Behind the Façade

An essential book for anyone interested in understanding London houses. Much has been written about Georgian London and its street architecture but far less about the arrangements for everyday life behind the street faades. Sir John Summerson's Georgian London of 1945 identified a standard type of house plan in the Metropolis but since then scholars have unearthed a much more diverse picture. This book, by two leading experts, has an informative introduction and uses specially drawn plans and accompanying photographs to chart the wide range of London's street architecture in the long Georgian period. The studies range from the small but respectable one-room houses of the East End (now almost all demolished as slums), to the more comfortable and familiar arrangements of the grander houses in the West End.