A bookend terrace is a short row of

terraced house A terrace, terraced house ( UK), or townhouse ( US) is a type of medium-density housing which first started in 16th century Europe with a row of joined houses sharing side walls. In the United States and Canada these are sometimes known as row ...

s, where the two end houses of the terrace are larger than the others. This gives the visual effect of

bookend A bookend is an object tall, sturdy, and heavy enough that is placed at either end of a row of upright books to support or buttress them. Heavy bookends—made of wood, bronze, marble, and even large geodes—have been used in libraries, sto ...

History

Bookend terraces in Britain first appeared in the late-

Georgian period The Georgian era was a period in British history from 1714 to , named after the Hanoverian kings George I, George II, George III and George IV. The definition of the Georgian era is also often extended to include the relatively short reign ...

, as the combination of

neo-classical architecture Neoclassical architecture, sometimes referred to as Classical Revival architecture, is an architectural style produced by the Neoclassicism, Neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century in Italy, France and Germany. It became one of t ...

and the newly built terraces in the expanding cities. Typical terraces were identical throughout, but high-status developments, where space and budget permitted, might have a central protrusion to their facade or even a portico added as a feature. For prices between these ranges, the bookend terrace was a means to produce the symmetrical but non-uniform frontage demanded by the classical style, where the two end houses were distinguished by extra height or a protruding frontage, without involving the unprofitable extra cost and increased plot depth of the central portico. In the Victorian period, terraces again became regular, then in the mid-Victorian period the

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century It ...

style introduced entirely random variations between houses. The heyday of the bookend style was in the late-Victorian of the 1870s and 1880s, by which time domestic architecture had developed its own indigenous vernacular style. The ever-increasing demand for housing in the growing cities of this period led to house sizes shrinking, to match the shrinking households of fewer, and non-resident

servant A domestic worker is a person who works within a residence and performs a variety of household services for an individual, from providing cleaning and household maintenance, or cooking, laundry and ironing, or care for children and elderly ...

s. Many of these new houses were of two storeys, not the previous three-plus-basement. This led to the most familiar style of bookend terrace: a row of between six and twelve houses in total, with the central ones being of two storeys with a longitudinal roof ridge. At each end is a house of the overall same plot size, but of three storeys and with its own independent roof and gables to front and back. The upper storey in these houses have two bedrooms, with sloping ceilings to their sides immediately beneath the roof, rather than having an attic space above. Prestige features, such as

bay window A bay window is a window space projecting outward from the main walls of a building and forming a bay in a room. A bow window is a form of bay with a curve rather than angular facets; an oriel window is a bay window that does not touch the g ...

s, may be more prominent in the end terraces; either fitted to the end houses alone, or used on both storeys rather than just the ground floor. As there is side access to the end houses, their main 'front' doors are often relocated to the ends walls and may be enclosed in a small

porch A porch (; , ) is a room or gallery located in front of an entrance to a building. A porch is placed in front of the façade of a building it commands, and forms a low front. Alternatively, it may be a vestibule (architecture), vestibule (a s ...

, while the central houses have their door opening directly to the exterior. Terraces of this style appeared throughout the UK, from the suburbs of cities to small villages. A common instance was around the newly developing branch line railway stations, often as the first 'modern' houses in a newly connected village. The term is most used today in Australia, where it forms part of the

estate agent An estate agent is a person or business in the United Kingdom that arranges the selling, renting, or managing of real estate, properties and other buildings. An agent that specialises in renting is often called a Letting agent, letting or manag ...

's common descriptive vocabulary, although it is now largely used as a synonym for any 'end terrace' and the size variation is ignored.

Bookend effect

An unrelated effect in terraced houses is the claimed 'bookend effect'. This claims that side loads from the central houses cause the end houses, particularly their end walls, to bulge outwards. The effect arises from cyclical expansion and contraction effects, both daily and annually. As the terrace expands, the end walls are pushed outwards, leading to cracking in walls or lozenge distortion of door and window frames. As the terrace contracts again, the usual weaknesses of building materials in tension cannot recover these movements entirely and the cracks remain. This effect is most pronounced in taller structures, those of four storeys and taller. The existence, or not, of this effect is itself controversial.

References

{{Reflist House types in the United Kingdom House types