During its colonial heyday, the bungalow – a word derived from the Hindi word “bangla” meaning “belonging to Bengal” – was a practical, elegant structure. Shuttered rooms provided refuge from tropical heat. Deep verandahs were the setting for sundowners with tea planters, tax collectors and fellow servants of the British Raj. Then the bungalow arrived in Britain – and things went downhill. The advent of cheap, pre-fabricated building materials led to a rash of “bungaloid” developments across countryside and coastline. By the 1960s bungalows caught on with retirees who appreciated their lack of stairs. A symbol of a carefree, expat existence came to epitomise all that was unimaginative, and frumpy, about British housing.
But is it time for a rethink? Contented bungalow-dweller Ptolemy Mannthinks so. “People can be snobbish about bungalows, but attitudes are changing. All you need to do is knock down a few walls and you have a cool open-plan interior,” says Mann, a textile designer and weaver who lives with her husband, Keith, a graphic designer. “I spent most of my working life in London and I’d always imagined moving to a remote, rural cottage,” she admits. But after a fruitless trawl of “picturesque but cramped properties on tiny plots”, Mann realised that a wide bungalow, set in a 1960s development in Sussex, was the right option for a pair of artists in search of somewhere to “extend and improve”.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
