Summary

Author: Halfpenny, William

Title: Twelve beautiful designs for farm-houses, with their proper offices and estimates of the whole and every distinct building separate ; with the measurement, and value of each particular article, adapted ... more particularly for the following counties, viz. Middlesex, Surry, Essex, Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Somersetshire, &c. Useful for gentlemen, builders, &c. The third edition.

Publication: London, “printed for Robert Sayer, map and print seller, (No.53.) Fleet Street” 1774.

Price: £1,950

Reference: 09242

Full Description

A scarce pattern book of designs for farmhouses in the southern counties of England, first published in 1750 and intended by its author to meet a demand for designs of this character not entirely met by Daniel Garret’s then recently published volume of designs for farm houses in Yorkshire and other northern counties. Garret’s and Halfpenny’s were the first English publications specifically devoted to farm buildings. Although Halfpenny’s elevations are of no greater architectural merit than those in Halfpenny’s other pattern books of the period, there is much variety in the architectural character and ground plans of each of the farm houses, and his detailed costings are particularly informative. The printed leaf immmediately following the volume’s title leaf is an advertisement leaf carrying an extensive list of “books of architecture, &c.” available from the volume’s publisher, Robert Sayer, including architectural titles by Halfpenny, Abraham Swan and Robert Morris, and engraved suites of ornament by Matthias Lock, Thomas Johnson, and so on. The present edition is an essentially unaltered reissue of the 1750 first edition (the advertisement leaf is a substitute for the original preface leaf), but copies of all editions of this title are uncommon. BAL Cat 1452 (this edition, the only edition held by the BAL).