Recently, I was writing a story in which someone had a vision of a house. I had a really clear idea of what I wanted the building to look like; very much like the house in the picture above. I reckoned that it should be possible to do better for a description than “the windows on the top floor had pointy bits going up into the roof”.

Are they gable windows? A gable is the triangle-y part on the end of a ridged roof, but does it apply here as well? Asking around, no one understood what I meant by “gable window”.

A cursory search suggested that maybe what I wanted was a “dormer window”. In which case I felt it was time for a quick redesign of the house in the story. I dislike the word dormer; I associate it with bugalows, and with sad towns that have become nothing more than London commuter overspill.

I took myself off to consult Rice’s Architectural Primer, which is an absolute delight of a book. The cover blurb promises “an indispensable guide to the vocabulary and grammar of British buildings”; the pages are packed with lovely illustrations and the most amazingly obscure words. Twenty minutes later I still had no idea what the windows were called, but was quite taken with vermiculated rustication, and had learned the difference between torus and scotia.

After some more browsing, I concluded:

1. A dormer window is set upright on a sloping roof, so these are not dormer windows.

2. These are probably just windows, with gables above them.

3. The above is more or less useless if no one else understands what I mean, and frankly “pointy bits going up into the roof” may well paint a better picture.

Ah, well. Back to the writing!

Many thanks to Denise for sending me a photo of her house to demonstrate the pointy bits.