edges of the slates in grooves. They will be very long corks doubtless, but they will be very efficient, and will last a very long time, and can be very easily replaced if needful, without the slightest difficulty of access, and at a very tritling cost.
So now we have got a really flat roof with a slope, say of half an inch to the yard, to lead away the rain-water, and overhanging the wall, with a cornice all round and a parapet some six inches in height, to prevent rain from falling over or into the street. On this parapet is an ornamental railing to prevent accidents. Thus there is a flat pavement on the house-top, as flat as the foot-pavement in the street below.
The slates are laid on rafters of iron or wood— or iron and wood—the edges being kept together by iron dogs. But the slates aro only an inch in thickness, and are exposed to heat and cold. Well, the rain and the snow will not affect them, for the cork provides against that. But the room below might be affected. True, so we will ceil that room with lath and plaster, or with a ceiling of thin slabs; and between the two we will provide for a constant current of external air in summer, which will keep the room cool enough, and for fixed warm air in winter, which will warm the room and cause all snow to melt on the roof.
Supposing a range of houses of equal height and the roofs communicating, we should thus obtain an upper street by which the inmates of a burning house might escape, or which they might convert into a garden far more healthy than the enclosures we call squares, or a playground for their children, or in the case of poor people, into a laundry and drying ground. And further, if we bridged over the intervening openings, all London might communicate by a system of aërial streets.
But inasmuch as we are not a gregarious people, and most men like to sit down each under the shade of his own something or other—fig trees not being indigenous—it would be quite practicable to carry up thin slate partitions with doors for emergencies. And thus, upon the roof, greenhouses might be erected if preferred to the open air. And probably we should soon see ivy and creeping plants entwining London chimneys as they do country chimneys, the boxes in which they might be rooted being supplied with water from high-level fountains quite as prettily as the Temple court. The water would be better applied than as at present to other and mischievous uses.
These gardens would be far more healthy than those of the low lying districts round London. We might have a return of the olden time only with the gardens elevated. Instead of saying : “My Lord of Ely when I passed your garden,” it would be: “My Lord of Ely, now I mount your garden,” and, Hatton Garden would be restored.
And Whetstone Park, that “Punch” mocks at so comically, might fairly look down on Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
Think of the wine-parties, supper-parties, and open-air dinners, that might take place with the upper crust of London restored to its proprietors! Compare Pump Court, Temple, with the new gardens of Chepe looking on to St. Paul’s, and Bow bells chiming; meanwhile men’s brains crooning with old reliques of the merry doings of the olden time, around the crosses of Paul and Chepe.
But now for the drawbacks of “Sitch a gettin’ up-stairs.” What then? How many of the poor are there who would gladly mount the Monument, could they only get fresh air or the sight of a garden, and especially a garden of their own—not a window garden, but a garden to walk in. And for those better off there are mechanical appliances enough, when they come to be wise enough to use them, as instance the Coliseum in the Regent’s Park. Gardens of this kind would be, as in the East, the resort of the family in fine weather, and in bad weather a warm greenhouse on the roof would be a more pleasant thing than a dark parlour. Scarcely anything could be conceived more beautiful than the enormous expanse of London roofs covered with shrubs and flowers. And it would be a perfectly practicable thing so to construct the greenhouses that they might be open or closed at pleasure. Every housekeeper might possess his own bit of Crystal Palace, his own fountains, and his own flower baskets, watered not by hand, but by art without labour, so that the lady of the house, by a process as easy as ringing a bell, would effect this object.
And now as to cost. This kind of roof, once in demand, would be cheaper than ordinary roofs in first cost, and immeasurably cheaper in maintenance. The roof would be at least as permanent as the walls. The system awaits only the riddance of smoke for open air purposes, but for greenhouse purposes it might be accomplished to-morrow. Every separate house in a row might at once possess what is at present the peculiar luxury of people who happen to possess corner houses. If a London builder about to erect a row of four-roomed cottages, were to adopt such a system, it would be equivalent to adding another story as a garden to each house, with the same outlay, and without increasing ground-rent. If at the same time he could arrange his fires to prevent them engendering smoke, and carry water on to the roof, he would provide for the operation of washing and drying without slops in the house. But we must get the legislature at work to compel smokeless arrangements in dwellings as well as in factories.
Looking back in these pages, they seem so unusual as to read like a romance. Gardens on our housetops! Babylonian luxuries! But I am nothing if not—practical. And, for my own part, I shall feel greatly obliged to any critic who will demonstrate to me that any part of this proposition is either nut practical, or not practicable; in short, not a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence, by which landlords may reap profits and tenants reap a large amount of comfort and health.
With flat roofs water-tight as a cistern, and with water laid on to them, and easy of access, the area of London dwellings would be practically doubled; and I may add that such an arrangement of roof would be better, cheaper, and more permanent for railway-stations, than the coverings of corrugated metal.
W. Bridges Adams.
