Old English (1915-1940)
• Textured red or ‘tapestry’ multi-coloured brickwork.
• Dark-stained half timbering laid over brickwork or rough casting
• Gothic or Tudor styles sandstone trims to major doors and windows
• Centred or flattened ‘Tudor’ arches
• Steeply pitched terracotta tiled roofs
• Oriel windows
• Diamond pane leadlight windows with heraldic motifs in stained glass
• Heavy panelled entrance doors with decorative hardware
• Diagonal shaped chimney stacks with multiple ribs and elaborate stepped tops
Images of ‘Olde England’ were common in the Federation period right up until the end of the First World War. After the war architectural styles started to change with many adopting the Arts and Crafts or the American bungalow styles. By the late 1920s a distinctive style of designed had been adopted by a small group of architects following a fashion in England and America for reproduction ‘Tudor’ mansions for the very wealthy and smaller so-called ‘Stockbroker Tudor’ houses for the upper middle classes. The Old English style involved a certain nostalgia for English ways, and tended to draw on Tudor and other similar English styles vaguely reminiscent of the days of Henry VIII. It had a certain appeal for what was still a predominantly Anglo-Saxon population at the time. In Australia these houses are officially referred to as ‘Inter-war Old English’ but are commonly called ‘Stockbroker Tudor Style’. The most distinctive feature of this style is the black and white half timbering based on Elizabethan cottage work.
Old English Style in Burrawong Ave Mosman, date and architect unknown
