Edwardian Garden Paths

[Feltwell]

I tend to think of crazy paving as being a 1970's thing! I presume the houses you've seen were done with stone slabs. I know it can look good when done with stone, rather than cheap concrete slabs.

I really can't see crazy paving sitting very well with the late Victorian / early Edwardian formality and love of structured detail so I would have thought it unlikely to have been original. I can see it sitting better with a later Arts & Crafts style house when done properly with stone slabs with gravel inbetween . But that is purely an opinion, based on no factual knowledge whatsoever!

 

[mims&pip]

Is crazy paving a likelihood in 1904? There are three houses in the next street which seem to be among the most preserved in the area (have lovely original windows and so on). They have the same front garden walls as us and all three have a curved, crazy paved path.

I know crazy paving was big in the 20s and 30s, but could it have been in the Manchester area as early as the Edwardian period?

Alex, as I said in my earlier post we have crazy paved stone paths here but these were added when the house was enlarged in 1924. The extension is Arts & Crafts in style and includes typical features such as a verandah. The original house dates from 1853 which is imho too early for crazy paving.

I'm not sure about 1904 Manchester, but trawling through my extensive collection of books on the Arts & Crafts period, I found the following from Gertrude Jekyll and Laurence Weaver's 'Gardens for Small Country Houses' (published in 1912)......

"Methods of Paving........Thus, a house of eighteenth century character or a garden of formal design seems to demand a pavement of squared flags of York or Portland stone, while a house of the cottage class may be content with random-jointed stone* or even with a few rough-edged flat slabs laid like stepping-stones through grass and flowers......"

* my bold

Throughout the book there are various contemporary photographs of crazy paved pathways.

In 'Gertrude Jekyll Her Art Restored at Upton Grey' by Rosamund Wallinger, there are photos (including some dating from 1916) of the crazy paving laid out to Miss Jekyll's designs at Upton Grey, Hampshire in around 1908. At least some of the stone used there was Purbeck, but mainly for the dry stone walling.

Mims x