by Don Kwikshot

Created on: May 19, 2008

People, especially real estate agents, seem to have great difficulty in dating the homes they are dealing with, or in which they are living, an yet, it's actually very simple. There is no need to have a degree in architecture, or to be an acute architectural historian; it's only necessary to be interested in the subject and to have a reasonable knowledge of your facts and the history of recent time - that is supposing that most of us no longer live in pyramids!

So often in this country (South Africa) homes are described as being 'Victorian' when they were built long after the end of the Victorian era. It seems that anything up to and including 1940 rates as 'Victorian' here and it shows a devastating lack of knowledge. Most homes in the USA (and, let's face it, Helium is principally for the American market) are from early Victorian onwards.

Establishing the age of a house is a fairly simple business and there are several points which should lead you to an accurate assessment:
1: Windows: Most of the real Victorians in this part of the world have sash windows - that is where the opening is divided into two parts - upper and lower. The window is opened by means of either sliding the lower half upwards, or the upper half downwards. Correctly, these windows were further divided into two panes per sliding section, allowing four panes of glass in total. They were generally surrounded by a fairly deep framework. In many warmer climates these windows are covered internally by wooden carved shutters which fold in four and act both as burglar-proofing and as a sun-screen. Before the Victorian era these windows were usually of the casement type, in which two sections of the window opened outwards; these sections were generally divided into smaller panes, and as a general rule, the smaller the pane, the older the window. Another easy way to gauge the age of a building is to observe the relationship between height and depth: the older the window, the broader and lower it was. By the middle of the Edwardian era, windows tended to be either tall and narrow if they were sashes, or the architect preferred to fall back on the earlier design of the casement.

2: Walls: In general these were much thicker 150 years ago than they are today, had no internal cavities, and did not as a rule contain a damp course. As a rule, the thicker the walls, the older the house.

3: Fireplaces: Each era had its own idea of what a fireplace should look like. The Victorians favoured small cast-iron grates

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