Gaelen Foley, Historical Romance, History

"The Area"
This is one of the hardest concepts to explain to those who have not yet visited London and seen a Regency townhouse for themselves, so please bear with me. I want all those interested to be able to get a clear mental picture of what the area is and how it functioned, because we don't have them here.

As any good construction worker can tell you, before a new neighborhood can be built, first you need adequate streets. The Regency builders also followed this caveat, since they were usually dealing with pre-existing crooked London lanes that may well have served the burgeoning populace since medieval or even Roman times. By the Regency, the Industrial Revolution had already begun to bring on a population boom.

Because the roadway was built up in front of the terrace to support busy 19th century traffic, the basement of each townhouse was sunken partly below street-level. If you can imagine what a "basement apartment" of today looks like, you've got it-there might be a high, narrow window that generally gives you a view of people's knees walking by. Thus you can see how the wrought-iron fence prevented people from falling down into the area!

The area was the entrance used by servants coming and going, and by delivery people dropping off their wares. This class of souls did not dare use the front door. That was for the Quality. If you were a worker, you had to go through the wrought-iron gate in front of the townhouse and down a steep flight of cellar-type stairs into the "area."
Conversely, "the family" would probably have no occasion ever to go down there. Coming down these stairs, to your left you would see the large, stall-like, padlocked doors of the coal vaults; to your right, you would come to an ordinary looking door, the service entrance, giving access to the basement level of the townhouse.
Coal vaults.

When the road was being built up, the builders frequently hollowed out coal vaults below the surface of the road in front of each unit, which the homeowner could then use as storage space. The collier could come by and drop off a delivery of coal, simply lifting a brass cover in the sidewalk, called an "eye" (like a small manhole cover) and dump the coal down the chute into the vault. This was considered a great convenience. The coal would just stay there, taken inside little by little to cook with in the kitchens or to warm the house's many fireplaces.

The Basement.

We are venturing into the Interior of the house here, but the realm of the servants was something separate from that of "the family" so let's continue in this vein, though it will take us indoors.

If you were, say, a fish-seller going door-to-door with the fresh catch of the day, you would go down the area steps, knock on the service door, and see if you could interest the Cook in your fish. Of course, Cook is back in the kitchen at the very back of the townhouse, basement level, so perhaps the little scullery maid who answered the door might lead you back through the basement. You would find this a small but tightly organized, efficient work space as you passed various servant offices, and gender- segregated sleeping quarters for servants that double as their dining hall when the cots/hammocks are put away.

You would also pass a large wine-cellar-firmly locked!-the scullery (dish-washing and other tedious-chore room with a couple of huge sinks), possibly a laundry room, a china pantry, and the entrance to the cramped, twisting, wooden servant stairs that run in a narrow shaft up through the core of the house. All the maids know you mustn't let these stairs creak when carrying tea up to Milady! Servants are to be as silent and invisible as possible at all times.

You would notice that the basement has a cool, rather dank flagstone floor and plain white plaster walls with rounded corners so the crowd of servants can bustle around speedily at their jobs without injuring themselves.

Nearing the back, you'd reach food storage compartments such as the meat larder and pantry, and lastly, the kitchen itself. Today the kitchen is considered the heart of the home, but for most of history, it's been a major fire hazard. To minimize the risk, the kitchen was set back as far as was feasible from the main block of the house; no surprise, then, that foreign guests complained about the food in England usually arriving at the table cold. It had a long way to travel!

In any case, if Cook was interested in serving fish for one of dinner's numerous courses that day, you'd sell her a few choice specimens from your catch of the day, and be on your way to try your luck at the next-door neighbor's.

Meanwhile, fashionable life carried on elegantly as usual above-stairs. . . .

Web Tour: This is a great time to visit the Regency Town House project in Brunswick Town, just west of Brighton. They have been able to preserve the basement level (where most of this information has come from) as well as restoring a gorgeous townhouse to its original splendor. Look around and come back as we go inside the Regency townhouse! Enjoy... http://www.regency-town-house.org.uk/

In a culture obsessed with neoclassicism in everything from art to opera to clothing and hair styles, it is not surprising that an attractive, orderly uniformity of appearance was desired. Not every unit in the terrace had to be exactly the same, but there might be four of five designs that would be repeated on down the row. Ornamental features of the front exterior could include pilasters (flat pillars) on either side of the entrance; a triangular pediment or fan light over the door; one or more friezes; a bow window; flower boxes or miniature wrought-iron balconies at the middle row of windows. The front doors could be painted in a striking contrast color, such as blue or red. Depending on local topography, there might be a few shallow front steps to climb to reach the front door. Possible decorations could include a pineapple or sphinx motif, both traditional symbols of welcome and hospitality; potted flowers and topiaries were also popular.	Outside the door of most Regency townhouses you'd find a bootscrape to help a man get the mud off his boots before going inside.
Tying the whole terrace together visually was the omnipresent wrought-iron fence. The fence did not block the way to the front door; instead, it began on either side of it and formed a safe barrier around the so-called "area" in front of the building so that people walking by did not fall down the delivery/servant steps into the cellars! (Further discussion of "the area" below.) I imagine the wrought-iron fence must have also provided a certain degree of security in a city filled with "house breakers" (burglars) like our friend Billy Blade in Lady of Desire. In London today, most of the wrought-iron fences you'll see are black, but here and there, you'll see a muted teal shade that was a popular color for wrought-iron during the Regency. Any shade of blue, green or gray would have worked for them.
Sometimes the wrought-iron fence would be worked upward into a lovely, frothy arch that one had to pass under in order to approach the front door; often, a matching wrought-iron lantern was built into the top of the arch and provided exterior lighting. Otherwise, exterior lighting could be provided by a pair of brass or iron lanterns mounted on either side of the front door. In any case, in the nice neighborhoods where Regency terraces were newly built, most of the streets had street-lamps These were lit by oil-natural gas had only been installed on a few streets as a novelty at this point, and was generally feared by the public as being unsafe, liable to explode. You'll note from the various photos that the neighborhoods also had sidewalks; they called them "pavements."	Streetlamp
One more aside about the exterior of the buildings. Street signs did not usually stand on poles on the corner like we have today. Instead, the street name could be painted right on the side of the corner building, well above eye-level, but I suppose they were put in an easily visible spot if you were sitting up on the driver's box of a coach trying to drive His Lordship wherever he needed to go. If the street sign was not painted, it would likely be engraved on a metal placard of brass, copper or iron, set right into the side of the building. But back to the townhouses.