Hidden House History

Medieval

Look for traces of curly ironmongery; a classic technique of decorative hinges during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Though removed, this door carries the scars of 700 years of use.

Elizabethan

Plank doors are usually internal, where they survive. This example is of oak, from Suffolk and dates to c. 1612.

Queen Anne

This door is solid with deeply set panels, with a flat cornice overhead, and features an early fanlight which has been replaced by a simple sheet of glass.

Mid Georgian

Georgian fanlights were separate from the door leaf itself, illuminating the hall beyond. Some carried glazed lanterns that burned in the evening, but this surviving mid-Georgian example instead has a decorative fan pattern of glazing that betrays the name of this feature.

Later Georgian

Later Georgian houses show considerable variety in the designs of fanlights and doorknockers. The stucco façade within which the door is set also betrays the later Georgian date.

Victorian

Victorian doors became elaborate and often used coloured glass in smarter houses. This example shows how the traditional fanlight has become incorporated into the door leaf itself.

Edwardian

At the turn of the twentieth century, oval portholes were popular features, perhaps taken from Edwardian Baroque architecture which borrowed designs of seventeenth-century oval windows. By c. 1930, radial sunburst designs were more popular and larger areas of glazing prefigured the contemporary taste for glazed doors.