ABSTRACT
The extra plot width allowed a fair amount of garden, and with its complete break on one side providing room for a garden entrance for tradesmen and dustmen, the semi imparted an illusion of privacy combined with a slight basis for snobbery. Cottage styles, more or less loosely based on designs conceived by the Garden Suburb and small house architects of 1890–1914, were a common starting point, but whereas the originals had the virtues of simplicity, the speculator went overboard with decoration. The design allowed some scope for individuality in decoration, and proved amenable to the rural romantic treatment which was to be carried over with such enthusiasm from the suburban villas of the Victorians. Bungalows were most frequently encountered on cheap land, which meant that they occurred in quantity in suburban Essex and the lowlying outer fringes of Middlesex around Uxbridge and Staines.
