History of the Sash Window in Kent
The word “sash” is rooted in the French word “chassis”, meaning frame. The exact beginnings of the sash window and who was it's inventor, are not clear. The oldest examples of sash windows can be found in buildings in Britain as early as the late 1600's.
Kent, being situated in the South-East of England and a gateway to Europe, has much interesting history, and with it comes many interesting and beautiful old buildings, with some beautiful sash windows. Some of the oldest existing buildings in Kent go back to Tudor times, a time when the sash window did not exist, and such buildings usually have the classic diamond patterned lead-lighted windows. Nevertheless, such buildings that are found in some of the quaint villages of Kent have some sash windows that were fitted throughout the late 1700's an onwards.
The 1800's saw the emergence of Regency Architecture, which paved the way for the traditional Georgian style sash window. These sash windows mainly comprised of 6 or 8 panes in each sash, featuring beautiful and skillfully made slender glazing bars. Glass production had not advanced to larger sheets at this era and so this lent architects to use the smaller pane design. Many beautiful Regency buildings can be found through Central London, but Kent has it's fair share. Many Georgian Sash Windows can be found in such towns as Canterbury, Dover and Ramsgate.
Photo Credit: Neil Hennessy-Vass
The later 1800's saw larger sash windows, made to suit opulent Victorian buildings with high ceilings. Glass manufacture advanced to be able to suit whole paned sash windows, which soon became the gold standard, letting much light into the large rooms. Timber coming in more readily from the British Empire allowed thicker, stronger sashes, which were better suited for the larger, taller panes of glass.The Victorian Sash Window is littered throughout Kentish buildings, such as Tunbridge Wells, Faversham and Folkestone. Queen Victoria herself would have gazed out of her sash windows, overlooking the Royal Harbour of Ramsgate, out of a building named The Albion Hotel, where she used to holiday during the 1830's as a young princess, a building where we were priveleged to restore and repair the sash windows.
The seaside towns of Kent became a popular holiday spot for Londoners during this period and afterward, driving holidaymakers to the seaside.
This led to a surge in the building of many B and B's and hotels to the likes of Herne Bay, Margate and Deal, leading to the making of many more beautiful Victorian, and later, Edwardian Sash Windows.
The later post-Edwardian Sash Window was a bit of a mixture between the Georgian and Victorian sash windows. They often featured smaller upper sashes with little panes, and large lower sashes with whole, larger panes. They were often surrounded by black painted decorative timber mouldings, unlike the earlier sash windows, which were more likely to be fitted within stone or brick surrounds. Many examples of these Edwardian Sash Windows can be found in Kentish towns a bit further from the town centres as the towns continued to grow in size.
Going further into the 1900's, the sash window started to face a challenging time in Kent, as it did throughout Britain. The invention of metal crittal, louvre, and then later alumium started to encroach their modern ugliness on the beautiful sash window. Salesmen often successfully convinced homeowners that their modern windows would save them money by supposedly being low or no maintenance.
As the beautiful sash windows were being ripped out of their buildings, the joiners who made them could be heard turning in their graves. Sometimes, these newer window units would be installed within the existing timber box frames, leading to problems of mouisture ingress getting in-between the new windows and the older box frames. Other times even the box frames were removed along with the sashes, to be thrown in the fire.
Thankfully though, in the last 3 or 4 decades the sash window has revived. Local councils have sometimes enacted laws through the Listed Building and Conservation schemes that state the sash windows should be retained. The ones that have survived the gloomy past period of sash window history are now often kept and cherished as an original feature of the property. And sash windows that were “murdered” are now having faithful copies manufactured, to restore many of the facades of Kent's beautiful buildings, giving new life and prosperity to the Kent Sash Window.
