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The origin of the sash-window

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

H. J. Louw
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Extract

The sudden appearance of the sash-window on the architectural scene towards the end of the seventeenth century and the speed with which this most ingenious product of seventeenth-century building technology spread over half of the Western world in the course of the next century, have always surprised the modern observer. Yet, despite much speculation, neither the sash-window’s inventor nor the date and place of its first appearance are known.

Among the many theories that have emerged in the one and a quarter centuries since the origin of the sash-window became a subject of serious discussion in letters to the editor of Notes and Queries, several have so little foundation in fact that they can be summarily dismissed. Other theories, although equally devoid of a sound factual base, at least rise to the level of informed conjecture and as such deserve further consideration.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 26 , 1983 , pp. 49 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1983

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References

Notes

1 This article is a revised version of the first chapter of my doctoral thesis, The Origin and Development of the Sash-window in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, with special reference to England, accepted at Oxford University in 1981. Henceforth referred to as Louw.

2 Notes and Queries, 2nd series, VI (1858), 147. The subject continued to interest readers until the end of the century; the last entry was made in 1896 (8th series, IX, 436). Much of the discussion was of an etymological nature and centred on the origin of the term ‘sash’.

3 Haslinghuis, E.J., Bouwkundige Termen: Woordenboek der Westerse Architektuurgeschiedenis (Utrecht, 1953), p. 296 Google Scholar.

4 van der Pluym, W., Vijf Eeuwen Binnenhuis en Meubels in Nederland, 1450-1950 (Amsterdam, 1954), pp. 76–77 Google Scholar. For further references to this effect cf. Haslinghuis, E. J., De Nederlandse Monumenten van Geschiedenis en Kunst, II, ‘De Provincie Utrecht’, 1 (The Hague, 1956), 122 Google Scholar; Janse, H., Vensters (Nijmegen, 1971), p. 60 Google Scholar.

5 Janse, Vensters, pp. 57 ff.

6 See for example, Zantkuijl, H. J., ‘Het Schuifraam’, Bouwen in Amsterdam, 24 (1980), 210-11Google Scholar, where the case for France as the place of origin of the sash-window is once more argued.

7 Perry, Francis, Fashion of Windows in Civil and Ecclesiastical Buildings before the Conquest (London, 1762), p. 6 Google Scholar.

8 Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de L’Ancienne Langue Française et tous ses dialectes du IX’ au XV Siècle, 11 (Paris, 1883), 331-32Google Scholar, under coulisse. See also Littre, E., Dictionnaire de la Langue Français, II (Paris, 1878), 841 Google Scholar, under Menuisier.

9 In a building called Le Pressoir. Caisse Nationale des Monuments Historiques et des Sites, Paris. Photograph M.H. 283. 197.

10 Babelon, J. P., Demeures Parisiennes sous Henri IVet Louis XIII (Paris, 1965), p. 78 Google Scholar.

11 Centre de Recherches sur les Monuments Historiques et des Sites, Fenêtres (Menuisiere) à chassis coulissants XVII’ et XVIII’ Siècle (Paris, n.d.).

12 Roubo, M. (Jnr), L’Art du Menuisier, 4 parts in 3 vols (Paris, 1769-74), 1, 104-05Google Scholar. Part of series, Description des Arts et Métiers, published by the Académie des Sciences (1761-89).

13 Roubo only refers to these in the Glossary at the back of Volume III (p. 1278). No confirmation could be found for E. Littre’s suggestion (Dictionnaire, III, 431) that they were introduced by François Mansart (1598-1666).

14 Blum, André, who published about a hundred of Bosse’s engravings under the title, L’Oevre Graué D’Abraham Bosse (Paris, 1924)Google Scholar, dates the illustrated engravings mostly to the mid-1630s.

15 Roubo, , Menuisier, 1, 104-05Google Scholar. Note that the French preferred inward-opening casements, calling the outward-opening type à l’Angloise (Roubo, 1, 90).

16 Havard, Henry, Dictionnaire l’Ameublement et de la Decoration depuis le XIIIe siècle jusqu’à nos jours, 1 (Paris, 1887)Google Scholar, under chassis.

17 Doyon, G. and Hubrecht, R., L’Architecture Rurale et Bourgeoise en France (Paris, 1942), pp. 232 ffGoogle Scholar.

18 Thornton, P., Seventeenth Century Interior Decoration in England, France and Holland (London, 1978), pl. 31 Google Scholar.

19 Lister, Martin, Journey to Paris, 1698 (London, 1699), p. 190 Google Scholar. First quoted by Papworth, Wyatt in Notes and Queries, 3rd series, VII (1865), 449 Google Scholar.

20 Weigert, R. A. and Hernmarck, C., (editors), Les Relations artistiques entre France et Suede, 1693-1718: Extraits d’une correspondence entre l’architecte Nicodème Tessin le jeune et Daniel Cronstrom (Stockholm, 1964), p. 16 Google Scholar.

21 Ibid., p. 20.

22 Haslinghuis, Bouwkundige Termen.

23 Hexham, Henry, English and Netherdutch Dictionary (Rotterdam, 1647/48)Google Scholar. The second (1658/60) and third (1675) editions have no changes to this entry.

24 Pluimer, ‘Buitensp. jal’ (1681). Quoted in De Tollenaere, F., (editor), Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal, 18, (Amsterdam, 1958)Google Scholar, under Venster. (In translation this quotation reads: ‘A broad and fair house . . . but poorly built because it has no windows in the front and nothing but falling lights’.)

25 Goeree, W., d’Algemeene Bouwkunst volgens d’Antyke en de Hedendaagse Manier (Amsterdam, 1681), pp. 165-66, 169Google Scholar.

26 My attention was drawn to these windows by Mr R. Meischke of the Rijksdienst voor de Monumentenzorg, Zeist.

27 Janse, Vensters, pp. 57-58; Meischke, R., ‘Het Slot te Zeist’, Bulletin Koninklijke Nederlandse Oudheidkundige Bond, Jg. 14 (1961), 44–48 Google Scholar.

28 It has been proposed by Zantkuijl, Schuifraam, p. 211, based on van Eeghen, I. H., ‘Het Walenweeshuis drie eeuwen oud’, Maandblad Amstelodamum (1971), p. 79 Google Scholar, that the old French orphange (Walenweeshuis) in Amsterdam, built 1669-73, had counterbalanced sliding windows; but the documentary and historical arguments put forward fail to convince.

29 Upmark, Gustav, ‘Ein besuch in Holland 1687 aus den Reiseschilderungen des schwedische Architekten Nicodemus Tessin d. J.’, Oud Holland (1900), p. 146 Google Scholar.

30 Ibid., p. 123-24. Harris, Walter in his A Description of his Majesty ‘s Palace and Garden at Loo (London, 1699, p. 5)Google Scholar, observes that the building ‘has large sash-windows throughout’, but then, curiously, illustrates an engraving of the building with nothing but cross windows.

31 My account of these windows is based largely on survey and reconstruction drawings made over a period of twenty years at the Rijksdienst voor de Monumentenzorg, Zeist. I am indebted to Mr Wouter Kuyper and Mr Meischke for providing me with this information.

32 Jacob Roman’s first designs for De Voorst showing the original sash-windows have survived and are now in the Bodel Nijenhuis Collection, Leyden University Library (Port. 3133: 46-57). The building has been restored to its seventeenth-century state in 1957-60, complete with sash-windows. For an account of the restoration cf. Baart de la|Faille, C. A., ‘De Geschiedenis en de Restauratie van he Huis de Voorst’, Bulletin KNOB, 16 (1963), 167-92Google ScholarPubMed. Also, Kuyper, W., Dutch Classicist Architecture: a Survey of Dutch Architecture, Gardens and Anglo-Dutch Architectural Relations (Delft, 1980),pp. 183-85Google Scholar. A schematic section of the frame of the sash-windows at Huis’t Velde is given in Janse, Vensters, fig. 33.

33 This theory was first put forward by Mr Meischke in his article on Zeist (1961). See above n. 27. The author now accepts it to be no longer valid. Roman is not known to have visited England before 1689 when William III became king. For his career see chiefly Kuyper, Dutch Classicist Architecture, pp. 178-86, 192.

34 Richard III, v. 3.

35 I am indebted to Dr Robert White for this reference.

36 William Horman, Vulgaria (1519), reprinted Roxburgh Club, edited by M. R. James, 1926, p. 352.

37 Ibid., p. 349.

38 Engraving entitled ‘Hearing’. Pepys Collection, Magdalen College Library, Cambridge, Pl. 2973, p. 411(c).

39 Quoted in Murray, J. A. (editor), A New English Dictionary, III (1927), 65 Google Scholar.

40 Quoted in Thornton, Interior Decoration, p. 81 n. 78.

41 Ibid.

42 For an indication of what these may have looked like see, Forrester, H., The Timber-framed houses of Essex. A Short Review of their types and details 14th to 18th centuries, 2nd edn, (London, 1975), figure 44 Google Scholar. See also Harris, R., Discovering Timber-framed buildings (Aylesbury, Bucks., 1978), pp. 24–25 Google Scholar.

43 One should not however ignore Ben Jonson’s jibe at Inigo Jones in 1631 comparing Jones’s commissions with that of the Spanish court architect: ‘ ... He built a pallace: Thou a Shopp/with slyding windowes, false Lights a top!’. Jonson, , Works, (Herford, C. H. and Simpson, E., editors), Oxford, 1947, VIII, 407)Google Scholar. Information from Mr Howard Colvin.

44 PRO Works, 5/3. Note that the word ‘casement’ is sometimes used in the Works accounts to refer to sliding sashes and not only to window frames opening sideways on hinges.

45 Gunther, R. T., The Architecture of Sir Roger Pratt (Oxford, 1928), p. 295 Google Scholar. It is clear that Pratt is not here referring to sliding windows as such, but is using the term ‘chassis’ in its wider sense.

46 The first recorded instance of the use of the all-timber window (i.e., where the glazing material is fixed in a grid of thin wooden bars) in England is at Prince Henry’s Riding School, St James’s Palace, c. 1607-09. Drawn by Robert Smythson in 1609. Architectural History, 5 (1960), 76,1/14. For a discussion of this most important prelude to the development of the sash-window, see Louw, pp. 66-84.

47 See too for the Duke of York’s employment of a French architect Reuterswärd, P., ‘A French project for a Castle at Richmond’, Burlington Magazine, CIV (December 1962), 533-36Google Scholar.

48 Latham, R. and Matthews, W. (eds), The Diary of Samuel Pepys (London, 1970), V, 300, and vi, 17–18 Google Scholar. Entries for 18 October 1664, 21 January 1664/65.

49 Cowley, Abraham, The Works of Mr A. Cowley (London, 1669), pp. 26–28 Google Scholar:’On the Queens Repairing Somerset House’; Drury, G., editor, The Poems of Edmund Waller, 11 (London, 1893), 61–62 Google Scholar: ‘Upon Her Majesty’s new buildings at Somerset House’. Both poems were presumably written shortly after the building was completed, i.e., c. 1664/65.

50 Colvin, H. M., editor, The History of the King’s Works, V (London, 1976), 255 Google Scholar.

51 Ibid., n. 4.

52 Colvin, , King’s Works, V, fig. 22, pl. 32 Google Scholar.

53 PRO Works, 5/18.

54 PRO Works, 5/8, Account for Somerset House 1 May 1664-end March 1665.

55 Godfrey, Richard, The First Book of Architecture by Andrea Palladio, 2nd Edn, (London, 1668)Google Scholar, Preface.

56 See note 52.

57 PRO Works, 5/7.

58 Ibid.

59 Dunbar, J., ‘The building activities of the Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale 1670-82’, Archaeological Jnl, CXXXII, (1976), 202-30Google Scholar.

60 The accounts for Lauderdale’s English houses as well as some material on the Scottish ones have only recently been catalogued and are among the Tollemache MSS at Buckminster Park, Leicestershire (henceforth referred to as Buckminster). At the time when I inspected these accounts in the County Record Office, Exeter, the material was not fully sorted and no folio numbers were allocated. The reader is therefore referred only to the general catalogue numbers. For the Scottish accounts cf. J. Dunbar, op. cit. Some doubt has been expressed as to whether the Ham House windows were actually counterbalanced (Thornton, Interior Decoration, p. 84) but a summary account for ‘severall works’ carried out at Ham House, c. 1672/73 (Buckminster, 438), includes the following: ‘1872 Sash lights, Lines, weights & Pulleys at 6d p. light. — £46 : 16 : 0’. This account, I believe hitherto unnoticed, is undated but it is by the same hand as the Carpenter’s Bill of 1672 which was finally proved 2 May 1674, and with which it is bound, so it can be safely assumed that it belongs to the same building phase.

61 PRO Works, 5/7, Whitehall, June 1665.

62 PRO Works, 5/10.

63 PRO Works, 5/13; 5/14. The term ‘casement’ used in these accounts must mean ‘sash’.

64 PRO Works, 5/17. This entry seems to have been made as an afterthought, squeezed into the margin next to the entry for joiners’ work done in the withdrawing room of the lodging.

65 For a detailed analysis of the date for this account cf. Louw, p. 289 n. 68.

66 PRO Works, 5/19.

67 Ibid.

68 Buckminster, 57. This account, which is totally omitted from the Office of Works accounts, is titled: ‘Charges in doeing diverse necessary works and alterations in the Duke of Lauderdales Lodgings in the privie Garden begunn in February 1672. And finished in June 1673’.

69 For the complicated building history cf. Dunbar, Building activities, p. 221 ff. and the V & A Official Guide. None of the original sash-windows survives at Ham House, but the Portland stone sills, the external stucco architraves and the internal shutters have. From these it can be deduced that the windows were 2360 mm high × 1320 mm wide (i.e., in the two lower floors) and definitely had central mullions.

70 Among the accounts (Buckminster, 441), there is a bill, dated 17 July 1672 (proved 28 April 1673) of a certain Oliver Atkinson, timber merchants of London, for ‘forty inch & quarter Clapboard leaves for the Shasses at Is a peece’.

71 The building history of the College of Physicians is complicated and not yet properly sorted out. For the dating of the section in which these windows were installed cf. Louw, p. 292 note 88.

72 Robinson, H. W. and Adams, W., The Diary of Robert Hooke, 1672-80 (London, 1931), pp. 201, 205, 381, 437, 453-55Google Scholar.

73 The claim sometimes made that Winchester Palace built for Charles II (1683-85) had sash-windows (e.g., Janse, Vensters, p. 57) is unfounded. The surviving accounts clearly indicate that cross windows only were used in the building (Wren Society, VII, 14, 30-31). No less than 140 sash-windows were installed in the James II building at Whitehall. (PRO Works, 5/54; Wren Society, VII, 86-134). Some of these, the windows in the Queen’s Apartment on the river front, were very big — 3960 mm × 1650 mm according to a sketch design by Wren, (Wren Society, VII, pl. xv)Google Scholar. The detailed monthly accounts for William Ill’s building at Hampton Court survive only up to March 1692. Very few of the large number of sash-windows — those in the King’s Gallery — had been installed by then. The windows in the Queen’s Apartment probably date from 1693 ( Colvin, , King’s Works, V, 159-63Google Scholar). The sash-windows at Kensington Palace were installed by Alexander Fort, Master Joiner, between September 1690 and September 1692 (PRO Works, 19/48/1; Colvin, op. cit., pp. 184-89.

74 Cornforth, J., ‘Boughton House, Northamptonshire’, Country Life, CXLVIII (1970), 504-08, 624-28, 684-87Google Scholar. The Type A sash-windows in the two flanking wings of the north front date from two building phases. Those in the north-east pavilion are the oldest and range from c. 1687 to 1702. Many were left incomplete. Those in the north-west pavilion date from the eighteenth century, c. 1710-12. There is a possibility that some of these sash-windows may have been installed by a French joiner. For this see Louw, p. 307, n. 58.

75 The designer of the chapel, built between 1691-94, is not known although several people, amongst them Sir Christopher Wren, were consulted during its construction (Colvin, Dictionary, pp. 63, 923).

76 PRO Works, 5/5.

77 Ibid., 5/9.

78 Ibid., 5/19.

79 Ibid., 5/27. The old ‘shassis’ was originally installed in October 1664.

80 Miège, Guy, The Great French Dictionary (London, 1688)Google Scholar. The term was not taken up in his New Dictionary (London, 1677).

81 The term’Fenêtres à chassis coulissants’, currently used in France to denote unbalanced vertically sliding windows, must be of fairly recent origin. So must be ‘Fenêtre à Guillotine’, regularly given in modern dictionairies as the translation for ‘sash-window’. As far as could be established neither was used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

82 For a full historical analysis of the use of the term in German see Jacob, chiefly and Grimm, Wilhelm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, VIII (1886)Google Scholar: Col. 2673; ix (1899): Col. 1817. For the use of the term in Dutch, apart from Hexham see: Halma, François, Woordenboek der Nederduitsche en Fransche Taaien, 2nd edn (Amsterdam, 1729)Google Scholar, first published in 1719; Sewel, William, A Large Dictionary, English and Dutch, 5th edn (Amsterdam, 1754)Google Scholar; van Kiersbilck, J. V., Vak & Kunstwoorden III: Amacht van der Timmerman (Gent, 1898)Google Scholar; Kruyskamp, C., editor, Van Dale Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal, 10th edn (The Hague, 1976)Google Scholar.

83 Vergilius, A pleasant and compendious list of the first inventors ... in the world to which is added several curious inventions peculiarly attributed to England and Englishmen (London, 1686)Google Scholar, printed for John Harris.

84 Quoted in French in Hollister-Short, G., ‘Leads and Lags in late Seventeenth Century English Technology’, History of Technology (1976), p. 159 Google Scholar.

85 The phrase comes from the Gestalt Psychology. For a useful discussion of the principal theories regarding the origin and nature of mechanical invention cf. Usher, A. P., A History of Mechanical Inventions, 2nd edn (Harvard Univ. Press, 1954), Chapter IV Google Scholar, ‘The emergence of novelty in thought and action’.

86 For a detailed analysis see Louw, pp. 36-49, 140-41.

87 For Kinward see Louw, p. 308 n. 76.