The young Dance has chosen (or was set) to design a house on a triangular plan and quite ingeniously flattens the apex, extends the sides and makes the centre of the base segmental, so that the design looks rather like a compass in shape or, in the manner of the later architects of the Arts and Craft Movement, a butterfly. But the planning is clumsy with identical plans for both floors, awkward circulation, no provisions of a secondary stair, dressing rooms or water closets. And the draughtsmanship is uncertain, particularly in the setting out of the staircase.

An early example in England of a house on a three-sided plan was the Triangular Lodge at Rushton, Northamptonshire built as a defiant symbol of the Trinity in 1594-7. In the 18th century, of houses designed on a polygonal plan, the triangle seems to have enjoyed the greatest favour. An engraving of a section of a triangular house made before 1742 by Theodore Jacobson is an album of prints collected by the elder Dance (framed f.3). Stillman (1988, p.151) writes 'Designs for houses in ths shape by Chambers Adam, Carr, Dance (catalogued here), Carter and Nash ... are known; and some of these were carried out, including Carr's Grimston Garth Yorkshire, of 1781-6, Nash's Castle House in Aberystwyth for Uvedale Price of c.1795, and Adam's Walkingshaw House, Renfrewshire, 1791.'

LITERATURE. D Stillman, English Neoclassical architecture, 1988.

Group

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