文久 3 年在箱館英國領事館について : (下) 建築の概要と焼失後再建計画

抄録

The British Consulate, as the author had studied in the preceding paper, built in 1863 and destroyed by fire in 1865, was a building consisting of a main one-storeyed square block with a court, and two two-storeyed pavilions projecting at front. A front gateway-actually designed copying the Japanese style gateway of the upper class warrior's residence-directly led to a cloister-like corridor arround the court, which in turn connected each room. The original drawings of plan show a high masonry staircase ascending to the gateway, that suggests the main block might have been laid on a raised platform and the two projecting pavilions on the lower ground, and, as a result, built two-storeyed. This conjecture accords with the actual shape of the site. Several features of the building can be reconstructed by surveying the documents of correspondence between British and Japanese officers; plastered wall, sizes and types of windows, glazed and hinged, and with outside shutters painted green, and so on. Samely, of inside of the building something can be conjectured; wall paper with patterns of hollyhock and paulownia leaves, and chrysanthemum flowers, and accommodations of large masonry stoves. Soon after the destruction in 1865, rebuilding of the Consulate was planned and a French architect H. Clipet, who stayed in Yokohama for the French Embassy, was commissioned. His design was, however, never executed because it could not be afforded by the Japanese (Shogunate) government which was right to collapse in 1867.