​Casement Windows and Character... October 2024

As the 2024 Topsmead house tour season winds down, Miss Edith's house welcomes October and its last weekends of tours.  To beautify the house for fall tours, Debbie Feussenich, a member of the Friends of Topsmead, gathers goldenrod and other flowers from the meadows and marigolds and zinnias from the cutting garden and creates colorful fall flower arrangements in vases chosen from Miss Lucy's flower room.  When she places the arrangements around the house, they add a pungent fall fragrance that enlivens the house.  To prepare the house for tours, the docent team goes around opening window curtains to let in the day and cranking open the casement windows to let fresh fall air stream in and invigorate the rooms.
 
The casement windows in each room seem to have stories of their own.  The breeze coming in through the open casement windows on each side of the bay window in the great room surely whispers stories of the original rustic cabin. Architect Richard Henry Dana integrated the footprint and the fireplace of that cabin into the structure of the current Mock Tudor house that he designed for Miss Edith to evoke her beloved English Cotswold cottages.  The bathroom casement windows in the second-floor guest bathroom surely remember the swish swish sound of female guests brushing their teeth in the glory of the morning sun as it streamed in through those east-facing windows.  (Male guests were relegated to the dovecote guest house.)  The dining room casement windows overlooking the walled English garden must remember fondly the muted memories of many a dinner conversation between Miss Edith and her good friends and lifelong companions, Lucy and Mary Burrall.
 
With Miss Edith's love of Cotswold architecture and the value she placed on handcrafted work, casement windows were definitely the right choice for her house at Topsmead.  Casement windows dated back to 18th century England were made of small panes of leaded glass in wrought iron frames, and were only for the wealthy who could afford the expensive glass.  The ironwork fittings handcrafted by blacksmiths to operate them included catches to hold them shut, stays to hold them open, and handles for moving them. 
 
According to Linda Hall, a member of the Vernacular Architecture Group, "Windows is one of the most important items for giving character to an old house."  The elegant curls and notches of the handcrafted wrought iron catches, stays, and handles of Topsmead's tall leaded casement windows are a testament to Richard Henry Dana's understanding of both how to give character to a house and how to satisfy Miss Edith's demand for handcrafted work.
 
 
Margaret Hunt
BlogMistress