How to tell if your house is Victorian or Georgian

Maybe you want to know more about the history and past of your home, or about the street or area in which you live? Knowing which period it was built in is a great place to start.

The Derbyshire area has a wide range of housing in all sorts of shapes and styles, and around here you'll find plenty of both periods within a few streets of each other, along with a great deal of later Victorian terracing built for the collieries.

Have a look at the lists of clues below to see if you can identify which style your house is.

Visible slate roofs. Pillars and bargeboards of carved wood. Ironwork decoration. Big gables. Large paned sash windows. Bay windows. Stained glass in doorways and windows. A lack of symmetry.

Paired chimneys. A parapet round the top, hiding the slope of the roof. Smaller windows near the roof. Window panes in multiples of three. Simple bands of stonework to contrast with the brick. Symmetrical design.

The reason the window panes are such a reliable tell is glass technology. Georgian glass came in small sheets, so windows were made up of many small panes held in glazing bars. By the Victorian period larger sheets were available and cheaper, so panes got bigger and the bars got fewer. If a house has six over six sash windows it is probably telling you the truth about its age, and if it has one over one it probably isn't Georgian, though a Georgian house with Victorian replacement windows is a common enough thing.

Be careful with all of it though, because plenty of houses have been altered, and a Victorian bay bolted onto a Georgian front happens more often than you might think.

Any of this matters practically if you're planning work, because a period property is more likely to sit in a Conservation Area or to be listed, and both change what you're allowed to do to it. There's more on that in do you need planning permission.

If you want to know any more about the different styles of local houses, or about architecture and design, get in touch with Chris Froggatt of Architectural Building Design Services, who will be able to answer all of your questions and give you loads more information. He is "the man with the plan"!

For more information please call us on 07773 899 597 or contact us through this website.