote about all the construction details of Stratford Hall which William Walker, the Master Builder, had to work out before the masons could begin laying the walls.

They are all visible in this photograph: the brick pattern (Flemish Bond) and its variations, the brick headers over the windows in the ground floor and the main floor, the corner brick pattern and that around the windows, the cap at the shoulder, where the walls become thinner by one brick.

The Hall needed big windows on the main (family) floor above, smaller ones on the ground (service) floor below. As William Walker placed and sized the windows he would have considered all these constraints.

I wondered:

Was he drawing on paper, a board, a plaster wall, a framing floor? 

Drawings about framing can still be seen on cathedral walls and floors. So perhaps Walker did his layouts on the floor of the Hall.

He could have used the ground floor as a framing floor as soon as the foundation was set. The floor itself, his sketches and calculations, would become covered with pavers when the Hall was finished and ready for use.

It would also have been easier to lay out his ideas, check his dimensions for both floors from the inside, rather than working on scaffolding outside or in a shed nearby.

Walker used 5 equally sized squares to lay out Stratford Hall's floor plan. Perhaps he used a similar simplicity for the elevations. I drew squares.  

The red boxes show the interior of the wing. My tentative pencil marks are barely visible.

 

Simple squares (using the room height as the length) lay out the window locations for the Hall. Here is the main floor wall with 2 squares. They mark the edges of the center window for the main floor and the ground floor below.

 

 

They also locate the center of the window. The window frame is 2 squares tall - as noted by the diagonal line.

The size of the main floor windows and the width of the ground floor windows is set.

Squares of the same proportions, moved to the sides of the window, locate the outer edges of the windows on the left and right. Note: Square A-A and Square B-B.  

Those windows will be the same size as the center windows. There is plenty of room for the flat arches above the windows; the edging brick patterns are not crowded.

 

The only unknown is the vertical height of the ground floor windows and how far above the floor they will sit. Space must be given for the rowlock arches over the windows.

The Lines which located and sized the main floor windows extend to the ground floor. I've labeled them A-B, B-A, A-B to match what I drew earlier. 

Using the window width as a radius, and the floor of the lower level as the base, (the Line below 3) the center of the circle can be found, the circle and its daisy wheel drawn. It marks the brick arch over the window. It also intersects the Lines of the window widths  locating the height of the ground floor windows. 

The windows are 3/4/5 rectangles.

Walker trained as a joiner in Scotland at the time when James Gibbs, also a Scotsman, was there, and when Gibb's book, 'On Architecture', was published. Gibbs' book included plans for 2 'menageries'.** One was laid out with similar crossed squares, the other used the inside for its geometry as the exterior wall - shown here - was irregular, as is the exterior surface at Stratford Hall. Gibbs also used the 3/4/5 rectangle for layouts.

Copies of James Gibbs' book came to the Colonies. It is possible both William Walker and the Lee family had read the book in Virginia.

* Previous posts:

https://www.jgrarchitect.com/2023/06/stratford-hall-and-paul-buchanan.html

https://www.jgrarchitect.com/2023/07/stratford-hall-part-ii-geometry-of.html

https://www.jgrarchitect.com/2023/08/stratford-hall-part-iii-look-at.html

** My posts on Gibbs' geometry:

https://www.jgrarchitect.com/2021/12/james-gibbs-book-of-architecture.html

https://www.jgrarchitect.com/2022/01/james-gibbs-of-architecture-draughts.html

*  See previous posts:

https://www.jgrarchitect.com/2023/06/stratford-hall-and-paul-buchanan.html

https://www.jgrarchitect.com/2023/07/stratford-hall-part-ii-geometry-of.html 

**Personal note: I have been asked at workshops how I use practical geometry. Here is an example of how I would approach a design today. The geometry would tell me what size the windows would be and their spacing.