This document discusses the typology and morphology of English semi-detached houses. It provides background on critiques of semi-detached housing and examines different semi configurations. The document explores the concept of "type" and analyzes internal layouts and external forms of semis over time. While semis demonstrate some plan variations over 150+ years, the evidence does not strongly support the existence of a systematic typological process of change. The semi may better be described as having a "universal plan" that remained largely consistent over the period studied.

1. Morphology,
micromorphology and typo-morphology: the
English semi-detached house
Peter J. Larkham
Birmingham City University

2. Introduction: why the semi?

3. A broad range
of academic
interest (even
if critical!)

4. Academic and professional critiques
“…the outskirts of Banbury were a sorry sight, for the sturdy stone
heart of the old market town by the Cherwell is besieged on all sides by
semi-detached monstrosities whose growth has recently received fresh
impetus from new industrial expansion” (Rolt, 1944, p. 50)

5. Academic and professional critiques
“a wilderness of semi-detached houses in sham-rural streets are indeed
something more than a chaos of romantic individualism in themselves:
they are the physical expression of the prime social evil of the age.
Everywhere individualism is supreme: and the Street and the Town,
those two units in which the quality of man’s mass association has
always been so clearly symbolised, unmistakeably illustrate it – by their
very absence” (Sharp, 1936, p. 87).

6. Academic and professional critiques
The semi-detached is “perhaps the least satisfactory building unit in the
world” (Patrick Abercrombie, 1939, p. xix)
“Suburbia is a dirty word. This is natural enough for, with rare
exceptions, the appearance of Britain’s suburbia is at best dull, and at
worst hideous” (Edwards, 1981, p. 1)

7. Social attitudes?
“The only fault of the house is that it is semi-detached.”
“Oh, Aunt Sarah! You don’t mean that you expect me to live in a semi-detached
house?”
“Why not, dear, if it suits you in all other respects?”
“Why, because I should hate my semi-detachment, or whatever the
occupants of the other half of the house may call themselves.”
(E. Eden (1859) The semi-detached house, p. 1)

8. Osbert Lancaster’s “By-pass
variegated”

11. “Semi-detached” as
a work of art!
By Michael Landy, at
the Tate Gallery,
2004

12. Semi-detached suburbia is relatively low density, therefore threatened by
contemporary planning policies and development economics (this photo is 1991)

13. Typology and type; morphology and
micromorphology

14. According to Cannigia and Maffei:
Type:
“During a moment of greater civil continuity, builders, guided by their
spontaneous consciousness, can produce an object ‘without thinking
twice’, only unconsciously conditioned by their cultural background.
That object [building] will be determined out of previous experiences in
their civil surroundings” (p. 50)

15. According to Cannigia and Maffei:
Building Type:
“… buildings with a certain function in common … or, less generally,
buildings with a similar structural-distributive plan … or … [used to
systematize buildings] unitarily characterizing buildings with the same
purpose and similar architectural characteristics” (p. 50).
“In other words, if we see that two or more houses have similar
characteristics, we label them together and say that these houses
belong to the same ‘building type’” (p. 51).

16. In the Italian typo-morphological approach, therefore,
Type is usually identified by a posteriori analysis; but similar houses,
leading to the identification of a “type”, may be “produced in such a
way because their builders would not have been capable of producing
them differently … each house corresponds to the house concept in
force at the time in which each of them was built” (p. 52).
“Type is, therefore, the conception of the building produced” (p. 54).

17. In the Italian typo-morphological approach, therefore,
“Type cognition necessitates another further definition, typological
process. If we examine several historical building types in the same
cultural area, we perceive progressive differentiation among them,
more marked in very old buildings and less so in more recent buildings”
(p. 54).
“In actual fact, the contribution of widespread changes can only be
read at prolonged intervals, comparing a new order to its previous
ones” (p. 55).

18. Perhaps more confusingly,
“Type can be defined as a heritage of common, transmittable
characters pre-existent to the formation of the organism, governing the
generation of the single elements and the structure of their
relationship. Type is not definable by a simple statistical recurrence of
certain requisites; it is not an abstract model, but rather a synthesis of
the original characters of a building; it is the materialization of a
persistent set of notions, principles, and characters inherited on a
collective basis and accepted by a civilization throughout its history”
(Strappa, 1998, p. 92).

19. Perhaps more helpfully,
“The concept of building type is the mental tool used to facilitate
orientation in the intriguing stratified layers of the [urban] fabric”
(Petruccioli, 1998, p. 12).
“The birth of a type is conditioned by the fact that a series of buildings
share an obvious functional and formal analogy among themselves. In
the process of comparing or selectively superimposing individual forms
for the determination of the type, the identifying characteristic of
specific buildings is eliminated and only the common elements remain
which then appear in the whole series” (Petruccioli, 1998, p. 11, after Argan)

20. More generally,
“Type” is defined as
• “a kind, class or category, the constituents of which share similar
characteristics” .
• “a subidivision of a particular class”
• “the general form, plan or design distinguishing a particular group”
“Typology” is
• “the study of types in archaeology, biology etc.”
(Collins English Dictionary)

21. What is “the semi”?

22. The archetypal English semi-detached
house?
“Britain’s most popular house
type” (Jensen, 2007, front cover)

23. The “universal plan”
semi – although
architectural styles
vary!

24. But a semi-detached pair does not have to be symmetrical!

25. But some can be single-storey

26. Or only just separated!

27. Just because buildings are physically attached does not mean that
they were built at the same time nor that they should be considered
as a “semi-detached pair”

28. Conversion of detached
to semi-detached (built
1734, Manningham)
York

29. Three (or more)
houses, of the
same floor plan
as a semi-detached
pair,
form a terrace

30. And a single,
again of the
same floor
plan, is
detached

31. Detached, but
unusally obviously
a “half-semi”
design!

32. Detached or semi-detached? Often in close proximity, of same design, not
constrained by site. So what factors affect this choice?

33. Or even the decision to build semi-detached or terraced (these are in very
close proximity)

34. The impact of
extensions
(affect character but
not “type”?)

35. Alterations in 1994 certainly affected character! (centre)
(half-timbering subsequently removed)

36. Over-extended?

37. If everyone
extends to the
property
boundaries, does
this create a
terrace?

38. Different plan forms

39. Semis can be double-fronted (or more) (that on extreme right has lost its
right-hand chimney)

40. Double fronted but entrances on side wall: these are
maisonettes (4 dwellings per block)

41. Centre bay, centre
chimney,
entrances at side
of front elevation

43. Centre entrance,
habitable rooms
and chimneys at
sides

44. Centre entrances
(chimneys usually at sides!)

45. Symmetrical, but
centre bays
projecting.
Entrances on side
walls

46. Garages at centre, though entrances differ

47. Turning the street corner

48. Coping with hills

49. Dates (and styles)
“Every house is different!” (Wates, advertisement, c. 1938)

50. A timeline of styles
(Jensen, 2007)
Variation in Wates house designs
(company brochure c. 1938)

51. The earliest semis?
In 2008 there was a robust debate on the Guardian website seeking to
identify the first semis.
• Michael Searles, early 1790s, Kennington Park
• T. Gayfere & J. Groves, 1776, Blackheath (in Pevsner & Cherry)
• Richard Gillow, 1758/9, Moor Lane
• Unknown, c. 1715-25, 808-810 Tottenham High Road
• Unknown, 1690s, Northgate, Warwick
• Unknown, late mediaeval? now 169-170 Spon Street, Coventry (via the
city’s Conservation Officer)

52. Very early!

53. Classical (early Victorian)

54. Mid-Late Victorian

55. Edwardian

56. 1920s
Reminiscent of Edwardian pre-war
Local Authority-built, smaller, lacks
detailing
Cast iron, immediately post-First World War

57. 1930s
Reminiscent of Edwardian pre-war/
1920s

58. Modern(e), twentieth-century inter-war

59. 1950s/60s
Post-war
‘experimental’

60. (very) contemporary

61. Recently constructed

62. Chingford,
1993

63. Internal layouts

64. The typo-morphological approach?
Typically, typo-morphological
studies have shown a (perhaps
idealised) diagram of the
development of the “type’s” plan
over time.

72. A typological process?

73. Front
Living room (parlour)
Dining room
Service (hallway, stairs, landing)
Kitchen

74. Front
Living room (parlour)
Dining room
Service (hallway, stairs, landing)
Kitchen

75. Front
Living room (parlour)
Dining room
Service (hallway, stairs, landing)
Kitchen
Bays – optional front/back,
could be lower only

76. Front
Living room (parlour)
Dining room
Service (hallway, stairs, landing)
Kitchen
Bays – optional front/back,
could be lower only
Adjoining semi could be
attached to either side

77. Double-fronted, large service area
(kitchen, scullery, wash-house, toilet etc)
Primarily early (eg Victorian)
Single living
room (2-up, 2-
down), early, low
status
Universal plan,
common from
First World War
Stairs between
living & dining
rooms, primarily
early

78. Double-fronted, large service area
(kitchen, scullery, wash-house, toilet etc)
Primarily early (eg Victorian)
Single living
room (2-up, 2-
down), early, low
status
Universal plan,
common from
First World War
With garage, and perhaps
“outhouse”, either side,
from c. 1930/35

79. Double-fronted, large service area
(kitchen, scullery, wash-house, toilet etc)
Primarily early (eg Victorian)
Single living
room (2-up, 2-
down), early, low
status
Universal plan,
common from
First World War
With garage, and perhaps
“outhouse”, either side,
from c. 1930/35
May be detached, in
rear garden

80. Post-war, particularly 1980s onwards
“Cloakroom” (toilet – paralleling
the fashion for more en suites
upstairs!)

81. Post-war, particularly 1980s onwards
New construction but, increasingly, conversions
Open plan, “kitchen/diner”
Open plan, “lounge/diner”

82. Area layouts
Perhaps the “urban morphology” scale?
Certainly we could recognise “morphological regions”; patterns in
streets, plots, buildings (forms, details, even land uses?)

86. Edgware,
London, c. 1935

89. Morphological areas, regions, plan units,
morphotopes?

91. Conclusions

92. • This has not been a systematic analysis; although much of the
pictorial evidence comes from within a 3-mile radius within
Birmingham.
• We can develop a chronology/geography (what was built where and
when) but this relates more closely to (superficial) architectural style
and fashion than to plan form.

93. • Key factors include
• Market (what is fashionable, what will sell)
• Funding (availability of purchase funding for individuals; private letting;
financing of social housing)
• Land availability (outward expansion in inter-war period; new settlements;
“densification” from mid-1980s)
• National housing/density standards (especially after both World Wars)
• Social status: the “parlour” 2-room plan
• Social status + technological change: providing garages for motor cars

94. • Is there a typological process at work?
• I cover a period of some 150+ years, analogous to some recent examples of
typological analysis
• But there is little evidence of systematic diachronic change in plan form: even
garage additions are varied by time, location/developer, status etc.
• Some very modern semis are very similar in plan form and architectural style to those of,
say, 80 years ago; almost “universal plan”.
• Question: what is the impact of planning and housing policy on typology of the
semi-detached over the second half of this period?

95. So: does the concept of typological process
relate to the English semi? Let’s discuss!