Area (architecture)

In architecture, an area (areaway in North America) is an excavated, subterranean space around the walls of a building, designed to admit light into a basement.

The term is most commonly applied to urban houses of the Georgian period in the UK, where it was normal for the service rooms, such as the kitchen, scullery and laundry, to be in the basement.

Areas are also found in the English and French country 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 at Mereworth Castle in Kent or The Abbey in Cumbria.

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.

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 Mary