AAAJ
16,4
582
Accounting, Auditing &
Accountability Journal
Vol. 16 No. 4, 2003
pp. 582-605
# MCB UP Limited
0951-3574
DOI 10.1108/09513570310492317
Received 23 October
2001
Revised 18 March 2002,
30 August 2002
Accepted 8 November
2002
Accounting and
the construction of the
standard house
Ingrid Jeacle
School of Management, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Keywords Accounting history, Responsibility, Estimation accounting, Architecture,
Standard costs, United Kingdom
Abstract Georgian architecture dominates much of the urban vista of the British Isles and is
also evident in many former British colonies.A product of the eighteenth century, it is an
architectural style richly embedded in its social and political context.The defining feature of a
Georgian building: a perfectly proportioned, standardized and symmetrical facËade echoes the
balance inherent in Pacioli's double entry treatise.The purpose of this paper is to examine the role
of accounting in the construction and widespread adoption of the standard Georgian house.It
finds that eighteenth century builders' price books (``estimators''), disseminating detailed
materials and labour costing information on all components of house construction, inherently
acted as norms or standards of cost behaviour.Essentially, it is argued, they constituted a form of
human accountability which, located within a broader network of diverse actors, culminated in the
diffusion of Georgian Classicism.
Introduction
This paper seeks to understand the role of accounting in the diffusion of a
classically inspired architectural style commonly referred to as Georgian.
Georgian architecture is essentially a reincarnation and interpretation of the
classical architecture of Ancient Greece and Rome. The Georgian era is
generally viewed as encompassing the period from the Hanoverian Succession
of King George I to the British Crown in 1714, to the death of George IV in 1830.
It is a celebrated period of architectural significance. A taste in Classical
Antiquity, resurrected by Italian Renaissance artists and architects, altered the
urban scape of much of the British Isles. Cities such as London, Edinburgh and
Dublin have concentrated Georgian spaces which still bear testimony to this
architectural style. A wave of Georgian transformation also rippled across the
Atlantic to influence the street scapes of several US cities including Boston and
Philadelphia (Ayres, 1998; Parissien, 1995). Replica Georgian architectural
details are even a frequent theme in contemporary suburban housing
developments, with the ``Adam style'' fireplace often appearing as a popular
feature. An illustration of a typical Georgian house facËade appears in Figure 1.
The defining characteristics of Georgian architecture, symmetry and
proportion, are of course familiar to the accounting historian. The Renaissance
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The paper benefited from the comments and suggestions of Aage Johnsen, Falconer Mitchell,
Stephen Walker, two anonymous reviewers and participants at the European Accounting
Association Conference 2002. The financial assistance of the Carnegie Trust for the Universities
of Scotland is gratefully acknowledged.