Notting Hill Living

Stairs

Wooden stairs

Early Georgian staircases were built from softwoods like pine. But by the Victorian period, hardwoods like mahogany and oak were used at least for the hand rails and quite often for the rest of the construction as well.

Iron stairs

Wrought and cast iron revolutionised the construction of staircases in Regency times. With an iron frame and cantilever, stairs could be built without apparent support and even the risers could be held up hidden iron supports from the wall. Valuable woods like mahogany were used for the handrails but the balusters might be made of cast or wrought iron.

'Dog legs'

The standard arrangement of a small terraced houses was like this. You opened the main door, stepped into a small hall and then either continued up the stairs which were built against the wall, or you stepped into the passage which skirted the staircase and which led into a front and a back room and, possibly, an additional room in an extension right at the back. The stairs themselves went up to a half landing where they made a “dog leg” turn at right angles upwards again, for as many storeys as was needed.

Two sets of stairs

Having only one set of stairs meant that the family and their servants both had to use them. (This was not just a matter of snobbery. There was also the unpleasant business of “night soil” being removed.) Only in the larger houses was it possible to have two staircases. The most fashionable arrangement was to have a “great stair” from the front entrance hall to the first floor reception rooms. There would be a separate staircase from the basement to the attic stairs at the back of the house, lit by a skylight, which would still have to be shared by everyone for reaching upper floors. But since the first floor was the main family and entertaining floor this was a sufficient compromise. Houses normally had to be four or five windows wide to incorporate a second staircase. But even in houses three windows wide which had to have a dog-leg staircase – because there was no room for a grand stair case – there might still be a second set of stairs at the very back, accessed only through a back room on each floor.

Great stairs

The earliest form of great stair was the "front compartment stair" right at the front of the house. The stair went up into the house and then turned back to the front of the house to be lit by a front window. By 1770 the "front compartment stair began to be replaced by the more attractive "central stair". The stair started further back into the house beyond the entrance hall, and it was lit by a top light in the roof. This had the advantage of allowing the rooms at the front to expand in width to the whole frontage of the house. In the grander houses, the staircase itself might be in marble with the steps cantilevered from the wall on metal brackets.

Back stairs

As the Georgian and Victorian eras progressed, ever larger wings came to be built at the back of houses to accommodate back stairs and these wings also provided some extra rooms.