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Inarchitecture, anarea (areaway in North America) is an excavated,subterranean space around the walls of a building, designed to admit light into abasement. Also called alightwell, it often provides access to the house and a store-room/service cupboard fortradesmen, such as a coal store vault under the pavement.
The term is most commonly applied to urban houses of theGeorgian period in theUK, where it was normal for the service rooms, such as thekitchen,scullery andlaundry, to be in the basement. Areas were commonly enclosed for safety reasons by wrought iron or cast iron railings, which became one of the principal decorative features of theastylarterraced houses of this period. Areas are also found in the English and Frenchcountry house, where basements were popular in the 18th century as a way of accommodating service functions while allowing all four faces of a symmetrical Classical building to relate directly to its landscape setting, as atMereworth Castle inKent orThe Abbey inCumbria. Basements, and consequently areas, decreased in popularity in the 19th century, as attitudes to servants changed, although they continued to be constructed as service accommodation in urban settings where land was at a premium until the early 20th century. A suburban residential application can be seen at theGamble House inPasadena, California, to light the laundry and service areas of the expansive basement.
In early 18th-century house descriptions, the area was usually called the "airy", which suggests that its primary function was ventilation, needed to prevent cooking smells from percolating upstairs to the rooms above. This implies that the term "area" was a corruption of "airey" rather than vice versa.[1]
InNorth London, it was known colloquially as "the airey". It is a subject of an old-time children's ball-bouncing rhyme, which begins:
"One, two, three, alairy
My ball is down the airey
Don't forget to give it to MaryEarly in the morning".
