the english house through seven centuries

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THROUGH SEVER CENTURIES j Olive Cook with photographs by Edwin Smith KsJTJ £:**/ ' ..> *t

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The English House Through Seven Centuries

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Page 1: The English House Through Seven Centuries

THROUGH SEVER CENTURIES

j Olive Cook with photographs by Edwin Smith

KsJTJ £:**/ ' ..>

*t

Page 2: The English House Through Seven Centuries

I

Page 3: The English House Through Seven Centuries

PENGUIN BOOKS

THEENGLISH HOUSETHROUGH SEVEN CENTURIES

3

Olive Cook has written a number of books on architectural

and topographical subjects, including The English Country

House, An Art and a Way of Life. English Cottages and Farm-

houses, The Wonders of Italy and Breckland. Interested in all

forms of visual expression, she is also the author of a book on

the prehistory of the cinema, called Movement in Two Dimen-

sions. She was married to Edwin Smith (1912-71) who

trained as an architect but who made his reputation as a

photographer. He was praised by Cecil Beaton as 'an under-

standing and loving connoisseur of his subject' and Sir John

Betjeman called him 'a genius at photography". He had

special feeling for the domestic shell, whether grand or hum-

ble, and an amused and sympathetic eye for the casual detail

of either. His photographs do far more than complement the

text of this book: they are an integral part of the whole

presentation, giving it an exceptional and exciting sense of

unity. Among the many volumes illustrated by Edwin

Smith's photographs the following make a special contri-

bution: English Parish Churches, The English Garden. The

Wonders of Italy. England, Ireland. Great Houses qj Europe,

Pompeii and Venice.

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Page 4: The English House Through Seven Centuries

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Page 5: The English House Through Seven Centuries

OLIVE COOK

THEENGLISHHOUSE

THROUGHSEVEN

CENTURIESWith photographs by EDWIN SMITH

PENGUIN BOOKS

Page 6: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Frontispiece: Porchester House, Hants

Penguin Books Ltd. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

Penguin Books, 40 West 23rd Street, New York. New York 10010, U.S.A.

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood. Victoria, Australia

Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 2801 John Street, Markham, Ontario. Canada L3B IB4

Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

First published in Great Britain by Thomas Nelson 1968

Published in the U.S.A. by The Overlook Press 1983

Published in Penguin Books 1984

Copyright C Olive Cook and Edwin Smith. 1968

All rights reserved

Made and printed in Great Britain by

Butler and Tanner Ltd, Frome, Somerset

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject

to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,

re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the

publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than

that in which it is published and without a similar condition

including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

Page 7: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Contents

Foreword 7

1 The Theme Foreshadowed

:

Pre-Norman Britain 9

2 Variations on Three Units 23

3 Innovations in Design 41

4 Rectangular and Two-Storeyed Houses 60

5 Tudor Renaissance 77

6 Elizabethan Baroque 97

7 The Development of Regional Styles 137

8 Form in Transition 162

9 The Triumph of the Orders 190

10 The Gothic and Picturesque 241

1

1

Victorian Dilemma 269

12 The End of an Art 305

Bibliography 313

Index 316

Page 8: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Note to Reprinted Edition

This book attempts to tell the story of the English house primarily as a work of art. But

this does not mean that it is intended to be no more than an account of changing styles.

The development of the house as a work of art reflects an attitude to life which, while

peculiar to these islands, is at the same time an expression of the idea underlying the whole

of Western civilization. This idea, very broadly speaking, is based on the apprehension of

man's individuality as the source of his highest achievements and greatest felicity. There is

evidence that this idea, and with it the civilization it inspired, is moribund. Although it is

not yet possible to view the tendencies of our own age objectively, the course followed

not only by architecture but by all the arts indicates that tradition is everywhere being

flung aside, and philosophical and political trends confirm that the sense ofunique, irreplace-

able personal identity which nourished the traditions we are uprooting is giving way to the

conception of collectivity. The story unfolded here throws a clear light on this process. For

the success with which in the past builders combined utility with the most vivid manifesta-

tions of individuality is particularly striking in a form of art which, of all others, is the most

sternly conditioned by needs which have nothing to do with aesthetics and which has nowbecome little more than a statement of those needs.

Britain's isolation from the main-stream of development on the Continent and the

unusual variety of materials resulting from the complicated geology of the country have

enhanced the idiosyncracy already encouraged by the prevailing intellectual climate; and

because of the relative internal peace enjoyed by these islands since the Norman Conquest,

the material embodiments of a long and continuous tradition lived on into the present

century in astonishingly large numbers. There, before 1945, change was largely a matter of

renovation, addition and slow growth in which past and present were one. But today,

because of the economic consequences of a radically altered ideology, the new is not only

springing up beside the old: it threatens to engulf it. It has long since become apparent that

the day of the large country house is over. And now the survival of the smaller traditional

house and cottage isjeopardized by the further inevitable results of that same ideology, the

rank growth of population, widespread car ownership, an exaggerated regard for utility,

a wave of industrialization on a far greater and more destructive scale than that of the last

century and, in short, by a way of life into which the homes of our forebears no longer fit.

In order to give perspective to the theme of these pages and to stress its urgency, this

history ofan art, emerging in the Middle Ages and enduring until the close ofthe nineteenth

century, has been prefaced by a glance at the prehistoric darkness and the Roman period,

out of which it was born, and concluded by a brief reference to what is taking its place.

Because of the point of view adopted, every kind of house has been included in this survey,

although the choice is necessarily personal and very far from comprehensive. For the samereason an eccentric example has sometimes been preferred to a more typical instance of a

particular style. Although the arrangement is roughly chronological, it has occasionally

seemed more expedient and more informative, especially pictonally, to group different

phases of a development together, even at the risk ofsome repetition and overlapping. Thetitle of the book is not to be taken too seriously, for although the majority of the houses

photographed and described are English, some of the examples come from other parts o\

Britain. They have been introduced as parallel and evocative developments in altered

conditions and as variants of forms originating in England.

I originally wrote this book in response to a suggestion of the late Leonard Russell and to

him I owe the opportunity of getting to know an endlessly fascinating subject a little better.

\ lis idea was that such a general account might complement the major work on the EnglishI louse by Nathaniel 1 loyd, since the publication of which 111 1931 no full scale stud) hadbeen attempted The hook which resulted from 1 eonard's suggestion makes no claim to

Page 9: The English House Through Seven Centuries

supersede Lloyd's History but the inclusion of new material and the continuation of the

story up to our own day may justify the venture and perhaps the wide canvas may give

perspective to the numbers of brilliant explorations of specialized aspects of domestic

architecture which have been published during the decade which divides the first and the

present edition of these pages. Although I might now write differently about some of the

houses mentioned, my conclusions and standpoint remain unaltered for nothing has

occurred which could lead me to modify them. So I have not revised the text for this newedition except to correct obvious mistakes. And although the condition of some of the

buildings illustrated may have deteriorated while not a few other houses, among them the

Vineyard, Saffron Walden, Great Cressingham Manor and the former Vicarage at Meth-wold, have been rescued from decay, it seemed best to leave a text untouched which whenit was written corresponded to the images shown in the photographs. In describing the

locations of individual houses the traditional names and the traditional boundaries of the

counties have been retained.

Olive Cook

Page 10: The English House Through Seven Centuries
Page 11: The English House Through Seven Centuries

TheTheme ForeshadowedPRE-NORMAN BRITAIN

Interior of a Neolithic house at

Skara Brae, Mainland, Orkney

This house is one of seven discovered

in 1850 after a storm had blown awaythe top covering of the sand underwhich they had lain concealed

throughout the centuries of recorded

history. The Stone Age village waslater excavated by Professor Childe,

who found that the houses wereconnected by galleries and that each

was provided with a central hearth

and inbuilt furniture. The houses

probably date from about 2000 or

1800 B.C. and may be contemporarywith Maes Howe, the remarkableprehistoric tomb above Loch Harraya little distance from Skara Brae.

Some archaeologists, among themDr Glyn Daniel and Professor

O'Riordan, suggest that the builders

of both the tomb and the village werethe descendants of trading com-munities from Spain and Portugal

who left their homeland some time in

the third millennium B.C. and travelled

from Brittany, the west coast ofFrance and Normandy and spread

from Ireland and Wales to Scotland

and the Orkneys. The photographshows the combination of monolithic

slabs and cut stones which character-

izes the building methods of these

people. The fine quality of the

masonry is partly due to the availa-

bility of the Orkney flagstones whichwere easily split into smaller pieces,

but also to an innate sense of form,

a conception of the house as some-thing more than a convenient shelter.

It is usual to begin the story of the English house with the emergence of the period

styles at the time of the Norman Conquest; but the Conquest was only the mostrecent of innumerable invasions and immigrations which had already conspired

to blend foreign and native traditions in these islands. And viewed in the light of

later developments the survivals ofhuman dwellings dating from prehistoric and

Roman Britain are of extraordinary interest. They hint at the possibility of con-tinuing traditions and, even more fascinating, they reveal patterns in domestic

building which reappear centuries later with little or no evidence of direct

influence. While there is no exact repetition, the similarities are sufficiently

arresting to suggest that they mark specific moments in the ceaseless oscillating

movement to which all life is subject and which dominates man's effort to create

order out of chaos.

Surprising affinities with subsequent practices can be observed in the mostexciting of all surviving prehistoric houses in these islands, those at Skara Brae

in the Orkneys. Covered and preserved by shifting sands for thousands of years,

this village was exposed in 1850 when a storm of exceptional ferocity tore the

grasses and top layers from the high dune in which it lay buried. Seven houses

and four older structures were discovered. Each house consists of a single large

room with a central hearth and a passage connecting it to its neighbour. There

are the remains of an effective sewage system. But the most astonishing charac-

teristic of these houses is that they are provided with built-in furniture, shelves,

a shelved dresser, cupboards and beds which immediately recall the built-in

furniture of the seventeenth century found in farmhouses in the Lake District.

Yet this Skara Brae furniture is perhaps closer in feeling to the slate shelves,

mantelpieces and lavatory seats ofsome Welsh houses, for it is formed exclusively

oflocal stone, the same Caithness flagstone ofwhich the dry-stone walls are made.

One of the houses exhibits a further totally unexpected feature: an impressive

attempt at constructing pillars with rude capitals to support an architrave and

frame doorways and recesses. These pillars are truly architectural and their

appearance in the dwelling of a Stone Age farmer marks the emergence of a sense

of something more than mere function, of a groping towards that combination

of form and ornament which characterizes the finest domestic design.

In actual time Skara Brae belongs to the period of c. 1800 B.C., when the

south of Britain had already entered the Bronze Age but the knowledge of metal

had not reached these northern villages, and there could be no more forceful

illustration of the Neolithic way of life than these stone beds and dressers. Skara

Brae is thus an early and unforgettable example of the effect ofregion on domestic

architecture. Just as the Elizabethan manor of Chastleton incorporates the oolitic

limestone on which it stands, or Sawston Hall embodies Cambridgeshire clunch

in its walls and Cambridgeshire bog oak in its staircase, so these primitive habita-

tions reflect that intimate relation between house and setting which endured until

the nineteenth century. They are fashioned of the very stuff of the country. They

Page 12: The English House Through Seven Centuries
Page 13: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The long house

The photograph on the left shows the

principal room of one of the seven

houses in the late Iron Age village ofChysauster, near Penzance, Cornwall.

Each of these houses is roughly rec-

tangular in shape and the rooms are

built within the thickness of the wall

and open into a central courtyard.

The interest of the Chysauster houses

in the present context is that each

consists of two apartments: a living-

room, furnished with a hollow granite

basin used as a mortar, and a byre tor

cattle. This custom of housing menand beasts under the same roof wasgeneral among pastoral peoples in

wild or mountainous regions and has

persisted until the present day. Thearrangement is seen in the traditional

crofter's cottage on Lewis, Hebrides

(top right), thatched, warmed by a

central hearth and windowless. Such

dwellings were called 'black houses',

not only because they had no win-dows, but also because it was cus-

tomary in the Hebrides to strip off the

soot-impregnated thatch once a year,

in May, for manure. One of the

objects of the roof, which wasoriginally without a smoke-hole, wasto encourage the accumulation of

soot. Today most 'black houses', if

they are still in use, are occupied

entirely by cattle. Although manycenturies divide this crofter's dwelling

from that at Chysauster, the methodof construction, the massive dry-stone

walling, is the same in each case.

The cottage from Ballinaboy, Co.Galway (centre), is characteristic ofthe one-storeyed dwellings foundeverywhere in Ireland; it again in-

corporates the principle of the longhouse, the end nearest to the cameraand furthest from the hearth, referred

to as the 'bottom end', being reserved

for a cow. But though the byre is part

of the rectangular house, there is nodirect access from the main room to

the feeding walk as in the long houses

of Dartmoor. In many Irish examplesthe former byre has been convertedinto a bedroom, store or dairy. Asimilar conversion took place at

Warbstow, Cornwall (bottom),

where the byre and the hayloft of a

two-storeyed long house dating fromthe early eighteenth century wereturned into a dairy and bedroomduring the Victorian period. Theupper window on the left was oncethe opening into the hayloft and wasreached by an external staircase. Thishouse is of cob, protected by slate-

hanging (see page 146).

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II

Page 14: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Theme Foreshadowed : Pre-Norman Britain

also introduce the theme of the house remote from the centre of fashion and new

ideas. Except for the grandest mansions such houses do not show innovations

until they are one or more generations out of date: a Westmorland farmhouse

may well appear to be of the seventeenth century when in reality it was built in

the Georgian period, and a late seventeenth-century house, such as Eyam Hall.

Derbyshire, may still wear the look of an Elizabethan manor.

The type of house revealed at Skara Brae seemed to have no immediate suc-

cessors. The celebrated street of Iron Age houses at Chysauster, near Penzance,

on the other hand, discloses an arrangement which occurred again during

the Roman occupation and is still found in some districts today. Each of the

Chvsauster houses consists oftwo apartments: a living-room and a byre for cattle.

In a Romano-British farmhouse excavated by Colonel Pitt-River at Iwerne in

Dorset - built of flint and rubble just like the cottages which are characteristic of

that landscape today - the family and their livestock were sheltered under one

roof in exactly the same way. The Dark Age history of this type of house is

obscure, but the long house was widely known over medieval Britain, and in

parts of Cornwall and Devonshire, in the north, in Wales and in Ireland the

tradition of housing animals and humans under the same roof outlived all the

changes which in southern and eastern England led to the separation of byre and

dwelling.

These primitive oblong houses seem akin to the rectangular houses which

emerged towards the end of the Middle Ages. The cross-walk dividing the

animals' shelter from the family apartments in Devonshire and Lakeland long

houses recalls the screens passage of a hall house; and the characteristic Irish

homestead comes very close in its arrangement to the medieval rectangular hall

house. The likeness is particularly striking when represented by a house such as

Truthall, near Helston, which is low and continuously roofed. The typical Irish

dwelling is one room thick, and the door, placed near one end of the principal

central room, the kitchen, is directly opposite another door. Small apartments

lead off this main room at one or both ends, and there may be two attic roomsin the roof. Before the introduction of chimney flues the hearth was in the centre

of the main apartment, as in the older hall houses. A central fire was not unknowneven as late as the nineteenth century, for Charles Lever, the novelist, describes

one he saw in the Brannock Islands. The parallels between this kind of house and

the English rectangular house are, however, purely fortuitous ; for the long house

is the product of a continuing tradition, while the rectangular house, as will

appear later, is the result of a combination of two distinct types of dwelling.

In any consideration of recurring patterns in domestic architecture, the cen-

turies of the Roman Occupation are peculiarly stimulating to the imagination

both because the civilization then established produced so much that was echoed

by later developments and because the abrupt decline of that civilization was

inaugurated by a period of chaos and destruction dramatically like that uponwhich we are now entering. Only the fringe of this vast and complex subject of

analogies can be touched upon here. The reintroduction in our own era of the

luxuries of the baths and central heating, which became an essential part of the

plan of most villas in the last phase of Roman rule, is an obvious instance ot

repetition. The themes of the town house within a garden, contrasting with the

true town house as a unit in a composition filling the street frontage, and of ribbon

development along arterial roads, creating urban sprawl, were also first stated in

Roman Britain.

A comparison oi the effects of the first impact of classical art on domesticbuilding in Britain with that of the second great w ave of Mediterranean influence

which culminated in the Palladian house inevitably reveals countless resemb-lances, tor the ultimate source ofinspiration was the same. I he absorbing interest

son. however, is that the British genius tor manipulating anddesign, which is expressed with such /est m .1 composition

Page 15: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Theme Foreshadowed : Pre-Nonnan Britain

such as the three-storeyed porch of Kirby Hall, which combines an utterly free

interpretation of the Orders, exotic pillars and scrolly brackets, with a curving

gable, and which reached its full flowering in the unique harmony of the

eighteenth-century house, is already manifest in the remains of Roman Britain.

The exuberant Venus mosaic at Rudston, Yorkshire, for example, and the

mosaic figures of the seasons at Chedworth, near Cirencester, are reminiscent

in their quality of caricature and enthusiastic infidelity to classical models of the

robust interpretations by Elizabethan and Jacobean craftsmen of Renaissance

motifs. They invite comparison with such works as the carved screen at AudleyEnd with its rollicking terminal busts or with the coloured plaster friezes in

relief of the stories of Diana and Orpheus in the Great High Presence Chamberat Hardwick, which are also strangely related in both colour and feeling to the

Orpheus pavements of Cirencester and the south-west which were a speciality of

Romano-British taste. An abstract mosaic like that from Littlecote Park,

Ramsbury, now in the Ashmolean Museum, bears as little affinity to the Venus

pavement as do the reliefs at Hardwick to the sophisticated plasterwork of

Charles Stanley or Joseph Rose. Just as Adam's saloon at Kedleston, though

inspired by the Pantheon, is unmistakably English, so this mosaic, while based

on Roman models, could never be confused with Mediterranean work. Thebold contrasts and brilliance of the typical Roman mosaic have undergone a

significant metamorphosis. The colours, in common indeed with those at

Chedworth, are as restrained and muted as those of the English landscape on a

cool, cloudy day. This Ashmolean mosaic includes three semicircular shapes

filled with an unfolding fan device within an ornamental border. They precisely

correspond to the favourite shape and the commonest design for fanlights over

eighteenth-century doors.

It seem incredible that a civilization so long established as the Roman, covering

a period, after all, about equal to that which divides the reigns of QueenElizabeth I and Queen Elizabeth II, could have been wholly effaced; that all the

manifestations of a classically inspired way of life were obliterated after the with-

drawal of Roman government. We do indeed know that the massive ruins of

deserted Roman cities still excited wonder three centuries after their builders

had vanished. The remains of Aquae Sulis, Roman Bath, are the subject of one

of the most moving of early English poems, that first ofmany meditations on old

stones, called 'The Ruin'

:

Well wrought this wall: Wierd broke it.

The stronghold burnt . . .

Snapped rooftrees, towers fallen,

The work of Giants, the stonesmiths

mouldereth.

Rime scoureth gatetowers,

rime on mortar.

Shattered the showershield, roofs ruined,

age under-ate them.

Bright were the buildings, halls where springs ran,

high, horn-gabled, much throng-noise,

these many meadhalls men filled

with loud cheerfulness. Wierd changed that.

Hosts who would build again

shrank to earth. Therefore are these courts dreary

and that red arch twisteth tiles,

wryeth from roof-ridge, reacheth groundwards . . .

Broken blocks.

The Romans themselves are less than ghosts to the writer of this poem: he has

13

Page 16: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Romano-British mosaic, Rudston,Yorkshire

The remains of a villa dating from the

time of the Roman Occupation werediscovered at Rudston in the East

Riding in 1933, the finds including

this bold mosaic pavement. Suchpavements were among the mostnovel as well as the most enduring of

the furnishings imported by the

Romans. This crude and lively Venus,

carried out in brown, yellow, white

and blue-grey tesserae, tossing up her

apple with one hand and throwingaside her mirror with the other, sur-

rounded by huntsmen, a tnton, a bull,

a lion, a leopard and a stag, is an

arresting example of the impact of

classical art and a foreign medium onthe native craftsmen. A comparison ofthis rendering of a Roman goddess

with the plaster relief of Diana fromHardwick (opposite) reveals an inter-

esting parallel. The two classically

derived images, one representing the

first overwhelming confrontation of

the Briton by the Graeco-Romanworld, the other the resurgence ofenthusiasm for antiquity in Eliza-

bethan England, display the samesense of poetry and high excitement

expressed in wild proportions andcoarse, robust handling.

no knowledge of them and to him their remains are 'the work of Giants'. But

there is evidence that if the race who had left their shattered monuments was no

more than a legend, the men who came after them were not blind to the building

practices displayed in the fabric of these ruins. At Trinity Church, Colchester,

courses of re-used Roman bricks lace the flint masonry of the Saxon tower 111

exactly the same way as Roman bricks strengthen the near-by flint walls of

Camulodunum. The Saxons did not themselves make bricks: they were content

to use those which, because they had been manufactured in such vast quantities.

so plentifully survived the Occupation. But the combination of the two materials,

flint and brick, later became common in all those districts where flint is abundant.

Thus the great drum-like bastions of Burgh Castle, one of the forts of the SaxonShore, its immensely stout walls now besieged by corn tilling and surroundingthem, are intimately and touchingly related to eighteenth- and nineteenth-

century cottages in the neighbouring villages because they are all fashioned ot

the same local flints bonded with brick. I he Roman brie ks do indeed differ fromthe later ones. They are strikingly thin, resembling tiles more than bricks.

commonly measuring about 1 S x 1 2 x \\ inches, though they vary in size. Butthe use to which the manufactured material was put is more important and moreimmediately impressive than such distinctions. A most interesting aspect of this

firsi introduction oi bricks into Britain by the Romans, the bearers of classical

U

Page 17: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Detail from the plaster frieze of the

High Great Presence Chamber,Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire

The great coloured plaster frieze,

some twelve feet deep, of which this

detail shows Diana and her maidens,

was the work of Abraham Smith,

c - 1 595- Just as the mosaic pavement(opposite) was inspired by Romanexample, so this unique plasterwork

was based on the imagery of a master

more conversant with classical motifs

than the English artist: it derived

from a design by Martin de Vos. Butin both cases the vigour and origin-

ality of the copy impart new life to

outworn themes. Other subjects ofthe Hardwick frieze include Venuschastising Cupid, as well as Orpheusand Ceres, all embowered in a forest

where men and dogs hunt amongsmooth-stemmed trees and giant

foliage.

ideals, is that when classical torms were again beginning to influence architecture

in these islands, the fashion was accompanied by the widespread popularity of

brick, which had not been made again after the Occupation until medieval times

and was then only used sporadically.

There is no real connecting link between the brickwork of the Romans and

that of Tudor England. Yet recent excavations appear to show that some threads

of continuity may have linked the declining order of Roman Britain with that

which was to take its place. It is possible, for instance, that the manufacture of

cylinder-blown glass may never have died out. Window glass was widely used

in Romano-British dwellings, even in native settlements and in sites as far north

as the Scottish Lowlands. But formerly the only evidence for the occurrence of

window glass in Anglo-Saxon Britain came from such sources as Bede's reference

to Benedict Biscop's appeal to Gaul in 674 for glass-makers to teach the art of

making glass windows to monkish craftsmen in Britain and St Wilfrid of

York's mention of the insertion of glass in windows previously fitted with linen

or a fretted slab. During recent decades discoveries at Glastonbury, Thetford,

Old Windsor and Southampton of glass manufactories of pre-Norman date,

each site revealing fragments of window glass of the type made during the

Occupation, suggest that the Saxon glassmen were following and upholding a

skill introduced by the Romans.

15

Page 18: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Theme Foreshadowed: Pre-Norman Britain

Yet it would be rash to assume that this comforting hint ot continuity rested

on more than conjecture. The Saxon glasshouses may well have been founded by

foreign glass-makers brought to Britain in response to demands like that of

Benedict Biscop. It is still less likely that the hall house, which, probably stemming

from Saxon practice, became the characteristic form of dwelling for a landowner

of the early Middle Ages, was a survival from Roman times. Thus the anticipa-

tion of this type of structure in Roman Britain is among the more striking mani-

festations of those haunting parallels which excavation is continually bringing to

light. The labourers on the larger Romano-British estates were usually housed

in a barn-like building standing on one side of the farmyard. The most impressive

example to have been discovered is probably the enormous dwelling which forms

part of the famous villa at Bignor; it measures 128 by 56 feet, thus exceeding in

overall size the largest medieval timber hall so far known in the British Isles, the

twelfth-century building measuring no by 60 feet excavated at Cheddar by

Mr P. A. Rantz tor the Ministry of Works in 1963.

The interior of the Roman labourers' dwelling was divided into nave and

aisles by timber columns; and occasionally a partition, not unlike the screen of a

medieval hall, ran across one end of the vast apartment. Stores, implements,

livestock and workers were all housed in the building. Sometimes, when the

farm was only a modest establishment, as at Clanville and Castlefield in

Hampshire and at Ickleton in Cambridgeshire, the aisled hall provided the only

domestic accommodation.

The advanced form of timber construction which was the pride of English

domestic architecture in the late fourteenth and succeeding centuries, the build-

ing in which a well-carpentered timber frame took the main stresses, filled with

wattling and clay daub and rendered with a coating of lime-wash or plaster,

was clearly an established feature of the scene in Roman Britain. Although actual

remains of Romano-British timber buildings are rare owing to the perishable

nature of the material, the precision with which the Romans built has caused

marks to be left in the soil from which archaeologists have been able to recon-

struct their methods. The upper storey ofthe fine villa at Chedworth was timber-

framed and its roofs were constructed with tie-beams and king-posts. Theground floor of this villa was stone-walled, but less important dwellings, like

that of which traces have been found at Ditchley. were entirely timber-framed.

The timber wall-posts were set on a 'groundsill' and this practice, reintroduced

by the Anglo-Saxons, became the basis for all timber house construction in the

Middle Ages. The roofs of the Romano-British timber-framed buildings were

stone-slated, as they were not to be again until the Middle Ages.

The possibility of a persisting tradition of advanced timber construction

during the Dark Ages is remote, for the commonest type of primitive dwelling,

the round hut, formed the basis of domestic building habits for several centuries

after the eclipse of imperial civilization. The rejection of the round house in

iir ot the rectangular, which must certainly have followed on the adoption

of sophisticated Roman ideas in building, was however repeated by an in-

dependent development which probably neither took place nor became wide-spread until long after the Romans had departed from Britain.

In ail districts where timber was available the circular hut was constructed ot

posts interlaced with brushwood and covered with sods. In the centre ot these

pole huts was a hearth made ot slabs of lias, gravel or sandstone or of baked clay,

and near the hearth was a pole supporting the roof. Such were the celebrated

dwellings whose fragmented foundations were laid bare near Glastonburyabout halt a century ago. Although archaeologists have reconstructed the

appearance of these round houses, their remains are much too scanty for eventhe most imaginat I itor to create .1 strong visual image. But there are in

these islands certain treeless wastes where stone counterparts of the pole hutswere built and still stand entire, preserving the very essence of remote living

An outhouse near Recess,

Connemara, Co. Galway, and (below)

beehive huts, Slea Head. DinglePeninsula, Co. Kerry

Although primitive construction in

timber has, from the nature of the

material, almost entirely disappeared

from the English scene, there survives

an archaic tradition of building in

dry-stone in humble storehouses andshelters still erected in Ireland andfound also in Wales, in the Orkneysand occasionally on Dartmoor, time-

less structures which might beascribed to any period within the last

three centuries and which repeat

forms once used as dwellings and oncecarried out in timber and brushwood.Outhouses such as this Connemaraexample are used for a variety ofpurposes, as pigsties, hen-houses and

fuel stores. The circular form and the

single, hntelled opening, though here

of wood instead of stone, are identical

with those of the beehive huts or

clochans on Slea Head. The corbel

principle behind these structures,

whereby courses of flatfish stones ofroughly uniform size are so placed

that each course projects slighdv

further inwards as the wall growshigher, the roof being a continuation

of the wall, occurs in the Megalithic

tombs of prehistoric times, and someof these clochans may date from the

Neolithic period, although such

dwellings were still being built in the

early Christian centuries. Mostclochans measure from between 12

and 1 5 feet in diameter, although a

few large, oval structures could give

standing-room to as nunv as fifty

persons. Instead of being fullv cor-

belled, the roof of the outhouse is

furnished with a covering of loose

straw and turt piled up in a conical

shape on horizontal beams and then

roughly thatched with rushes andmarram grass.

IC.

Page 19: The English House Through Seven Centuries

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Page 20: The English House Through Seven Centuries

conditions. More than a hundred beehive huts lie scattered, singly or in clusters,

on the savage promontory of Slea Head in Co. Kerry, scarcely distinguishable

at first glance from the boulders which crowd about them and of which they

are fashioned. It is not possible to date these structures with any accuracy; someof them are contemporary with a near-by Iron Age fort, while others belong to

the Early Christian period. The long persistence of the circular form is proved

by the fact that main of the modem outhouses of the little farmsteads on the

Dingle Peninsular and in Galway exactly resemble the clochans on Slea Head.

The idea of the pole hut was similarly perpetuated, for in his Evolution of the

English House S. O. Addy illustrates a charcoal-burner's hut in Old Park Wood.Sheffield, which in constructed in the same way as the conical houses of ourforefathers. But this hut and its like have long since vanished.

in of the lush ( lochans are more oval than round and one or two are almost

ii corbelled structures consisting of courses of flat stones oflily uniform size so placed that each course projects slightly farther inwards

ds upwards, the roof being a continuation of the wall.

1 he famous Gallerus ( )ratory, of die eighth centui y, also on the Dingle Peninsula,

(.ruck-built house at Lacock,

Wiltshire, and (right) The Gallerus

Oratory, Dingle Peninsula, Co. Kerry

The similarity between the upturned-

bo.it shapes of these two buildings is

at once apparent and points to the con-

clusion that the timber-framedstructure represents the survival ot an

ancient tradition preserved in its stone

form m the treeless expanse ot the

Dingle Peninsula. Professor E. Estyn

Evans does indeed suggest that the

primitive wattled dwellings ot Ireland,

which were contemporary with the

Gallerus Orators, were supported by

crucks, or pairs of curving timbers

joined together at the top

Page 21: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Theme Foreshadowed : Pre-Norman Britain

The celebrated Oratory is assumed to

date from the eighth century and is

particularly interesting as a perfect

example of a dry-stone walled, cor-

belled building on a rectangular plan

which evolved independently of

Roman influence. The workmanship

is immensely superior to that of the

clochans in the same district (page 17);

the stones have been chosen with

immense care and so ingeniously

fitted together (without the aid of

mortar) that after the passage of about

1,200 years the interior remains bone

dry. The massive cruck truss of the

Lacock cottage may date from the

early fifteenth century, although the

building has been much altered since

then.

though part of an eremitical monastery and probably not a dwelling, is a perfect

example of the kind of rectangular house which evolved from the circular

clochans. Like them it is corbelled and dry-stone walled, though of immensely

superior workmanship. The stones have been chosen with the greatest care, manyof them are partially dressed and they have been fitted together with such in-

genuity that even after the passage of 1,200 years the little building is completely

weather-tight. There is no line of demarcation between the side-walls and the

roof, so that the Oratory is like an upturned boat or a neatly stacked pile of turf.

Exactly the same impression is created by the timber counterpart of the Gallerus

Oratory, the cruck-built house; it resembles a boat and its walls and roof are

continuous. To construct it two pairs of bent trees were set up on the ground to

overlap and carry the longitudinal ridge-rafter or roof-tree; poles or branches

were fastened horizontally from one pair to another and the frame thus fashioned

was covered with thatch. The ends of this inverted V-shaped house were filled

with wattle and daub, leaving an opening for the door.

The transition from the circular to the oblong plan was clearly effected in

Ireland independently of Roman influence, for Ireland lay beyond the sphere of

Page 22: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Roman invasion and Roman government. The cruck-built house likewise does

not appear to have been initiated by Roman example despite the fact that the

couples of bent trees which formed the structural bases of such a house wereanciently known as forks ami were called by their I atin name jurcae. Vitruvius,

writing before the conquest ot Britain, refers to this type ofdwelling as obsolete.

describing it as the most primitive form of building, 'first men erected forks.'

he said, 'and weaving bushes between them, covered the walls with mud.'1 he rectangular space between two pairs of crucks, a length of about [6 feet,

Page 23: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Theme Foreshadowed: Pre-Norman Britain

Cottage at Didbrook, Gloucestershire

The evolution of the timber-framed

house is summed up in this little

house, much altered in the course of

the centuries. A tradition of immenseantiquity, probably going back to pre-

Saxon times and perhaps ante-dating

the Roman Occupation, is represented

by the most prominent feature ot the

design, the inverted V-shape made by

the two long timbers, or crucks, rising

from the stone plinth on which the

cottage is set and meeting at the apex

of the original roof. This roof reached

right down to the ground like its

stone counterpart, the roof of the

Gallerus Oratory (page 19). A hori-

zontal tie-beam and collar-beam seen

above the door and in a line with the

low lintel strengthened the crucks.

Later on a third and longer tie-beam

was introduced projecting immediate-ly above the base of the crucks. Theremains of this tie-beam are still

clearly visible, though the part

between the crucks has since beenremoved. This tie-beam enabled a

new roof of a lower pitch to be built

and also made possible the erection ofvertical walls, thus providing morehead-room inside the cottage. Finally

Cotswold stone replaced the original

wattle and daub walls, the roof waspitched still less steeply and the old

structure with all its alterations lay

embedded in the new casing.

CBUCK-BUILT HOUi

was known as a bay, and this became an accepted unit of measurement. Medieval

houses were often assessed for taxation by the number of their bays, forks or

gavels (the original form of the word 'gable'). For cruck houses were still being

built in the Middle Ages and much later and examples can still occasionally be

seen. The primitive character of such structures is emphasized by the fact that

they are rarely found in East Anglia and the south-east where timber framing

was most highly elaborated. The distribution of cruck-built houses, in fact, as

Mr J. T. Smith points out, coincides to a marked degree with that of British

place-names of pre-Saxon origin.

I know of no complete extant example of the earliest form of the cruck-built

house, but there is a haunting reminder of the all-roof type of structure, an un-

expected survival of ancient procedure, at Clifton in Oxfordshire. Here twogigantic adjoining gables, perhaps at one time two separate dwellings, jut out

from a picturesque, patched, altered and utterly irregular thatched house,

conforming to no known plan. Each of these gables reaches to the ground and is

supported by straight timbers inclining towards one another to meet at the ridge.

The thatch covering extends from the ridge to the ground. The remains offormer

tie-beams can just be made out in the masonry, which may have replaced wattle

and daub in these gable-ends. Cruck builders discovered that if a tie-beam placed

about half-way up the cruck was extended at either end, it made possible the

erection of vertical walls. This was the first step in the evolution of the splendid

timber-built houses and timber roofs of the later Middle Ages.

It is this more developed form of cruck construction which can occasionally

still be seen in barns and cottages, especially in the west midlands and parts of

Yorkshire. A well-known example occurs at Didbrook in Gloucestershire, where

the original crucks have been preserved within a larger and later post and truss

house (in which the timbers of wall and roof are separate) and both arc nowencased in Cotswold stone. The tie-beam, which marked the width of the original

roof and the juncture between that root and the walls, was cut off between the

crucks for internal convenience when the house was altered. The crucks of this

Gloucestershire cottage are almost as straight as the gable timbers at Clifton.

Other examples, more sophisticated and obviously of later date, such as can be

seen at Weobley in Herefordshire and Lacock in Wiltshire, boast a more architec-

tural character and exhibit beautiful symmetrical arches, closely resembling the

stone ogee arches fashionable in the fifteenth century and contrived by halving

a carefully chosen curving trunk or branch. But this refinement on .1 tradition of

undatcablc antiquity and the story of the timber construction which flowered

from this tradition belong to another chapter.

21

Page 24: The English House Through Seven Centuries

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Page 25: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Variations onThreeUnits

Barn at Cherhill, Wiltshire

This noble interior, no feet long, a

former tithe barn (now demolished),

composed almost entirely ot timber

on a stone base, is an outstanding

example of a post and truss construc-

tion, and although it is on a larger

scale than most hall houses, it gives a

better idea than any existing domestic

building of the great single-roomeddwellings of pre-Norman Britain andof the early Middle Ages whichformed one of the basic units in the

evolution of the English house. All

the principles of construction, the

great main posts, the tie-beams with

the crown-posts standing on them, the

central purlin and the collar-beams,

the timbers of the aisle walls, can be

clearly seen in this magnificent

building. When such an aisled hall

constituted an entire house, the aisles

might be used as cubicles for the

owner and his family as well as tor

animals and storage. The fire was ona hearth near the middle of the hall.

There were two doors opposite oneanother at one end of the structure,

and this draughty area was separated

from the rest of the hall by twowooden partitions beside the doors

known as the 'screens'.

The development of domestic architecture during the centuries immediatelyfollowing the Norman Conquest represents a fortuitious rather than a conscious

process, a combination of slowly maturing traditional methods and foreign

elements which was entirely overshadowed by ecclesiastical building. Whateverthe motives which led to the erection of the thousands of religious works whichstill proclaim the aspiring, dynamic spirit of the medieval period - the desire to

raise a lasting monument to the glory of God, personal and family pride, local

patriotism, aesthetic interest or mere superstition - there can be no doubt that

these buildings, monasteries, cathedrals, chantries, collegiate and parish churches

embody the most splendid and inventive achievements of the age, all the mostdaring explorations of new ideas of construction, all the boldest as well as the

most poetic conceits. No medieval house, however venerable its fabric, howeverromantic its associations, makes that dazzling impact of high genius which im-

presses such features ofecclesiastical art as the spire and chapter-house ofSalisbury,

the nave of Ely or the ruined choir ofBolton forever on the memory. The secular

architecture of the Middle Ages was altogether subordinated to this great en-

deavour in the religious field. The attitude of mind which fostered such a situation

could not be more eloquently attested than by the fact that in every nobleman's

house the chapel or oratory was considered a more urgent necessity than com-fort, convenience or privacy.

Whereas stone had replaced timber for ecclesiastical building by the beginning

of the thirteenth century, the medieval house was commonly constructed of

traditional mud or wood. Stone houses were so rare that, according to T. HudsonTurner in his Domestic Architecture in England from the Conquest to the End of the

Thirteenth Cetitury, they were named in deeds to indicate boundaries. Building

in mud must have been widespread : C. F. Innocent found documentary evidence

for the general use of this material for the walls of London houses in the year

1212. As for timber, the ancient ancestry of the cruck-built house has already

been mentioned; and it has been pointed out that the box-frame or post and truss

method which replaced cruck construction was known in Roman Britain. Thetransition from the earlier to the later procedure in the Middle Ages, which is so

vividly illustrated in the picture of the cottage at Didbrook shown at the end of

Chapter One, was doubtless first achieved by church builders. It cannot be

closely followed in other examples as, apart from a number of aisled halls,

usually disguised externally beneath the alterations and additions of later ages,

very few medieval timber-framed houses still stand which can be dated before

the fifteenth century. The essential distinction between the two operations was

briefly described a page or two earlier: whereas in the cruck-built house walls

and roof are indivisible, in the post and truss house the timbers ot walls and root

are separate, thus providing tor infinite diversity in the height and width as well

as the length of the house. The general method of erecting the framework was

this: groundsills were laid on a base ot stone, flint, rubble or brick and upon these

were set pairs of stout wall-posts. The posts supported the wall-plates upon which

were set the massive principal rafters, notched into place and carrying at the apex

23

Page 26: The English House Through Seven Centuries

the longitudinal ridge-piece. Each pair of principals was further strengthened and

prevented from spreading by a horizontal beam morticed into the wall-plates.

The so-called truss formed by these span-bridging timbers was reintorced by an

upright king-post rising from the centre ot the tie-beam to the ridge, or by either

a crown-post or two upright queen-posts supporting a collar-beam. Between the

wall-plate and ridge-piece and parallel with them a so-called purlin ran from

principal to principal and carried the common rafters. Across these commonratters were nailed laths to take the outer covering, which in the Middle Ages

was invariably thatch, although wooden shingles provided an occasional alter-

native and tiles were mentioned in an Ordinance of 12 12 prohibiting the use of

straw tor roofing in London. The wall-posts were shaped from tree-trunks and

set inverted, a practice which is thought by some authorities to have been a

means of preserving the timber by allowing the sap to dry out. But the real

advantage ot the custom was that the butt end of the tree was thick enough for the

tie-beam and wall-plates to be laid upon and jointed to it and coupled with each

other. Subsidiary and smaller uprights, or studs, were fixed between the mainposts, and the spaces between them were filled with wattle and daub. Uprightrods ot hazel or ash were sprung into prepared grooves in the timber frame andsmall sticks were woven in and out of them 111 the manner of basketwork. Thedaub, commonly composed ot clay, water, straw or cow hair and cow dung.mixed with lime wherever it was available, was applied to both sides ot this

hurdling. The clay from which the daub was made was usually dug close to the

site ot the house and this explains the frequent existence of small ponds m the

vicinity ot timber-framed houses. I he extraordinary number and randomgraphical occurrence of these ponds, dotted about over nearly the whole o\

England, is an indication o( the ubiquity of the timber house in the medievalpel 1

In an age when England boasted it least si\t\ great forests there was no shortage

irdwood and oak was the preferred material tor frame building. Oak becomes

The hall roof, Tiptofts Manor,Wimbish. Essex

Of the mid-fourteenth-century aisled

hall of Tiptofts Manor, two of the

three original bays and one aisle

survive in a remarkable state ofpreservation. The root structure is

exactly the same type as that at

Cherhill (page 22). There is no ridge-

piece, the rafters being peggedtogether where they intersect. Acrown-post, treated as a column with

capital and base, upholds a central

purlin which strengthens the collars

tying the pairs ot common ratters.

The crown-post sends out four branch-

ing struts, two tn the central purlin

and two to the collar immediately

above the massive, cambered tie-

beam on which it rests. This tie-beam

is morticed not into the wall-plate, as

in fully developed post and truss con-

struction, but, because this is an aisled

hall with the root coming down to

within a tew teet ot the ground, into

a stout purlm parallel to the wall-

plate. A graceful oaken pillar (shownm the photograph opposite below),

from which spring curving braces,

strengthens both purlm and tie-beam.

The moulded capitals and braces and

the filleted shafts ot column and king-

post, the cusped spandrels and moul-

ded tie-beam all bear witness to the

carpenter's growing aesthetic sense

and mastery of his craft.

Page 27: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Abbas Hall, Great Gurnard, Suffolk,

and (below) the hall, Tiptofts

Manor, Wimbish, Essex

By comparison with the work at

Tiptofts, the ponderous timber con-

struction at Abbas Hall looks

extremely rough, although it is ot

roughly the same date. A floor wasinserted in the open hall some time

during the sixteenth century to give

the house two storeys, and thus the

bedroom in which the photographwas taken sets us on a level with

the upper part ot the structure. It is

of the same crown-post type as the

Tiptofts roof, and the view of it

shown here corresponds almost

exactly with that of the Wimbishhall below it, with the former aisle

column bursting through the floor

and crowding the low-ceilinged

space with its formidable struts andbraces.

The photograph ot Tiptofts wastaken from a gallery beside the hugebrick chimney which took the place

of the former, open central hearth in

the Elizabethan period. The space

between the free-standing column andthe end-wall was once occupied bythe screens passage, and the wall

shows traces of the openings whichled into the buttery and pantry. Thetwo-centred arch of one of these

openings, now filled in, can beglimpsed through the gallery

balustrade.

Page 28: The English House Through Seven Centuries

I 'ariations on Three Units

harder as it dries and therefore encouraged the medieval tendency to work with

unseasoned timber. The inevitable process of shrinkage was sometimes reduced

by allowing the stripped trees to float for several months in running water; and

in anv case the leisurely progress of medieval building permitted a certain amount

of time for the oak to dry off. The advantages of seasoned timber were not

ignored in the Middle Ages, for L. F. Salzman quotes from a letter written by

John Thoresby, Archbishop of York, in January 1355-6 in which he requested

that the wood for a building he had commissioned should be felled during the

winter so that it might dry offduring the summer months for use in the following

year.

The basic type of box-frame construction just described was elaborated in

response to varvmg practical needs and influences which will become apparent

as the story of the English house unfolds. It has been pointed out that very few

early medieval half-timber houses survive with the exception of a number of

aisled halls of a kind which had existed in Britain before Saxon times. These

aisled halls formed one of the basic units upon which all future developments in

domestic architecture depended. They consisted of a single enormous apartment

divided, like a church, into nave and aisles by lines of timber columns. Thereason for the aisles was technical. It was impossible to bridge the huge span

between the low walls of the earliest hall houses without nave arcades, and the

full width was needed tor the multifarious purposes of the one-roomed house.

The immense twelfth-century structure excavated at Cheddar was mentioned

in the previous chapter. The arcade posts of this vast building were 2 feet square

and probably rose to a height of 50 to 60 feet. But it is not easy to visualize the

original hall on the present Ministry of Works site, which does nothing to warmthe imagination, and tor a vivid idea ot the appearance and atmosphere of this

great single-room dwelling and the many others like it, it is more profitable to

visit some of the numerous surviving medieval barns, such as those at Great

Coxwell and Pilton. whose lofty roofs and cathedral-like expanses of timber

columns spring from the same tradition as the hall house.

Originally, as in Roman Britain, animals were stalled in one ot the aisles ot

the hall, but later this space was used for the accommodation of servants and

storage. There were doors opposite each other at one end ot the hall and these

were lett open to provide a draught for the central fire. Just inside each door a

wooden screen jutted out to prevent sudden gusts of wind from blowing the

tire in all directions. These short screens eventually became a continuous struc-

ture reaching trom wall to wall, pierced by two doors. When they were fully

developed these screens, judging from those still to be seen at Haddon Hall,

1 ytes Cary, Little Sodbury Manor and Fenshurst Place, relied in style uponchurch example. The screen dividing the (ireat Chamber on the first floor from

the oratory over the porch in a Berkshire house. Ashbury Manor, a much moremodest building than those just named, instantly recalls ,i parish church parclose

screen, such as that at East Harling 111 Norfolk, though the work at Ashbur)Manor, as is generally the case w ith medieval domestic architecture, is simpler mdetail and workmanship with its six trefoiled panels and quatrefoiled spandrels

than the delicate and intricate carving m the Norfolk church.

When it became fashionable, during the second half of the fifteenth century,

to build a rood lott above the chancel screen 111 churches, a similar feature was .it

once introduced into the domestic hall and became popular as the minstrels'

gallery. Apart trom well-known survivals sikh as that at Penshurst Place, one ot

the earliest and most interesting examples, exceptionally large tor the size of the

hall, occurs at Woodlands \ lere.

Behind the screen ran what was called the screens passage, which must havebeen so excruciatingly draught} that it is not surprising that the doors at either

end ot it should have later been protected In porches which developed into

magnificent architec tural features. I rom the far side ofthe si reens passage opened

Page 29: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Variations on Three I hits

the pantry and the buttery, which at first were probably no more than shacks

leaning against the gable wall. The kitchen was usually a separate building

approached from a passage between the buttery and the pantry, though cookingwas also done on the fire burning on the floor towards the upper end of the hall.

At this end of the great apartment there was a raised, paved space, which came to

be known as the dais, where the head of the household and his family could dine

and retire from the dirt and disorder, the littei of food scraps, straw and rush that

turned the earth floor of the rest of the hall into what was disdainfully referred

to as the 'marsh'.

This simplest type of house was still being built without extensions as late as

the end of the thirteenth century, for Fyfield Hall in Essex has been shown byMr J. T. Smith to have consisted originally of no more than a two-bayed aisled

hall. The style persisted with additions and modifications into the fourteenth

and even into the fifteenth century, and Mrs Wood lists well over thirty examples

which still stand, even though they have been disguised and sometimes mutilated

by later alterations and are usually unrecognizable externally because they have

been encased in brick, stone or weatherboarding. Many more are possibly await-

ing identification, especially in the eastern counties.

Much ot the character of these early aisled halls can still be strongly experienced

in a house near Sudbury, Abbas Hall, despite the insertion of a floor, a chimney-

stack and a Tudor fireplace. The low, dark bedrooms of the present house have

been contrived in a forest of timbers of gigantic size which, at first confusing,

resolve themselves into the structure of the upper part of the former aisles, mas-

sive arcade plates and the tops of huge, rough pillars, and into the members of a

tie-beam and crown-post roof bursting with struts and braces. So closely massed

arc the enormous timbers ot this roof that it is difficult to move among them, but

it is not only because they are seen at such close quarters that they inspire so

crushing a sense of weight: it is the rude, unpolished aspect of the workmanshipwhich is daunting. Yet compared with the simple construction of the Didbrook

cottage, this roof seems a complicated and skilful piece of work. It is in fact a

coarse version of the commonest type of those open timber roofs which in parish

church architecture were to develop into such glorious and peculiarly English

compositions as those which soar above the naves ot Needham Market, Trunch,

Pulham, Knapton or March.

The roofof Tiptofts Manor, Wimbish, shows a finer feeling for design, though

its date, the mid fourteenth century, is not much later than that of Abbas Hall.

Only two ofthe three original bays ofthis aisled hall survive, but these are miracu-

lously preserved in atmosphere if not in every detail, and the great height of the

noble structure makes its full impact unimpeded by the intrusion of a horizontal

division. One of the aisles, that on the side from which the hall is now entered,

vanished when the house was given a new front, although a pillar from the

former arcade can be seen embedded in the later wall. Its slim, tree-standing

companion opposite is a Decorated column carved in dark, hard oak with fillctted

shafts and a boldly moulded capital. From it spring curving braces to support the

purlin and a tie-beam cut with a camber to counteract the tendency to sag. The

spandrels are cusped and the lower part of the principal rafters dividing each bay

are wave-moulded. An octagonal crown-post with four branching struts rises

from the tie-beam to carry a central longitudinal purlin which strengthens the

collars tying each pair of closely set rafters. There is no ridge-piece in this root:

the rafters are halved and pegged where they intersect. The central pair ot

principal rafters rest on hammer-beams, but this may be a later alteration to

obviate the necessity for aisle columns and so gain more space.

Apart from the interest of its superb roof, it is still possible in the hall at Tiptofts

to see where openings led into the buttery and pantry. One ot these openings, a

two-centred arch with ornamented spandrels, is still in use; the second has been

filled in. During the sixteenth century, when a chimney was added to the hall.

27

Page 30: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Variations on Three Units

the earth floor was bricked over, and this pallid surface of thin yellow or rose-

coloured bricks, irregular in shape, yet of silken sheen, and as undulating as the

floor of St Mark's, Venice, sets off the sombre timber and harmonizes with the

dramatically tapering and inclining chimney tunnel snaking up to the apex of

the roof. A stairway leads up beside the stack to a tiny gallery and from here it is

possible to see the rafters which were blackened by the soot of the earlier fire on

the hall floor. But the mention ofthe chimney and brick floor anticipates develop-

ments which have no place in this early phase of our story. There is, however,

another feature of Tiptofts Manor which connects it with the opening stages in

the evolution of the English house - its moat. For it is islanded by a broad, deep

ditch of spring-fed water, recalling another type of moated dwelling, fortified

not only by water but by stone walls, which made its startling, foreign appear-

ance among the traditional one-storeyed, one-roomed halls ot the native nobles

and their retainers and the flimsy mud or wattle and daub huts of the peasants

some time towards the end of the eleventh century. This was the second of those

units which played an essential part in the development of domestic architecture

in Britain, the rectangular keep of the Norman castle. Regarded as a house, the

plan of the keep or donjon was amazingly novel, tor it introduced an arrange-

ment of accommodation in storeys instead of on ground level. The entrance was

on the first floor and was reached by a ladder or a narrow flight of stone steps.

Above the entrance floor was the principal room, the hall with the 'solar' or

withdrawing room over it. The vaulted ground floor was used for storage. Asplendidly preserved Norman keep still towers from its high promontory over

the Colne valley and over the small Essex town of Castle Hedingham. and is still

the visual centre of the scene it dominated socially and politically for close on

400 years. Built inc. 113 s by Aubrey de Vere. whose grandfather had acquired

the land at the Conquest, its mighty stone-faced walls, blank except for tiny

single and twin arched openings, 1 1 teet thick and rising to a height of 100 feet.

look as exotic today in their quiet East Anglian setting as when they first soared

above their humble mud and timber neighbours. They must have made an

impact akin to that of the relics of Roman masonry on the Saxon poet. Like

those rums ot antiquity. Castle Hedingham is conspicuous for an alien monu-mentally; a not unexpected resemblance, for the Norman keep is based onarchitectural patterns evolved in the eastern regions of the Byzantine Empireand partly inherited from pagan Rome. The interior of the keep is remarkable

tor much else besides its plan: the lofty hall is warmed, not by a central fire, but

by a wall fireplace, round-headed, ornamented with a double chevron mouldingand stone-canopied. The first-floor room, reached by an outside stair, boasts a

similar fireplace, and the south buttress contains flues for both fireplaces. Theupper rooms are reached by a stair in the north-west angle turret and the thick

walls secrete small chambers opening off the main apartments.

The third unit to make its indispensable contribution to the evolving plan ot

the English house originated, like the castle keep, with the advent of the Norman-.It was an even more extraordinary phenomenon 111 twelfth-century Britain, for

it was from the outset purely domestic, a small stone house of trim rectangular

shape with an electrifying plan on two floors. Each floor consisted ot\\ greater

and a lesser chamber with the most important room on the upper floor.

.wish origin to the two-storeyed Norman houses whichappeared in certain towns, and three of the most famous, at Lincoln, are known

as House. I urt and Aaron's House, while another, at Bur\ St

Edmund's. p>C s by the name ofM Hall, and one at Norwich is known as

's Hall. Jews did not appear in Britain until after the Conquest, and becausethey were wealthy and. as money-lenders, often unpopular, they probably stoodin need of the protection offered by stone walls and an upper floor So despitethe tact that Aaron ot Lincoln never lived 111 the house named after him. there

Hue truth m the assumption that these little buildings, which struck so

Castle Hedingham. E

It the aisled, open hall was one of the

basic units from which the English

house evolved, the rectangular castle

keeps built by the Norman con-querors were of equal importanceThey introduced the tower motifwhich was to play a considerable part

in medieval house design (especially

in the north), thev expressed the novel

idea of accommodation arranged in

storeys instead ot all on one floor, andthey embodied the conception ot

stone instead of timber building for

secular purposes, while certain

features of the interior foreshadowedfuture developments. Wall fireplaces.

tor instance, warmed the principal

room instead of an open central

hearth.

Castle Hedingham was built c. 1 155

:istructed

ot flint rubble faced with Barnack

stone. The flight of stone 51

leading up to the entrance was

originally covered by a forebuilding.

It opens into a large first-floor roomwith a screw staircase in the north-

west angle, the external protection ot

which can be seen in the photograph.

The hall, a large room surrounded bv

a gallery, is on the second floor, and

over it ts the solar' or withdrawingroom, above which, behind the

former battlements, there was once

a paved walk

Page 31: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Variations on Three Units

outlandish a note in their English environment, were designed for Jews. On the

other hand, the tradition may be no more accurate than that which associates

Norman stone houses of a rather later date, such as King John's Hunting Box,

Romsey, or King John's House, Lacock, with the name of King John. These

two-storeyed stone dwellings may merely have become linked with the names of

unusual or notable personages because they themselves were so distinctive.

No matter who built them, and no matter whether they be town houses,

manor houses or episcopal palaces, these Norman structures all conform to type

and display similar features in similar positions. Seldom more than 20 feet wide

and usually less than 40 feet in length, the ground floor of these houses is always

low and vaulted, and, where it has escaped alteration, illumined only by narrow

loop windows like those which can still be seen in the ruined example at

Chnstchurch. This lower floor is thought to have been used tor storage, while the

upper chambers with their larger two-light, shafted windows were the owner's

Page 32: The English House Through Seven Centuries
Page 33: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Two-storeyed Norman houses

Hemingford Manor, Huntingdon-shire, built c. 1 150 (top left), the

interior of the first-floor hall of which

is shown underneath ; BoothbyPagnell Manor House, Lincolnshire,

f. 1200 (top right); and the Jew's

House, The Strait, Lincoln, c. 1 170

(bottom right), are examples of the

third component which determined

the development of the English house.

They introduced the two-storeyed,

rectangular theme into domestic design

for the first time. Built of stone andwith the hall and another roomopening from one end of it, on the

upper floor they incorporated an

arrangement totally different fromthat of the aisled hall. The photograph

of Boothby Pagnell shows the exter-

nal staircase by which in such houses

the first-floor entrance was usually

approached. The door of the Jew's

House at Lincoln is, however, on the

ground floor, probably because the

lower part of this town house wasused as business premises. Immediate-

ly above the door, resting upon its

hood mould, rises the chimney-stack

of the hall fireplace. A typical

Norman wall fireplace flanked byshafts with cushion capitals survives

at Hemingford (bottom left). Boththis house and Boothby Pagnell

Manor House retain the two-light

round-arched windows which usually

lit the first-floor Norman hall.

Whereas the covering arch at

Hemingford is adorned with the

popular chevron motif, and the doorof the Jew's House is still more richly

ornamented with an uncommon openheart pattern, the plain window arches

at Boothby Pagnell herald the simpler

Early English style. The ground floor

of the Norman stone house wasgenerally used for storage, and tor

purposes of security was originally

lit only by narrow loops.

Variations on Three Units

living-quarters. The windows are in general round-headed and set within a con-taining arch, but at Moyses Hall the arches enclose square-headed windows. Theyare unquestionably of the same date as the house and are of particular interest as

extremely early instances of this design.

The focus of the little house was the large first-floor room, or hall. The smallerapartment, or solar, adjoining it provided privacy and such comforts of civiliza-

tion, perhaps a garderobe in one angle, as were then available. The great chamberwas generally entered by means of an outside stair rising parallel to the wall, as

in the manor house at Boothby Pagnell. At Isaac's House, Norwich, the stair

was enclosed in a forebuilding. An internal stair led down to the well-nighimpregnable ground floor. But if the lower floor was used as a workshop or

for the transaction of business, as was sometimes the case with town houses, there

was a street door at ground level. The rich door of the Jew's House, Lincoln, is

the most conspicuous object in The Strait. It survives almost entire except that

in thejambs only the capitals remain. The doorway arch exhibits a comparativelyrare Norman ornament, the open-heart, a motif which occurs more frequently

in France than in England. Another curious feature of this house is that an en-

closing arch above the doorway carries the chimney of the first-floor fireplace,

an arrangement found also in a house of the same date at Cluny. While the open-ing in the roof of the timber-framed aisled hall, through which the central fire

sent up its curl of smoke, was capped by no more than a small clay chimney-potor pottery louver, like those now in the Chichester Museum, these sophisticated

Norman houses, with their wall fireplaces, were graced by tall cylindrical

chimneys such as those still to be seen at Boothby Pagnell and Christchurch.

Some of these were open while others were topped by a conical cap like those

which still taper above twelfth-century houses at Cluny and Bayeux.

If they are not in ruins, turned into museums, or preserved as empty shells,

these Norman houses have usually been so much altered and enlarged in the

course of their long lives, that although, as in the Jew's House, Lincoln, the

original character of the exterior may still compel attention, this exterior nolonger corresponds to the internal arrangements and the building exists as a relic

rather than a vital organism. There survives one Norman house, however, in

Huntingdonshire, where despite later accretions the builder's plan emerges with

astonishing clarity and meets the demands of present inhabitants as adequately

as, from about 1 1 50 onwards, it satisfied those of a long succession ofpast owners.

At Hemingford Manor past and present mingle in an atmosphere which, in its

magical essence, is still that of Norman England. The miracle has been partly

brought about by the surprising fact that the landscape in which the house is set

has scarcely altered since the first owner and builder Payne de Hemingford looked

out on it from the splayed, round-headed windows. The manor house confronts

a flat, willowy expanse where backwaters separate Houghton meadows from

the main stream of the Ouse, and stands islanded by the river and by a green moat

swept by overhanging trees. Immense yews throw shadows on to the walls, the

rough stone of which has been plastered over, in accordance with medieval

usage, to make a scintillating, irregular surface like that ofa palette-knife painting.

The south window, with its twin lights and chevron-ornamented arch, stands

out in relief against this richly textured wall like the piped decoration on an iced

cake. Near this window, in the angle of the house, a modern opening marks the

position of the doorway formerly approached by an outside stair. Another

Norman window looks towards the east, and yet another, on the opposite side,

opens from the hall into a bedroom which, with the kitchen below it, was

probably added to the house in the eighteenth century. The hall, or great cham-

ber, remains the most important room at Hemingford Manor; it is still the

centre of the life of the house. It is no longer exactly as Payne de Hemingford

left it, for the wall separating it from the solar is now taken up by a gigantic

sixteenth-century chimney, the leaning mass ot which nearly fills the width of

31

Page 34: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Variations on Three Units

the original house. Yet in spite of its prodigious size this structure contributes less

to the memorable atmosphere of the room than the chimney-piece it supplanted,

a fine architectural composition in the west wall, a shallow arch with a bold

keystone head flanked by pilasters with scalloped capitals. This and the deep

window embrasure, revealing the impressive thickness of the wall, set the moodof the apartment.

The main stream of English domestic planning derives from various combina-

tions and elaborations of the three types of dwelling just described: the tower-

like keep, the rectangular Norman house, with its upper-floor hall, and the

aisled hall. The theme of the tower has an independent history besides playing a

part in diverse amalgamations. It is perhaps even more associated in the imagina-

tion with the Middle Ages than the Great Hall; and in the medieval mind it

certainly persisted as a dominant image long after the need for defence which

gave it birth had vanished, satisfying the strong predilection of the age for

verticality and for symbols of authority. Free-standing residential towers maysometimes have owed their existence to a restricted site, as the most economical

means of obtaining the required accommodation, as at Okehampton, where the

tower house was actually built on the stump of a Norman keep. And towers

were a necessity for several centuries in the wilder and more disturbed parts of

the British Isles, in the northern counties, in Ireland and in Scotland. But the

necessity became a fashion, the extravagant development of which, especially

in Scotland, the country above all of tower houses, will be discussed later in

these pages. For the moment it is the association of the tower with the two-

storeyed house and the traditional hall which is of interest.

A combination of the first two of these units, creating a new L-shaped plan,

can be seen in the thirteenth-century Little Wenham Hall, Suffolk. The first

floor, approached by an external stair, is occupied by the hall, while a chapel

with traceried windows opens at right-angles from it. Above the chapel, rising

over the rest of the little building in the form of a square tower, is the solar. Theground floor, like the bottom storey of the Norman house and the castle keep,

is low and vaulted. The union of tower and hall was, however, a more commonlyoccurring design. At Longthorpe Hall, Northamptonshire, a massive square

tower was added early in the fourteenth century to a hall of about 1260, prob-

ably by Robert Thorpe, Steward of Peterborough Abbey and son of William

de Thorpe, who is thought to have built the hall. The ground floor of the tower

is vaulted and was used as a store, while the first floor comprises the Great Cham-ber and a tiny room contrived in the thickness of the west wall which may have

been a garderobe. A narrow staircase concealed in the south wall leads to the

third storey, a room in which all the original stone window seats survive andwhere, in the window recesses, the draw-bar holes for securing the shutters can

still be seen. The stone seat of the garderobe in the south wall has also been pre-

served. The Great Chamber was inaccessible from the ground floor and wasentered by steps from the adjoining hall. It is now reached by a passage on the

level of the floor inserted in the hall during the seventeenth century.

The Great Chamber at Longthorpe is distinguished by a unique series ofmural paintings which reveal the religious climate in which medieval domesticarchitecture evolved even more compellingly than the ubiquitous chapel. Thesedecorations arc conditioned b\ the same habit of mind as that which informed the

great didactic schemes nt wall and glass painting displayed in Gothic churches.

The fact that they were commissioned by a man who was not connected withthe church and was not a great lord indicates that such paintings were a normaland fashionable feature of fourteenth-century houses. The theme of the muralsis the contrast between the worldly and the spiritual life as exhibited in a numberot biblical scenes, episodes from the lues of the saints ,uu\ various moralities.

Immediately on entering the room the visitor is hugely confronted by an imageot the Virgin, mysteriously commanding though half obliterated, clasping the

UTTLE »ENHAM hall Fva floor

Page 35: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Window from Longthorpe Tower,Northamptonshire, and (below)

window at Hemingford ManorHouse, Huntingdonshire

The deep embrasure of the window at

Hemingford, seen from the inside of

the upper-floor hall, shows the great

thickness of the walls and reveals a

curious and unusual feature, the

lobes protruding from the soffits of

the lights. There was originally no

glass in the windows of twelfth-

century houses, and these projections

probably helped to keep shutters in

place. Between the stone windowseats, parallel with the splayed jambs,

where two persons might sit with-

drawn, is a stone foot-rest or step,

only just visible in the photograph.

This could alternatively be used as a

seat for a single person.

The window from the hall of

Longthorpe Tower illustrates the per-

sistence in the thirteenth century of

the two-light opening, but the pro-

portions have become more slender

and the arches are pointed instead of

round-headed. The quatrefoil in the

window-head is cut in the stone andis an example of 'plate' tracery. Thedividing shaft is a simple version of

the Early English cylindrical columnwith plainly moulded capital and

base.

Page 36: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Child and reclining on a high conch of ecclesiastical design. Above her the

Wheel of Lite depicts the seven stages of man's transient pilgrimage on earth and

below her the Apostles walk in pairs with a woman representing the Churchand holding a scroll. Beneath them again runs a dado of exquisitely drawn birds,

most of them of the kind native, or once native, to the near-by Lincolnshire tens:

bittern, curlew, shelduck and goose. A tonsured figure sits in an armchair in a

window embrasure instructing a child, and a vision of Christ dazzles a hermit and

a basket-maker. But at first the eye scarcely registers either these personages or

the enchanting birds, so instantly is it drawn to a dramatic representation of three

kings brought t\cv to face with their own skeletons and the realization of the

vanity of earthly rank and wealth. Equally arresting, both m subject-matter and

execution, is the strange device above the fireplace, the Wheel of the Five Senses,

typified by a monkey, a vulture, a spider's web, a boar and a cock. The Wheelis controlled by a gigantic kingly figure, perhaps the Almighty, standing behind

it. and making an impression even more memorable than that intended by the

artist by reason of the surprising colour of his complexion. It is blotched and

swarthy, I he colour of the undercoat for the rlcsh tints was black, and where it

has worn away the faces of the figures have assumed the dusk v hue ofMoors, while

the reds and ochres of the rest of the paintings still glow with a fiery intensity

although they can only be the ghosts (if the original pigments.

I he plan resulting from the fusion of hall and tower appears to have remainedfashionable over a long period. Richard Stonyhurst, author of" /)e Rebus in

Hibernia Gestis, records the survival in Ireland in [584 of long halls built 'ofcl.n

or mud and thatched' attached to stone towers containing solar chambers. AtBroughton in Oxfordshire a hall was built 111 the fifteenth century on to .1

teenth-century tower; and even as late as tin sixteenth century Pengersicklelston in Cornwall, was designed as a hall (now destroyed) abutting

on to a three-Storeyed tower and taller angle turret with a dooi into the hail

from the solar on the first floor.

But the most fruitful play upon the once separate components of the emerging

Little Wenham Hall. Suffolk, and

(right) Longthorpe Tower.Northamptonshire

At Little Wenham Hall, dating from

c. 1270-S0, the two-storeyed plan of

the Norman house and the tower

house, exemplified b\ Castle Heding-

ham (page 29), .ire combined in an

1 -shaped house 1 he long arm ot the

1 i out.uns .1 hall above a vaulted

basement which, like that ofBoothbyPagnell Manor I louse, is reached by

an outside staircase, ol wood here

instead ot stone, while the shorter

arm takes the form ot .1 tower with a

chapel on the first tlooi and .1 chambeiabo\ e u 1 he ground flooi is lit only by

narrow lancets tor purposes ot

security I he three-light chapel win-

dow indicates by its size the import-

ance ot the chapel in the medieval

house and shows also how in the

course of the thirteenth century 'plate'

tracery de\ eloped mto geometrit

tracery completely filling the head of

the window 1 ittle Wenham 1 lall is

constructed mainly ot bru k mixedw ith tin it and septana. and is one of

tin earliest instances ot the use ot

brick, as distinct from the re-use ot

Roman bruk. in the Middle Ages

At I ongthorpe the massive tower was

added to the ihu teenth-i enturv hall in

the early fourteenth century

.

Page 37: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Interior of the Great Chamber,Longthorpe Tower, Northampton-shire

The remarkable murals in this princi-

pal, first-floor room of the Towerwere hidden under successive coats oflimewash until 1945, when the tenant

discovered evidences of painting. Thewhole amazing scheme of decoration

was recovered and restored by MrE. Clive Rouse. The subjects seen here

are the Nativity, immediately abovethe window arch, with the SevenAges of Man in the arc outlined abovethe scene. On either side of the

window opening are pairs ofApostles, while below them can beseen part of a dado of Fenland birds.

Old Soar, Plaxtol, Kent (right)

At Old Soar, dating from c. 1290, a

wing based on the plan of the two-storeyed Norman house was set

across the end of an aisled hall. Thegable-end of the two-storeyedstructure, with the solar on the upperfloor, can be seen to the left of the

photograph. The hall was replaced

by a brick house in the eighteenth

century. The projection in the fore-

ground of the picture, with its simple,

two-light lancet window, is the

upper-floor chapel, with a vaulted

chamber with external access beneath

it. The chapel is entered through a

door in the south-east corner of the

solar.

house plan was the combination of the hall and the two-storeyed dwelling. In

some instances they are not actually brought into contact but are joined by a

passage. This is the case at Woodlands Manor, Mere, a basically fourteenth-

century house built by Thomas Doddington when he left the Quantocks to

marry the Wiltshire daughter of the lord of the manor, John Guphaye. Thehouse comprises two structures each under its own roof connected by a short

passage not more than 5 feet long. The north building is a version of the Normantwo-storeyed house with a chapel on the upper floor, formerly entered by an

external stone stairway on the north wall and still reached from within by steps

going up from a pointed arch in the passage. The room below the chapel,

probably once used for storage, later became a kitchen with an outside door. Its

three windows were inserted in the sixteenth century. The second building

stands parallel to the chapel and contains the fine hall with its minstrels' gallery,

the porch and the little room over it, once a columbarium, and a sixteenth- or

seventeenth-century addition now used as a kitchen.

At the thirteenth-century manor of Old Soar in Kent, the hall and the two-

storeyed block assumed a relationship which was to become standardized. Themanor has lost its hall, and where it stood an eighteenth-century red-brick farm-

house now dwarfs the little grey ragstone medieval survival in its wonderfully

unaltered setting of steep woods and orchards. But the corbels of the former hall

arcade, embedded in the west wall of the existing building, testify to the mannerin which the two structures were associated. The two-storeyed unit was set

across the end of the hall house, and a spiral stair, which has been preserved, led

from the north-east angle of the hall to the upper chamber of the two-storeyed

block, which could also be approached by an outside stair. This apartment is

furnished with a fireplace in the centre of one of its long walls, and two small

rooms open from its north-east and south-east corners. One served as a garderobe,

the other was a chapel. The hall was used for dining and for the accommodation

of servants, while the upper chamber of the cross-block, the solar, with the

chapel leading from it were tor the private use of the owner, with pantry, buttery

35

Page 38: The English House Through Seven Centuries

and place tor storage on the ground floor. The plan thus mirrors a way of life

involving a principal and a dependent household.

In general, house design was furthered by combinations of two of the origin-

ally isolated structures, particularly by the merging of the aisled hall and the

two-storeyed dwelling. Hut occasionally tower, upper hall house and hall cametogether in a single composition. These, for instance, are the familiar compo-nents that underly the deceptively haphazard aspect ot Stokesay Castle, the

picturesque irregularity of which is enhanced by its romantic site m the woodedvalley ot the River Onny and by the calm reflection of its fretted, faded fabric

in the remains ot its own broad moat. The north end of the house, with its later

projecting halt-timber storc\. was built as a free-standing tower before 1270,

the suggested date of the hall, which, according to Mr J. T. Smith, was onceaisled. The cross-wing, containing the solar, was .xdalcd to the south end of the

hall in 1291, at the same time as the conspicuous, curiously shaped and battle-

mented south tower. The older tower, the structure of the upper part of whichseems to bear out the theory that stone towers were preceded by timber buildingssuch .is are shown 111 the Bayeux 1 apestry, was entered from the hall by a rough

-den staircase, but the solar block was cut off from the hall 111 the interests ot

privacy and the only access was by an external stair

I he cross-wing was a more important factor than the tower in the evolutionot the house and the advance which followed on its fusion with the aisled hall is

well illustrated b\ a house 111 bast Angha which is rather earlier than Stokesa)tie aiul superficially utterly different in character, although in plan it is

ill) closely connected both with the Shropshire house and with Old Soar

Stokesay Castle, Shropshire

The left-hand photograph shows the

interior of the Great Hall, c. 1285.

There is reason to believe that the

hall was once aisled. The wall-post-,

on the end-walls, resting on stone

corbies and supporting a collar, once a

tie-beam, support this view. And the

timber roof, in the opinion of MrJ.

T. Smith, belongs to two periods

the thirteenth century, the date of the

original crucks. and the late MiddleAges. We are looking towards the

service end of the hall, where the

stair in the former screens passage

(where it must have obstructed the

back entrance to the hall) gives access

to doors on two floors connecting the

hall with the north tower (opposite).

The shouldered lintel of the loweropening is characteristic of the second

half ot the fourteenth century.

At Stokesay Castle the hall with a

cross-wing .it its south end was addedto a tower built in the twelfth century

opposite), so Stokesay was a com-bination of tower, hall and two-storeyed block The overhangingupper, timber storey of the tower is

seventeenth-century work, but it mayhave replaced an earlier timber

structure and may represent a timber

tradition The photograph shows the

external structure of the hall in which

the wall above the windows is

carried up into gables The windows.ot which one can be seen, are charac-

teristic of the late thirteenth Century.

Mies have twin, trefoil-headed lights

with a large circle in the head, the

whole protected b\ .1 pointed hood.

Page 39: The English House Through Seven Centuries

37

Page 40: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Northborough Hall, Northampton-shire

The type of manor house whichemerged from the union of the hall

and the two-storeyed, separately

roofed cross-block is well illustrated

by Northborough, built c. 1330-40.

The porch protected the entrance into

the original open hall and led directly

into the screens passage. Inside the

passage the three original ogee-arched

doors can still.be seen which once led

into the buttery, pantry and kitchen.

Medieval kitchens were usually in

separate buildings owing to the

danger of fire, but in the triple-door

arrangement which was fashionable in

the fourteenth century, the centre

door led into a passage to the kitchen.

The heads ot the two hall window s

are filled with blocked flowing

tracery showing the ogee and heart

shapes found in church windows ot

the period. The dormer was inserted

during the seventeenth century whenthe hall was divided horizontally to

give an extra floor. The bold crockets

adorning the gable-end of the hall

are a rare sur\i\al, and still moreinteresting is the chimney at the apexof the gable, dating from c. 1340. It

is hexagonal and crenellated, with a

ball-flower cornice and an orna-

mental gable on each face.

Thirteenth-century doorway. Little

Chesterford Manor. Essex

This is one of two service doorwayswhich originally led from the screens

passage into the buttery or pantry.

The opening is t\ pica! of the period, a

two-centred arch with a roll-moulded

hood. The original purpose of the

hood was to throw ort rainwater,

externally. Here it is used purely

ornamentally.

St Clere's Hall. St Os\th. 1 >h\

opposite)

When two cross-blocks were com-bined with the hall, one at each endot it. .1 symmetrical, winged arrange-

ment resulted which became the

standard H-plan of the English manorhouse St Clere's. built in the four-

teenth century, is one of the least

altered examples of .1 house conceivedfrom the beginning as .111 aisled hall

with separately rooted cross-blocks

at either end On the right can be seen

the lean-to or 'outshut', which pro-

\ ided extra storage space and whichmight also have represented the

service departments, the butters and

pantry, il the family wished to use the

nued oppoi

Page 41: The English House Through Seven Centuries

space next the screens as a dining-

room. In a house of this kind the

aisled hall was the heart of the home.The wing to the right contained the

buttery and pantry on the groundfloor with a bedchamber above it,

while the corresponding wing on the

left, farthest away from the entrance,

comprised the solar on the tirst floor,

for the private use of the family, with

below it a parlour, used as a bowerfor the daughters of the house or as a

reception room.

(.'/unit, r jfc.iv

milium i i

Little Chesterford Manor originated as a two-storeyed house built in the style

of Hemingford Manor in about 1225 of flint rubble strengthened with clunch

and limestone. A recently exposed doorway in the upper chamber doubtless

gave on to the former outside staircase. Another door of Tudor design and the

windows of this room are part of later alterations, but the low ground floor, its

stout walls knurled by rough flints gleaming in the dim light from two tiny

original windows, remains structurally much as it was when a timbered, aisled

hall was added at right-angles to the house just before the end of the thirteenth

century. Two stone arches lead from this ground floor of the cross-block into

what was once the hall, but which is now scarcely recognizable after horizontal

subdividing to make extra floors and rooms. Only two posts of the aisle are still

visible and the roof timbers only emerge here and there from ornamental plaster

ceilings.

At some time during the fourteenth century a block similar to the earliest

two-storeyed wing was erected at right-angles to the opposite end of the hall.

The wing at farthest remove from the draughty entrance now became the solar,

while the apartment below, at first a storeroom and wardrobe, became the par-

lour, a room for the reception of guests, or, known as the bower, set aside for the

use of the daughters of the house.

Whether it came into being purely in response to a desire for greater comfort

and convenience or was prompted by a sense of design, this addition of a second

cross-wing to the hall house created a symmetrical H-shaped dwelling which,

with significant modifications, was to determine the pattern of manor-house

architecture for many decades, indeed until the close of the sixteenth century

in outlying districts. The more important houses were now conceived from the

start as three-part buildings, at first, like Northborough Manor, built in about

1330, and like St Clere's Hall, St Osyth, as a great hall with separately roofed

cross-blocks at either end, and then, with the passage of the years, as ever more

closely integrated amalgamations of the three components. At the same time

there developed a conscious, romantic taste tor past conventions which resulted

in the deliberate designing of a house such as Great Chalfield Manor, Wiltshire,

on the early medieval plan of a great hall balanced by a cross-wing at either end,

at a period (1480) when these three units had all been brought under a continuous

roof-line. These tendencies were the dominant influences in domestic plans of

the later Gothic age

39

Page 42: The English House Through Seven Centuries
Page 43: The English House Through Seven Centuries

3

Innovations in Design

West Bower Farm, Durleigh,

Somerset

Gatehouses were originally defensive

features: their value had becomeapparent in the thirteenth century

when the castle keep had been sup-

planted by curtain walls, and they hadplayed a part in the protection of

cathedral closes, abbeys and priories.

But the domestic gatehouse, though it

provided protection against bands ofmarauders m periods of unrest such

as the fourteenth century, wasnot a military structure. And the

design of this hfteenth-century

example, embedded in a later house,

reflects a sense of security in the size

of the traceried windows which turn

the twin octagonal turrets into lantern

towers. The continuous hood mouldabove the windows and the corbel

heads at the angles make an unusual

decoration. Some of the glass in the

cusped lights is original. It includes

quarries embellished with painted

flowers and with the initials 'M' and'A', which probably stand for the

owners of West Bower, MargaretCoker and Alexander Hody. Hodywas executed in 1461 on a charge oftreason.

As the Middle Ages advanced, so a domestic architecture emerged which showedincreasing awareness of aesthetic possibilities, both in the form of the building

and its decoration, and this is clearly apparent not only 111 the individuality andvaried treatment of houses of the period, but in the gradual subordination ofdefensive features to an ordered design which eliminated the sharp distinction

between the castle, originally a purely military structure, and the manor house,

which fulfilled an entirely different function as the administrative centre of the

petty domain known as the manor. The plan which led to the fusion of these

widely disparate buildings was quadrangular and usually moated and derived

from France, more than half of which country had at one time during the

Hundred Years War been occupied by English forces. Thus HerstmonceuxCastle, Sussex, Maxstone Castle, Warwickshire, Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk, and

the timber-framed merchant's house known as Southfields, Dedham, Essex, are

all governed by the quadrangular design, even if the gatehouse at Herstmonceuxremains a massive piece of fortification, and even if Maxstone is defended bvcorner towers.

These four houses were conceived from the beginning as quadrangular

arrangements, but very often older buildings were adapted to the plan. Exten-

sions of the cross-wings of the great hall to form two sides of a courtyard can often

be found at the rear of old houses in country towns. At Ightham Mote, Kent, one

of the most atmospheric ofmoated houses, owing as much to its undisturbed site

in a wooded hollow as to its architecture, the picturesque buildings, the broad,

low, battlemented gatehouse of Kentish ragstone and dull red brick, the half-

timbered hall and the ranges of offices, private rooms and lodgings for retainers

were grouped over a period of two centuries round the courtyard, the confines

of which had already been circumscribed by the moat. At Haddon Hall, Derby-

shire, two courts were developed over a long period with the hall between them.

In the case of some lesser manor houses, where there is often no more than the

most playful hint at fortification, a moat defines the quadrangular layout, but the

gatehouse, instead of forming part of the symmetrical structure, stands in isola-

tion facing the free-standing hall house, as at Cothay, Somerset, and at LowerBrockhampton, Herefordshire (p. 42). A comparison of the pretty timber-framed

gatehouse of this enchanting house, with its moulded angle-posts and vine-trailed

bargeboards, with the narrow opening between two big circular towers which

forms the formidable gatehouse of Whittington Castle, Shropshire, illustrates

more forcefully than any description the decline in the need tor defence between

the reigns of Henry III and Edward IV and the growing delight in ornament.

The variety in design which was stimulated by freedom from military require-

ments can be judged by a glance at another fifteenth-century gatehouse, the one

which is now embedded in the facade ofWest Bower Farm. Durleigh. Somerset,

and which could scarcely diverge more widely from that at Little Brockhampton.

The upper parts of the octagonal towers flanking the entrance consist of two air)

rooms lit, like lanterns, by large windows in every outer wall, each of two

trefoil-headed lights.

4i

Page 44: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The gatehouse ofOxburgh Hall, though certainly less vulnerable than that ot

either West Bower Farm or Lower Brockhampton, is in reality not much moreeffective as a piece of fortification. Sir Edward Bedingfield obtained licence to

crenellate his house in [482. The king's "licence to crenellate' originated in a

decree of Edward I that no castle might be erected without the monarch'spermission, tor at that period a strongly fortified castle housing a large number o(men could constitute a threat to the state and the purpose of the law was to controlthat menace. But by the time Oxburgh Hall was built the licence to crenellate

had become a svmbol of power and status w huh was only translated into defen-

signofthe recipient's importance : sometimes, indeed.

Pattendi it. the evidence of the licence is expressed no moreipicuously than b\ the use along the wall-plates of the hall, or perhaps ^n the

The gatehouse. Lower Brock-hampton. Herefordshire

The gatehouse dates from the late

fifteenth century, and it is only the

stone-slated roof of the little structure

which indicates its locality, for the

closely set vertical timbers present

much the same pattern as timber

framing of the same period in East

Angha. The photograph shows the

moat which almost encircles the

house, though its purpose was nolonger defensive by the time the

gatehouse was built.

Oxburgh Hall. Norfolk (opposil

The broad moat and lofty gatehouse.>! Oxburgh Hall look more formid-

able than the halt-timber work at

Lower Brockhampton. But CO Sir

Edward Bedingfield, for whom the

house was built in 14s;. the promin-ent gatehouse was a s\ mbol of his

importance and at the same time a

romantic allusion to the immediate

past when defence had been a

necessity. The quadrangular plan *.'(

the house derived from French

example with which Englishmen had

become familiar during the HundredYears W ar The gatehouse remains as

it looked in the fifteenth century, but

the rest of the mansion was restored

from , is;s b\ Sir Henry Richard

Bedingfield. The oriels, the dormerwindows and the pantiles, all ot

which add to the picturesque aspect

ot Oxburgh. date from the nine-

teenth-century restoration

Page 45: The English House Through Seven Centuries

1 HALL Ground fioi

i

.

Gnat hall

2. Dining- room

i. Withdrawing i

f Entry

6. Brtakfatt

j. Kitchen

a. Buttery

10 Knapcry

11. Laundry

screen, of the favourite late medieval motif of miniature battlements. Sir Edwardwas not so discreet: the machicolated arch connecting the polygonal turrets of

his gatehouse may be ornamental rather than defensive, the fanciful battlements

and the moat may be no more than striking details in a deliberately pictorial

composition, but the structure nevertheless rises to a height of seven storeys. Thediscrepancy in size between this immense edifice and the rest of the symmetrical

mansion springs only in part, however, from Sir Edward Bedingfield's desire

to impress his contemporaries : it also testifies to his conscious pleasure in a design

of marked originality and in an exaggerated allusion to a convention which had

been a necessity in the immediate past. The sense of romance at Oxburgh is

heightened by the reflection of turrets, crenellations, stepped gables, oriels and

slender chimney-stacks in the glassy moat, and probably by the fact that, apart

from the gatehouse, a good deal of the fabric was rebuilt in the early nineteenth

century at a time when the taste for the Picturesque had not yet hardened into

the insistence on archaeological correctness which so often destroyed the vitality

ofVictorian work. It was then that the ranges were roofed with the pantiles which

now seem so integral a part of the composition. The harmony of the design and

the impact it makes are due as much to the colour and character of the material

as to the shape of the building. It is the weathered red brick of the walls which

so instantly conjures up the romantic's view of the Middle Ages and brings to

mind lines like those William Morris used to describe a moated medieval castle:

43

Page 46: The English House Through Seven Centuries

• *.

On the bricks the green moss grew.

Yellow lichen on the stone,

Over which red apples shone;

Little war that castle knew.

Deep green water filled the moat;

Each side had a red-brick lip

Green and mossy with the drip

Of dew and rain.

Brick had ot course been common m Roman Britain, but there are no records

ot brickmaking between the time of the Occupation and the Middle Ages. Oneot the most frequently mentioned features of Little Wenham Hall (p. 34) is that,

except for the flint and septaria base of the walls and the stone buttresses, it is

built of brick and that it probably represents the earliest use of locally made brick

111 England since the departure of the Romans. They are ot a creamy, greenish-

yellow hue, with here and there a touch of pink or red, and they are of the Flemish

or I ow Country type and may have been made by Flemish immigrants. Thearresting use ot brick at Oxburgh Hall, however, as at Herstmonceux, was a

direct result of the influence of French brick building on the English knights whohad been engaged in the wars against France. On their return to England, they

built houses tor themselves which were based on French fashions 111 material as

well as style. Sir Roger de I ynes, the builder of Herstmonceux, had served in

France, and lord Stales, the author o\ Middleton lowers, Norfolk, with its

orielled gatehouse, had been seneschal oi Normandy for several years. It is

significant that th ord 'brick1

only came into use in these islands duringthe fifteenth century, Before that time bricks were not distinguished from tiles

and were referred to as tegulae I he new material stimulated the creative imagina-tion ot builders and although their boldest flights ot'taiu v are asso. l.ited with the

sixteenth century rather than with the Middle Ages, there were other notable

i')

Tattershall Castle, Lincolnshire

The castle began as a fortified stone

dwelling-house with a curtain wall

strengthened by towers, built byRobert of Tateshall in 1231. It wasrebuilt in 1434-45 by Ralph, 3rd

Baron Cromwell, Treasurer ofEngland under Henry VI, with the

addition of the Great Tower, whichnow stands alone. This is 1 10 teet high

and is remarkable both tor its design

and for its brickwork. It was plannedto look like a fortress in an age whenthe tortihed castle keep had becomeobsolete. But despite the thickness of

the walls, as much as 22 feet in the

basement, the tower was planned as a

magnificent residence, and nothing

shows this more than the size ot the

tw O-lighl w indows on every floor

The dovecote occupies the south-

west corner turret on the second floor

of the tower. It is lined with wattle

and daub. Pigeon houses or dovecotes

were .1 common feature ot medieval

manors and monasteries, tor pigeons

formed .1 considerable item in medi-eval diet, but though nesting-places

were sometimes provided in the

gable-ends of houses, barns or parish

churches, dovecotes were usually

detached buildings Lord Cromwellhad served in France through most ot

Henry V's reign, and the brick build-

ings he had seen there prompted his

choice ot tins material tor his great

[continued opposite)

I I

Page 47: The English House Through Seven Centuries

tower house. The deep-red bricks

measure about 8x4x2 ins. Thesplendid use to which the material

was put is shown by the viewfrom the principal room on the first

floor into the south-west angle

turret, and, above all. by the vault-

ing of the lobby from which the

principal apartment of the third floor

is entered. It is a rare example ofbrick stellar vaulting (quadripartite

vaulting with intermediate and hemeribs producing a star pattern). Thespaces between the ribs have been

filled by quatretoil tracery carried

out in cut and moulded brick. Theprincipal boss shows the Tateshall

and Cromwell arms.

fifteenth-century compositions in brick in addition to those which have beenmentioned.

The most surprising example of all is Tattershall Castle, Lincolnshire. It wasonce a very large-scale brick version of the hall house and tower house design,

but now the tower stands alone in the Fen landscape, a powerful, unforgettable

image in its isolation. It was built between 1434 and 1452 by Ralph, Lord Crom-well, Lord Chief Treasurer of the Exchequer, under the supervision of his agents

Thomas Croxby, John Southell and John Combe, with brick supplied by one

Baldwin from kilns at Edhngton moor. The name of the mason has been lost.

With its frowning battlements and heavy machicolations, it looks as menacing as

any true fortress ; but the size ofthe arched windows piercing even the lower floors

of the huge six-storeyed building at once refutes the idea of defence. There was no

thought of the serious employment of the elaborate military devices exhibited

in the composition of this tower: they were the mere trappings of a castle used to

adorn a magnificent and spacious house. Inside the tower there was a hall for

Lord Cromwell's personal use on the first floor above a guard-room; there was

a solar on the next floor and above that apartments intended for the ladies and

children of the household. The corner turrets throughout contained garderobes,

and additional chambers were contrived in the thickness ot the walls on every

floor. Though it is now an empty shell, the delicacy of the brick vaults with their

carved bosses and the beauty and variety of the sculptured fireplaces still bear

witness to the sumptuous character of Lord Cromwell's great tower house, while

an emblem everywhere repeated, a purse with the arrogant motto Way je droit' .

vividly recalls its owner's office and personality.

The arrangement ot the rooms inside the tower made it a private mansion

which could be independent ot the rest ot the castle, and this recalls those tree-

standing residential towers which are such conspicuous features ot the landscape

in the Border Country and in Scotland, and which have already been mentioned

m passing. The simplest form ot this type ot dwelling, as exemplified by the

4.n

Page 48: The English House Through Seven Centuries

famous fourteenth-century island castle of Lochleven. at once reveals that it is

a special form of hall house modified by the insecure conditions of the north. It is

in fact the hall house up-ended, comprising a great hall on the first floor, entered

by an external stair, with storage and service accommodation below it and a

solar above it. This vertical version of the hall house outnumbers every other kind

of dwelling of the later medieval period in Scotland and makes a unique contri-

bution to the domestic architecture of Britain. Although the unsettled state of the

country led to the persistence of such towers as an economical type of defended

house long after fortresses had become no more than ornamental in the south, the

tendency to elaborate the structure in the service ot both convenience and

aesthetics soon declared itself and eventually resulted in a house ot such charmand such commodity that it was preferred for its own sake when the protection

aflorded by its plan had long ceased to be necessary. Externally the austere tower,

articulated by no more than a parapet proiectmg very slightly on a corbel table,

was enlivened in the fifteenth century by the French fashion for boldly putting

parapets on huge corbels and tor angle turrets corbelled from the exposed corners

ot the building, and these proliferated in time into the fabulous arrav of conical

towerlets, dormers and machicolations such as crown Armisfield in Dumfries-shire. Increased space inside the tower was achieved first by the introduction ot

chambers in the thickness of the walls, as at Elphinstone Tower, Midlothian, andthen by variations o\] the original square or rectangular plan. A favourite design

the L-shape. ot which one ot the earliest and most attractive examples is

Ipath on its high promontory above the I weed, despite the fact that it has

never recovered from the loss of the timber which once softened its bleak

situation It was sold by that dissolute Duke of Queensbury known as 'Old Q\

Borthwick Castle. Midlothian

Built «'. 1430. this Scottish castle is a

tower house which at the same time

incorporates the hall house design

The two formidable rectangular

towers shown in the photograph

correspond to the cross-wings of the

hall house Between them, deeplv

recessed, lies the central block con-

taining the hall on its first floor with

service rooms to one side ot it and a

withdrawing room on the other. Thecastle was built bv the first Lord

Borthwick.

Page 49: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Neidpath Castle, Peeblesshire

The gateway and the door reached by

the fan of steps were seventeenth-

century alterations to the fortress

dating from the fourteenth and fif-

teenth centuries. The keystone of the

portal shows the strawberry plant, or

jraise, of the Norman-French Frasers.

the first owners of Neidpath, and the

coronet and goat's head of the Hays

of Yester, who acquired the castle

through marriage into the Fraser

family. Neidpath consists of twotower houses: a tall narrow structure,

taking up one arm of an L-design

behind the building seen in the photo-

graph, and Sir William Hay's massive

rectangular tower. The expanse of

windowless wall points to the con-

tinued need for defence in the un-

settled conditions north of the Border.

The parapet walk, clearly visible in

the photograph, once continued on

north and south sides of the tower.

But it was roofed in during the

seventeenth century to form gal-

leries with turrets. The interior

shows the characteristic tower house

plan, which is like that of a hall house

arranged vertically instead of hori-

zontally. The first floor is taken up by

the entrance, formerly approached by

an outside stair, with a room leading

off it containing a trap-door giving

access to a dungeon and garderobe.

The Great Hall is on the second floor

with a private room adjoining it, and

the third floor consists of twobedrooms.

Innovations in Design

an act of vandalism which moved Wordsworth to write his well-known sonnet

on Neidpath.

An even greater flexibility of plan animates Borthwick Castle, Midlothian.

Dating from about 1430, this remarkable building incorporates one of the mostbrilliant exploitations of the hall house design. Strength and impregnability

were still matters of urgency in Midlothian when the castle was planned, and

externally it is overwhelmingly stark, an effect which is emphasized by the

surroundings, a desolate valley threaded by the Gore and Middleton Waters.

Two colossal, absolutely plain square towers project from the main block, rather

like the cross-wings of a horizontal hall house, except that here the central

elevation, instead of dominating the structure, is proportionally so narrow that it

lies like a deep, dark chasm between the towers. This arrangement enables the

hall house plan to be carried out both vertically and horizontally, for the first

floor contains kitchen, great hall and solar in the sequence they occupy in the

traditional English hall house, while the vaulted chamber below the hall is used

for storage and that above it is a private chamber with an oratory over it. Thevertical and horizontal themes are elaborated by numerous wall chambers,

stairways and garderobes.

Page 50: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Great Dixter, Northiam, Sussex

The hall at Great Dixter dates frombetween 1450 and 1466 and is a

superb example of the unaisled great

hall. We are looking towards the

former dais end. The tiny opening in

the end-wall is a reconstruction byLutyens of the squint, through whichthe lord of the manor could observe

all that went on in the hall after he

had retired to the solar, reached by a

stair through the door seen on the left.

The bay window is also a reconstruc-

tion by Lutyens, but the canted posts

on either side of the recess gave

evidence of its former existence. In

the roof structure hammer-beamsalternate with tie-beams. Great Dixter

was the home of Nathaniel Lloyd,

author of the standard work on the

history of the English house.

The nucleus of all the buildings so far described in this chapter is the hall house

with its upper-end and lower-end chambers, whether arranged horizontally

or vertically. Though the great hall itselfcould now only be regarded as part of the

essential accommodation in an important house, it continued to be used as a

centre for the administration ofjustice and assemblies oftenants. The great signifi-

cance of the hall in the medieval way of life is demonstrated by the persistence of

the word 'hall' to designate the great house in a village community long after the

hall itselfhad ceased to exist except as an occasional architectural relic, long alter it

had become horizontally divided to create space for upper rooms, and even after

it had been transformed, first into one among several living-rooms, and then

had dwindled into the mere vestibule of recent times, partaking more o( the

character of the former screens passage than of the noble apartment from whichit derived its name. Indeed, in many a converted hall house - at Abbas Hall and

Pattenden Manor, to name only two examples which figure in this account -

what was once called the screens passage is now called the 'hall'. The first stage in

this metamorphosis could be associated with the disappearance of the aisles, even

though the immediate result of this was the enhancement ^t the formal andaesthetic character of the great hall. In early medieval houses, as we have seen, the

hall was aisled because in the home which consisted ofnothing but a hall, its great

span could not be roofed without supporting pillars, while the aisles thus formedprovided essential storage space. But once the two-storeyed Norman house and

the aisled hall had been merged into a single building, the need for great width

and arcade alike vanished and an unaisled type of hall made its appearance. Its

high walls were pierced by important windows, its open timber roof was ofevermore ingenious construction and its w hole splendid character w as the creation ot

tsmen whose skill was continually increasing and the fruit of tastes whichwere List growing mote sophisticated.

*8

Page 51: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The hall roof, Woodlands Manor,Mere, Wiltshire

The hall at Woodlands Manor is ofthe developed type without aisles, andthe fifteenth-century roof is a splendid

example of the arch-braced, collar-

beam type, which had first becomepopular in the previous century. Thearched braces, reminiscent of crucks,

spring from the side-walls to support

the collars, thus giving an impression

of great height; and there is no tie-

beam. Massive braces alternate with

lighter trusses. The raking struts ofthe main arches, branching out to

support the principal rafters, add to

the richness of the design. Both the

braces and collars of this finely

wrought roof are moulded, while the

tiers of cusped windbraces supporting

the rafters between the purlins are not

only functional but supremelydecorative.

Although for power of invention and for richness of ornament the timber

roofs of unaisled medieval halls can seldom, except in unusual instances like the

magnificent anachronistic example in Edward IV's palace at Eltham, be com-pared to the finest church roofs, they are based on the same varieties ofdesign and

show the same advance from the simple crown-post and ridge roofto the elaborate

hammer beam type. The crown-post roof, such as that seen at Tiptofts Manor(p. 24), gave place to the queen-post type. In a roofofthis construction the crown-

post is replaced by two upright queen-posts resting on the tie-beam and sup-

porting the collar immediately above it near the ends. The effect is as if the

aisled hall structure had been raised to the roof. At Church Farm, Fressingfield,

Suffolk, the arrangement is two-tiered, with a crown-post in the upper tier and

queen-posts as well as a crown-post in the lower tier. The late fourteenth- or early

fifteenth-century hall at Woodlands Manor, Mere, exhibits a type of roofwhich

had lately become fashionable: the arch-braced, collar-beam style. The cambered

collar-beams, high-set, each with two branching struts, are supported by large

braces springing from the wall-plate, reminiscent of crucks, and indeed primitive

cruck construction may have influenced this variety ot root. The absence ot a tie-

beam enhances the impression of height and space. Between the purlins and rafters

supports known as wind braces have been inserted and made decorative with

curves and cusps. Margaret Wood makes the interesting suggestion that such

braces may derive from the arch braces of the aisled hall, and this is borne out by

the occurrence in some unaisled halls, at Trecarrell, near Launceston, for instance,

of straight wind braces.

The main arches in the roof at Woodlands Manor are moulded with a slight

but wholly delightful irregularity, so that the timbers look like the swaying,

ribbed stems of giant rhubarb. The grooves were cut with no other tools than the

49

Page 52: The English House Through Seven Centuries

:'V

•««»-****$**$?*$

chisel and gouge, for it was not until the seventeenth century that moulding

planes like those mentioned by Moxon in his Mechanick Exercises (1679) came

into use; and it is this absence of uniformity which imparts such liveliness to the

texture of these medieval timbers and calls attention to the ingenuity of the early

carpenters.

Another roof of the kind seen at Woodlands Manor crowns the granite hall of

Cotehele, a house beside the Tamarin in Cornwall built on the quadrangular

plan with a powerful gate; which in this case was more than a mock fortification,

for Sir Richard Edgecombe, the builder, wished to be prepared against the attacks

of a neighbour who had already driven him once from the site. Although begun

in 1 485, Cotehele was only completed in 1 540, and by that time the great hall open

to the roofwas decidely old-fashioned. It is an instance not so much of the roman-tic enthusiasm for the past which inspired many sixteenth-century designers as of

the inevitable conservatism of remote districts. In the Middle Ages Cornwall lay

on the edge of the known world, an almost legendary land, encompassed on twosides by a dangerous coast, a situation which fostered isolation and regional

habits including the preservation of the Celtic tongue. At Cotehele there are

three purlins on the slope of the roof, and between these and the main rafters

arched wind braces make a complex pattern of four tiers of interlacing arcading.

A root of quite another character distinguishes the hall of Great Dixter, Sussex.

built between 1450 and 1465. It exhibits an enormous cambered tie-beam cut

from a single great 0.1k tree, reinforced bv curved and cusped braces on a massive

scale and itself supporting a noble octagonal crown-post with moulded capital andbase; and (his design is combined with hammer-beams beams projecting at

right-angles from the wall, supported by curved braces and with arched braces

springing from them. The purpose of these hammer-beams was to strengthen

The roof of Gifford's Hall,

Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk

The hammer-beam roof, already half

in evidence at Great Dixter, appears

in its fully developed form in the hall

of the house built by the Mannocks in

the time of Henry VII. It is of the

tvpe so richly exemplified in manyEast Anglian churches, such as

Trunch or Palgrave. The structure

here is a double hammer-beam roof

in which a second range of hammer-beams tics the principles more firmly

to the wall. The vertical strut rising

from the hammer-beam to the

principal rafter is not set on the

hammer-beam but morticed into it,

and ends in a lavishly carved pendant.

The whole composition is articulated

by carved designs, pierced tracery and

heavy mouldings.

SO

Page 53: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Innovations in Design

the arch-braced roof by tying the principal rafters, embedded in their outer ends,

more firmly to the wall. The faces of the hammer-beams at Great Dixter are

decorated with heraldic shields, the arms of the Etchingham, Dalingridge and

Gaynsford families. The central rafters are still blackened by the smoke from the

former open fire than burned on the floor in the middle ofthe hall. The exception-

ally strong sense of continuity conveyed by this noble room is intensified by a

charming detail: a woodpecker's nest, cut in half when the braces of the huge tie-

beam were fashioned, has been preserved ever since then in the woodwork.Another roof of a similar type, combining tie-beams and hammer-beams, can

be seen bursting from the plaster ceiling of a later date in the rectory at Market

Deeping, Lincolnshire. The hammer-beams here are finely carved with pairs of

downward-glancing animal and human figures.

This and the roof at Greater Dixter show the most uncomplicated form of the

hammer-beam type. From it evolved the double hammer-beam roof, where the

original hammer-beam projected much farther and a second one was introduced

to strengthen the junction of the two parts of the arch-brace in a construction

without a tie-beam. This style of roof, for which East Anglia is especially famous,

was popular throughout the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The over-

powering roof of Giffbrd's Hall, near Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk, discloses three

sets of arched braces with carved and traceried spandrels. The carvings, when the

eye adjusts itself to the dim light of the room, are found to include winning,

realistic representations of a tiny mouse running in and out of a bowl.

Apart from the elaboration of the roof, there were other changes in the

furnishing and fitting of the hall, some conducive to greater comfort and all

symptomatic of the gradual emancipation of the designer from basic needs.

Floors, for instance, were now, in the houses of the great, often paved with stone,

tiles or brick. The greater height of the walls in the new unaisled structures

allowed space for large windows. Those at Woodlands Manor are tall, handsome

openings, one at the dais end of the hall and a rather shorter example near the

former screens passage. Both are square-headed with cinquefoils in the upper

lights. Such windows obviously derive from ecclesiastical example, but window

design of the fifteenth century nevertheless shows an inventive spirit in many of its

details which is independent of church precedent. The window of the former

hall at Market Deeping, just mentioned, is distinguished by windows which have

no parallel in either church or manor house. The lights are shouldered, with

tracery to match, a pattern of such captivating gaiety that it is difficult to believe

it truly belongs to the Middle Ages and not to the early Gothic Revival. The

resemblance is all the more sharply pointed by the presence of orange, emerald,

scarlet and ultramarine Victorian glass in some of the tracery, an addition clearly

made by one who understood the frame of mind in which these windows were

conceived.

Again, the bay window which occurs in numbers of fifteenth-century halls

and which is mentioned already in some fourteenth-century documents relating

to London houses and published by Mr Salzman, was a peculiarly domestic

feature. It was probably a development of the oriel, a projection from an upper

storey which is thought to have originated in the porch at the head of an external

staircase, the name for which in Cornwall still survives as 'orell'. Among the best

preserved and the most impressive of all medieval bay windows is that of the

house in the High Street at Chipping Campden built by the fifteenth-century

wool merchant, William Grevel. The fine-grained limestone composition

sweeps from the bottom to the top of the house, divided into two sides and four

front panels by the long, unbroken lines of moulded mulhons. Stone, instead ot

glass, fills the central part of the bay, and this is sparsely adorned with cusping

which is repeated in reverse, as if mirrored, in the heads of the lights immediately

below it. Monstrous, nervously carved gargoyles lean from the angles ot the bay.

Another fifteenth-century, two-storeyed bay at South Petherton Manor.

Si

Page 54: The English House Through Seven Centuries
Page 55: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Bay window of Grevel's House,

Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire

and (right) oriel Monks Barn,

Newport, Essex, and (below) window

at Great Dixter, Northiam, Sussex.

The bay was probably a development

of the oriel, a double oriel serving an

important apartment such as the hall

or lighting two storeys. The carved

ornament, the mouldings of the

panels and mullions, the tracery and

the gargoyles of the window of the

house built for William Grevel, the

wool merchant, in c. 1400, is a noble

example of the stone-mason's art.

Cinquefoil lights set in square frames

were typical of the fifteenth century.

The grilles protecting the openings

were usual at that period, whether the

windows were glazed or not.

The oriel at Newport shows a type of

projecting opening contrived beneath

the eaves which was popular in

timber-framed houses before and

during the Tudor period. It wassupported on a corbelled base

fashioned from a solid balk whichafforded the carver an inviting space

for the exercise of his art. His themehere is the crowned Virgin holding

the Child and attended by angel

musicians.

The square-headed, two-light

window from Great Dixter is

characteristic of the simple, unglazed

opening common in the fifteenth

century. The window is divided by a

plain mulhon and transom and bydiagonally set vertical bars. This

window is actually part of a timber-

framed house from Benenden, Kent,

which was moved by Lutyens to

Great Dixter and re-erected there.

This bears out medieval accounts of

the successful removal of timber-

framed houses and testifies to the

strength and resilience of such

structures.

Page 56: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Innovations in Design

Somerset, lights both floors of the solar wing. It is similar in structure to the bay

of Grevel's house, but it is a less unified and much less arresting composition and

it is battlemented (a style so greatly favoured for small suburban houses of the

late Victorian period that it is almost impossible to accept the authenticity of this

motif in this position) : the upper and lower parts of each face of the bay are

conceived as separate entities, the upper, ornately traceried lights being enclosed

in a shallow arch, while the lower windows are square-headed. The stone panels

firmlv dividing the two components of the bay are embellished by shields.

The latticed lights which fill these windows and are seen also in the hall at Great

Dixter, recall the mention in fifteenth-century documents of the purchase of

'quarelles' (quarries) of glass for such lights. The lead-work was wired to holes

in the wrought-iron frames. Stained glass was sometimes inserted in windows of

this period. F. Blomfield, in a topographical history of Norfolk written in the

eighteenth century, describes the bay window of Sir John Fastolf's house in

Norwich, which was still standing at the time, as set with glass representing the

Virgin, St John the Baptist, St Margaret. St Blaise, the Nine Worthies and a

combat between two knights.

The pretty pane of stained glass at Great Dixter, representing the Virgo

Incoronata after Diirer. was added by Lutyens. who was indeed responsible for

these bavs with their round-arched lights, although they look so entirely con-

vincing. Armorial designs were as popular as religious subjects, and perhaps the

most remarkable heraldic display in any smaller house of the period is that at

Ockwell's Manor, Bray. Berkshire, where the hall and parlour, with the solar

above it, are lit by tremendous bays repeating in wood the basic design of such

stone structures as the windows at South Petherton and Chipping Campden.But although this glass is genuine it was nevertheless a comparatively rare

luxury at that date, and it was not until the Elizabethan period, when the manu-facture of glass was encouraged by immigrants from the Continent, that it came

into general use. Before the mid sixteenth century glazed lattices were prized as

such costly possessions that owners were in the habit of removing and storing

them in a place of safety if they had to leave home for any length of time. Thewindows of Grevel's house were probably unglazed originally and were perhaps

protected by internal hinged wooden shutters. Another form ofshutter for simple

windows, such as can still be seen at Great Dixter. slid along the sill. This was the

precursor of the sliding vertical sashes common in eighteenth-century and early

nineteenth-century cottages. Former unglazed windows, now blocked or glass-

filled, can often be observed in timber-framed houses. The simple, rectangular

openings are divided by plain wooden mulhons. set diagonally into the wall-

plate or sill, as in a window at Great Dixter and in another at Martin's Farm.

ex. Occasionally panes of thin horn or waxed paper took the place

of glass, and oiled linen stiffened by a wooden lattice was a common substitute.

The historian William Harrison mentions this in his Description of England,

published in 1577: 'Of old time.' he writes, 'our country houses, instead of glass,

did use much lattice and that made either of wicker or fine rifts ofoak in checker-

In Scotland, even in the first half of the sixteenth century, when Falkland

Palace, the hunting home of the Stuart kings, was built, glass was still so highly

esteemed that the painted decoration in the Great Hall took the form of illusionist

lattices paralleling the actual openings in the opposite wall. Glazed window s wereat first nearly always fixed ; in cases where the lights did open, they were casementshung on hooks and secured by ornamental fasteners

The fashion tor musicians' galleries in fifteenth-century halls, following uponthe introduction of the rood loft in church interiors, has already been mentioned.The battlemented gallery at Penshurst Place show s as dearly as any surviving

example the relation of gallery to screen. The front of the gallery continues the

_-n of the screen with its elegant tl ind the gallery itself roofs the screens

thus adding grc.itlv to the comfort of the hall. Besides suitably accom-

Page 57: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Parlour ot the Abbot's Lodging,

Muchelney, Somerset

The wall fireplace in this room is

probably the most elaborate and

finely carved surviving example of its

period, the late fifteenth or early

sixteenth century. The ornamentation

of the rich quatretoiled frieze and of

the cornice is based chiefly on the

vine. The panelled wainscoting,

showing an early form of lmenfold

(see pages 58 and 59), and the fitted

seating are characteristic early Tudorwork. This room is provided with

pegs from which tapestry was hungabove the wainscot.

modating the musicians opposite the high table, the gallery gave access to bed-

rooms over the service quarters.

The comfort of the fifteenth-century house was further advanced by the wall

fireplaces, which had always warmed the solar and which now began to take the

place of the central hearth in the hall and to appear in some of the other apart-

ments. The hooded design, which as early as the twelfth century had been found

to facilitate the discharge of smoke, persisted throughout the Middle Ages, and

there is a handsome example of it in the hall of Borthwick Castle. Square-headed

fireplaces were relatively common in the fourteenth century and they were

sometimes preferred in fifteenth-century houses. An outstandingly beautiful

stone chimney-piece of this kind graces the parlour of the Abbot's Lodging at

Muchelney, Somerset. Thejambs are treated like pillars set on a base and crowned

by octagonal capitals decorated with a flowing vine motifwhich continues under

a narrow shelf, a new feature in fireplace design. Below this, sharply carved grape

clusters and vine leaves decorate a narrow band above a frieze of four large, bold

yet wiry quatrefoils enriched by cusping and further vine-inspired ornaments.

From the mantelshelf rise shafts to support two recumbent lions and to frame a

space once intended for a heraldic tapestry or a painted cloth. This is a memorable

instance of the individuality which had begun to manifest itself 111 domestic

architecture. But the shape of this Muchelney fireplace was not typical ot the

fifteenth century: the most favoured design was the tour-centred arch which, in

traditional houses, was preferred until the establishment of the classical mode in

the seventeenth century. The examples at Tattershall Castle, already cited, are

among the most vigorous and the most varied within the chosen limits ot a general

design. In each case the wide arched recess is enclosed in a rectangular frame

55

Page 58: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Innovations in Design

flanked by shafts and surmounted by a row of battlements, while the space

between the battlements and the opening is filled by rows of panels carved with

shields. But the ornament changes in every room ; the fantasy informing the detail

of the carvings never fails. In one case the row of shields is doubled and animated

by the upward curves ofa crocketted ogee arch, sometimes medallions represent-

ing men and animals in combat mingle with the shields, and sometimes panels

sculptured with plant forms take their place among the heraldic emblems, one of

them showing the gromwell weed as a punning allusion to the owner.

The paintings at Longthorpe Tower have already been partially described. As

the interiors of houses became less austere, so the fashion of painting designs on

the walls of the principal rooms, especially the hall, spread. The preference for

religious subjects continued throughout the Middle Ages although J. H. Parker

records that the hall of Tamworth Castle was decorated with frescoes of 'Sir

Launcelot of the Lake and Sir Tarquin'. Murals dating from more than a century

later than those at Longthorpe found about thirty years ago under layer upon

layer of wallpaper in a half-timbered house at Piccott's End, Hertfordshire, a hall

house which had later been converted into three cottages, are as fervently

religious in feeling. The painting is extremely rough, so thickly applied to the

lumpy wattle and daub infilling between the structural timbers that it gives the

impression of being modelled in relief, an effect which is strengthened by the

artist's addiction to forceful dark-blue outlines. Sometimes he has made use of

the timbers as divisions between different subjects, while on other occasions he

has carried his background design of large, scrolly vine leaves right across the

struts. The emphatic contours and sprawling hands of the figures, the expression-

ist treatment, the unusual combinations of white, ochre, vermilion and dark blue

are all reminiscent of the glass painting of the period, though these murals are

cruder than any window pictures. The best preserved show the Salvator Mundiwith the Pieta to the left and the Baptism on the right, the figures and the foliage

behind them entirely filling the wall surface. Above the ochre cross, behind the

enormous Virgin of the Pieta, appears the word 'Fiirst\ which suggests a Germanpainter, although the composition may perhaps have been copied by an English

craftsman from a German woodcut or wood engraving.

Painted geometric and floral patterns completely covering the wall only

began to be popular from the end of the fifteenth century. They invariably

consisted of coarsely painted interlacing compartments of curvilinear or angular

design, each containing sprays ot flowers. The religious element was often intro-

duced in an inscription forming a tneze. Nathaniel Lloyd shows a photograph

of a floral display said to be carried out on an orange-red ground in a house in

Cornmarket Street, Oxford, which is surmounted by this partially preserved

text: '.. . and last of thi rest be thou gods servant tor that hold 1 best. In the

momynge Serve god Devoutlye. Fear god above allthynge adn . . . the Kynge.'

Tapestries had been used as wall coverings in the homes of the great from the

fourteenth century onwards, especially at the dais end of the hall. The high table is

depicted against a blackcloth of either tapestry or woven fabric in the Luttrell

Psalter. The inventory ot Sir John FastolPs possessions includes a number of

pieces of arras 'of hunting and hawking scenes' and one with the Assumption ot

the Virgin ; and Henry V owned tapestries of religious and epic subjects, probably

en in France. Few early tapestries survive, although some fragments ot a

medieval scries ot hunting scenes, which used to hang at Hardwick, are preserved

at Chatsworth, and they conjure up with piercing eloquence the sense of spring

and autumn thickets in that period when the forest was part ofevery Englishman's

ex pcrict;

Heraldic tapesti nsidered appropriate for the wall behind the high

table and a tittecnth-centur\ example showing five shields on a flow er-spnggedbackground still hangs in that position at Haddon Hall. The material was hungon pegs, such .is can still be seen in the Prior's I odgmg at Much Wenlock.

Types of painted wall decoration

The mural on the right, from a late

fifteenth-century hall house at

Piccott's End, Hertfordshire, although

utterly different in feeling from the

frescoes at Longthorpe Tower (page

35) and infinitely coarser in treatment,

shows the continued preference for

religious subjects for domestic interior

decoration throughout the MiddleAges. The wall paintings reproduced

below, from a house at Ashdon,Essex, and from a house at Stamford,

Lincolnshire, have been included here

tor purposes of comparison, to illus-

trate the kind ot mural designs which

became popular when domestic archi-

tecture was developing independently

of ecclesiastical influence. Such geo-

metncal and floral repeanng patterns

completely covering the walls, usu-

ally when tapestry could not be afford-

ed, onlv occur from the end of the

fifteenth century onwards, and these

two examples probably date from the

close of the sixteenth century; in

both cases, however, the work is

carried out by hand without resort

to the stencil so frequently used by the

post-Reformation decorator. Thework at Ashdon is painted in dark

green, white and dull rose, a range of

colours often found in East Anglian

church frescoes and screen painnngs,

and perhaps the precision and delicacy

of the execution, which are empha-sized by the crudity of the Stamfordmural, are due to the fine tradition

of religious painting in East Anglia.

The vehicle used for the painting was

glue, perhaps mixed with egg white.

Page 59: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Page 60: The English House Through Seven Centuries

rn

Internal partition, Ashbury Manor,Berkshire, and (below) The Hall,

Compton Wynyates, Warwickshire

The partiton between the two upper

rooms at Ashbury Manor (c. 1488) is

of the plank and muntin type. Theboldly carved frieze, the scale of

which perfectly harmonizes with the

ponderous oak panelling, shows howthe wall-plate, originally plain, then,

by the fourteenth century, moulded,had by this date been elaborated into

a rich cornice. It was from this simple

form of panelling that 'linenfold'

developed. The central part of the

panel between the muntins wasmoulded into a vertical rib termina-

ting in a semicircular 'stop'. Whenthis feature was multiplied, the result

was the kind of panelling seen at

Compton Wynyates. Here the

boarding is in two lengths, divided by

carved decoration of figure subjects,

beasts and foliage.

Page 61: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Innovations in Design

Those who could not afford tapestries often used roughly painted linen

instead, and in Elizabeth's reign this became common in the humblest homes.

Painted cloth of medieval date scarcely exists, but a Jacobean set now in the

Luton Museum features briskly painted Old Testament subjects and thus mayindicate a persisting predilection for religious themes in this cheap form of wall

decoration.

The tapestry or painted cloth generally only covered the upper part of the wall.

The lower half, in the grandest houses, was wainscoted. Wainscoting wasprobably normal in royal palaces and very great houses as early as the thirteenth

century, for it is frequently mentioned in Henry Ill's instructions to his bailiffs.

In 1239, for example, he commanded the bailiff of Windsor 'to wainscote the

chamber of Edward our son', and in 1253 the king gave orders for 'two hundred

Norway boards of fir to wainscot therewith the chamber of our beloved son

Edward in our castle ot Winchester'. Such wainscoting, however, consisted only

of vertical panelling of the simplest kind, and it was customary to paint it, either

in a flat colour, usually green, or with an abstract design in red and green or green

and gold or with a figure composition of a religious character. None ot this

early wainscoting is still in existence and it was only in the later Middle Ages that

wall covering of this kind made its appearance in lesser houses. At first it resembled

vertical clapboarding, sometimes overlapping on the side facing the apartment,

sometimes presenting a smooth surface to the room and overlapping at the back.

A common form of wainscoting consisted of plain panels set between upright

planks or structural studding; this can be seen in the hall ot Pattenden Manor,

and there is a massive version of it at Ashbury Manor, Berkshire, where smooth-

faced clapboarding also occurs. The vertical planks are champfered at the edges

and tenoned into substantial beams at top and bottom. The upper moulded beam

is surmounted by a frieze of tracery, startlingly big in scale and so freely flowing

that it seems closer in feeling to Art Nouveau than to medieval work.

From this elementary type of panelling there eventually developed the extra-

ordinary linenfold pattern. The ribbed panels here take the form of folded cloth,

and in some cases the illusion is heightened by the punching of the edges to

represent embroidery. The motif probably reflects that obsession of the age with

drapery which induced painters, particularly those of the Flemish School, to

concentrate so energetically on the rendering of the pleats and twists in full skirts,

cloaks and hangings that the emerging pattern is often the sole point ot the picture.

In the hall screen at Compton Wynyates, tall, thin linenfold panels are inter-

rupted by ornate doors carved with coats ofarms, leafy scrolls, birds and animals.

A similar arrangement covers the walls of the former parlour at Tolleshunt

Darcy Hall, Essex, and small, square linenfold panels line the principal room of

the Parsonage, Brenchley, Kent. Although some versions of linenfold, among

them the type which adorns an Elizabethan cupboard at Sawston Hall, Cam-

bridgeshire, where leaves seem to sprout from the folds, are sufficiently removed

from the original treatment of this motif and so pleasingly contrasted with plain

surfaces as to seem entirely appropriate, in its more customary form, this strange,

small-scale simulation of bunched-up cloth, especially when introduced into a

great medieval hall like that at Compton Wynyates, arouses the same sense ot

irrelevance, albeit accompanied by wonder at the artist's virtuosity, as the illu-

sionist marquetry practised by Italian Renaissance craftsmen or the inlaid marbles

counterfeiting rich brocades which, seemingly stretched without a single wrinkle

round the pillars of the nave, so astonish the visitor to the great baroque church

of the Gesuiti in Venice. There is not quite the same high-mettled disregard of

taste in this curious and peculiarly English convention as that which runs so

refreshingly through all Italian art, but it in expressive of a similar spirit ot

confidence and presages the extravagances of a century which was to rival the

Renaissance and baroque periods 111 Italy in the intensity of its marvellous vitality.

59

Page 62: The English House Through Seven Centuries

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Rectangular and

Two-Storeyed Houses

J

By the time Gifford's Hall (p. 50) was built at the end of the fifteenth century,

the conception of the house as a great hall open to the rafters with separately

roofed cross-wings at either end had been modified in several ways. The pro-

portions and architectural features of the hall no longer sharply differentiated it

from the rest of the building, and the three originally distinct components of the

medieval house became firmly integrated in a compact design which eventually

assumed a rectangular shape, sometimes with a projecting arm making it into an

L-plan, covered either by a single roof or by roofs of consistent pitch throughout.

The various parts of the hall house still made up the internal arrangement of the

domestic plan, but externally they became less and less recognizable. And whenthe structure had become two-storeyed throughout, the importance of the hall

in relation to the rest ot the accommodation diminished inside as well as outside

60

Cottage ,u Dorchester, Oxfordshire

The tr.uiition.il cottage plan is

rectangular, firstly because the early

cottage was .1 humble form ot the hall

house, a single room, consisting ot

but one bay (the rectangular space

between two pairs ot crucks) and

could be most easily enlarged by the

addition ofanother bay; and second-

ly . because the golden age ot cottage

building, to which the majority of

surviving English cottages belong.

was between is so and 1660. when the

hall house with cross-wings had

become rectangular in shape. When

Page 63: The English House Through Seven Centuries

AMI

lill

hi

i

the space was divided horizontally to

make two storeys, the wall wouldoften be carried up into a dormergable, as here, because the walls weretoo low to allow of windows underthe eaves.

The Manor House, Meare, Somerset

This was the summer palace of Adamde Sodbury, Abbot of Glastonbury,built c. 1330, and is an early exampleof individuality in house design. Theporch is in the traditional hall houseposition, but, following Normanprecedent, the building is two-storeyed throughout and the

accommodation is arranged to suit

the owner's particular needs. Thereare thus two upper-floor halls, the

second occupying a large projection

at the rear, making the plan into an

L-shape. The tall, pointed, blockedwindow seen in the photograph wasone of three which lit the ha-11 the

abbot reserved for the use of himselfand his household. The plan of this

house set a fashion in the district ; it

anticipates a distinctive type of stone

manor house built in the south-westin the following century.

and the small house began to take on the guise which, with variations, it has

worn ever since.

The innovations which revolutionized the house of modest size towards the

close of the Middle Ages were preceded and accompanied by some remarkable

two-storeyed and rectangular plans sponsored and often devised by dignitaries

of the Church. Bishops, who figured prominently in the political life of the

country throughout the medieval period, had for long been nobly housed. At

the end of the fourteenth century the Bishop of Ely owned palaces at Ely,

Downham Market and London, castles at Wisbech and Doddington and manorhouses at Somersham, Balsham and Ditton, Bishop's Hatfield and MuchHadham. Earlier in the same century, Bishop Henry Gower had built his palace

at St David's and his manor house at Lamphey, both of which incorporated

original features such as decorative parapets masking high-pitched roofs and

polychrome masonry, and both of which combined the Norman idea of a first-

floor hall with the parlour and solar of the medieval manor house. The palace at

St David's had two halls, and this notion of the double hall occurs in other forms

in a number of episcopal residences of the fourteenth century and certainly

influenced the evolution of the two-storeyed houses of commoners in the

following century.

From the time of the Norman kings, the head of a monastery had been

specially housed, and revenues, distinct from the common fund set aside for the

maintenance of the convent, had been allocated for the support of his establish-

ment. His administrative responsibilities resembled those of a feudal lord; he had

to entertain visitors on a worthy scale in the material interests of his community;

and he might be called upon to carry out duties of state. These outside activities

inevitably led to the development of separate living-quarters, which were at

first part of the claustral buildings but eventually became free-standing. And

61

Page 64: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Rectangular and Two-Storeyed Houses

despite the austerity imposed by the monastic rule on the abbot or prior no less

than the brethren, it was customary by the fourteenth century for the heads of

religious houses to live in a style more luxurious than that of the great barons.

The abbot's accommodation generally consisted, like that of a lord, of hall,

chamber or chambers and a chapel. But these rooms were often arranged with

much more variety than in the manor house. The fourteenth-century lodging

of the Abbot of Croxden, Staffordshire, is already rectangular and two-storeyed

with the hall on the ground floor and a first-floor chamber above it. At Netley,

Hampshire, the lodging was again two-storeyed, with, this time, an upper floor

hall, but small wings projected at right-angles to the main block, one containing

a chamber, the other a chapel. These were not the cross-wings of the traditional

hall house, but the arms of a half H-plan, such as did not occur till much later in

secular building. At Roche Abbey, Yorkshire, the layout of the fourteenth-

century abbot's house embraced the complete hall-house arrangement in a

rectangular structure, a central, open hall, chambers to one side of it and on the

other, beyond the screens passage, buttery, pantry and kitchen. At Castle Acre

Priory, Norfolk, the rectangular plan, with a first-floor hall, chamber and chapel,

was modulated by the addition of a single wing containing a chapel above a

parlour.

The Abbot of St Augustine's, Canterbury, built himself a country residence

in the reign of Edward II at Salmstone, near Margate, which is two-storeyed

with the hall on the first floor, a great chamber above it and the chapel alongside

it. And at about the same rime Adam de Sodbury, Abbot of Glastonbury

(1323-34), built a summer palace at Meare in the Somerset marshes by the River

Brue, the character of which anticipates that of the numerous two-storeyed stone

manor houses erected in the south-west during the following century. Like

Bishop Gower's palace, this house was planned with two halls, both on the

upper floor. But the building is L-shaped, and while one hall lies immediately to

the east of the entrance, the other, a huge room, 60 feet long, occupies the

whole of the wing projecting from the back of the house. One of these halls and

the room below it were probably used by the abbot and his household; the other

was doubtless intended for distinguished visitors and their secular retainers. Theadvantage of the two storeys is clear, for it meant that all the rooms on the first

floor, including the two halls, could be reached by a single stair, instead of being

divided by a great open hall. A notable feature of this house at Meare is that the

line of the facade remains unbroken except by the tiered porch.

This porch at Meare is crowned by the sculptured figure of an abbot, perhaps

intended to represent Adam de Sodbury. though it might well be an image of

St Dunstan, who was a monk at Glastonbury and later abbot. The carving is but

one of the fine decorations of this buttressed residence to survive in its present

much reduced and decaying state as a farm house. Some of the windows, onceregularly spaced, have been blocked, and later openings disturb the rhythm ofthe walls, but the wing at the rear is still pierced by its original tracened and ogee-headed lights. In the interior of this vast room, the pale masonry of one of the

most beautiful of medieval hooded fireplaces gleams amid a pile ofjunk: dis-

carded, disintegrating furniture, broken-down bicycles, a battered pram, rags

and apples. The tall, slender hood, ridged and five-sided and adorned with scroll

and bead mouldings, rests on corbels jutting out from the jambs and the anglesbetween the hood and the wall are tilled by chastely moulded lamp brackets.

Among the many prelates of the fifteenth century who interested themselvesin architecture, three, all belonging to the south-west and west of England,were especially distinguished in the sphere ofdomestic design. They were AbbotSelwood, .1 successor of Adam de Sodbury at Glastonbury (1457 93), rhomas

Bishop of B.ith and Wells (1443 65 . and John Shrewsbury, Priorluch Wenlock (1471-83). The last named built .1 lodging for himself which

111 both plan and elevation is the most arresting of all medieval rectangular and

Page 65: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Rectangular and Two-Storeyed Houses

The Prior's Lodging, Much Wenlock,Shropshire

Dating from c . 1 500, this remarkable

house gives striking evidence of

ecclesiastical influence as the source of

the most original domestic design in

the Middle Ages. The conception is

entirely architectural: the two-storeyed facade is treated as a single

rhythmic unit articulated by the

buttresses and by the shafts connecting

the lower and upper mulhons.

two-storeyed houses. The immense slope of its great stone-slated roof and the

powerful rhythm of a double range of arched windows, four to each buttressed

bay, make their shattering impact without a single interruption. The perfect

regularity of the pattern has been achieved by the device of a two-storeyed

gallery, nearly 100 feet long and 6 feet wide, running the entire length of the

facade to give access to the monastic kitchens and brewhouse on the ground

floor and the prior's hall, parlour and other apartments on the first floor. There

is an echo of this arrangement in some of the rectangular houses of the sixteenth

and seventeenth centuries where a broad corridor runs along one side of the upper

floor; and the upstairs gallery at Much Wenlock could be said to presage the

introduction of the long gallery in the Elizabethan mansion; but it is only in our

own age that the astonishing conception of the continuous grid of windows has

been incorporated in the domestic plan. Yet similarity of motif only serves to

accentuate the gulf which divides our industrialized, egalitarian society from that

of Prior Shrewsbury: the barren, functional handling of the theme in the typical

mid-twentieth-century block of flats could not be more starkly exposed than by

comparison with the medieval mason's imaginative approach. Not only does the

solid expanse of the roof of the prior's house counteract the blank effect of a wall

Page 66: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Ashbury Manor. Berkshire

The photograph shows the stone

spiral or newel staircase which gives

access to the upper floor of this two-storeyed manor house from the

corner of the ground-floor hall. Suchstaircases, like the two-storeyed plan,

made their appearance with the

Normans, for they are essentially

connected with stone buildings.

When they occur in fortified struc-

tures, such as the angle turrets ofNorman keeps, they generally mountclockwise, with the newel columnand the narrow end of the steps on the

left of the defender, so as to allow as

much room as possible for his swordarm. But in this domestic context the

ascent is anti-clockwise, so that the

newel column can be grasped by the

right hand of the person ascending the

stair. In a stone spiral such as this,

each step forms a circular section ofthe newel at its inner end.

organized as a framework for glass, but the monotony of the transparent panels

is subtly varied by the articulation of the framework. Between the buttresses

dividing the bays rise smaller buttresses, and the seventy of the design is softened

by the trefoiled heads of the windows and by the carved masks which terminate

the projecting spouts of the water drains.

Abbot Selwood built a house at Ashbury in Berkshire which was nearly con-

temporary with the Shropshire Priory lodging and almost as sophisticated in

design. This manor house shows an arrangement not unlike that found in the

abbot's palace at Meare, but here the double hall takes the form of an upper and

a lower room, of which that on the first floor leads into a solar divided by a

tracened screen from a small oratory over the porch. As at Meare and MuchWenlock, the bays of the house are marked by buttresses, and a strong sense of

design is conveyed by the consistent spacing and uniformity of the windows,which are all straight-headed with twin cinque-foiled lights. The array of glass

is modest beside that of Prior Shrewsbury's house, but the composition is nonethe less remarkable for its period. The porch is centrally placed with three bays

on either side of it, and it is clear that the builder was consciously aiming at

metry although he had to embody in his building a small dwelling already

in existence. This accounts for the two different roof levels at Ashbury Manor.The first floor at Ashbury is reached by a stone spiral staircase rather like the

winding stairs of castle keeps and turrets, where each step forms at its inner enda circular section of the newel. The slightly more advanced but closely allied

^air in which the newel v. t circular post rising from floor to

rig, with the solid timber stcp> framed to it, was the most commonlvg means of ascent in the late medieval house and replaced the step ladders

and straight steep fligh- itched balks, which had led to the upper

Page 67: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Rectangular and Two-Storeyed Houses

Tower staircase, Sawston Hall,

Cambridgeshire

The spiral staircase of this Elizabethan

mansion is constructed of bog oak

from the near-by Fens. Each step is of

solid wood framed into the stout

newel post. Such wooden newel

staircases were deliberate copies in

Elizabethan times of the medieval

stone version of the form.

floor of each wing in the house with an open central hall. At Ashbury Manorthe staircase is enclosed in a projection near the upper end of the hall and the

builder extended this feature to include a small chamber on each floor and a

garderobe, now appropriately converted into a bathroom. The projection turns

the rectangular block of the house into an L-plan like that of the Manor Houseat Meare and that of the Prior's Lodging at Castle Acre, though with quite a

different usage of the additional space.

Another of Abbot Selwood's houses was probably the very individual OldParsonage at Walton, Somerset, which is two-storeyed throughout and is

planned as a rectangular house with a parallel wing attached at the north-west

angle of the main block. A newel staircase in the common angle gave access from

the wing to the rooms above the ground-floor hall. Bishop Beckington built the

rectory at Stanton Drew in Somerset as well as an interesting small house at

Congresbury in the same county, now known as the Old Vicarage, both with a

rectangular plan. Although it is conspicuously furnished with a handsome two-

tiered porch with the figure of an angel in its gable and a traceried windowlighting a tiny oratory (as at Ashbury Manor), the fifteenth-century part of the

Congresbury Old Vicarage, which then constituted the whole house, contained

only four rooms: a low hall with a chamber above it and a solar over a service

apartment. The Old Rectory at Winford a few miles away, dating from the

same time, is even smaller. Here the rectangular, two-storeyed block is reduced

to its simplest form with only one room on each floor. The hall, on the ground

floor, is dignified by a hood-moulded window with arched, cusped tretoil

lights. A lean-to, opening from the screens passage, houses the buttery and relates

•-"

'<f\

Page 68: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Rectangular and Two-Storeyed Houses

this little house to hundreds of Liter cottage dwellings with their inclining

'outshuts'.

An even earlier example of the small oblong house, the plan of which was

adopted for the standardized dwellings of yeomen and tenant farmers, now

regarded as cottages, is the enchanting little Priest's House at Muchelney, again

in Somerset. According to the evidence of the mouldings of the doorways at

either end of the former screens passage, the building must date from the four-

teenth century, although the windows belong to the end of the fifteenth century.

This is a traditional hall house m miniature, but the solar and service wings,

instead of projecting at right-angles to the central hall, have been brought into

line with it to make a rectangular composition. The thatched root, with its

hipped gable-end, is continuous and high pitched. The four-centred door, placed

asymmetrically, .is in the early hall house, leads into the screens passage; to the

right lies the hall, and opening from it is the parlour with the solar above it,

while on the left of the passage are the buttery and kitchen. The growing import-

ance of the parlour in the later Middle Ages is reflected here in the size of its

window. It is as wide as that of the hall, and surmounted similarly by a drip-

stone, or label, dropped down a tew inches at either end and neatly turned,

though its four arched lights are plain, while those of the hall window are cusped

ogees. And the hall window rises to the full height of the wall.

Small oblong structures of this kind, and still more the even simpler plans

exemplified by Wmtord Old Rectory and the Old Vicarage at Congresbury,

could be readily adapted to a row of cottages with a uniform roof-line; and

although the terrace house proper only played a major part in the development

of domestic architecture after the Great Fire, rows of identical houses did make

The Priest's House, Muchelney,Somerset

An early example- ofthe small

rectangular house combining .1 cen-

tral hall upon to the ratters with .1

two-storeyed blink. It may date from(Ik- fourteenth century, but the

cinquefoiled, ogee-headed lights ol

the hall window show a popular

fifteenth-century motif and the

parlour w mdow to the right is of

even later date 1 he small dormerlights the solar, which is reached In .1

m rcu staircase in .1 projection at the

real ot the house entered through a

door m the parloui

Page 69: The English House Through Seven Centuries

9

Cottages at Melbourn, Cambridge-shire

The compact rectangular plan is here

adapted to a row of chalk marlcottages with a continuous thatched

roof. Each contains four rooms:hall-kitchen and parlour below, with

two chambers above. An interesting

feature of these cottages is the shutters

(since removed) : they are hinged to

the sill and, when pushed up at night,

are kept in position by a woodenprop.

their appearance during the Middle Ages. Abbot Selwood was the author of a

scheme for rebuilding the Somerset town of Mells with four straight streets

radiating from a focal point in the Roman fashion; and New Street still stands to

bear witness to the partial realization of his plan. Leland described Mells as 'a

praty townlet ot clothing', and the abbot's houses were intended for clothiers.

Each consists of a screens passage between a larger and smaller room with tworooms above reached by a spiral staircase enclosed in a polygonal projection

placed by the back door. At Wells, Bishop Beckiiigton built rows of houses for

lorty-two vicars in two parallel ranges, each with two rooms, one on each floor,

and a minute yard or garden in front. These little dwellings have been muchaltered, but the original arrangement is known from drawings made by Pugin:

the ground-floor chamber was entered through a four-centred arch and the screw

staircase to the upper room was encased in a square projection at the back of the

house. Both rooms were furnished with fireplaces and square-headed windowswith trefoiled lights. The plan of the Mells terraces is repeated almost identically

in a late sixteenth or even early seventeenth century row of clunch, thatched

cottages at Melbourn, Cambridgeshire. The only difference is that the Mel-

bourn staircases are steep and straight and lead up from an angle in the principal

room beside the fireplace.

Several important secular houses built at the close of the Middle Ages in the

county of Somerset show the direct influence of the advanced two-storeyed and

rectangular plans realized by ecclesiastical designers. Gothelney Manor, near

Bridgwater, for instance, is an oblong house with two floors throughout. But the

ground-floor hall rises almost to the height of an open hall, and with the roomabove it, an impressive chamber crowned by an arch-braced timber roof, this

part of the house assumes tower-like proportions to the left of the porch. Beside

the porch, projecting alongside it, is a garderobe, an unusual position for this

convenience in a medieval house, though the modem cloakroom (the word

exactly translates 'garderobe') is often found close to the front door. This pro-

67

Page 70: The English House Through Seven Centuries

mgular and Two-Storeyed Houses

jection at Gothelney is balanced, with a nice sense of composition, by another to

the right of the back entrance to the screens passage, and this contains a spiral

staircase leading to a tiny chapel opening from the solar.

Blackmoor Manor, near Cannington, has features in common with both Adamde Sodbury's residence at Meare and Ashbury Manor, Berkshire, as well as

incorporating characteristics of the traditional hall house. It was the home of

Sir Thomas Tremaill, whose will is dated 1508. It is two-storeyed throughout

and shows .1 double hall arrangement with one hall above the other, as at Ashbury;

and as .it Meare, it takes the form of a rectangular block with a wing turning it

into an L-shape. But here the wing juts forward at nght-angles to the facade like

the cross-block of the old hall house, to the plan of which the gable at the

opposite end of the building also alludes. The projecting arm of the L contains

the chapel with a large three-light window and a solar above it. The lower of the

two halls was perhaps, here as well as at Ashbury, used tor the transaction of the

official business of the estate.

Sir Thomas Tremaill's manor, like Adam de Sodbury's summer palace, has

become a farm and shows similar signs of decline in status in its dilapidated

fabric. But if little has been done to counteract the wear and tear of centuries,

later owners have nobly refrained from modernizing the house. Externally, the

scabrous building which confronts the visitor behind a permanently open,

unhinged gate, rusting, unworthy iron railings and a patch of weeds, is the same

in its essential details as the proud manor which gladdened the eyes of Sir Thomas.

Gothelney and Blackmoor are not, however, really typical of the very large

number ot new small houses in which the two-storeyed, oblong design

materialized at the end of the fifteenth century. These houses sprang into being

m response to the needs ofan emerging class of yeomen and tenant farmers whose

welfare had become a particular concern of Tudor policy as one of the principal

means ot counteracting the results of two centuries of agricultural depression

and unrest. The rise of such a class was symptomatic of the disintegration of the

feudal system, heralded more than a hundred years earlier by the revolutionary

utterances of the 'mad priest of Kent', John Ball; and the unprecedented demandtor houses which followed marked the gathering of a great wave of inspired

domestic building which was to reach its height in the Elizabethan period, the

visual counterpart ot that glorious outburst of poetry which then transfigured

our national drama. The newly created yeomen were not usually able to employmasons to build tor them, tor they were working chiefly for the Church and the

nobility, and so it fell to the carpenter to emulate the advances in domestic

planning which had already been achieved in stone. While ecclesiastical builders,

perhaps encouraged by recollections of the Norman house, seem to have reduced

the hall house plan of a central block with cross-wings to a rectangular com-position without any intermediate stages, the timber worker only arrived at the

two-storeyed and rectangular design by a gradual metamorphosis of the three

original units of the traditional hall house. The first stage in the conversion took

place when the lower storey of the cross-wings was brought into line with the

hall, while the upper storey still projected at one or both ends. A cottage showingthis arrangement can be seen at Pembridge, Herefordshire. Brick House, once a

yeoman's dwelling, has been much altered in the course of several centuries.

Brick has taken the place of the original wattle and daub filling of the timber

framework of the hall and one of the cross-blocks, while the other cross-block,

now converted into a separate cottage, has been encased in rough-cast. But noneof these modifications obscures the original design.

1 he projections of the upper storey of this house constitute a feature known as

'jettvmg', which became extremely popular during the fifteenth century. Thesource of the jetty has been variously explained, but the simplest and mostobvious reason for its existence is that the device occurred naturally to builders

when they were laying the joists to support the floorboards of the upper storey

Page 71: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Rectangular and Two-Storeyed Houses

of one of the cross-wings. The advantages of the oversail were probably theconsequences rather than the cause of the innovation. It shielded the ground floor

from the weather, and in towns, where the high value of land necessitated

economy in its use, it was a means of increasing the size of the upper rooms.This very considerable convenience, specially appreciated when the lower part

of the house was a shop of the kind preserved in Lady Street, Lavenham, andKing Street, Saffron Walden, gave rise to a tendency to increase the height ofof the house, and as its size increased too with each storey, the narrow streets oflate medieval towns were darkened by top-heavy timber 'skyscrapers' such as

can still be seen at Shrewsbury and Chester.

At Brick House, Pembridge, the eaves of the hall, which was open to the

roof when the house was built, are much lower than those of the cross-wings.

A considerable advance in design was made when, in the two-storeyed house,

the eaves were made level throughout, as at Dixie's Farm, Ashwell, Hertfordshire,

though the three units of the hall house are still perfectly distinct here, owing to

the higher level of the roof of the main block necessitated by its greater span. AtPlace Farm, Ashdon, also in Essex, a continuous jetty along the entire front ofthe house harmonizes the structure yet further, and here the separate origins ofthe main block and cross-wings are discernable only in the different level of the

roof of one of the wings. The other wing has been successfully merged into the

unified structure as a gable. The ultimate development along these lines of the

early hall house with cross-wings appears in dwellings such as Uffbrd Hall,

Fressingfield, where the two storeys are framed together in one wall, braced bycross-girders, or summers, and the three units are smoothed into a long lowdesign without a jetty, with a gable at either end and a roof of gentle andconsistent pitch.

The plan of the little Priest's House at Muchelney, where the components of

the hall house were contained in a rectangular structure covered by a single roof,

had its counterpart in timber in the form of house called 'wealden'. Jettied end

storeys still, as in the Herefordshire house at Pembridge, mark the position of the

cross-wings, while the deeper projection of the eaves over the central hall,

supported by curved braces from the wings, secures a continuous roof-line. This

form of house is popularly associated with Kent, but is by no means limited to

that county. There is a 'wealden'-type house dating from the fifteenth century at

Stratford on Avon, and examples are fairly common in the north-west corner of

Essex and in the adjoining counties of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. Bridge Street

and Castle Street, Saffron Walden, boast several houses of this kind, some of

them now divided into two or more cottages; and a large farmhouse con-

spicuously illustrates the style at Swaffham Prior. Rectangular houses o( this

pattern, which oversail at each end but not in the middle, were almost certainly

built with an open hall originally. When, with the decline in the importance of

the hall, two-storeyed houses became common, the 'wealden' design evolved

into a rectangular block with a single roof and a continuous facade, characterized

at first, like that of the evolving house with gables, by an unbroken line of

jettying along the front, as at Baldwin's Manor, Swaffham Bulbeck, Cambridge-

shire, or the famous Paycocke's, Coggeshall, and in countless village houses of

Suffolk and Essex. The final form of this single-roofed, oblong, half-timber

house is among the most familiar sights in south-west England, striped with

dark struts or tiled and clapboardcd in Kent and east Sussex and plastered in East

Anglia, where, startlingly white or coloured ochre, peach and sometimes

crimson, it stands out dramatically against the uneventful landscape (p. 143).

In some jettied houses the upper storey oversails the lower at the sides as well

as along the front, and even, when the walls are not interrupted by external

chimney-stacks, on every side. This highly self-conscious effect could only be

accomplished by a sophisticated method of construction far removed from the

basic processes of the early timber workers. The projection oftwo adjacent sides

69

Page 72: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Rectangular and Two-Storeyed Houses

- \* ' <lit

Stages in the evolution of the two-storeyed, rectangular, timber-framedhouse

At Brick House, Pembridge,

Herefordshire (left), the lower storey

of the cross-blocks of a fifteenth-

century hall house with cross-wings

has been brought into line with the

wall of the one-storeyed hall, while

the upper storey lsjettied. The early

sixteenth-century Dixie s Farm,Ashwell, Hertfordshire (opposite),

shows the same form of construction,

and the three components of the hall

house are still distinct and separately

roofed, but the eaves-line is con-tinuous, and although the roof ridge

of the hall block rises above those ofthe cross-wings, this is because it is

two-storeyed, the house having beenconceived on two floors from the

beginning.

MIHmB^BR

Page 73: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The continuous line of the jetty along

the front ot Place Farm, Ashdon,Essex (left, below), another two-storeyed sixteenth-century house,

unifies the central and cross-blocks

still further. It is only the variation in

the level of the roofs of the hall block

and one of the wings which reveals

the ancestry of the plan. At UffordHall, Framlingham, Suffolk (right,

below), dating from the early

seventeenth century, the gables at

either end of the low facade give nohint of crossblocks. The roof is ofconsistent and gentle pitch, the dooris centrally placed without reference

to a screens passage, and the jetty

has yielded to smooth walls reaching

from foundation to roof.

71

Page 74: The English House Through Seven Centuries

of an upper storey necessitated two sets ofjoists set at right-angles to each other.

To allow of this, a large diagonal beam, called the 'dragon beam", was fixed

across the floor, and it was into this that the joists were framed. The outer edge

of the dragon beam, protruding from the angle of the house, rested upon a

heavy corner-post, a tree, shaped and inverted, such as can be seen at Pattenden

Manor, Goudhurst. Kent, and in a house near the church at Clavering, Essex,

among innumerable other examples.

The corner-posts of both these houses are elegantly moulded, and this feature

of the fully developed half-timber house is indeed often prominently orna-

mented. An eye-catching example at the corner of Bridge Street and Myddleton

Place. Saffron Walden. is expressively carved with a motif like folded, em-broidered cloth, a free and pleasing variation on the theme which inspired linen-

fold panelling.

The oak ofwhich the framework of these late medieval timber-framed houses

was fashioned, was so eminently suitable for the carver's an that it naturallv

became a medium for rich and intricate decoration. Bargeboards. which werefixed to the ends of a gable a short distance from the face of the wall, with the

object of protecting the ends of the roof timbers from the effects ot weather,

might be cusped and pierced or carved with quatrefoils or trefoils, like a numberwhich have triumphantly survived at Weobley in Herefordshire. Fascia board-,

which very often shielded the ends of the timbers of the jetty, displayed a great

variety ot sculptured devices and mouldings: commonly a running ornamentderiving from the vine, the oak, the rose or the pomegranate; sometimes embrac-ing Gothic motifs such as the quatrefoil; almost always conceived with the sameenchanting fantasy as that which delights us on the screens, benches and wall-

plates ot churches ot this great period ot the wood carver's art. Accurately

rved birds perch among cat" ornaments, antlcrcd stags bound throughintertwining brai peer from behind huge rosettes, kings.

queens, angels and moi tig like leaves from an undulating stem. Engaged

The Wealden' House

This manor house at Goudhurst.

Kent, built c. i4~o by the Pattendens.

after whom it was named, show s

another device by which the three

units of the hall house, the central

block with cross-wings, could be

transformed into a rectangular plan.

The upper floors of the cross-?*

are jettied. but a single roofcoversthe whole structure, the deeper pr.>-

jection of the eaves over the hall being

supported by curved braces springing

from the corner-posts of the wThe upper floor ot the hall block

was not inserted until the sixteenth

centurv (probably not later than :>>;.

when Henry V'lll divorced Cathanneof Aragon. for the badges ot the king

and queen appear in the quarries .it

the hall window).

Page 75: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Rectangular and Two-Storeyed Houses

shafts, like delicate silvery little buttresses, sometimes embellish the lower storey

of oversaving houses. Such a slender-fluted column adorns rather than

strengthens the wall of The Close, Saffron Walden, and pilasters of even greater

fragility, with sensitively moulded capitals, stand in the shadow of the projecting

upper floors of Monk's Barn, Newport, Essex, an outstanding example of the

'wealden' house. The corbelled base of the oriel window of the solar of this

building, wrought out of a solid balk, provides the setting for a carving of the

coronated Virgin holding the Child and brandishing a sceptre between twomusicians, an organist and a harpist, all informed with a zestful immediacy which

shines through five centuries of decay. The spandrels of the four-centred door-

ways of late fifteenth-century houses frequently show leaf and rosette motifs or

emblems relating to the builder. Above the fabulous doorway of the de Vere

house in Lavenham, flanked by male figures set on high pedestals in niches with

crocketted canopies, carved shields bearing the devices of the family, the star and

the boar, are accompanied by the unusual and exquisitely formalized representa-

Fifteenth-century jettying at

(Havering, Essex

The corner-post in the foreground of

the picture, with its finely carved

capital, supports the diagonal beam,known as the 'dragon beam', the end

of which can just be seen comingthrough the plastered wall, and into

which the floor joists are set at an

angle to each other. This structural

device was necessitated by the pro-

.

jection of the upper storey of the

house on two adjacent sides. The ends

of the joists are concealed behind

well-moulded fascia boards. In houses

of later date, such as Place Farm,

Ashdon (shown on page 70), the ends

of the joists are left visible below the

bressumers of thejettied upper

storey.

Page 76: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Doorway of the de Vere House,Lavenham. Suffolk

It is at once apparent that this is the

doorway of a rich man's house. It

is conspicuous in a whole town oftimber houses of remarkable qualitv.

The jambs and lintel are moulded and

the opening is flanked by elaborately

carved posts embellished with sculp-

ture: the spandrels are sunk andcarved. The door itself is beautifully

finished. It is the usual battened type

associated with timber houses: it

consists of outer vertical boards held

together by inner horizontal boards.

The joins are covered by delicately

moulded, nail-studded fillets, and the

door is shaped at the top to fit the

depressed, four-centred arch which is

the typical Tudor opening. Thediagonally placed bricks filling the

spaces between the timbers of this

house are an additional sign of the

owner's importance, for brick was the

most fashionable material of the day

when this house was being built at the

close of the fifteenth centurv.

nun of a squid. Figures of a cruder character than those at Lavenham. but bursting

with vitality, stand on the capitals of the stout shafts rising on either side ot the

cartway at Paycocke's, a woman clasping a distaff and a smiling man bearing a

shield with a head upon it that might be intended for the Medusa.

Contrary to popular belief, the timber-framed house at the height ot its

development in the late Middle Ages is not a flimsy structure, but, apart from

the risk ot fire, the most durable of habitations. The oak timbers, all morticed

and pegged into one another, have grown ever harder and stronger with time.

and form a unit far better able to resist the effects ot heavy traffic than stone or

brick, and so complete that it could, if necessary, be moved as a whole. The first

buildings of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, consisted of two 'framed'

houses bought at Coton in 1473 and transported to Cambridge. Mr Salzman

gives several instances of such removals: timber-trained houses bought at

:hall were taken to Sutton and set up there as part of the royal manor, and a

hall was moved from the manor of Thundersley and re-erected in Rayleigh Park.

Essex. In our own century. Lutyens transferred a house at Benenden in Kent to

rthiam in Sussex, where it became part of Great Dixter. And workmenputting a damp course into a late fifteenth-century house at Radwmter. Essex, in

1966, were able to raise the whole edifice bodily from the plinth without

damaging it.

Regional distinctions in the arrangement of the studs of timber-framed houses

were becoming apparent in the Tudor period. They will be discussed in a later

chapter. It was probably at this time, when centuries ot work on familiar

materials by familiar methods had culminated in Mich a florescence ot tine crafts-

manship, and when individual specialization was coming to the fore, that the

wattle and daub filling ot tht between the partitions of a half-timber

house acquired the intriguing names by which it is still known in different parts

Page 77: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Moulded ceiling beams, Pattenden

Manor, Goudhurst, Kent

This ceiling was inserted in the former

open hall of Pattenden Manor in the

early sixteenth century and is divided

into compartments by heavy beamsupon which rest the joists of the upper

floor. Whitened plaster between the

timbers emphasizes the magnificent

moulding of the immense beams, all

executed with the limited tools then

available: the chisel and the gouge.

The long lines of the moulding are

effectively repeated on the lintel of

the fireplace, which was inserted with

its back to the screens passage at

the same time as the ceiling.

of the country, although only to a generation which is fast disappearing. In

Leicestershire it was called 'stud and mud'; in Cheshire it went by the name of

'rad and dab' or 'raddle and daub'; in parts of Lancashire it was termed 'clam,

staff and daub'; in Kent it was referred to as 'loaming'; in the west country it

was known as 'freeth' or 'vreath' ; and in the north as 'rice and stower'. In someof the larger late medieval houses, brick nogging was used instead of wattle and

daub as an infilling of the timber frame, very often replacing an earlier filling of

wattle and daub. The conjunction of timber and brick seems strangely incon-

gruous, for the timber frame becomes unnecessary in a brick house. But tradition

encouraged the persistent use of the familiar framework, while the glamour

attaching to a fashionable new material prompted the predeliction for brick. Thebricks were generally laid diagonally, as at Monk's Barn, both for effect and

maximum strength.

The medieval two-storeyed houses built for prelates and nobles in the fifteenth

century were provided in most cases with outside chimney-stacks and wall

fireplaces on both floors. It was the widespread adoption of the chimney-stack,

usually constructed of brick, and the consequent substitution of a wall fireplace

for the central hearth, which enabled builders to carry the first floor across the

whole of the house in much humbler dwellings and to insert one or more floors

in the house originally open to the roof. Pattenden Manor, for instance, which was

built in about 1470 with an open central hall, was altered in the early sixteenth

75

Page 78: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The screens passage, Pattenden Manor,Goudhurst, Kent

The screens passage was retained as an

entrance passage when the hall house

was altered in the sixteenth century.

It is significant of the decline in

status of the hall that this passage is

now known as the 'hall'. The twoTudor arches on the left are the

original openings into the formerbuttery and pantry. The open front

entrance door is original and consists

of six oaken planks, each 8^ inches

thick, overlapping and worked into

vertical ridges and hollows to conceal

the joins.

century by Sir Maurice Berkeley, who introduced a large chimney-stack with

its back to the screens passage. The passage became what we should now call the

hall, while the hall was divided horizontally into three rooms. The room on the

first floor is graced by a stone fireplace and the walls and ceiling are lined with

oaken boards reeded with mouldings of the hnenfold pattern, though not divided

into panels. Above this room a long attic abruptly presents the visitor with the

giant timbers, the tie-beam, moulded crown-posts and collar-beam and the

blackened rafters of the former hall with its central hearth.

It was not unusual for a chimney-stack inserted into a house with an open hall

to be set against the screens passage; this is the position it occupies in the Priest's

House at Muchelney, at Monk's Barn and also at Abbas Hall, Suffolk. The central

stack allowed tor back-to-back fireplaces on the upper floor, and could thus

serve both hall and parlour blocks. The types of fireplace common towards the

end of the Middle Ages have already been briefly mentioned. Brick fireplaces

were generally spanned by an oak lintel, which might be richly moulded, as at

Pattenden, where it matches the magnificently moulded joists of the new floor.

Extremely ample fireplaces, like that at Abbas Hall, may have been used at first

for hearth cooking. Sometimes, when there is an outside chimney-stack, a bake-

oven is found built on to its base under a pyramidal or lean-to roof.

In districts where stone was available, fireplaces and chimneys of this material

had appeared very early, but where timber was the principal building medium,the central hearth persisted until brick became fashionable. It is not surprising

that in such regions the advent of the brick fireplace assumed special importanceand that it was marked b an extraordinary development of the brickworker'sart. It is largely to the I udor craftsman's fantasies in brick that the followingi hapter will be devoted.

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Tudor Renaissance

Modern historians, among them E. M. W. Tillyard, have rejected the idea, oncecommon, that with the dawn of the sixteenth century all the medieval forms ofart and literature, economics and politics, philosophy and religion, came to anend and emerged in an utterly new guise under the influence of the Renaissance.

It is true that medieval modes of thought still carried weight in the Tudor period,

and it is true that in the visual arts change did not come as abruptly as at a casual

glance it might appear to do. The huge windows and fan vaults of the last great

age of church building, which coincided with the reign of the first Tudor,embody a spirit which combines clarity of design with picturesque detail: the

soaring vault and richly romantic heraldic ornament of King's College Chapel,

Cambridge, are part of an insistently rectangular and rhythmic composition, andthe actual structure of Bath Abbey is as rigidly controlled and unified as anyclassical building, despite its fretted pinnacles, pierced parapet, elaborate tracery

and ornate mouldings. But the forms used are essentially medieval, and the fan

vault, the most spectacular invention of the age, is the logical development of theintricate stellar vaulting of the late fourteenth century. The style associated with

Henry VIII's reign obviously follows upon that exhibited at King's, differing

from it chiefly in that it embraces certain details which not only suggest classical

architecture but actually derive from it. Several outstanding houses of the

fifteenth century, Oxburgh Hall and Tattershall Castle, to name but two. fore-

shadow the striking developments of the sixteenth century; and the continuing

part played by tradition in the evolution of the smaller house is shown by the

illustrations in the previous chapter, which include examples from the late Gothic

and Tudor periods.

But it is always possible to find basic, underlying, enduring attitudes linking

apparently diverse phases in the social and cultural history of a country. Just as

classical forms and ideas can be shown to have persisted in Italy throughout the

Early Christian and medieval centuries, to burgeon with fresh vigour during the

Renaissance, so the whole notion of a 'Gothic Revival' in England can be replaced

by the concept of a 'Gothic Survival', of Gothic modes sustained through a time

ofintense classical enthusiasm by an inherent propensity. Yet the general tendency

cannot but be modified by such divagations in an opposite direction; and a

modification of this kind was taking place in Tudor England. The implications

and the drama of it were so great, producing such profound sociological and

political changes and an architecture so idiosyncratic, that they cannot be con-

templated without an instinctive reference to some such term as Renaissance,

even if it is used only in its strictest sense. Firstly, even though the habit of mindwhich is most typical of the sixteenth century can be seen as the culmination of

a process rooted in the Middle Ages, it is utterly averse to the attitude encouraged

by the formal, abstracted dialectics of medieval philosophy. The vision of man's

destiny emanating from Renaissance Italy embraced horizons far beyond the

narrow confines of the medieval world. Every reader of the literature of the

Middle Ages realizes that knowledge of ancient history, philosophy and

mythology was far from extinguished during the Gothic period. There are

77

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Tudor Renaissance

hundreds of classical allusions in the works of Chaucer alone. And anyone whohas studied the imagery of medieval churches is aware of pagan elements. But

just as extensive contacts with far-off lands made only the most superficial

impression and aesthetic influences were absorbed into a native style which,

vertical and dynamic, was the tangible expression of an aspiring but circum-

scribed ideology, so these remembrances of antiquity were unrecognizably trans-

formed by a view of life totally opposed to that of the civilization in which they

had originated.

But now the study of Greek, introduced into England by William Grocyn

(i446?-i5i9) and Thomas Lineacre (i46o?-i524), and the change in ideals of

education from the training of priests and scholars to the training ofaccomplished

gentlemen versed in the classics, engendered a fresh approach to antiquity, so

that it became a source of imaginative enrichment instead a depository of

whimsical embroideries in word or stone. This procreant intellectual and

educational activity was supported by the development of printing. William

Caxton (i422?-9i) began printing in England in 1476 and was followed by his

apprentice Wynkyn de Worde and by a succession of king's printers, of whomThomas Berthelet and Richard Grafton are the best known. Streams of books

and pamphlets poured from the presses, immensely facilitating mental contacts.

At the same time, the exploration of strange continents fanned the breath ot

a fantasy newly released from a constricting metaphysics and opened fresh paths

of bold endeavour to the artist as well as to the scientist and adventurer.

Ecclesiastical dominion was fast declining. The one great medieval profession,

the clerical, was now rivalled by those of the lawyer, the doctor and above all the

merchant. The end of the absolute supremacy of the Church in secular matters

was dramatically symbolized by the Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536-40).

One result of this was that the importance of the Monarchy was enhanced,

especially through the creation of the Privy Council, while the House of

Commons gained strength by representatives from new boroughs. The wealthy

merchants who had supplanted the former feudal lords, decimated by the Warsof the Roses (1455-85), had acquired land, often from monastic establishments,

and were demanding houses in keeping with their state; new houses also wereneeded, as we have seen, by yeomen and tenant farmers, and a sudden population

explosion, similar, though on a less frightening scale, to that which we are

experiencing today, gave yet further impetus to domestic architecture. Churchbuilding almost came to an end, and for the first time house rather than church

design expressed the most advanced ideas of the period.

The Dissolution had other effects which bear on our story. Apart from the

economic consequences of the redistribution of the vast estates of the medieval

church, enormous numbers of skilled men, formerly occupied in the never-

ending task of repairing and maintaining the monasteries, were freed for employ-ment by the rising class of traders. A large proportion of the abandoned abbeys

and priories became quarries for building materials such as had hitherto been

rarely used for housing the laity other than the greatest lords. These materials, in

conjunction with the growing fashion for brick, were an inspiration in them-selves. And in addition to this, knowledge of planning and building construction

was fostered by the detailed surveys of the convents and their estates which hadto be undertaken before the) could be re-allocated. The work turned those

engaged in it into embryonic architects, the first of yet another nascent class ofprofessional men, who were more consciously concerned with design than withthe traditions within which the medieval master craftsmen had achieved their

most spk-ndid triumphs. Sometimes the owner of a house might be his ownmaster ot works, collaborating with his chief mason in a plan to which bothcontributed A recently discovered indenture ot 1 547 for the building ot Mount

umbe 111 Cornwall, shows that Sir Richard Edgcumbe provided the design.

1itt'. and that the company ofworkmen, who came from North Buckland,

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Tudor Renaissance

Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire

An example of the conversion of an

abbey into a house, a common pro-

cedure in the years following the

Dissolution. Sir William Shanngtonpurchased the former Augustinian

abbey in 1540 and himself planned

the conversion. The long south front

(shown here) is strikingly classical in

feeling. The proportions of the design

and the prominent balustraded para-

pet masking the roof-line create an

impression of horizontality which

outweighs the effect of the medieval

buttresses, of the lack of symmetry, of

the fact that the tower, despite its

severity, is polygonal and un-Italian,

and of the presence of the battlemented

oriels. The latter are not medieval and

were not part of the Tudor conver-

sion : they were the work of FoxTalbot, the pioneer photographer, in

c. 1828. Sir William's niece married a

Talbot and the house remained in the

possession of the Talbots until 1958.

near Bideford, nearly forty miles distant, with Roger Palmer as their head

mason, agreed to follow 'alwayes in their seyd work the devise, advyse and platt

of the seyd Sir Richard Eggecumbe and his assjgnes'. Similarly Sir John Thynneof Longleat is known to have controlled the design and building of his ownhouse. The day was to come when the division of the creative act of building

between the man of ideas and the workman was to have disastrous results, but

that day was still far off and for a long time the disadvantages of the separation

were offset by the force of a tradition of craftsmanship built up over five hundred

years. That same force also counteracted the threat to quality implicit in the

high-pressure work with much overtime which, as Professor Knoop and DrG. P. Jones have shown, now became common for the first time, owing to

Henry VIII's insistence on speed and the tremendous demand for houses. Thenumber of great country houses alone which were built in the early part of the

sixteenth century is staggering by comparison with the output of the fifteenth

century. They include Hampton Court, Fawsley Manor, with its dower house

of about the same date (c. 1537), Thornbury Castle, Hengrave Hall, St James's

Palace, the legendary Nonsuch, Layer Marney Hall, Sutton Place, Barrington

Court and Brymton D'Everecy, Forde Abbey, Athelhampton Hall, Bramhall

Hall, Speke Hall and Compton Wynyates, to name but a few.

This spate of domestic building, encouraged by a heightened sense of

personality, an awareness of the past and a love of ostentation, and sustained by

the burst of creative energy liberated by a changed outlook and by the current

emphasis on secular rather than ecclesiastical matters, was carried out by mentrained in the Gothic tradition but often working under foreign artists schooled in

the classical idiom, many of them brought from Italy by Henry VIII. The result

was an architecture which curiously prefigured that of the early Gothic Revival.

*?>-'

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Tudor Renaissance

Just as in the mid eighteenth century Gothic imagery, perceived poetically rather

than historically, was grafted on to a classical mould, so in the first half of the

sixteenth century classical motifs, imperfectly but imaginatively grasped, were

fused with medieval forms. The architecture of both periods exhibits a strong

predilection for the picturesque (although this word was unknown in Tudor

England) and a romantic attitude to the past. The same continuing excellence of

craftsmanship underlay both phases.

While the Tudor mansion still embraced the hall-house plan, often as part of

the quadrangular pattern introduced during the Middle Ages, it revealed manynovel features, the products of a mounting appreciation of the house as a work

of art, modified by individual taste and fancy rather than by utilitarian needs.

One indication of an altered view of the house is that now, for the first time, the

garden was deliberately created as a setting for the building. While there is no

evidence that the fruit and vegetables cultivated by some noblemen and the

regular clergy during the Middle Ages were part of designed layouts, Tudor

gardens were highly stylized geometrical arrangements of topiary, statues and

masonry, and were enlivened by new species of plants brought to England from

all over the known world. The most famous of these gardens was the one at

Hampton Court, planned by Cardinal Wolsey and familiar from contemporary

descriptions and from the painting by Leonard Knyff. Such formal gardens were

of a piece with the style of houses which were becoming ever more elaborate.

Both were alike informed with a keen eye for composition and an inclination

for extravagant detail. When Sir William Shanngton converted the conventual

buildings of the Augustinian Abbey of Lacock into a residence in about 1540, he

was obviously inspired by a feeling for classical architecture, although he did not

attempt to impose a forced symmetry on the medieval structure. But his interest

is revealed in the markedly horizontal character of the south front, where the

irregular roof-lines are hidden by a balustraded parapet and by the plainness of

the tower, which is yet the one romantic feature of the facade. It was used as

a belvedere and Sir William was his own architect. Barnngton Court, Somerset,

built soon after 15 14, is a still more eloquent and much earlier expression of the

Tudor preoccupation with symmetry. Though the plan is based on that of the

hall house, it is completely logical and balanced, principally because the three-

tiered porch, the traditional position of which was determined by the screens

passage and was thus never central, has been made the focal point of the main

elevation. Thus, with its wings, the building, receding and advancing, already

makes the E-shape popularly associated with the Elizabethan period. The walls

are plain, except for the hood moulds above the rectangular, mullioned windows,

and might even be considered stern, were it not for the warmth of its yellow,

lichen-encrusted stone walls. But this severity is counteracted by exotic, spiralling

chimneys and by twisting finials, which extend and accentuate each vertical line

of the house and crown the gables of dormers and wings, each capped by star

tops or by the miniature pepper-pot domes which are such a hall-mark of Tudorarchitecture.

By comparison with a simple manor house of the previous century, such as

Cothay in the same district, Barnngton Court contains a bewildering variety ofrooms, including a 'small' dining-room and one of the earliest long galleries, the

apartment which, like the E-plan, is usually considered to be peculiar to Eliza-

bethan houses. Inventories of other mansions of the early sixteenth century now,for the first time, mention such rooms as summer and winter parlours, studies

and private dining-rooms, while the number of bedrooms, even if they wereonly 'thoroughfare' rooms, multiplied. At Hcngravc Hall, Suffolk, there werefort) bedrooms, and the former buttery and p.mtr\ of the hall house had beenenlarged to embrace still-rooms, a pastry room, laundry and linen rooms. This

I house illustrates most of the characteristics of the residences erected by the

new .md wealthy trading families and by the favourites ot Henry VIII. It was

Page 83: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Detail of the oriel above the entrance,

Hengrave Hall, Suffolk

This florid ornament was carved byJohn Sparke in fine limestone broughtfrom King's Cliffe in Northampton-shire and bears the date 1538. Thephotograph shows the curious lobed

or scalloped design of the oriel, whichresembles that of one of the oriels onthe garden side of the Duke ofBuckingham's great house ofThornbury Castle (1511-22). This

may have been the house of whichJohn Eastawe, the designer of Hen-grave, saw a model at Comby (see

adjacent text). Italian Renaissance

influence is seen in the mouldings ofthe corbels and the treatment of the

cherubs holding coats of armsbeneath them.

built in 1523-38 for Sir Thomas Kytson, a London merchant and a typical

representative of the upstart nobility, after a 'frame', or model, by John Eastawe,

based on one which, so runs the contract, 'the said John has seen at Comby' (a

house belonging to the Duke. of Buckingham). Eastawe, of whom little is

known, was the mason and bricklayer, the freestone work was done by JohnSparke, Thomas Dyricke was the joiner and Davey the carver. The building is

quadrangular in plan, but its character is no longer even as playfully defensive as

that of Oxburgh Hall (p. 43). The entrance is purely domestic and decorative,

tremendous windows articulate the long facade, which was wholly symmetrical

until the bay to the right of the central gateway was removed and the three

gables, which once matched those to the left, .were changed to battlements in the

eighteenth century. A comparison of the two sides of the elevation shows the

affinities and disparities of the two periods more graphically than any description

could do. Without its gables and bay, the altered side is an excessively horizontal

composition and could be taken for a work of the early Gothic Revival. The

pepper-pot domes heighten the resemblance. The original gables and jutting bay

on the other side of the entrance, however, impart a vertical element to the

design which, like the chimneys, gables and finials of Barrington Court, belongs

to the Gothic tradition.

But the flamboyant central feature of the Hengrave facade, the oriel over the

portal - the work ofJohn Sparke, dated 1538 - follows no tradition. It is an early

and zestful instance ofclassical influence, shown not only in the meticulous render-

ing of Renaissance motifs but in the mingling of the familiar and rousingly

unfamiliar in an exuberantly individual work. It assumes the shape, on plan, of

a gigantic, swelling trefoil, a form known in the later Gothic ages, corbelled out

from the face of the wall on tiers at multiform mouldings of classical design

;

Si

Page 84: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Tudor Renaissance

and in the shelter of these ornate curves, pairs of cherubs, either nude or dressed

in Roman armour, support heraldic shields, the middle one displaying the Fish-

mongers' arms. Capricious, scaly, crocketted half-domes surmount each of the

three billowing windows of the oriel and complete an extravaganza which comes

close in spirit to the Gothic folly.

This picturesque invention springs from the same impulses, romantic and at

the same time ebullient, which led Sir Thomas Kytson and other magnates of

the rime to indulge in conscious archaisms. The hall at Hengrave is not entered

directly from the courtyard in the customary manner, but from a corridor

running round three sides of the quadrangle, an individual and progressive

arrangement. But the hall itself is open to the roof, rises to the full height of the

two storeys of the other ranges and was once furnished with all the components

of the great medieval hall, the dais, the screen, the timber roof and the long dais

window, thus reviving the traditions of the vanished feudal order. Again, at

Adlington Hall, Cheshire, the medieval trappings are prominent and elaborate.

The dais is emphasized by an ornamental panelled canopy with a crenellated

bressumer and lavish carvings of heraldic devices. The roof is supported by

massive columns said to be the trunks ot trees standing where they grew. At

Rufford Old Hall. Lancashire, not only is the hammer-beam roof conspicuously

ponderous, but the movable screen is adorned by extraordinary pinnacles which,

though based on Gothic example, would not look out of place on a Baroque

altarpiece. At Fawsley Hall, Northamptonshire, the splendid mansion of Sir

Edmund Knightley, a three-tiered oriel, more like some grandiose Gothic

Revival conceit than a genuinely medieval work, stresses the importance of the

old-fashioned hall: it has much in common indeed with the bow windows at

Arbury, Warwickshire. It resembles a tower, made half of glass, vaulted within

and flinging down a pattern of glowing colour from its brilliant heraldic lights.

At Horeham Hall, Essex, the home ot Sir John Cuttle. Treasurer of the House-

hold of Henry VIII. the hall is distinguished by a truly colossal dais window with

arched and cusped lights, running the whole height of the great apartment, from

the ground sill to the battlements and parapet. And the builder even went so far

in his aping of medieval usage as to provide the hall with a louvre for a central

hearth.

Externally, Horeham Hall is intentionally irregular, with its stepped gables,

asymmetrical facade and picture-book battlements outlined in stone, and it musthave been so even before the addition of the tower in the reign of Elizabeth I.

Such irregularis shows another aspect of the deliberate attempt, at a time whenthe theme of the balanced design had already been established, to perpetuate the

Middle Ages. One of the most famous of such rambling houses, ComptonWynyates, the great hall of which, with its curiously carved, linenfold screen,

was mentioned earlier, owes its present appearance to William Compton,Squire of the Body to Henry VIII, who rebuilt the manor which had belonged to

his ancestors since the twelfth century. Like many Tudor buildings, it lies low, its

brick walls smouldering against a dark, wooded slope. In the sixteenth century

the russet glow stained the water ot a moat which completed and magnified the

picturesque character ot the crowded quadrangle. Familiarity never diminishes

the pleasure or quite removes the surprise of the sight ot Compton Wynyatesfrom the rising ground opposite the entrance front. The queer, fat, bottle-shaped

porch is not in the middle of the facade; the window s. though all square-headed,

vary in size and treatment: erratically disposed diaper-work interrupts the plain

brick ot the walls and the fabric is further diversified by two timber-framedgables. Each gable rises above two windows, one above the other, placed off-

centre. The herring-bone pattern of the timbers is the same in each gable, andeach is lit b\ a strongly defined window, the head of which is the width ot the

gable. But though the gables match as designs, they differ in size, so that from thedistance at which the house is first glimpsed, the larger gable seems to start

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Tudor Renaissance

forward while the smaller recedes; the effect on the eye is as if the facade, withroofs, tall, ornate chimneys and battlemented towers of all heights and sizes

clustering behind it, were viewed in a distorting mirror. When the moat existedto double the image, the impression must have been intensified almost to thepoint of hallucination.

Another unforgettable creation of Tudor romanticism, little known beyondits own district, is the former home of the Uffords and Willoughbys, Moat Hall,

near Parham in Suffolk. It was once approached by a magnificent gateway,bearing the six shields of the two families, but that was sold and moved to the

United States in 1926. A second gateway, more in keeping with the shrunkenstate of the house, breaks the decaying, ivied wall on the south side. Battlementsand stone carvings in flanking niches of wode-houses, or wild men, skin-clad,

hairy creatures brandishing clubs, whose pagan but distinctly Gothic images are

to be found in wood and stone all over Suffolk, impart a legendary air to the

simple brick arch which anticipates the atmosphere of the hall. T-shaped andpart brick, part timber-framed, it is still encircled by an ancient weed-grown moat,which was never more than ornamental. From it, ghostly and faded, rises the

tall north facade. Two decrepid gabled bays project into the water, half the

arched lights of their upper windows blocked with wattle and daub or pieces ofsacking. One of these gables is almost central, the second soars up adjacent to it,

and on its other side, even closer to it, the pitted wall is buttressed by a chimney-stack adorned with arcading and, like the bays themselves, with diaper-work

grown dim with age and neglect.

Diaper-work of this kind, like the actual use of bricks, was based on French

practice. Bricks which were more deeply burnt in the kiln than the rest became a

deep purple or even turned black, and were then employed to make patterns in

the prevailing red or yellow material. Other designs were invented by Tudorbuilders, whose preference for brick established it as the successor to half-timber

m all those parts of the country where stone was not available. The sudden

prominence ofdomestic architecture in the early sixteenth century and the eclipse

of ecclesiastical building were underlined by the fashion for the new material and

the way in which it was treated. Tudor brick was generally red in colour, but byno means uniform, for the red varied with the quantity of iron in the clay from

palest rust to burning crimson and deep mulberry. But bricks of other colours

were occasionally made. Hengrave Hall is distinguished by its walls of blanched,

silvery brick, exquisitely harmonizing with John Sparke's freestone work. Even

though these bricks were the kind most easily procurable from the local cal-

careous clay (for it was the custom tor a brickworks to be set up near the site of

building operations), the fact that they were deliberately selected rather than

bricks ofsome shade of the universally popular red testifies to the serious aesthetic

concern which now informed domestic design. Early bricks vary in size, and

although they tend to be thinner than the i\ inches which became common in

the seventeenth century, it is not possible to date buildings more than approxi-

mately by brick dimensions. During the second halt of the eighteenth century

the general thickness was 2% inches, but there were always exceptions, and

surprisingly, it was not until 1936 that the size of the common brick was

standardized, the thickness being 2§ inches. Thorough baking caused shrinkage

and distortion in early brickwork, which necessitated wide mortar joints. This

mortar, laid flush with the bricks, was at first the colour of the clay, and only

later, when more lime was added, did it assume the greenish-white hue nowassociated with brickwork. Ifthejoints were exceptionally wide, they were often

strengthened by small stones or fragments of flint, a practice known as 'garretting'

or 'gallettmg' (see p. 160).

The method ot laying bricks varied considerably in the sixteenth century.

Although what is now called 'English Bond", in which the bricks are laid in

alternate row^ of headers and stretchers, as in the stepped gable of Horeham Hall

S3

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Picturesque irregularity

Horhani Hall, Essex (left), ComptonWynyates, Warwickshire (below) andGreat Cressingham Manor, Norfolk(right) all date from the first half ofthe sixteenth century. The first twohouses are expressive of Tudor delight

in deliberately irregular composition.

They also illustrate the popularity andsocial importance of brick, whichencouraged its use even in the

limestone district where ComptonWynyates lies. The roof of this house,

significantly, is not of tile but of local

stone. Great Cressingham Manor is

one of the most exciting examples in

the country of that exotic

combination of brick and terracotta

which, under the influence of Italian

workmen brought to England byHenry VIII, was fashionable for the

first fifty years of the sixteenth

century. The Manor is believed to

have been built by John Jenny in

about 1545

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4X *-

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Tudor Renaissance

and in the beautiful gatehouse at Charlecote, had been almost universally adopted

bv the mid sixteenth century, irregularities very often pattern the brickwork of

this period. At Little Leez Priory, for instance, the rhythmic sequence of a row

of stretchers followed by a row of headers is suddenly interrupted by rows of

stretchers sandwiched between courses of alternating headers and stretchers. It

was not until the eighteenth century that 'English Bond' was superseded by

'Flemish Bond', in which each course consisted of alternating headers and

stretchers.

Whatever their colour, and whatever the method used in the laying of them,

bricks formed the medium of some of the most startling inventions of Tudor

builders. Gatehouses, towers, manor houses and chimney-stacks all assumed

fantastic shapes in brick. Towers, ostensibly used as look-outs, like the one at

Lacock, but which at the same time paraded the importance of the owner, were

as popular as the folly tower of the Gothic Revival. The free-standing tower at

Freston. Suffolk, only measures 10 by 12 feet on plan, but rises to a height of

six storeys, and with its openwork parapet of arches and attenuated pinnacled

angle buttresses, looks still taller. It is placed with as acute a perception of the

picturesque as that of any eighteenth-century landscape gardener and adds a

dramatic accent to the quietly shelving, wooded banks of the Orwell estuary.

The brickwork is red with diaper patterning of dark, shiny blue, and some of

the windows are already pedimented. The arrangement inside is unlike that of

any earlier tower house, for the principal room is on the topmost floor.

Gatehouses, even more than towers, were the showpieces of the age. Nolonger needed for defence, they became splendid vehicles for the display ofpompand pageantry. The gatehouse known as Kirtling Tower in Cambridgeshire was

once part of a moated, quadrangular mansion, and the fragment is perhaps morepowerfully moving in isolation than when the house was entire, though its effect

also depends on the remarkably unchanged character of the landscape in which

it stands. Not a single reminder of our own age ruffles the mood of these twin

octagonal turrets and the great swelling two-storeyed oriel between them. Thehuge, six-light, curving windows, so grandly domestic and ornamental, endorse

the playful intent of the battlements, and the very texture of the structure -

diapered brickwork striped by irregular quoins of the same warm-hued stone as

the oriel, the base of the parapet and the tops of the crenellations - suggests wovenmaterial rather than solid walls: Kirtling might be a castle in a tapestry, set about

with winter trees, venerable yews clipped to represent gigantic birds or, shaggy

and spreading, invading the wide, deep moat, long since dry and overgrownwith brambles. Traditional and classical details mingle, as at Hengrave. in the

treatment of the oriel, but in so harmonious, so delicate an assemblage that it is

only in the light ofacquired knowledge that the motifs are seen to be drawn fromdisparate and incompatible origins. Tiny battlements and a frieze of quatrefoils

and shields rise like a diadem banded with a classical leaf ornament above the

arched lights of the upper window. The same leaf motifadorns the sills and formsone of the classical devices that enliven the mouldings of the corbelled-out under-side of the oriel.

The fine gatehouses of Leez Priory reveal a different aspect ot the Tudorinstinct for the picturesque. After the Dissolution, the Augustinian priory

became the property of Lord Rich, who pulled down the monastic buildings anderected a fashionable mansion in their place, a mansion, however, which, unlike

ck, was inspired and haunted by the character of the priory it had dislodged.

Lord Rich built a courtyard on the site of the cloister, his principal living-roomsreplaced the 1 dorter and frater of the monks, with the hall on the southside 111 the position once occupied by the nave of the priory church, lust as in theclaustral plan, there was an outer court entered by a monumental gatehouse. Likethe • rd Rich's residence, and unlike the former monastery, this is ofred brick. I he design, a broad, rlat arch in a square head, with moulded shields

Kirtling Tower. Cambridgeshire

Kirtling Tower is the gatehouse of a

quadrangular mansion built c. 1530 byEdward North, a lawyer. It is all that

survives after wholesale demolition in

1 801 following upon the removal ofone wing in 1752. A drawing ofabout 1735, now in the British

Museum, shows the house as it wasbefore 1752. The texture of the

brickwork, varied by quoins, copings

and string courses ofwarm stone, is

enriched, like that of Moat Hall,

Parham (page 85), with diaper work,

the pattern being formed of flared

headers of dark colour, partially

vitrified, a fashion which originated

in France. The prominent oriel is a

clear indication, if any were needed,

that this gatehouse was designed from

the outset as a picturesque intro-

duction to the mansion and not for

defence.

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uKsmaaaaoM

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Tudor Renaissance

Leez Priory, Essex

The photograph shows the Inner

Gatehouse seen from the OuterGatehouse, the principal survivals of

the great house built by Lord Rich

from 1536 on the site of a dissolved

Augustinian priory. The patterning

on this structure includes not only the

popular diaper (on the left-hand

turret), but also a chequer design (on

the right-hand turret). The incon-

sistency of the decoration enhances

the romantic aspect of the gatehouse.

The open half of the double door in

the foreground of the photograph

shows the inner side of a battened

door. Here the horizontal, spaced

timbers are strengthened by vertical

supports. A separate opening has been

constructed in the lower part of the

door for the use of pedestrians. Thewooden latch of this secondary doorrepresents a development from the

wooden bar which for centuries wasplaced across the domestic door at

night to serve as a lock. The latch is

secured at one end to the door and

the unfixed end slides up and downin the staple on the door and drops

into the catch on the jamb. It wasworked from outside by the piece

of string tied to the latch and passed

through the tiny square openingwhich can be seen in the top of the

door. The latch could be madesecure by the insertion of a piece ofwood in the staple.

in the spandrels set between sturdy polygonal turrets, is markedly severe. A single,

straight-headed window breaks the great expanse of wall framed by the turrets.

Battlements decorated with banded or moulded brick, angle pilaster strips andtwo corbelled friezes on each turret provide the only enrichment apart from a

terracotta coat of arms. The trefoiled friezes add a distinctly ecclesiastical touchto the composition. The beautiful door of this structure is designedly Gothic in

style: the heads of the panels are filled with cusped tracery of a type commonlyfound on the screens and doorways of Perpendicular churches in East Anglia.

The inner gateway, taller, narrower and more ornate, also exhibits trefoiled

corbel friezes, but here they are combined with diaper and chequerwork patterns

in the brick, with lavishly moulded chimney-stacks and with a pediment overthe upper of the two large windows between the flanking turrets. As at Kirtling,

these two noble gatehouses are almost all that remain of the Tudor building.

Lord Rich's mansion was razed to the ground in 1753.

These compositions are dominated by the medieval past: a freer fantasy can beseen at work in the charming gatehouse of West Stow Hall in Breckland. It is a

long, narrow structure and a touch of unreality is imparted to the already bizarre

aspect of the tall, confined entrance by the juxtaposition of a very small plain

arch to the right of the gatehouse. A strong oriental flavour pervades the design

of this portal. Squeezed between battlemented, octagonal turrets, adorned withcrocketted pepper-pot domes and terminal terracotta figures, it is crowned at

either end by a stepped gable surmounted by a third figure raised on a niched,

octagonal drum. Above the entrance arch stretches a broad rich band of lozenge-

shaped panels, each containing a quatrefoil. The upper storey of the long side-

elevations, overlooking a slight depression that was once a moat, shows close-set

timber studding filled with brick nogging. Nothing could be more unclassical

than the shape and details of this gatehouse, and it is with something ofa surprise

that the eye comes to rest on the regular openings of what was once a brick

colonnade joining the detached structure to the mansion and which later becamethe lower storey of a prolongation of the gatehouse. The arches of the colonnade

continue inside the passageway, calm and clear after the riotous gallimaufry of

the exterior.

The upper room of the gatehouse at West Stow contains a crude wall painting,

added in the Elizabethan period but at one with the building in its expression of

the profoundly altered attitude which divided the sixteenth century from the

Middle Ages. The subject is one which was dear to medieval artists: the Wheelof Life, which is interpreted with such memorable conviction at Longthorpe

Tower. This West Stow version of the theme no longer contrasts the worldly

with the spiritual life: instead of linking the brief span of man's earthly days with

the eternal mysteries of the Nativity and the Passion, the painter combines the

Four Ages with a hunting scene. The pivot of his sequence is a representation of

a man and woman embracing; love is celebrated as the highest joy in life, and

middle age is to be regretted because those youthful pleasures can no longer be

experienced. Woman has no place in the Longthorpe Wheel; there the vigour

of manhood is symbolized by a huntsman with hawk and lure. Whereas the

medieval master never for a moment forgets the didactic significance of his

subject, the sixteenth-century painter has followed the matter but not the mean-

ing of the traditional cycle. Another singular gatehouse can be seen at Erwarton,

where the building takes the form of a vaulted tunnel entered at each end by a

round arch and surmounted on each of its four sides by semicircular pediments.

Fat round buttresses suport the walls in the centre and at the angles, each topped

by circular pinnacles with beehive caps. Similar pinnacles burst through the

pediments over the openings, creating forms that anticipate the broken pedi-

ments of Baroque architecture. No ornament is needed to elaborate the strange.

even grotesque aspect of this structure, and the brickwork is plain except for

a band of projections, like widely spaced modilhons running all round the

"

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X*. ^St ttt

building, following the curves of the pediments and the swelling shapes of the

buttresses.

This gatehouse, which was probably completed before i 549. must rank as one

of the most eccentric and yet prophetic of Tudor fantasies in brick. But for sheer

ostentation no conceit of the period can rival the towered entrance of Layer

Marney. It is carried out in brick and terracotta, that finer counterpart o( brick

introduced into England by Italian craftsmen, unknown in the Middle Ages and

hardly ever found after the first half of the sixteenth century until the LombardEarly Renaissance style made its appearance in Victorian London. The stupen-

dous gatehouse was to have introduced a mansion which was scarcely begun andis itself a mansion with four towers, loftier than any which had preceded them.

The towers and the house behind them were intended to form part ot a grand

pictorial, irregular group in which the church to the west of the gatehouse was

included, for it was rebuilt by Lord Marney in diapered brick as an essential

component in his design and is itself a romantic work with a priest's chamber and

an unexpected chimney at the end of the north aisle. Within the church, on tombchests, lie the lean-faced Henry Lord Marney, who died in 1523, and John,

his son, who followed him two years later, both effigies shaded by amazingbalustered terracotta canopies, that of Lord Henr\ adorned along the top with

huge semicircular battlements, reminiscent of those forming part of the frieze

of the Church ol San Pietro at Modena, but much bigger and supporting

dolphin-flanked urns. Kindred motifs embellish the gatehouse, where the sameItalian-inspired craftsman was no doubt at work. The towers are decorated with

thic trefoiled friezes and crowned with prodigous shell-shaped battlements anddolphins. Eight tiers of arched windows light the towers confronting the flight

teps leading up to the entrance, seven tiers of glass glitter in the towers pro-

Layer Marney Towers. Essex

Layer Marney, planned as a courtyard

house and probably begun c. 1 520.

was never completed, for Henry,Lord Marney, Treasurer to HenrvVIII, and his son John, with whomthe line became extinct, were both

dead b\ 1525. The stupendous gate-

house is an indication of the scale on

which Lord Marney intended to

build. It is a conspicuously original

and individual building. There is nopretence here of the gatehouse themeserving any purpose but that ofdisplay Layer Marney differs fromother gatehouses of the period in the

size and number of its windows, the

absolute symmetry of the design in

every detail, and the sophistication of

the composition, the exaggerated

character of which is emphasized by

the difference in height between the

toppling inner and outer turrets. Thedecoration of the building is as

arresting as its design. The brickworkis patterned not only by diapers but

bv huge zigzags (seen in the outer

turrets), and the terracotta work, in

which Gothic features such as battle-

ments assume classical forms and in

which Gothic shapes such as ogee-

headed lights are fashioned fromclassical motifs, is unique The Layer

Marney terracotta work is a pale

biscuit colour and counterfeits stone.

The unusual shapes of the leaded lights

in the window from the west wing

(left) foreshadow the variety ^t

design which became common later

in the century. These leaded lights,

protected b\ a grille, like the win-

dows ofGrevd's house (page -.

were tixed with wire to iron bars:

the window could not be opened.

yo

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jeering to the left and right behind these. The difference in height in conjunction

with the steps imparts an unnerving sense of movement to the pile, as if those

toppling facade turrets were leaning slightly backwards. But of all the oddities

of this extraordinary composition, it is a single detail, in addition to its immenseheight, which imprints itself most clearly on the memory: the unique character

of the large windows between the entrance towers and some of those in the partlv

built west range. They are square-headed, mullioned and transomed, but the

mullions and transoms are all of terracotta, covered with classical ornament. Theheads of the lights, which from a distance might be taken for the Gothic ogeeshapes they were intended to simulate, are in fact composed of classical scroll, urnand leaf motifs. The result is typical of the whole spirit of the gatehouse, which is

neither Gothic nor classic but as peculiarly English and as proudly individual as

Fonthill.

This terracotta work at Layer Mamey is ascribed to one of the Italians whocame to England in the king's service and who was appointed Court Architect.

Girolamo da I revisi, or Trevisano, but there is no evidence for this, and it seemsunlikely, tor the same name is associated with the decoration at Sutton Place.

Surrey, which is entirely different. It is more conspicuous than at Layer Mameyand transfigures the strict logic of the plan with enchanting fantasy. The sym-metrical house was quadrangular, but the fourth side was destroyed m theeighteenth century, and the builder's concern tor form is strikingly shown in

the composition of the south range, where the bay of the hall to the right of the

lust Barsham Manor. Norfolk

The terr.ieotta work of this Norfolkhouse, the hori7ont.il friezes andpanelled battlements. iv of the samered colour as the brick and is almost

indistinguishable from carved andmoulded brick itselt. The decorative

panel over the gatehouse showing the

royal arms is a superb example of this

eratt It was carved on the spot

Page 95: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Tudor Renaissance

entrance is precisely matched by another bay to the left which serves no practical

purpose but is introduced solely for the sake of design. The terracotta ornament,mostly of a creamy hue varied by rose and yellow, is arrestingly pale against the

dusky red brick ofthe house. Groups ofpanels embellished with crudely modelledyet wonderfully robust amorini and rows of quatrefoil lozenge and cusped-archpatterns, stretch between the thin polygonal turrets flanking the entrance bayand along the parapet, creating an effect like that of gay embroidery, while the

quoms are enlivened with panels containing the initials of Sir Richard Weston,the builder, assistant to Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell, and a tun.

Sutton Place has no parallel, but the kind of imagination which gave it birth

can also be seen at work in a celebrated Norfolk house, East Barsham Manor,built at the same time, the early 1520s, for Sir Henry Fermor. East Barsham is a

less ordered composition and its decoration includes no classical details, but the

long, embattled facade with its large, regularly spaced windows wears the samelook of tightly spread embroidered fabric, kept in place by absurdly slender

polygonal buttresses and turrets; and the outlandish character of the ornament is

exaggerated by a group often gigantic chimney-shafts dominating the roof-line.

Each of these shafts is encrusted with decoration carried out in carved andmoulded brick: fleurs-de-lis, diapers and net patterns. It is these bedizened

objects and the elaborate crenellations and the little domed caps and fretted

finials of the buttresses and turrets which first rivet the eye as East Barsham comesinto view from the road running above the hollow in which it lies. The friezes

of terracotta panels beneath the parapet show coats of arms, Gothic tracery andheads, making a display similar to that at Sutton Place, but without a hint offoreign influence in the motifs. The porch is adorned over the entrance with the

royal arms, the griffin and the greyhound, while a panel over the gatehouse

parades the griffin and the lion. The change in the royal device took place in 1527and thus the mansion itself must have been built before then. All this enrichment

is of the same rose-red as the house, and it is impossible always to distinguish

between terracotta and moulded or carved brick. The ornament already exhibits

the remarkable ingenuity which was soon to inform the brickwork of even

minor houses.

Carved and moulded brick mostly superseded terracotta as the medium for

decorative work on brick houses after the Dissolution. Among the latest instances

of terracotta ornament, probably like that at East Barsham, executed by a native

craftsman who adapted the skill he had learned from foreigners to express a

personal and thoroughly English conceit, is that which distinguishes Great

Cressingham Manor, also in Norfolk, as one of the most unforgettable of small

houses. Still partly moated, it stands in a hollow amid tussocky fields. For manyyears a farm, it was derelict when the writer first saw it. The eccentric facade

invites comparison with the more extreme fancies of the Picturesque movement,

but the poetry of this relic is ofa higher order. A rich mantle ofornament expands

rhythmically across a structure which is notably simple in line. Only half the

south facade, alas, survives. This half, beyond a castellated, square-headed gate-

way, is flat except for turret-like angle buttresses and an identical central buttress,

from which rises a brick chimney-stack with octagonal shafts and moulded bases.

Between the buttresses the wall is interrupted by severely rectilinear windows

which still retain their leaded lights. The upper and lower storeys are divided by

a moulded frieze combining a broad, intersecting arch motif, used in reverse,

with a Gothic trefoil and a Renaissance curving leaf ornament. Above this frieze

the whole wall is covered with traceried panels in rust-coloured terracotta, the

vertical lines of the panels contrasting with the bold curving forms of the tracery

and the horizontal character of the building itself. Each of the panels contains a

device, either a monogram composed of two crossed J's and a capital E joined

by an intricate knot, or a hand clasping a falcon. The initials are those ofJohn

Jenny, who is believed to have built the house some time after 1542, and his wife

93

Page 96: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Tudor Renaissance

Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Spring. The hand with the falcon was the Jenny-

crest. In some instances the roundels bearing the initials have been set upside

down, and there are two distinct versions of the hand and falcon. The ground

floor of the house is crudely rendered with cement replacing an original covering

of plaster to imitate stone. Such treatment was often applied to the cut and

moulded parts of the brickwork of Tudor houses.

The tall, narrow panels with pointed, trefoiled heads adorning the central

buttress of the Great Cressingham facade have their counterparts on the central,

polygonal chimney of the gable-end of a house at Methwold, also in Norfolk

and also fast falling into decay, though except for the trefoils in the heads of the

panels there is no tracery at Methwold. This is the only part of the magnificent

chimney decoration to be carried out in terracotta: all the rest, delicate lattice

work and a vertical motif echoing the shape of the stepped gable, as well as the

rope-like hoods above the windows and the mouldings outlining the gable, has

been contrived in brick. The more usual method of finishing off such stepped

gables was to furnish each step with a little gable, as at Horeham Hall. TheMethwold gable-end is an extraordinary object in the village street; even the

uncommonly tall, slender spire of the church on the other side of the road attracts

the eye no more than the rich invention, the varied texture and fiery colour of

this composition, all the more conspicuous in its humbled state as part of three

abandoned cottages.

Though it is rare to find the whole chimney-stack as finely ornamented as it

is here, the brick chimneys of the early sixteenth century are among the most

astonishing productions of the age. It has already been remarked that the mtro-

Bnck fireplace. Abbas Hall, Suffolk

The fireplace dates from the Eliza-

bethan period, when the former openhall was altered (see page 27), and is

set with its back to the former screens

passage. Such a fireplace would at

first have been used for hearth

cooking. The oak lintel spanning the

huge opening was a customaryfeature. Its back was canted to en-

courage a draught up the chimney.The arched recess on the right is an

ingle-nook, and a person sitting 111 it

would use the small niche near it to

hold a glass or cup.

Page 97: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Former Vicarage, Methwold, Norfolk

Apart from its rich ornamental brick-

work, described on the opposite page,

this sixteenth-century gable-end is an

expressive example of 'English Bond",

the method of laying bricks whichcame into general use in the late

fifteenth century and persisted until

the third quarter of the seventeenth

century. The pattern consists ofalternating rows of headers andstretchers with an occasional irregu-

larity due to differences in the sizes

of the bricks. It is the absence ofmechanical uniformity which imparts

such life to the wall texture.

duction of fireplaces, and especially of brick fireplaces, was an event to be cele-

brated; externally it was advertised by a dazzling display of the brickworker's

skill. The proportions, shape and decoration of the chimney were intended to

draw the eye, and on the many houses where they survive they still dominate

the elevation. Very often dramatically placed in the centre of the roof, they

tower above great mansion, farmhouse, cottage and small town house alike, and

although the most outrageous examples occur, as I have said, in stoneless districts,

they are found in most regions, even crowning stone-built houses, as at Thorn-

bury Castle in Gloucestershire, the great palace in the form of a feudal fortress

built for Edward, 3rd Duke of Buckingham. Built at first with only a single

shaft to serve the one fireplace in the hall, the Tudor chimney-stack soon began

to boast four, five, six and occasionally, as at East Barsham Manor, even ten

shafts. A description of but one or two of these remarkable constructions, in

addition to those that have been mentioned in passing, must suffice to show their

diversity and liveliness. A cluster ot four shafts, two circular and two octagonal.

cannot fail to attract the eye ot anyone walking or driving along Netherg.itc

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Page 98: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Tudor Renaissance

Street, Clare. They belong to a house known as The Chitons, rise trom broad,

octagonal bases set on a square, moulded plinth and terminate in scalloped,

corbelled, octagonal capitals, the tip ofeach scallop projecting in a thin spur. Theshafts are entirely sheathed in prominent patterns in relief, bold, intersecting

zigzags, chain meshes and a design based on Gothic dog-tooth moulding. Asimilar group of four shafts with spurred and scalloped tops looms above a half-

timbered house in Newport, Essex. Here, however, the shafts are all circular and

much shorter and fatter, and it is as if the patterns on them had been compressed

by the reduction in height, they are so intricate and so closely knit. One is over-

spread with a design recalling the geometrical yet flower-like shapes of snow

crystals, another is netted with minute lacy reticulations resembling and perhaps

inspired by Saracenic design; another is animated by repeated hexagons enclosing

rectangles. At Broadoaks, a moated brick house at Wimbish, assemblages oftwoor three slender octagonal shafts rest on high gabled plinths and are topped by

heavily corbelled octagonal capitals with triple rows of projecting spurs. Four

shafts rising from a house at Preston, Suffolk, are surmounted by star tops and

stand on a plinth decorated with four rows of square panels, each filled with dog-

tooth ornament. The freedom and originality with which themes from diverse

sources have been blended and reinterpreted on the bases, shafts and capitals of

such chimneys place these aerial pillars among the most inventive variations of

the column motif in the whole historv ot architecture.

Chimnev. Newport, Essex

The popularity or" the brick chimneyin the sixteenth century was such that

it is found on many stone-built housesot the period. The clustered brick

shafts at Thornbury Castle.

Gloucestershire, are well known. Thereasons tor this popularity were two

:

first it was found that brick was moreresistant to fire than was stone, andsecondly, the material itself represen-

ted the height of fashionable taste.

The prominent chimney advertised

the important fact that the house hadfireplaces. As a status symbol, there-

fore, in an age given to ostentation,

the chimney became an object ofelaborate display. Very often, as here

at Newport, the magnificence ot the

exuberant shafts on their high base is

out of all proportion to the modestyof the house upon which it is set. Like

so much in English domestic design,

the extravagant and highly individual

Tudor chimney has no parallel out-

side this country.

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iS^^W'i*^

t'h

' "> 'Vv \

* 3

Elizabethan Baroque

Screen ornament and plaster ceiling,

The Hall, Knole, Kent

The flourish and movement of the

heraldic Sackville leopards, the

romantic presence of the screen so

long after the great hall had becomean anachronism in domestic design

(1603) and the geometric angularity

of the ribbed, pendentive plaster

ceiling all epitomize the spirit of the

Elizabethan house.

The tendencies which marked the domestic architecture of the early Tudorperiod were intensified during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, especially

during the last quarter of the sixteenth century. The self-awareness and ostenta-

tion, the passionate and romantic interest in the past, coupled with a predilection

for the picturesque, the preoccupation with design, the fusing of foreign and

native influences and the secular emphasis all deepened to inspire an art as vital, as

superbly organized and as free from rusticity as the poetry of Shakespeare, BenJonson or Donne. The age was prosperous and the demand for houses, already

under way, increased fantastically in momentum. So extraordinary is the wealth

of houses left by this period that, despite the losses occasioned by the Industrial

Revolution and the greater vandalism of our own day, many hundreds of

Elizabethan dwellings, all over the country - great mansions, manors, farm-

houses and cottages - still testify to the dynamic, restless, often aggressive spirit,

allied with but a few exceptions to a surpassing sense of beauty, which sets this

age apart from all others. They still seem to echo with the sound of the throbbing,

vibrant life which once filled them. There is a peculiar poignancy at the present

time about the murmurs sent forth from the domestic shells of our Elizabethan

97

Page 100: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Wmdporch, Montacute. Somerset

Internal porches such as this wereintroduced in response to a growingdemand tor comtort. Thev wereparticularly fashionable in the south-

west, the earliest dating from the

second quarter of the sixteenth

centurv. and they remained popular

for about a hundred vears. As a

design this aspiring porch, with

flicker of obelisks and combination

of contrasted refined and correct and

bold, idiosyncratic rendering of the

Renaissance idiom, is peculiarly

expressive of its period. The motifs of

the cornice and the panelled piL

vaned by an inlav ot wood ot another

colour, derive from French example,

but the extraordinary 'strapwork'

volutes flanking the pediment are

wholly individual. (Flat, interlacing

strapwork is itself employed in all

materials in Elizabethan architecture

and perhaps originated in Eastern

damascene work.) The curious form

of the niche decoration on the bases

of the pilasters is an instance of the

craftsman's misreading of one of the

few available pattern books of the

dav. perhaps Delorme's Architecture

(i 567) ; he has used console forms

instead of pilasters to support the arch.

The geometric panelling sh

design often found during the period

:

it occurs at Broughton Castle and at

Crewe Hall and resembles the formal

layout ot Elizabethan gardens.

forebears: they speak to us of activities, of discoveries, of adventures which have

made us what we are: they stress the gulf which divides a people flushed with

the excitement of a newly achieved maturity and a people in decline. A con-

tinuous line of development links the sad remnants ot Beaupre Hall. Ourwell.

with the hideous prefabricated bungalows lining the drive that once led up to the

gatehouse. For the whole basis of our modern industrial pattern of living _

back to Elizabeth's reign. It was then that coal-muring first made significant

advances : it was then that the stocking-knitting frame was invented : it was then

that the foundations ofmodem science were laid m the intense activity described

by Wolf in A History of Science, Technology and Philosophy in the 16th ana ,

Centuries. Mathematicians, such as the celebrated Napier, the inventor of

logarithms, geographers like Hakluyt, naturalists, of whom William Turner

one. astronomers like John Blagrave and Thomas Digges. cartographers

including Norden, Saxton and Speed, and physicists such as William Gilbert of

Colchester were preparing the way for men like Newton. Their workderisive for the character of our lives today: and even greater was the impact of

the English expansion overseas and the emergence, as one result of it, ot 2 North

America peopled by Enghsh-speaki: 3

Domestically these reasoned, practical enter:- re paralleled by the

invention of dev: _*ater comfort and convenience. Some of them have

been mentioned in a previous chapter. Internal wind porches, such as can be

•ntacute. kept out draughts. And it was at the close of the sixteenth century

that Sir John Hanngton invented the water closet which he described in his

He installed his device in his

near Bath, and it was afterwards copied for the Qu.

Page 101: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Elizabethan Baroque

Palace at Richmond. The illustration accompanying Sir John's description showsa low flush cistern with fish swimming in it, an overflow pipe, a flushing pipe

and a waste together with a large rectangular seat and a pan. 'If water be plenty,'

says the inventor, 'the oftener it is used and opened the sweeter; but if it be scant,

once a day is enough, for a need, though twenty persons should use it.'

But just as the inevitable results of the experiments, the enthusiasm and per-

severance of the Elizabethan scientists and explorers have only become fully

apparent centuries later, so Sir John's contrivance had to wait until the nineteenth

century before it came into general use, and it was not until our own age that

comfort and convenience outweighed and finally ousted aesthetic considerations

in house design. Despite developments in comfort in the sixteenth century, the

house was first and foremost a vehicle for the expression of personality and

fantasy. To a greater extent than ever before it became part of architecture instead

of the product of a largely unselfconscious tradition.

I have purposely used the word 'Baroque' in the heading of this chapter because

it suggests both the explosive, exotic character of Elizabethan inventiveness and

the remarkable synthesis achieved in the more ambitious houses of the period.

In its brilliant creativity, sense of rhythm and exploitation of unexpected com-binations, this architecture has a great deal in common with the Baroque art of

Europe of the following century. The divergences between the two mani-

festations are as fascinating as the resemblances. The vertical Gothic and the

horizontal classical modes conspire together in both to create an original image.

Both are spectacular, even theatrical. But whereas the sweeping diagonals, the

ascending spirals and billowing curves of the Baroque correspond to a revival of

religious fervour and make use of classical forms for a purpose once served by

Gothic art, the stately, angular movement of great houses such as Hardwick,

Burghley or Wollaton is secular in inspiration, but finds expression in forms

largely derived from Gothic tradition.

The concept of synthesis, the reconciliation of vividly contrasting opposites

from which the special character of Elizabethan house design derives, dominates

every aspect of this complex age. It would be beyond the scope of this book to

embark on more than a fleeting reference to the general phenomenon, but one or

two examples must be mentioned. First of all, this age, which was so ardently

forward-looking, which may be said to have laid the foundations of our modern

world, was also passionately attracted by the past. The Elizabethans were the

first English topographers, antiquarians and historians in the modern sense, and

Leland was followed by Carew, Lambarde and Camden. Shakespeare's history

plays were written in response to an urgent popular demand. Drayton devoted

himself almost entirely to historical poetry, and in his finest work, Polyolbion,

attempted to survey the whole country and to put Camden's Britannia into verse;

and even Spenser, dreamer and visionary though he was, conjured up his country's

legendary past in one of the cantos of the Faerie Queene. This past, which in the

Elizabethan imagination was peopled by King Lud, founder of London, Brutus,

Lear, Cymbeline, Boadicea, Constantine and Uther Pendragon, was united to

a future of expanding trade by an ardent feeling of patriotism, movingly

expressed by Spenser in the words of Prince Arthur:

Dear country, O how dearly dear

Ought thy remembrance and perpetual bond

Be to thy foster child, that from thy hand

Did common breath and nouriture receive?

How brutish is it not to understand

How much to her we owe, that all us gave,

That gave unto us all, whatever good we have.

The domestic architecture of the age bears many signs of this preoccupation with

the past. For the moment it suffices to call attention to the way in which the

99

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Elizabethan Baroque

Elizabethans clung to the Gothic great hall, investing it with even more pic-

turesque reminders of medieval usage than did their immediate predecessors.

Perhaps the most spectacular of all is that of Hatfield House built by Robert

Lyminge. The screen is barbaric in the profusion of its carved ornament. It is

crowned by a projecting gallery, and facing it at the other end of the vast roomis a second gallery corbelled out from the wall on monstrous brackets. Whereas

the architect of Hatfield combined some original features, such as the loggia

between the wings of the traditional E-shape of the design, with deliberate

archaisms, the author of Burton Agnes, perhaps John Smythson, produced one

of the most wholly original plans of the period and in the rich decoration of the

interior made use of Renaissance flower, figure and geometric motifs without a

backward glance at Gothic imagery. Yet he could not forego the medieval hall,

even while embellishing it with forms unknown in the Middle Ages. This

romantic and nostalgic vein in the Elizabethan temperament is confirmed by the

attitude to older houses which were altered or enlarged at this time. HorehamHall, which was described earlier (p. 82), was furnished with a battlemented

tower in c. 1580, which emphasizes the irregularity of the facade. The rambling

character of Haddon Hall, the silvery-grey house which, set on a grassy slope

above a stream, comes nearer than any medieval manor to realizing the dream

castle of the age of chivalry, was encouraged by the addition of oriels, a long

gallery and castelled bays. Sir John Bellingham of Levens Hall, Westmorland,

was moved by an existing medieval tower to make it part of a picturesque com-position of gables, tall chimneys and battlements. A sixteenth-century gatehouse,

stone on the ground floor but vigorously patterned above with lozenges and

stripes in half-timber and adorned with carved brackets, underlines the romantic

mood of Stokesay Castle (pp. 36-7).

Medieval strongholds were modified to accord with a glamorous view of the

Middle Ages. Wardour and Carew were among them, and it was at this time

that Kenilworth was ornamented with its picturesque gatehouse, ostentatiously

'medieval' in spirit if not in detail, and that Leicester's new wing was built to

harmonize with the Gothic ranges. And Naworth, in the border country, also

assumed its present spectacular aspect in Elizabeth's reign. The new rich, whowere building magnificent palaces and manors of stone and brick as memorials

to themselves and their age, were often self-made men, ruthless, ambitious and

dangerous, but the upper ranks of English society in the sixteenth century

included men of noble birth and it was the Elizabethans who created the ideal of

the gentleman which was to exert so powerfully civilizing an influence for the

next three hundred years, an ideal first realized in the person of the knight, poet

and humanist, Sir Philip Sidney, and again a synthesis, for it joined classical

learning with medieval chivalry.

Again, the Church which resulted from the Act of Supremacy of 1559, the

complete break with Rome and the establishment of the Queen as supreme

governor of things temporal and spiritual, was as much a synthesis of opposing

forces as the architecture of the period. If it was Protestant in doctrine, it wasCatholic in order, and the majestic, consoling and poetic language of the Prayer

Book celebrates their union. This book also symbolizes the severance of England

from the direct current of Renaissance influence, an event which did much to

encourage the striking individuality of Elizabethan house design. For manydecades the Englishman's experience of the classical idiom was limited to trans-

mogrifications from France and the Netherlands. They were sufficient to leaven

the forces of tradition, sufficient to stimulate without possessing an imagination

fired by the excitement of national tension and national triumph. Removal fromthe fountain-head of classical inspiration postponed the day when the classical

( )rdcrs were to impose their extraordinary and exclusive tyranny in this northernland. The Elizabethans were familiar with the Orders, and when they wishedthey could apply the principles and disciplines the\ incorporated perfectly COf-

100

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Elizabethan Baroque

rectly. The hall screen and the fireplaces in the long gallery at Hardwick are

instances of this. But the foreign ideas were not upheld as the only means ofachieving a noble architecture: they were merely recognized as useful ingredients

in the fabrication of some of the most exotic, daring house designs which haveever taken shape.

The French and Netherlandish versions of classical proportions and ornamentwere known from handbooks which were in circulation at the time and whichwere the forerunners of the pattern books of the Georgian and Victorian periods.

Among them were the books of the Fleming, Vredeman de Vries, especially his

Variae Architecturae Formae of 1563. And copies of Serlio's Architecture, of whichBooks III and V were published in Venice in 1537 and 1540 and Books I, II and IVin France in 1 545 and 1 547, provided details for chimney-pieces and ornament,

although Serlio's influence on English designers only became important after his

work was published in translation by Robert Peake in 161 1. To these foreign

books must be added the one English publication on architecture to appear

during Elizabeth's reign, The Firste and Chief Groundes of Architecture used in all

the auncient andfamous monyments : with a farther and more ample discourse uppon the

same, than hath been set out by any other. Published byjhon Shute, Paynter and Archy-

tecte. Imprinted at London at the Flete-strete near to Sainct Dunstans Churche by

Thomas Marshe, 1563

Shute's title contains the first use of the word 'architect' as applied to a specific

person. It occurs again in the next century in the church register of deaths at

Blickling, Norfolk, where Robert Lyminge, dying in 1628, is described as 'the

architect and builder of Blickling Hall'; and Robert Smythson, in 1614, wascalled 'Architector' on his tombstone. These instances show that the conception

of the architect as distinct from the master craftsman was beginning to emerge

more clearly. At the same time the men who designed the distinguished houses

of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were still closely connected

with the crafts. Robert Lyminge was by trade a carpenter, Robert Smythson,

author of Wollaton and probably at least partly responsible for Hardwick,

Longleat, Fountains Hall and Barlborough as well as - according to his bio-

grapher, Dr Girouard - of the enchanting Wootton Lodge, Staffordshire, was

trained as a mason, as was his son John. Two of these craftsmen-architects, Robert

Smythson and John Thorpe, have left behind them large collections of plans

which would bear eloquent testimony to the astonishing power of invention

which characterized the age, even ifno actual buildings survived. Thorpe's book

of drawings, now preserved in the Soane Museum, contains plans of manyfamous Elizabethan and Jacobean mansions, including Wollaton and Kirby, but

Sir John Summerson has shown that many of these plans are for houses built

before Thorpe was born and that they are in the nature of surveys rather than

original creations. But included among them are a Thorpe extravaganza, a design

based on the architect's own initials, and an eccentric plan for a circular house

containing three rectangular compartments. Smythson's drawings now belong

to the Royal Institute of British Architects and again many of them are surveys

of known houses, but among them are numbers of brilliantly original plans and

elevations as well as ingenious designs for screens, tombs and fountains. Some of

Smythson's more exotic plans look like the strapwork compartments of Eliza-

bethan and Jacobean plaster ceilings.

It is in the prodigy houses, as Sir John Summerson calls them, built by these

and other genial designers, many of them nameless, that domestic architecture

first became an art comparable in importance with the ecclesiastical building of

the Middle Ages. And it is in these houses that all the varied and conflicting

characteristics of the age are most perfectly synthesized.

Kirby Hall, Northamptonshire, is traditionally quadrangular in plan, and in

the principal range, in accordance with medieval custom, the porch leads into a

screens passage, with the kitchen, buttery and pantry on one side and the hall

101

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Elizabethan Baroque

and living-quarters on the other. The hall, again following established practice,

rises to the full height of the building and is roofed with a barrel vault divided

into rectangular compartments with wavy diagonals passing through them and

with flowery bosses at the intersections. The design is carried out in timber and

the diagonals recall the windbraces of medieval halls, but the roof curves above a

Renaissance cornice and the timbers are all most delicately carved with classically

derived foliage and mouldings. The exterior of this range is governed by the

same refined and imaginative interpretation of Renaissance motifs applied to a

traditional theme. Despite the internal arrangement, the projecting porch is in

the centre of a symmetrical facade articulated by giant pilasters with fanciful

Ionic capitals taking the place of the buttresses of a Perpendicular building and

set between large mullioned windows. The porch itself makes as strange and as

inventive a use of classical forms as Dr Caius's gateways at Cambridge. It rises

high above the rest of the building, standing up like one of the elaborate frontis-

pieces of the books of the period changed into stone. The third, attic storey of the

structure has been added, like that of countless Baroque facades on the Continent,

purely for its dramatic effect, for there is nothing behind it. The round-arched

entrance is flanked by twin fluted Ionic pilasters with a strong entasis, and a third

pilaster, set round the corner so that the angle of the porch juts out between the

two pillars, imparts a lateral movement to the design. A frieze of elegantly

carved foliage divides this stage of the porch from the superstructure. Thebalcony set on bold brackets immediately above the arch and the round-headed

window crowned by a broken pediment bear the date 1638 and are thus morethan sixty years later than the rest of the porch, though they entirely accord with

the ascending mood of the composition. On either side of the window pairs of

fluted Corinthian columns, again with a third column on the east and west walls,

project most curiously on large, sculptural leaf-carved brackets and introduce a

bold advancing and retreating motion to the frieze they support. The attic storey

takes the form of a curving Dutch gable flanked by flaming ball ornaments sur-

mounting a screen of Corinthian pilasters, again perched on brackets above a

strapwork frieze. The fantasy of this structure, poised above the roof-line, whereit consorts with tall, polygonal, coupled chimneys, is heightened by the

exquisitely carved decoration - shell devices, cartouches, roundels and foliage -

which wholly covers it. The felicitious contrast between this exciting, busy porch

and the calm, restrained lines of the facade in which it is set makes an indelible

impact. It is all the more poignant because of the ruinous state of the house and

all the more potent because of its setting. This richly poetic conceit stands in an

oddly menacing landscape of little hills, ravaged by the consequences of iron-

stone mining: slag heaps and livid pools.

In no other Elizabethan exterior are classical motifs used in such profusion as

at Kirby. Classical influence makes itself felt for the most part in the conspicuous

symmetry of the Elizabethan elevation and is otherwise confined to a few details.

Longleat is generally regarded as the most classical looking of the great Eliza-

bethan mansions, and it is an important house, for certain motifs which were to

play a decisive part in the design of Hardwick, Wollaton, Burghley Fountains

Hall and Barlborough, to name only these, appear here for the first time. Longleat

rose on the site of a former house of Austin Friars and had been taking shape from

1547 onwards when it was severely damaged by fire in 1567. Rebuilding beganin the following year, but the final remodelling, which left the exterior much as

we now see it, only started in 1 572, which makes this house the contemporary ofthe Elizabethan part of Kirby. The plan is completely balanced and all the

facades are to the eye of the same height and design, though Dr Pevsner points

to irregularities in the proportions of window to wall. The significant features

of the design and those which reappear in later houses are the great height of the

house, the uniformity oi the ranges of enormous windows, taking up morewall space than the stonework, the high basement containing the offices and

102

Page 105: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Kirby Hall, Northamptonshire

The house, now a ruin, was built for

Sir Humphrey Stafford of Blather-

wick between 1572 and 1575. Thedesigner is unknown, but the masonis thought to have been ThomasThorpe, one of a family of masonsfrom King's Clitfe and the father of

the famous John Thorpe, the surveyor

(see page 101).

The hall, with its beautiful canted oakceiling, combines traditional andRenaissance features, and while it

takes its traditional place in the

interior design of the house, extern-

ally it forms part of a symmetrical

scheme of which the bizarre and

prominent porch is the centrepiece.

The large windows, with their

regular, rectangular divisions, are the

typical expression of the Elizabethan

passion for glass. The giant pilasters,

which give this facade its particular

rhythm and emphasis, are a Frenchmotif rarely found in Elizabethan

architecture.

Page 106: The English House Through Seven Centuries

kitchen - an entirely novel arrangement in England - and the articulation of the

facades by three-storeyed jutting bays. The storeyed bay used as a repeating unit

is one of the most spectacular inventions of the Elizabethans, for by its means their

designs are informed with that stately advancing and retreating and aspiring

movement which is their special distinction. The bay appears in this new form

for the first time at Longleat. Thirteen bays control the powerful rhythm of Sir

John Thynne's gre.it house; with their array of glass they are like giant lanterns,

although their square shape is reminiscent of that of the medieval tower. They

t at a little distance from the corners of the house, so that the angle ot the

building juts out sharply between them creating a colossally magnified version

of the effect achieved b\ the pilasters and angles of the porch at Kirby.

Although it incorporates so main original and distinguished features of

The cist front. Montacute,

Somerset

This garden side of the house was

originally the main entrance and has

remained unaltered. The house was

probably begun . i S90, and, accord-

ing to Mr Arthur Oswald in Country

House* ofDorset (1959), the designer

may have been William Arnold, the

architect ofCranborne Manor,

1 lorset.

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Elizabethan Baroque

Elizabethan architecture, Longleat lacks the note of high romance, the tingling

excitement and ebullience which are as typical of the period. Seen from a distant

height across the landscape garden designed by Capability Brown and Repton,

the long house basks in an almost classical serenity.

Traditional and foreign elements conspire together to produce a composition

which is more truly expressive of the temper of the age and infinitely morepoetic at Montacute. Though transformed by symmetry, this Somerset house is

as firmly based on native usage as Kirby. It is in fact a highly elaborated version

of the medieval hall house with cross-wings. Built of mellow Ham Hill stone,

its height emphasized by obelisks, by semicircular and curving gables with a wavyBaroque silhouette and by tall cylindrical chimneys, it has a three-tiered porch

in the centre of its main front with a round-headed rusticated door; the facade is

more than half glass, so large are its windows, and it is adorned on each of its

floors by niches, shell-headed along the plinth and circular above the first-floor

sills. This facade looks towards a forecourt which is all fantasy. It is enclosed by

a balustrade ornamented with regularly spaced obelisks and interrupted midwayalong the left- and right-hand walls by open rotundas, outlines in stone, which

might be taken for playful little classical temples, except that they are surmounted

by ogee cupolas crowned with finials composed of two intersecting stone rings,

suggesting, as they may have done to the device-loving Elizabethans, the

universe. In each corner of this courtyard is a pavilion, square, with obelisks at

its corners and with an ogee dome rising from a parapet of shell-shaped battle-

ments, the tapering crown of the dome again topped by an open sphere. Two-storeyed oriels swell each facade. House and forecourt are entirely individual and

extraordinarily expressive of their period. The size and splendour of the building

Rotunda and garden pavilion,

Montacute, Somerset

Elizabethan delight in pattern is

shown in the combinations of shapes:

square and quatrefoil, circle, ogee and

obelisk, in tins garden forecourt. Thefusion of Gothic and classical forms

in magical harmony, the ogee

cupolas, tapering closed and openagainst the sky, the battlements, the

Doric columns and obelisks,

anticipates the early Gothic Revival.

Page 108: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Elizabethan Baroque

proclaim rhc importance of its owner, Edward Phelips, a lawyer, later knighted,

Speaker in the House of Commons and Master of the Rolls; the design goes back

to the past, but the obelisks recall the Rome of Sixtus V, the roundels and the

rusticated door are Florentine in feeling, and the gesticulating statues of Romansoldiers in the niches along the top storey allude picturesquely to antiquity. All

these elements are welded together in a harmony transcending every allusion and

dominated by the mood of the strangely proportioned, strangely symbolic

rotundas and pavilions.

Fountains Hall, Yorkshire, is, again like Montacute, based on the old hall-

house plan, and it again reconciles seeming incongruities in a balanced design,

but it is more dramatic, more exuberant. Despite the strong horizontal lines of

its cornices and the screen between its wings, Fountains is animated by a surging

upward movement, which is quickened by the position of the house, pressed

against the side of a wooded declivity, and by the flight of worn steps ascending

first to a gateway embellished with fragments of medieval columns set on

classical plinths and then to the main doorway which is adorned with coupled

Ionic columns entrancmgly associated with medieval knights. More knights look

out from niches above the entrance and yet more stand on the balustrade of the

screen. The advancing and retreating movement is far more complex and

sophisticated than that which enlivens Montacute. For square, embattled angle

towersjut forward beyond the gabled wings, themselves furnished with project-

ing bays, and the angularity of the design is checked and softened by the curve

of the tall castellated oriel above the screen which lights the great chamber. Thehall, with a traditionally placed and asymmetrical screens passage, runs below

the great chamber with its entrance concealed by the external screen, which has

its own pillared doorway in the centre of the whole facade.

At Barlborough Hall, the traditional quadrangular design is transformed into

a compact mansion with a tiny inner courtyard surmounted by a cupola. Themain elevation, set up on a basement, is one of the lightest and most enchanting

of Elizabethan compositions. It is animated by hexagonal bays, which, almost

completely fashioned of glass, shoot up above the roof-line like proud coronets,

augmenting the vertical emphasis of the house and contrasting with the square,

two-storeyed projection of the porch, where the round-arched entrance is

flanked by exaggerated twin columns rising, with a theatrical and truly Baroque

touch, to twice the height of the opening. The facade is adorned with medallions

enclosing busts and with battlements assuming fanciful semicircular and tall

rectangular shapes.

Barlborough anticipates the design of the monstrous Wollaton Hall, the most

grandiose and showy of all Elizabethan houses, where the hall ingeniously

occupies the centre of a quadrangular composition and rises higher than the rest

of the building in a great tower-like mass surmounted by a parapet and corner

turrets with saucer domes. Robert Smythson's plan for this house is remarkably

original and the elevations are spectacularly symmetrical and brilliantly en-

livened by projections and recessions, but the building is so overloaded with

ornament, with strapwork, angular banding, busts and obelisks, that the mag-nificence ot the conception is blurred in an effect of restlessness which perhaps

reflects the personal unhappincss and unease and also the vulgarity of the builder.

Sir Frances Willoughby, who had made his money in coal and iron, and some-

thing of whose mentality is revealed by the fact that he had some of his accounts

bound up in the leaves of fine medieval manuscripts. At the same time this

audacious disregard of 'taste' is a prominent attribute of the Baroque spirit and

Wollaton is a product of the same flamboyance which prompted the hideous but

overwhelmingly vital dolphin fountain at Caserta.

Another lesser house, which like Wollaton is ovcrpow ei ing instead ofbuoyant,is the I fill, Bradford on Avon, perched up on a high terrace with ornate balus-

trading. Here semicirculai bays project grandiloquently from the fronts ofOfcUION HAI i * .r.-uij floor

Hill i Crtllrry I lenity 4 Bultrry

Page 109: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Barlborough Hall, Derbyshire, and

(below) Fountains Hall, Yorkshire

Both Barlborough, dated 1583 on the

porch and 1584 on an overmantel and

built for a lawyer, Francis Rodes, and

Fountains, built c. 161 1 for Sir

Stephen Proctor, Collector of Fines

on Penal Statutes, have been attribu-

ted to Robert Smythson. There are

obvious affinities in the facade designs

and in the way both are set up on a

high base to enhance the architect's

fine sense of drama and romance.

Both houses show great originality in

their planning. The ingenious wayin which the hall house arrangement

has been adapted to a symmetrical

facade at Fountains is mentioned on

the opposite page. Barlborough is an

early instance, one of the first in this

country, of the basement kitchen

plan. While its quadrangular layout

relates it to Wollaton (1580-8), the

unusual feature of a corridor running

round the sides of the courtyard oneach floor shows the possible in-

fluence of Hengrave, which is also

conspicuous for such a corridor (see

page 82). Dr Girouard shows that the

Kytsons of Hengrave and the

Shrewsburys, patrons of Francis

Rodes, were connected for a short

period, so the architect ofBarlborough may have knownHengrave. The medallions with busts

below the main first-floor windowsof this house were perhaps inspired

by those on the great gateway at

Hampton Court, where this charmingdevice was first used. It was a

Northern Italian invention which wasto catch the imagination of English

builders and prompt them to someof their most delightful variations onthe theme of classical antiquity.

Page 110: The English House Through Seven Centuries

square bays on either side of a two-storeyed, aggressive and florid porch, the

forward movement ofwhich is skilfully counteracted by the recession ofpointed

gables and tall chimneys set back diagonally behind a parapet, where at the

same time they carry the design triumphantly upwards. The front is all glass, but

the effect is pompous rather than airy, and the doorway, weighed down bygigantic scrolls curiously surmounted by finials, is only distinguishable from the

bastard products of the Edwardian era by its superior confidence and vigour.

Bays and gables combine to create an utterly different atmosphere at Chastleton,

lllogically tall and designed for romantic effect. The advancing and retreating

movement is particularly emphatic, for the central recession containing the

entrance in the side of one of the bays, is almost as cavernous and mysterious as

that at Borthwick (p. 46) and the rhythm is given a staccato momentum by the

spiky, stepped gables which crown both the projections and the recessions. Square

battlemented towers rise from each of the side elevations and contribute to the

picturesque way in which the grouping of the angular forms shifts as one walks

round the house.

But for unforgettably dramatic grouping, no house can rival Hardwick which

is seen, now as three, now as tour mighty towers in zigzag perspective as the

building is viewed now from the west, now from the south, now from the

south-east. In this glorious house all the high aesthetic and intellectual excitement,

the freshness, the intensity of experience, the swagger and vitality of the age find

their fullest expression. It seems to incorporate all the most dynamic and satisfying

features of the houses so far described. The builder, Elizabeth, Dower Countess

ol Shrewsbury, or Bess of Hardwick, was as vivid an embodiment of her age

as her great mansion. .1 parvenue, formidable, proud, scheming, immensely

Hardwick Hall. Derbyshire

The west front of this great house

(built 1590- 7) is remarkable for its

severe angularity, relieved only by

the ornamental parapets of the towers

containing the initials ot the proudbuilder: 'E.S.' tor Elizabeth

Shrewsbury; tor the austerity andstraight entablature ot the classical

colonnade now running between the

towers, but originally designed to

continue all round the house; and.

above all. tor the proportion ot glass

to wall.

Although the FI17.1beth.1ns had .1

passion for light, their houses seldom

face south The south wind was

traditionally the bearer ot pestilence

and therefore to be avoided Caliban

cursmg Prospero, cried: 'A south

wind blow on ye and blister vou all

o'er ' The Elizabethan hygienist,

Andrew Boorde, advised builders to

'order and edify' the house so that

the main prospects might be east and

west, preferably north-east, 'tor the

south wind doth corrupt and makeevil vapours'.

108

Page 111: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Burghley House, Northamptonshire

References in his correspondence to

French architectural books, including

that of Delorme (1567), show that

William Cecil (created Lord Burghleyin 1 571) was personally interested in

architecture. Work was in progress at

Burghley, the site of an older manorhouse belonging to Cecil's father,

from 1556-f. 1587. The west front,

shown here, is dated 1577, when JohnSymondes, who also made a 'plan'

for Kyre Park, Worcestershire, mayhave been Cecil's mason. Theeighteenth-century landscape setting

by Capability Brown enhances the

fantastic character of the hugequadrangular mansion. The pepper-

pot domes and the gatehouse are in

the earlier Tudor tradition, but the

quivering skyline— the tall chimneysin the form of clustered columns; the

turrets; the arched and obelisk-

adorned parapet; the receding andadvancing movement set up by bays,

towers and oriels; the powerful

horizontal moulding dividing each

storey and emphasizing the unity ofthe composition; and the regularity

of the fenestration— all speak the

language first formulated at Longleat.

zestful and dominated by a passion for building which was prompted by an

irresistible creative urge as much as by the desire to demonstrate her wealth and

consequence. The powerful secular bias she shared with her age is sharply

revealed by a detail in the furnishing of the house, by the remarkable needlework

collages, perhaps the work of Bess herself and certainly conceived by her, madefrom copes which came into the possession of her second husband, Sir William

Cavendish when he was acting as Commissioner for Monastic Estates in Derby-

shire. Bess put the Virgin and Saints from the copes into Renaissance niches and

labelled them Justice, Prudence, Labour and Charity. The daughter of a small

country squire, she was married four times, multiplying her possessions and

enhancing her social position with each untion until she was among the richest

subjects in the kingdom. After years of bitter quarrelling with her last husband,

George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, Bess left him and returned to Hardwick,

the manor in which she had been born. She had already engaged in vast building

enterprises at Chatsworth, Worksop, Bolsover and Oldcotes, and now at the age

of sixty-seven, she began to reconstruct her old home on a grand scale. Three

years later, while the work was still in progress, Lord Shrewsbury died, leaving

his widow mistress of vast resources in addition to those she already had. Only a

month after her husband's death she embarked on a new Hardwick a stone's

throw from the original manor. The gaping windows and roofless walls of the

earlier unfinished house now confront the glittering pile of the new building

with a more forcefully romantic contrast than any eighteenth-century juxta-

position of porticoed villa and artificial ruin.

Hardwick stands high and the flicker of its fanciful openwork parapets, holding

up the proud builder's initials, 'E.S.', to every corner of the sky. catches the eye

109

Page 112: The English House Through Seven Centuries

k*+- T.

:rt*ft :

+*r

**€££. '

.^-~V ».|-'"'1T''«

'.w^*~'

Page 113: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Elizabethan Baroque

MDWICK HAH C,CU„d far

Hall i. Chap,! j. Kmkr,

Pantry 6. Nursery 7. Main s

East Lulworth Castle, Dorset

The house was perhaps begun byHenry Howard, 2nd ViscountBindon, in 1588, and finished in 1609by Thomas, 3rd Viscount Bindonand younger brother of Henry. Thehigh-set rectangular block, with its

angle towers is a typical example ofthe Elizabethan castle style, conscious-

ly evoking the age of chivalry and at

the same time mingling classical withmedieval motifs in an original

synthesis. Lulworth remained in the

possession of the Howards until 1641,

when it was sold to the Weld family.

The house was gutted by fire in 1929.

from afar. Yet che actual approach to the house is mysterious. Trees and hollowsconceal the full aspect of the great building so that the impact of the fabulouswest front is sudden and overwhelming. The westerly aspect has much to dowith the profoundly romantic mood of Hardwick. It is impossible adequately to

convey the stupendous effect of this facade seen at sunset at the end of a summerday or in the fading light of a wild autumn afternoon. The immense diamond-paned windows flash and vibrate with a hundred molten colours, setting up a

brittle rhythm of their own within the large angular motion of the stone frame-work with its perfect symmetry and severity. The house is planned as a rectangle

from which six great square bays advance and rise one storey above the already

lofty elevations like towers, and with two broad, shallow bays projecting fromthe centre of each main front. The towers are set one on each side of these central

features and one at each end of the rectangle. So the plan has something in

common with both Chastleton and Barlborough; and the towers, like the baysat Longleat, are set away from the corners of the house, thus intensifying the

drama and complexity of the movement. There is nothing classical about the

exterior of Hardwick except its symmetry and the colonnade running betweenthe east and west facade towers: it is as wholly English and individual as Shake-speare's plays.

The internal plan comprises all the rooms which were traditionally considered

necessary for a great house, a great chamber, a withdrawing chamber, a long

gallery, a staircase leading up to them from a vestibule off the hall, together with

a chapel, a bedchamber and a dining-room. But the designer, again RobertSmythson, although Bess played a major part in the organization of her house,

introduced a brilliant though simple innovation into the standard plan by altering

the position of the hall, so that instead of running parallel to the facade, it wascentrally placed and ran across the house from front to back. The buttery and

kitchen open from one side of it and the pantry on the other. This position,

which accorded with the decline in importance of the hall, was to become the

normal arrangement for the hall in the classically designed houses of succeeding

centuries.

In an age when the ideal of chivalry was kept alive by the colourful and

romantic spectacle of the tournament, when knights wore devices which, mereoften than not, were relevant to the state of their hearts and when they appeared

under such picturesque names as the Forsaken Knight or the Frozen Knight or

impersonated characters from the Arthurian legends, such as Sir Lancelot, Sir

Gawain or the Green Knight, it was natural that castle architecture should hold

special attractions. It has already been mentioned that the Elizabethans refur-

bished medieval castles as grand, romantic houses, and it has been shown that

towers and battlements played a prominent part in their original designs.

Occasionally they built in direct emulation of the castle form as their descendants,

equally obsessed by the Middle Ages, were to do two hundred years later.

Fantasies such as East Lulworth and Bolsover embody the same roseate, enchanted

view of medieval knighthood as Spenser's poetry. In its ruined state, set above

the sea in a countryside which more than any other part ofEngland is still haunted

by the Elizabethan sense of it as a place of magic, peopled by elves and fairies, the

Dorset Castle vividly evokes that wholly and delightfully artificial conception of

chivalry; it strikes the eye at once as a product of the same burning sensibility,

the same love of intricate allegory and archaisms which make The Faerie Queene

one of the most highly charged of all English poems. Lulworth is a battlemented,

rectangular block with big circular angle towers soaring above the main elevation

and banded by broad string courses to counteract the upward impulse of the

building. This latter is encouraged by the high, curving basement and terrace on

which it stands, approached by a rush of shallow balustraded steps. The window s

are not the large square-headed openings usually favoured by the Elizabethans,

but consist of paired, arched lights with lion masks beneath them, reminiscent of

1 1

1

Page 114: The English House Through Seven Centuries

ir~Gothic design. These and arched niches, filled with statues of knights and ladies,

together with the conspicuous string courses, relieve the simplicity of the

facades. The plain, round-arched entrance, between cartouches and shell-headed

niches flanked by Ionic columns, is surmounted by a wheel window, filled by

five tangent circles which seem strangely significant; and on either side of this

window, large figures, bare-headed and in the dress of Roman soldiers, raise their

arms in salutation of whomever climbs the weed-encumbered steps towards this

castle of high romance. Before the house was burnt out in 1929, the central space,

where sycamores have taken root among nettles and brambles and grown to

maturity, was roofed, like that at Wollaton, with a square tower contrasting with

the circular corner turrets.

Bolsover is a more theatrical interpretation of the medieval stronghold and one

ot the most memorable buildings of any period. It is as superbly placed as Cashel,

on a lofty promontory of the same ridge from which Hardwick rises, looking

across a far-flung, undulating territory in which fields and farm houses, industrial

housing, scarred hillsides and slagheaps are veiled in the smoke of collieries. Thecontrast between this scene and the withdrawn, make-believe and utterly over-

powering atmosphere of the castle gives the great building a potency stronger

even than that of its own masonry. The person chiefly responsible for the unique

character of Bolsover was Bess of Hardwick's third son, Sir Charles Cavendish,

who shared his mother's passion for architecture but who was especially addicted

to castles. He was concerned with the planning not only of Bolsover but also ot

Slimsby, Blackwell-in-the-Peak .md Ogle. The castle consists primarily ot a

massive keep, deliberately recalling those of Norman castles, a high, almost

square block with three angle turrets and a staircase tower rising above the

Bolsover Castle, Derbyshire

John Smythson, son of Robert, whomay have planned Bolsover. but whodied in 161 4, was sent to London byhis patron William Cavendish in 161 8.

While there he made drawings of

architectural details, particularly of

rustication. But the nonon of apply-

ing rustication to the panels of a

wooden door is peculiarly his own,and the vermiculated design covering

the door leading from the keep on to

the garden wall is one of the strangest

sights at Bolsover. (Smythson's

sketch for it is in the Royal Institute of

British Architects.) The hooded fire-

place of local marbles, probably also

designed by John Smythson. is as

remarkable an improvisation ontraditional forms and Renaissance

motifs In the spectacular terrace and

gallery facade (right), dating from

c. 1629, rustication of 2 highly

individual character again plays a

conspicuous part.

I 12

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Page 116: The English House Through Seven Centuries

formidable, castellated walls: but this keep is also crowned by a pretty cupola

and lantern tilled with mock-Gothic tracery, and it is further adorned with a

projecting bay and balconied windows between rusncated columns. In front of

it. adding to its impressive height, is a small raised torecourt of stony, angular

character, entered between sturdy, square, battlemented pavilions and enclosed

by battlemented walls. The interior is arranged much like a tower house, with

kitchen and offices and a large cellar tor storage in a vaulted basement, the hall

and parlour, known as the Pillar Parlour, on the ground floor, and the Great or

Star Chamber and withdrawing room, the Marble Closet (together with a bed

chamber and two inner chambers, the Heaven Room and the Elysium Room)on the first floor and a group ot small rooms leading off an octagonal lobby under

the cupola on the top storey. The mysteriously gloomy interior translates the

visitor to a world ot strange devices suggesting the Middle Ages in the manner

n inspired stage set rather than by the reproducnon of actual details: for

although the principal rooms are vaulted, the intricate decoration and the truly

remarkable chimney-pieces are works of pure fantasy prompted by memories of

the past mingled with imagery from some of the Renaissance source-books avail-

able at the time.

If this keep is an outstanding instance ot the Elizabethan brand ot Baroque,

the outer facade of the ruined range added by Sir Charles's son William rivals the

most daring and extravagant of Baroque achievements on the Continent. It is

: 7 : :eet long and in rront ot it runs a broad terrace on the edge ot a precipice

commanding the view I have just described. The windows ot this immense

ie are surmounted by pediments oddly and feverishly broken into three

instead ot the usual two parts: and the main entrance, approached by a double

stair, is heavily rusticated and crowned by a broken pediment with a detached

segmental pediment hovering above it. The mighty wall is further arnculated

between the windows by astomshing rounded projections which are without

parallel in any other building. These massive shafts, which are entirely covered

with vermicularions and flamboyantly banded, serve no functional purpose, for

they support nothing, but they do control the rhythm of the long composition

like the bar lines in a sheet ofmusic and they refer boldly and picturesquely to the

military inspiration of Bolsover. for their shape is that ot upright canon with the

bolt at the lower end. Pedestals on ogee-shaped corbels set at regular intervals

along the embattled parapet and huge, vigorous waterspouts increase the variety

ot the design. The end nearest the keep turns diagonally instead of at right-angles

and is crowned by a curved and pedimented gable. The breadth and grandeur

ot the conception are such that the eccentricity of the detail in no way disturbs the

soul-stirring harmony of the whole: this ravaged facade in its dramatic setting

must rank as the climax of the Elizabethan architecture of fantasy.

All this display ot vitality, pomp and wild invention, this affirmation of the

triumphant secular world, also conjured up its counterpart, the keen sense of the

brief transitoriness of rife which informs so much Elizabethan poetry.

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea.

But sad mortality o'ersways their power.

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea.

Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

O how shall summer's honey breath hold out

: the wreck fi. f battering da\ -.

When rocks impregnable are not so stout

itesofstet >ut time decays:

:hat this consciousness of the vanity of earthly achievement is

expressed directly in stone other than the tomb, and even the tombs of the

114

Page 117: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Triangular Lodge, Rushton,

Northamptonshire

Built for Sir Thomas Tresham as

an allegory of the Trinity, the

Triangular Lodge dates from between

1593 and 1595, the date on the

chimney-shaft. Every detail of the

building is dictated by the numberthree, and it was a fortunate coinci-

dence for Sir Thomas that the

Tresham emblem was a trefoil. Thebanded ironstone and pale limestone

underline the exotic character of the

lodge. The Elizabethan predilection

for polychrome effects was shared bythe Victorians.

Elizabethans celebrate the secular bias of the age in their magnificence and con-

tinue to assert the consequence of the deceased after death has claimed him. It is

only necessary to recall the huge and splendid four-poster monument to Fulke

Greville at Warwick or the arresting composition at Braybrooke, Northampton-shire, commemorating the Griffin family, to realize how large wordly importance

loomed in the very face of the grave. But at least one sixteenth-century builder

called attention to our mortal state and impressed upon all who set eyes on his

work the fervour of his belief. Sir Thomas Tresham, like Byrd, whose music so

affectingly echoes the disquieting undercurrent to all the extravert activities of

the age, was an adherent of the old faith. He had been brought up as a Protestant

and was knighted by the Queen in 1575, but was converted to Catholicism by

Campion. Like many converts, he was fanatical in his zeal and he combined this

ardour with a pronounced Elizabethan characteristic, the love of the device. The

house he built to replace a property of his ancestors at Lyveden, Northampton-

shire, was planned as a religious conceit to a design for which Sir Thomas must

have been responsible, although it was worked out by Robert Stickells, Clerk of

the Works at Richmond. New Build, as it was called, was never finished and

stands, an empty frame without glass or roof, at the end ofa lane amid the mourn-

ful remains of a terraced garden which once announced its maker's piety as

vehemently as the house. This latter takes the form at a Greek cross with three

115

Page 118: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Elizabethan Baroque

rooms, symbolic of the Trinity, on each of the three floors, a basement and two

upper storeys. Each limb of the cross ends in a two-storeyed bay, one of which

contains the entrance. Emblems of the Passion and the Sacred Monogram adorn

a metope frieze above the first floor, the basement is adorned with shields which

were to have borne sacred imagery, and on the surviving portions of the frieze

crowning the upper floor, fragments of inscriptions can be made out which once

ran all round the house: 'jesus mundi salus - gaude mater virgo maria'.

Before embarking on New Build, Sir Thomas Tresham had erected another

and more emphatic monument to his faith, the famous Triangular Lodge at his

Rushton home. The lodge is a miniature and perfect product of Elizabethan

Baroque, horizontally banded with ironstone and with the lines of frieze and

stringcourse and yet shooting upwards with flame-like urgency, and for all that

it moves with so darting a rhythm, animated by the same religious frenzy as the

sinuous facade of S. Maria Zobenigo in Venice. The plan, elevations and orna-

ment of this exotic little structure are all expressive ot the Trinity. It is three

storeys high and shaped like an equilateral triangle, and each of its three walls is

pierced by three windows on each floor, the windows taking the form of trefoils,

triangles and crosses. Three crocketted gables, crowned with triangular-topped

obelisks, surmount each wall above a frieze containing an inscription of thirty-

three letters on each facade:

' Aperiatur terragerminet salvatorutn ; 'Quis separabit nos

a charitate Christ?; and'

Consideravi opera tua domine et expaui'. The gables are

decorated with central panels carved with holy emblems, including the Chalice,

the seven eyes of God, the seven-branched candlestick and the Pelican, and with

dates and further inscriptions. The dates are 1580, the year of Sir Thomas's con-

version, 1626 and 1 64 1, which fell after his death, and two utterly mysterious far

future dates, 3509 and 3898, which must be prophetic. The tall triangular

chimney-shaft is pierced by smoke holes arranged in threes and is adorned with

the Sacred Monogram, the Lamb and Cross and the Chalice. The principal roomswithin are hexagonal with smaller triangular rooms in two of the corners of the

building and a newel staircase in the third. Visually Sir Thomas Tresham's lodge

is as much a picturesque folly and as little concerned with function and utility

as that at Rendlesham (p. 257), but whereas the Gothic Revival lodge was con-

ceived as no more than a romantic landscape garden ornament, that at Rushton,

however spectacular, was an intensely felt, a subtle and considered symbol

erected to the glory of God.

The Elizabethan houses so far discussed stand apart from the vernacular and

more modest dwellings of the period in the extraordinary brilliance and origi-

nality of their composition, but the unmistakable stamp of the age distinguishes

these lesser buildings too. They also were usually designed with an eye to display,

and in many a town and village all over the country it is the surviving houses of

this period which most rivet attention and linger in the memory. Morley OldHall, Norfolk, red brick, moated and with arrogant stepped gables and a huge

chmmeybreast, dominates its surroundings; Bourne Mill, Colchester (p. 160),

positively startles the passer-by at a first encounter; the village of Somersal

1 lerbert, in every other respect insignificant, can never be forgotten by those

who have glimpsed the amazingly patterned facade of its hall. The whole

bewitching impact of Long Melford is decided by the way in which the elongated

pepper-pot domes and shell-shaped battlements of the hall turrets shimmerabove the wide expanse of the village green. An awareness of tradition and the

past, a lively appreciation of design and power of invention, stimulated by a

superficial acquaintance with foreign motifs and sustained by a thorough know-ledge of native crafts, governed the character of these houses .is well as of the

great masterpieces of the age. Not unexpectedly, at a tune when imaginations

were stirred by the historical past, the builders of these houses followed estab-

lished practices, and as the following chapter will show, made the most of the

variety afforded by environment and available materials. Old-fashioned features

1 [6

Page 119: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Elizabethan Baroque

and forms were often retained, as they were in the houses of the great, in response

to the romantic attitude to the Middle Ages. Thus North Lees Hall Farm.

Hathersage, was built as a tower house, admirably suited to its position, high

above the village on the edge of savage moorland, approached by a steep, stony

track. The general shape of the house is much like that of Little Wenham Hall

(p. 34), for it consists of a tall, three-storeyed rectangular block, almost like a

tower itself, consisting of three large rooms, with the actual tower containing the

projecting staircase turret and four storeys rising only a little above it. The whole

building is crenellated with semicircular, niched battlements. It is not only

visually romantic, but romantic in its associations. It was known to Charlotte

North Lees Hall, Hathersage,

Derbyshire

The theatrical and chivalnc archi-

tecture of the Bolsover Keep and of

East Lulworth Castle consciously refer

to medieval castle design, but NorthLees, a much smaller and moremodest building, is more directly

related to the medieval tower house

and the vertical domestic design. Theromantic character of the conception

is revealed immediately bv the large

windows and decorative battlements.

The remains of plasterwork in the

large ground-floor room abovethe storage basement bear the date

1 596.

Page 120: The English House Through Seven Centuries

ibethan Baroque

Bronte, w ho often stayed .it Hathersagc with her friend Miss Nussey, and it seems

likely that it played a considerable part in the creation of Jane Eyre. It may well

have been the origin of Thornficld Hall, despite the fact that the name Thorn-

held was probably suggested by that of a neighbouring estate called Thornhill.

The view from the leads, reached by a door in the staircase turret, is remarkably

like that seen by |ane from the leads of Thornfield Hall. Furthermore, the

property belonged until after the Second World War to the Eyre family, whobuilt the house, and during the seventeenth century a woman, said to have been

insane, was kept in the first-floor room of the tower and lost her lite in a fire.

Another house connected with Charlotte Bronte, Oakwell Hall, Birstall, the

original t^t hcldhead in Shirley, follows the plan of the traditional hall house

with cross-wings, but although it is conceived as a unified composition with

continuous cues, it is not two-storeyed throughout but contains a hall open to

the roof. The arrangement differs from that of the medieval house only in so far

as the screens passage, instead ot shutting orl the kitchen and offices, divides the

hall from the parlour and solar, while a gallery runs all round the hall to give

access to the upper chambers - which would otherwise be cut orl from each

other and to obviate the need tor more than one staircase.

At Snitterton Hall, Derbyshire, the basic plan of the central hall with cross-

wings is combined with modest classical details. The builder stressed the link

with the past by crenellating the facade between the wings and preserving the

asymmetrical position ot the entrance. These medieval teaturcs arc associated

with ball-topped finials on the broad gable-ends and a picturesque doorwayflanked by tapering columns set on high bases and crowned with Ionic capitals,

the volutes of which are almost tangential, and a frieze carved with naturalistic

floral motifs. The wide, rather low windows accentuate the horizontal lines of

the house, and at the same time, with their mullions and lattices, thev evoke an

atmosphere which is neither classic nor Gothic, but movingly individual and

poeti<

.

An even freer juxtaposition of disparate motifs is resolved in a yet morepersonal and more fantastic harmony in the humble 1 )orset manor of Hammoon.1 [ere a root of velvety reed-thatch is combined with bow windows filled with

the arched lights of the early Tudor period and a porch defying classification, the

whole steeped in a delicious magic like that which translated the prosaic weaver

in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The round, Renaissance arch is set between

swelling, banded columns on high bases like those on either side ot the keep

windows at Bolsover. In the spandrels are garlands ot spikv leaves. The little

room over the porch is lit by three arched latticed lights in a square frame, to

match the centre part of the bays, and the dripstone above it ends in an Ionic

volute. The scrolled and semicircular gable was once adorned on both sides bya heraldic beast ,\t)d an obelisk, but only tine obelisk remains.

Another equally romantic and satisfying union ot the vernacular style and

foreign details can be seen at Fleming's Hall, Bedingfield, a house built for a

branch of the Bedingfield family of Oxburgh Hall (p. 4.3). This is a long rec-

tangular building, typical ot the final stage in the evolution ot the hall house

and different only in the perfection and greater elaboration of its detail from the

hundreds ot Elizabethan and seventeenth-century houses of the same shape to be

seen in main parts of the country, more especially 111 East Anglia. Fleming's Hall

does not hark back to the past in its actual style, vet it is consciously picturesque.

It is moated and richly coloured, for while the ground Hoot, the striking porchand the tall, conspicuous polygonal chimneys in their clusters of tour are of red

brick, the upper flooi shows the vertical stripes ofhalf-timber, classical pedimentssurmount the four-centred entrance arch .uu\ the mullioned windows, andobelisk-like finials flank mu\ crown the stepped gable of the porch and rise fromthe curly end-gables.

None ot these foui houses is exactly symmetrical, but there are numbers of

long Melford Hall, Suffolk

1 one Melford, .1 house ot soft red

brick, seen here on .1 snowy February

day, shows little ot the drama and

none ot the more startling innova-

tions ot the daring compositions

reproduced on some of the previous

pages. But the design boasts someunexpected features and is already

informed with the sense ot movementwhich became so striking a character-

istic ofhouses built during the last

quarter of the century. Long Melford

\\ as built at the beginning ot Queen

Elizabeth's reign for Sir William

Cordell, lawyer, Solicitor-General,

Speaker of the House of Commonsand later Master of the Rolls Thew mgs project to embrace a courtyard

and the composition combines .1

classical porch with tall chimney-

shafts and pepper-pot dome-., two ot

them crowning turrets placed

excitingly against the inner sides ot

the courtyard wings, giving .1 twist

like the final steps in a pavan to the

gentle recessions and projections ot

the design.

I is

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Elizabethan Baroque

I y-v--

<*

*-»

!>^- *-* •^

- * 4

[19

Page 122: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Hall, Somersal Herbert.

Derbyshire

Heming's Hall. Bedingfield. Suffolk

These two houses, and the two on the

opposite page, give some idea of the

picturesque individuality of the

smaller Elizabethan manor. AtSomersal Herbert (left) the arresting

pattern of the half-timber work is

informed by a conscious striving for

dramatic effect. At Fleming's Hal]

widely disparate features, stepped andcurving gables, obelisk finials. classic-

al pediments, brick and timber have

been synthesized in a deeply satisfying

harmony. The present house, on the

site of an earlier building, dates fromc. 1586. The incorporation of the

ornate chimney-stack in the gable-endis an unusually progressive feature.

Page 123: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Hammoon Manor, Dorset

Benthall Hall, Shropshire

It is the porch of Hammoon Manor(right), named after William de

Moion, who 'brought 47 knights to

the battle of hastings', which gives

this traditional thatched house its

romantic distinction. The fabric of the

wall shows that this porch replaced an

earlier gabled structure. The juxta-

position of round-arched, leaded

lights and a classical opening with

ringed baroque columns like those

of Rubens's house at Antwerp could

occur in no other country.

Benthall Hall, c. 1583, is a rustic but

forceful version of the favourite

Elizabethan theme of alternating

gables and projecting bays (see also

pages 118, 123-4).

Page 124: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Elizabethan Baroque

Elizabethan houses deriving from the hall-house plan in which the design is as

balanced as that of Montacute or Fountains. Some of these follow the E-shape

which had already appeared at Barrington Court, and the only fundamental

difference between such houses and Snitterton or Oakwell Hall is that the

entrance is centrally placed. Long Melford Hall is a noble example of this plan,

where the wings project to embrace a courtyard and the design combines a

classical porch with superimposed Doric and Ionic columns and a semicircular

shell top, a pedimented upper window and turrets unexpectedly placed against

the inner sides of the wings. Another favourite Elizabethan plan stems from the

compact rectangular house, heightened and animated by rows of gables and

groups of aspiring chimney-shafts and sometimes furnished, like the grander

houses already described, with jutting bays to impart an advancing and receding

movement to the facades. A sensational example of this arrangement electrifies

the landscape at Amesbury, Wiltshire, where the upward surge of the immensely

tall Lake House culminates in three groups of chimneys and five ball-topped

gables, while three castellated square bays carry the design forward. A subtle

touch is added to the whole composition by the placing of the chimneys. Twoof the groups are parallel and the third is placed at right-angles to them, and it is

this change in direction which sets the whole symmetrical arrangement in

motion. A sparkling accompaniment to the principal stately theme is provided

by the compelling chequerwork of flint and stone which decorates the entire

building. This house, like Barlborough and The Hall, Bradford-on-Avon, is

set up on a podium, forming a semi-basement in which the offices are placed.

A variation on the combination of gable and bay, yielding a more involved

movement, occurs at Moyns Park, Essex, where four gables alternate with three

bays. The sense of height gains impetus from the narrowness of the gables on

either side of the central bay, and from the slenderness of the extremely tall

chimney-shafts grouped in threes immediately behind three of the gables. In

the sixteenth century there were four of these groups, but one has unfortunately

been replaced by a low modern stack, thus breaking the dignified rhythm of

this noble house. This rhythm is skilfully elaborated by minor themes whichonly gradually announce themselves. The three fat bays are polygonal and so

are the attenuated chimney-shafts, and the parallel in shape draws the eye

diagonally along the slopes of the gables from one to the other: the lower storey

of the centre bay is occupied by a square porch with a square-headed door,

providing a welcome break in the regularity of the articulation ; and the enormouswindows ot the bays, so large that these projecting structures are nearly all glass,

contrast with the exceptionally short, broad openings and big areas of blank wall

on the first floor. Like Lake House, Moyns Park is rich in texture and colour.

prominent stone dressings of chalky pallor outlining the main features of the

design against fiery brick.

Gables and bays again govern the composition of Benthall Hall, Shropshire.

The design is based on that of the hall house with one cross-wing and an asym-metrically placed entrance. But from this unlikely material the builder has

created a rough rhythm and a shifting movement, which, loosely controlled andunsophisticated though they seem beside the subtle articulation of Moyns Park,

yet make an impact of astounding vigour. The gable of the wing, cut short onits inner side by a square, flat-roofed corner turret, is matched bv one of the samebreadth and again with a longer outer than inner side, where it 10111s a high

parapet at the end of the main block. The similarity in shape underlines the

forward movement of the wing. Between these two gables, three others, steep

and narrow, quicken the vertical tendency of the house. A big polygonal bay,

placed neither m between nor exactly beneath the first and second of these gables,

corresponds to another bay set half under and half to the right o\ the broadend-gable. The contrastingly square two-storeyed entrance projection, a squat

version ot the angle turret, rises close to the outer bay. 1 he effect of the arrange-

1 21

Page 125: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Elizabethan Baroque

ment is that the two bays and the entrance seem to be not only advancing butsliding to the right, while a counter-motion is set up by the gables and wing,and the whole design is stabilized by an external chimney-stack at either end ofthe house supporting coupled brick shafts with flamboyantly moulded tops,

dark red shapes soaring above stone warmed by tints of brown and pink.

The picturesque irregularity of Benthall Hall, as consciously sought as that ofCompton Wynyates (p. 84) and more ingeniously contrived, is more commonlycharacteristic of Elizabethan half-timbered houses than those of brick or stone.

Their frequently voiced concern over the diminuation of woodland occasioned

by the heavy demands of the time for timber for domestic purposes, ship building

and industry perhaps heightened the sensibility of the Elizabethans towards that

most traditional of all forms of building, for some of their most exuberantly

eccentric conceits are carried out in this medium. Parsonage Farm, Stebbing,

stands three storeys high and is for much of its length only one room thick, lit

by large glinting lattices, like a gigantic airy cage, to which the gentle over-

sailing of the first floor imparts a slight but perceptible swaying motion. Thevertical accents of the studding are abruptly checked by the horizontal lines ofthe bressumer, the eaves and the straight-headed attic, which is so broad that it

embraces the three big main windows of the third floor. But this unsteady balance

between vertical and horizontal yields on the narrow west front of the house to

an impetuous upward movement. Here the ground falls steeply away, exaggerat-

ing the drama of a white-plastered, cliff-like, sharply gabled wall bisected by a

long-necked, shouldered chimney-stack. Irregular gables along the rear of the

house reinforce the insistent verticals of the composition.

A different mood, secret and withdrawn despite the dazzling richness of its

timber patterning, informs Somersal Hall, Derbyshire. Like Benthall Hall, this

building is a modified form of the hall house with one wing. The inventiveness

of Elizabethan craftsmen could hardly be more vividly demonstrated than by the

contrast between these two houses. The entrance of Somersal Hall is centrally

placed, but the eye discounts this fact in a design which is apparently devoid of

symmetry. This facade nevertheless moves to a rhythm which gradually makes

itself felt. It is dominated by four gables of varying height. To the left, slightly

projecting, is the broad, low gable of the wing. Next comes the taller, narrower

gable of the entrance bay, and to the right of that, small twin gables, overhanging

the rest of the house, rise above the roof-line. These twin gables are together of

the same breadth as that of the wing, and they are decorated with the same

ornament of quatrefoils in small square panels. This not only strikes a balance

with the centrally placed door, but calls attention to the forward movement of

both structures. The middle gable is distinguished by wavy diagonals. Very

closely set vertical struts, banded by widely set horizontal timbers, stripe the wall

beneath the two attics, giving a recessive effect. All this woodwork is poetically

ashen in hue, while the roof and the tall chimney-stacks are of softest red. Unlike

those ofmost Elizabethan houses, the windows of Somersal Hall are exceptionally

small and oddly placed. The patterned front arrests the eye, as its designer

intended it should; but it is a screen behind which the house remains mysterious

and inward looking.

The timber work of the famous Little Moreton Hall is of the same character,

but aggressively black and complicated against white plaster, creating a totally

dissimilar effect. The entire structure is covered by the patterning of quatrefoils,

trefoil-headed arcading, stripes, cusped lozenges and diagonals, most of it shaped

in wood but some of it painted on the plaster. The windows of the bays are

furnished with wavy external pelmets of wood painted black, outlined in white

and inscribed in glittering white lettering with the name of the owner, William

Moreton, and that of the carpenter, 'Richarde Dale', and the date, 1559. The

Elizabethans seem to have been greatly taken with the Arabic numerals and

Roman lettering which they had substituted for Gothic lettering and Roman

123

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Window, Levens Hall, Westmorland

The bowls in the foreground of the

photograph were in use during the

reign of Elizabeth I, when, in 1586,

Sir James Bellingham converted a

medieval fortress into a country

house. The garden seen from the

window was not made until a centurv

later, but it is none the less profoundly

evocative of sixteenth-century

England, for topiary was an essential

part of the formal, geometric garden

layout of the period and in no other

country was it used so spectacularly.

The art went completely out of

fashion in the eighteenth century and

the Levens topiary garden is a unique,

unaltered survival, made even moreastonishing and mysterious by the

natural growth in the course of three

centuries of the mushrooms, chess-

men, arches and umbrellas of yew.

numerals, and from the middle of the sixteenth century onwards they lost no

opportunity of exhibiting the year when they had founded or enlarged a house

on the facade or perhaps on a gable-end. These windows at Little Moreton Hall

belong to the grotesque, hexagonal bays ot the hall which William Moreton

added to his grandfather's house. Each of the bays is crowned with three steep

gables and the upper storey of each oversails so that the top-heavy structures

jostle one another and crowd the tiny courtyard. Not only is every inch of the

timber-work embellished, but the leaded lights are of the most intricate geometric

floral design. These and the windows of the gatehouse, where the glazing vanes

with nearly every opening, are the most remarkable ot the many varieties of

quarry shapes to be tound in Elizabethan windows. Born of a similar enthusiasm

tor linear arabesques as the fanlight patterns of Georgian houses, they show even

greater terulitv of invention. Dv 1 ss (/» there were fifteen glass-works in England,

and a book published in r.615 entitled A Book of Sundry Draughtes, Principally

•1 Glasiers contains over one hundred designs for lead glazing.

William Moreton's ambitions were not satisfied when he had added these

preposterous bays to his house: he intensified the already bizarre character of his

long gatehouse- by increasing its height by another storey, the side-walls ofwhich

1-4

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Elizabethan Baroque

Windows. Little Moreton Hall,

Cheshire

The photograph, like that on the

opposite page, shows the elaborate

quarry shapes with which the

Elizabethans liked to fill their large

windows, and which here competefor attention with the ornate black

and white stripes and quatrefoils of

timber and painted plaster of the bays

themselves. These are the overhang-

ing upper halves of windows addedto the house by William Moreton in

1559. The inscriptions read: 'god is al

IN AL THING THIS WINDOVS WHIREMADE BY WILLIAM MORETON IN THEYEARE OF OURE LORDE MDLIX' ; and,

in the panel over the ground-floor

bay: 'rycharde dale carpeder madeTHIES WINDOVS BY THE GRAC OF GOD.'

consisted entirely of leaded lights. This storey is occupied by a single apartment,

the Long Gallery, a peculiarly English and peculiarly Elizabethan feature. Theroom at Little Moreton Hall is narrow and homely with a Gothic collar-beam

roof and decorative windbraces. The gable-ends are plastered and ornamented

with coloured reliefs of naturalistic foliage and figures of a faintly classical air,

associated with sententious mottoes. A woman in the dress of a Botticelli angel

holds aloft a spear, while two lettered panels announce 'The Speare of Destinye

whose Ruler is Knowledge'.

Long galleries are in general found only in the larger houses of the period, and

apart from their length they vary considerably. The formal apartment at Chastle-

ton, for instance, with its rich plaster barrel-vault and silvery panelling, is quite

different from the timbered room at Little Moreton Hall, and neither of these

rooms has anything in common with the sophisticated and amusing composition

at Knole where, beneath a lozenge-patterned ceiling, the wall opposite the

unusually small windows is closely hung with oval ancestral portraits all in

identical frames. But the most spendid and atmospheric of surviving long

galleries must be that at Hardwick, running along the entire east front of the

second floor. Immensely high and lit on the garden side by lofty windows that

almost fill three great bays and the wall between them, and made lighter still by

Page 128: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Long Gallery, Knole, Kent

The Long Gallery, hung with ancest-

ral portraits in uniform frames, wascontrived in that part of the great

palace built by Thomas Bourchier,

Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1456,

but it belongs essentially to the house

created by Thomas Sackville, poet

and statesman, after Knole had been

presented to him by the Queen, his

cousin, in 1 566.

its plaster ceiling, this proud room is hung with the portraits of so many tamihar

figures of the age, including Bess of Hardwick herself, stern-featured and bright-

eyed, three of her husbands and, confronting the visitor at the far distant end of

the gallery. Queen Elizabeth I standing lull length in a jewelled and embroidered

pink dress against a darker pink background, that it retains more than a whisper

of the departed. Their speech, broader, coarser and more vital than ours, lingers

on the air, their vibrant energy is reflected in the crystal light falling in huge

quivering rectangles across the rush matting and pulses in the shadows. Theroom was so designed to show off the thirteen Brussels tapestries illustrating the

story of Gideon woven for Sir Christopher Hatton in 1578 and bought from his

heir by Bess for £,326. She then proceeded to cover the Hatton arms in the

borders with cloth painted with her own device and to add antlers to the Hatton

does to turn them into Cavendish stags. These tapestries are still the principal

ornament of the apartment, although the compositions of blue and umber are

partly hidden by the portraits hung on top ot them. The effect, like that ot

Elizabethan dress and jewellery, is of extravagant richness.

Various suggestions have been put forward to explain the purpose ot the

Elizabethan long gallery. It is assumed that it was .1 necessary convenience 111 .in

age when a display of hospitality was required from all who wished to be ot

importance and when the Queen herself was 111 the habit of descending on her

subjects with an enormous retinue. Two of the most fabulous palaces of the period.

Holdenby and Theobald's, were built expressly by Hatton and Burghley as

The Staircase, Hardwick Hall,

Derbyshire (opposite]

The photograph shows the great

stone staircase mounting, with an

impressive absence of balustrading,

from the first to the second floor,

yielding .1 vista like that of the ascent

to the Chapter House at Wells.

Dr Pevsner has suggested that this

I 2<<

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Elizabethan Baroque

important feature, which is so elo-

quent of the romantic and spectacular

character of Hardwick, was not part

of the Elizabethan house, but was

perhaps designed by the 6th Duke of

Devonshire in the first half of the

nineteenth century. But, as DrGirouard points out, the staircase is

mentioned as a striking curiosity of

the house in the Tornngton Diaries

in a passage recording a visit to

Hardwick in 1789.

residences for the Queen's entertainment. The Long Gallery is supposed also to

have provided space for exercise on a rainy day and to have been used for music-

making in an age of exceptional talent in this art. The room is usually furnished

with two or more fireplaces, which suggest sedentary pursuits such as embroidery

rather than games. It could qertainly have been put to aD these purposes, but these

vast romantic rooms may have come into existence quite simply as a result of

the designer's pleasure in varying the shapes and sizes of apartments to suit his

creative impulse rather than to serve a practical end.

In addition to the long gallery, the feature which most attracts attention in

the Elizabethan house is the staircase. The staircase had already gained in impor-

tance with the establishment of the two-storey plan. It now became a conspicu-

ously ornamental structure. Even in a comparatively modest house like Parsonage

1

1

1

1

Page 130: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The principal staircase, Knole, Kent

This monumental staircase was built

by Thomas Sackville, ist Earl ofDorset, in 1604. The staircase, which,

with the evolution of the two-storeyed house, could serve the wholeof the upper floor, became an im-portant feature in domestic design

and in great mansions assumed a

monumental character intended for

display as well as use. The example at

Knole is typical of the grander

staircases of the late Elizabethan and

Jacobean periods, sturdily constructed

and of the square-well design,

mounting in flights at right-angles to

each other. The heavy, square newels,

covered with carving, arc surmountedby heraldic leopards; the broad hand-rail is moulded and the balusters rest

upon the strings.

Farm, Stebbing, the imposing staircase draws the eye, leading up in short flights

to the upper floors from the one-storeyed hall which has already begun to assume

the function of the modem entrance hall. Here the solid timber steps of the

Middle Ages, still to be seen at (rows Hall, Suffolk (although this staircase,

ascending in flights .it right-angles to each other and furnished with balusters,

cannot be much earlier than the late sixteenth century), have been replaced b\

separate trends and risers 1 onstriu ted of boards. C arved new el-posts and moulded

handrails sometimes impart a inonument.il i harac ter to the staircases ot relatn el\

small manoi houses, stub as Warren's 1 arm, (ireat Easton, w here the newels are

surmounted bv tall moulded vase-shaped tmi.ils and the balusters take the formot [oni< pilasters In larger houses, like Burton Agnes, the staircase could develop

into .1 t omposition of 0\ erw helming intricacy. I lere there are no less than eight

newels, joined in pairs bv arches, every inch of the surface of which is covered

with carving I lie staircase at Hardwick, on the other hand, is strikingly plain

Page 131: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Staircase, Crows Hall, Debenham,Suffolk

This simple staircase ascends in the

same angular manner, in short,

straight flights, as the grand exampleon the opposite page, but it represents

a less developed stage in the evolution

of the feature, for the steep steps are

constructed of solid timbers instead of

with separate treads and risers. Theturned balusters were a seventeenth-

century addition.

and yet unsurpassed for dignity, daring and romantic beauty by the mostspectacular architectural staircases of Baroque Europe. It is of stone and very

shallow, and climbs slowly through half the length of the great house, yielding

mysterious vistas and recalling the night stair at Hexham.The importance of the fireplace in the sixteenth century was pointed out in the

previous chapter. In houses of more than minor consequence, Elizabethan

chimney-piece designs show the same intriguing and imaginative fusion of

motifs and moods as the houses they furnish. The overmantel, which had madea tentative appearance in the fireplace of the Abbot's Lodging at Mulchelney

(p. 55), now played an essential part in the composition. The stone fireplace in

the Elizabethan room beneath the chapel at Woodlands Manor is a superb

interpretation of classical forms mingled with traditional details. The large-

rectangular opening is framed by egg and dart moulding and by Ionic columns

rising from bases decorated with huge acanthus leaves to carry foliated urns.

From two large brackets Corinthian colunyis, minutely carved with acanthus

leaves, spring to support an entablature with a frieze of roses and to enclose a

rich coat of arms surrounded by oak leaves. Big volutes flank the heraldic device

and a volute motif combined with ears of corn runs along the lintel.

Magnificent architectural compositions form the fireplaces in the Long Gallery

at Hardwick, and Dr Girouard has called attention to their affinities with chimney-

piece designs in the seventh book of Serlio's Architecture, though it is the individual

interpretation of the theme and the marriage of diverse motifs which gives these

fireplaces their distinction. Square, fluted, banded and coupled pilasters o\~

alabaster support overmantels set between pairs of smooth, black stone columns

[29

Page 132: The English House Through Seven Centuries

and containing taut strapwork, immensely bold and Baroque, curiously adorned

with little balls and forming the agitated background to oval medallions carved

with figures of Justice and Misericord. At Hardwick, too, is one of the most

poetic and inventive of overmantels, the unique alabaster relief of Apollo and

the Muses in the State Bedroom by Thomas Accres. Almost as fine a composi-

tion, and one better suited to its purpose, is the alabaster panel of the Marriage ot

Tobit in the Blue Room, the classically draped figures set in front ofarchitectur.il

niches below a tneze combining modillions and fancy battlements, the wholesupported by lionhead brackets and Hanked, like the simple opening, by flat

pilasters ot banded alabaster and black stone. The fireplaces at Bolsover are as

The Elizabethan Room, WoodlandsManor, Mere, Wiltshire

The room is below the former chapel

and the magnificent chimney-piece

and plaster ceiling date from c. 1570.

The conversion ot this apartment and

the chapel was the work ofChristopher Doddington, descendant

of the Thomas Doddington whobuilt the manor house at the end of

the fourteenth century.

30

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Elizabethan Baroque

The hall chimney-piece.

Burton Agnes, Yorkshire

This amazing late Elizabethan

composition, adorned in Baroque

profusion with plaster reliefs illustrat-

ing the parable of the Wise and

Foolish Virgins, shows, like the moremodest fireplace opposite, the

powerful development of the over-

mantel in Elizabethan fireplaces. Thebroken pediment (a motif introduced

into this country through foreign

architectural source books), with the

lavish cartouche bursting through it,

accentuates the upward movement of

the design. Although it harmonizes

so well with the plaster reliefs above

the hall screen, this chimney-piece

was not made for Burton Agnes, but

was moved from Barmston Hall in

the mid eighteenth century.

remarkable and as picturesque as the whole extraordinary building. They are

like big sepulchral monuments projecting into the tiny rooms of the keep,

square or octagonal in shape with huge sloping hoods recalling the hooded

fireplaces of Norman castles. Made of local stone, they are studded with shiny,

fossil-patterned roundels and lozenges of Derbyshire marble and unite Gothic

ogee forms with classical scroll work and classical enrichments in a brilliantly

successful and strange synthesis.

The overmantels of Elizabethan fireplaces were frequently decorated with

plaster compositions, and although the plasterer's art underwent exquisite

refinements later on (pp. 238-9), it reached a pinnacle of freshness and vigour in

this first great period of secular creation which it never again equalled. Not only

the overmantel, but the newly introduced plaster ceiling, which was everywhere

taking the place of the ecclesiastical-style, open roof, offered wonderful scope

for the decorator, particularly as ornamental motifs could be repeated in plaster

Page 134: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Elizabethan Baroque

without the labour which deadened the effect of a similar exercise in stone. Thetechnique of casting repeating detail and of modelling individual figures and

devices was brought to England by Italians engaged by Henry VIII to work on

his palace of Nonsuch; but by the time of Elizabeth I, Italian influence had

vanished in this as in other fields, and the names of plasterers of that period in the

list compiled by the late Margaret Jourdain are all English.

So much of this work still exists, that the output during the last half of the

sixteenth and the first quarter of the seventeenth centuries must have been

The Library, Langleys,

Little Waltham, Essex

Page 135: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Ceiling of the old dining-room,Langleys, Little Waltham, Essex

These fantastic ceilings are the mostexuberant examples in the country ofthe broad flat bands of strapworkwhich replaced the finer ribbed

designs of Elizabethan plasterwork

after the beginning of the seventeenth

century.

prodigious. The vitality and variety of it all could only be conveyed in a large

volume dedicated to the subject. Something of its range can perhaps be gauged

when it is realized that the wholly surprising frieze at Montacute, illustrating the

story of a hen-pecked husband, and the overmantel at Court House, East Quan-toxhead, where scenes from the life of Christ are placed between Red Indian

caryatids, were exactly contemporary with the flowing, interlacing, all-over

pattern of the long gallery ceiling at Chastleton, where ribbons of plaster adorned

with charming bead and lozenge shapes loop, twist and burgeon into rosettes

and fleurs-de-lis. Quite another impression is made by the crowded and unfor-

gettable figure compositions at Burton Agnes. There the screen, traditionally-

placed but pierced by round-arched openings and adorned with coupled Ionic

columns, is surmounted by tier upon tier of plaster reliefs of emblematic and

biblical personages, including the four Evangelists, each shown in his appropriate

landscape setting, the elements and the virtues. Some ofthese are based on Flemish

engravings, but they are all endowed with such palpitating life in the new

medium that the effect of the concentrated imagery is indeed memorable.

Strange as is this conceit, it is surpassed by that of the amazing plaster overmantel

of the hall fireplace, which looks like one of the wilder Baroque altarpieces. Arelief representing the wise and foolish virgins is crammed with agitated figures

of disturbingly disparate proportions, architecture, a writhing tree, an angel with

a scroll relegating the wise virgins to the abodes of bliss and the toolish ones to the

realms of woe, and grotesque corbel birds. Above this confused imagery three

133

Page 136: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Ceiling of the Cartoon Gallery.

Knole. Kent

This flowing design, with its wide,

decorated, nbbon-like bands ofplaster enclosing flower sprays,

represents a type of ceiling whichfollowed the more severely geo-

metrical, ribbed arrangements seen

in the hall of the same house (page

9~ and at Woodlands Manorg . 130). and preceded the over-

whelmingly rich strapwork style of

the Langleys ceilings . i and

133). The main pattern of this ceiling,

as at Langleys, was cast in plaster of

Pans (sulphate of lime) from reverse

moulds, while the sprays weremodelled bv hand.

panels, flanked by half-length armless caryatids, display heraldic device

and cherub heads and soar up to a broken pediment filled with a large coat of

arms.

This by no means completes the account of the exceptional plasterwock at

Burton Agnes. The ceiling of the Oak Room is embellished with a scrolled and

energetically modelled growth of honeysuckle, as peculiarly English as the pale

coloured frieze by Abraham Smith in the High Great Chamber at Hardwick

id hunting scenes and representations of Diana pre^

Page 137: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Elizabethan Baroque

over her court and Orpheus working his magic determine the haunting andelegaic mood of this lofty and poignantly beautiful room. The ceiling of the longgallery at Hardwick, moulded byJohn Master, shows an exceptionally restrained,

bold and rhythmic geometric design, a strong contrast to that at Chastleton andto most of the complicated patterns of the period. That in the Great Chamber at

Gilling Castle, Yorkshire, crushes the room with as formidable an array of chalkywhite fans and pendants as those at Arbury or Castle Ward (pp. 244-5). TheElizabethan ceiling might display medallions of classical heroes, lozenge-shapedpanels, semicircles and squares with leaves sprouting vigorously from their

intersections as at Craigievar Castle, or thin-ribboned, square panels in deeprelief with tangent circles breaking into them as in the room, of which the fire-

place has just been described, made out of the former kitchen at WoodlandsManor, Mere, in about 1570, when the chapel above it was turned into a living-

room (a significant sign of the times). Both circles and squares enclose bugles

and acorns, elements from the armorial of the Doddingtons who came to

Woodlands Manor in c. 1380 and remained in possession for more than three

centuries. This geometric pattern is offset by a freely designed plaster frieze of a

vine.

Another form of geometric patterning occurs at The Parsonage, Heytesbury,

where bands of plaster form large rectilinear and curving shapes about rosettes

and floral motifs and are themselves embellished with vines, while elaborately

wrought pendants add another dimension, life and movement, to a rather flat

composition. A dramatic development in this type of decoration with flat

ornamental bands can be seen in the library and the old dining-room at

Langleys, Little Waltham. The low waggon vault of the library exhibits bands

ot plaster so broad and so richly adorned with trailing foliage that they wouldseem oppressive were it not for the sweep and exuberance of the strapwork

patterns they make. Scrolls and cartouches fill all the intervening spaces and set

up a counter-rhythm to the emphatic measure of the strapwork curves and

angularities. The movement is continued by the swirling draperies and undulating

scrolls of the extraordinary overmantel in this ornate room, where a favourite

symbolical theme of early seventeenth-century plasterers, the five Senses, is

rendered with admirable spirit. The Senses take the form of women: Hearing

with a guitar attended by a stag, Smelling clasping flowers and accompanied by a

dog, Taste holding a basket of fruit with a monkey near by. Seeing gazing into

a mirror with an eagle at her side and Touching holding a bird. These womenare grouped about a cartouche adorned with a winged head and a skull, con-

taining two amorini who are carefully extracting Jonah from the side of the whale;

and the whole quivering composition is flanked by a staring, high-bosomed

creature and a bearded divinity, whose arms terminate in Ionic volutes.

The character of this room, its splendour, animation, drama, symbolism and

fusion of diverging themes and forms, sums up the substance of this chapter.

Plaster was a particularly congenial medium to southern Baroque artists and

there is a clear affinity between this Essex work and that of the stuccoists of the

Counter-Reformation which overrides all differences of form and nationality.

But the affinity was only a coincidence, and though a few architects continued

to work in the Elizbethan spirit - preserving the power to synthesize and the

feeling for movement and drama - increasing knowledge of the classical rules of

order and proportion and the influence of Inigo Jones eventually destroyed the

balance of the horizontal and vertical modes which appears to have been peculiarly

in tune with the English temperament. It was never fully restored, and however

enchantingly the belated classical Renaissance was at first transformed by native

craftsmanship and imagination, it remained an alien discipline.

135

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4s**v

ftr *<

t A

Page 139: The English House Through Seven Centuries

7

The Development of

Regional Styles

Craigievar Castle, Aberdeenshire

There could be few more striking

illustrations of the effect of locality

on style than Craigievar. Built in

1610-24, it is a splendid example ofthe deeply-rooted preference for the

tower house in a region where the

need for defence had persisted long

after the Middle Ages. The corbelled

angle turrets which impart such a top-

heavy air of fantasy to so manyScottish tower houses originated in

the need for flanking features fromwhich small arms could be fired. Thefashion for conical roofs was intro-

duced from France as a result of the

close connection between the twocountries. At the same time,

Craigievar shows the pepper-potdomes which feature so conspicuouslyin English Elizabethan and Jacobeanarchitecture. Scottish tower houses

were traditionally coated with 'harl'

or roughcast, both to protect the

masonry and to give unity to the

composition. At Craigievar the

roughcast is made from local granite

chips, so that the colour of this

picturesque house is clearest pink.

The importance of regional materials in the construction ofdomestic architecture

has become apparent in the preceding pages. With very few exceptions, amongthem Ashbury Manor, built partly of stone brought from Somerset and partly

of the local, primitive-looking coral ragstone, all the houses which have been so

far discussed are closely related to the soil on which they stand. Little Chesterford

Manor incorporates the clunch and flint of the Essex-Cambridgeshire border;

sandstones from two local quarries are the source of the contrast between the im-pressive greenish roof and the weathered red, pink, lilac and tawny walls of the

Prior's Lodge, Much Wenlock, while Hardwick Hall displays sandstone of a very

different aspect, the coarse, dusky-brown material of the Matlock quarries.

Northborough Hall, Northamptonshire, is already finely expressive of the close-

grained limestone which is most characteristic of the Cotswolds, but which runs

down erratically into parts of Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire and extends to

Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire. Yet some of the most distinctive features

of these houses, listed quite at random, only made their appearance with altera-

tions carried out long after they were first built. The roof of Little Chesterford

Manor, for instance, which so delightfully displays the variations in the composi-

tion of the clay of this district in its tweed-like mixture of yellow-brown, pink

and muted red tiles, cannot be earlier in date than the sixteenth-century recon-

struction of the building when the chimney-stack was inserted. It was indeed

during this century, and the one which followed it, that vernacular building was

most conspicuously marked by that vivid diversity of styles and texture and that

brilliant exploitation of materials which still, after so much destruction, after so

many later additions of a standardized, alien character, impress themselves upon

the eye and imagination as elements of the changing landscape made into houses.

It is not necessary to cover a wide territory to experience this diversity. In a

single county, Derbyshire, for example, carboniferous limestone, as pale as

bleached bone, forms the material of the stone walls which everywhere em-phasize the contours of the high bare land in the neighbourhood ot the great

prehistoric monument of Arbor Low. The same material imparts a sparkle to

the facade of Old Hall, Youlgreave, and to the dry-laid enclosure of Snitterton

Hall. But Snitterton lies on the dividing-line between limestone country and a

band of rough sandstone, and the house itself is brownish-pink in colour. In both

fabric and design there could be no greater contrast to Snitterton, as well as to

Old Hall, Youlgreave, than Somersal Hall (p. 120), in the same county and of

approximately the same date, mid sixteenth century. Somersal lies near the

Staffordshire border where stone walls have given way to hedges, and rock has

become clay. So the house is halt-timbered with a tiled root, the style resembling

that of the west midlands, soon to be described, except that the timbers here are

not black, but ashen. Such variety was vet another expression of the exuberant

spirit of the period, but it was also a response to the growing scarcity of timber,

of the steep rise in its price and ot the urge to build in a more durable form

137

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I

oap ^C -af

Page 141: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Development of Regional Styles

Features of the Lake District

The carved, fitted cupboards of highlypolished oak forming a screen with a

door in the centre and dividing the

entrance passage or vestibule from the

living-room of a farm house in

Matterdalc, Cumberland (above), are

common in the Lake District andseem to have become an established

local fashion in the early seventeenth

century. They are usually carved withthe date and the original owner'sinitials, and this example is dated

163 i. The traditional name for the

partition is the 'heck', and the passage

from which it shuts off the living-

room is known as the 'hallan'.

The so-called 'spinning gallery'

(below), above the stable end of a

long house near Coniston, Lancashire,

is a rare survival of a feature commonfrom the sixteenth century onwards in

houses of the Lake District, wherematerials for the dalesmen's garmentswere woven in the home.

The three materials which in the Middle Ages had been almost everywhereemployed - the unbaked earths, timber and thatch - were now largely relegated

to districts where there were no other resources to hand and where they thus

acquired a regional significance which had not previously been associated withthem. In the same way certain domestic plans, that of the long house in particular,

which had formerly been common in many parts of Britain, were now retained

only in areas remote from the centres of new development and so came to beregarded as peculiar to them alone. Long houses still exist in the south, particu-

larly in Devonshire, but they are considered to belong especially to the Scottish

Highlands, to Wales, Ireland and the Lake District, where the low, continuousroot-line of house and cattle-stall perfectly counterbalances the irregular,

abruptly rising and falling contours of a mountainous setting. The Lake District

is also remarkable for the long retention and distinctive development of the

screens of the medieval hall. In numerous farm houses and cottages of this region,

dating mostly from the early seventeenth century, the two principal ground-floorrooms are divided by a wooden partition, taking the form of highly polished,

carved and fitted cupboards with a central door. The same part of the country also

shows a conspicuously local characteristic owing to the type ofwork in which the

women of cottage and farm house were once widely engaged: the 'spinning

gallery', used not for spinning, but for drying wool. It runs the whole length ofthe house at second-floor level, supported on stout posts, and though such

galleries are now becoming rare, they were still so common in the last century

that De Quincey thought them the most striking peculiarity of the architectural

style of west Lancashire, Cumberland and Westmorland.

Sometimes a local style became established through the chance impact of

foreign influence. Thus Dutch fashions in brick building which affected the east

and south-east coasts and penetrated into the east midlands were responsible for

the curved gables so often encountered in East Anglia (p. 164). It is, too, in places

which were engaged in trade with the Low Countries that the oldest pantiles

are found, imparting a rhythmic wavy line to the roofs of sober brick, flint or,

on the east coast of Scotland, stone houses and a richness of colour ranging from

pink to tawny brown and deep red. But these tiles were imported when they madetheir first appearance and were probably not locally produced before the reign

of Queen Anne; and the dark lustrous glaze which in Norfolk villages such as

Morston and Blakeney reflects the sky and turns from black to blue was an even

later innovation. The development of the fantastic castle style of Scotland, with

its startling combination of traditional starkness and strength with corbelled angle

turrets, extinguisher roofs and classical details, was a result of the close association

of that country with France during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and

the large numbers of French craftsmen employed. James V was married to Marie

of Lorraine and Mary Queen of Scots was brought up entirely in France and

encouraged a great influx of French talent into Scotland.

The once ubiquitous unbaked earths - cob, mud or clay or chalk lump - were

still employed here and there almost until our own day. In William Pitt's General

View of the Agriculture of the County of Leicester (1809), mud mixed with road

scrapings is considered to make the best walls for cottages. And in a sophisticated

period like the last quarter of the eighteenth century the Earl of Dorchester chose

'cob', the west of England word for mud, as the material tor his planned village

of Milton Abbas (p. 260), and the elegant cottage orne" known as the Old Rectory

at Winterbornc Came is likewise built of cob. But the most striking manifesta-

tions of these materials belong to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and to

districts where neither timber nor stone were easily procured, mainly the west

country and East Anglia, especially Cambridgeshire, north Essex and parts of

Norfolk. The long, symmetrical, sparsely fenestrated and strangely exciting

expanse of the rear of Sawston Hall, Cambridgeshire, is. except tor the rubble

gables, of chalk lump, which unlike the rammed earth of other regions takes the

139

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The Development of Regional Styles

form of huge, brick-like blocks. Another remarkable feature of this house pro-

claiming its locality was shown in an earlier chapter (p. 65) - its screw staircase,

dusky and polished with age, each of the steps of which is carved from a solid

piece ofbog oak from the near-by Fens. Chalk lump with clunch (or chalk stone)

for the mullioned windows forms the material of a notable house at Burwell

known as Parsonage Farm, while villages such as Bio' Norton, Norfolk, and

Barnngton, Cambridgeshire, are almost wholly composed of chalk lump,

protected by a smooth coat of plaster, taking the shape at Barrington of modest

single and paired cottages on the fringe of a large green dominated by a tall,

lurching hall house with massive cross-wings and an elaborate chimney-stack.

The unusual terrace at Melbourn has already been mentioned (p. 67). The better-

known cob villages of the west country, such as Selworthy, Dunsford or Bryant's

Puddle, assumed their present aspect largely during the seventeenth century; and

Hayes Barton, Devon, the home of Sir Walter Raleigh, is an H-shaped manorhouse built of the earth on which it stands.

If they were not plastered, these earthen houses were covered with roughcast.

There are many examples of whitened roughcast in Cambridgeshire, at Harston,

Foxton, Haslingfield and Shepreth, for instance. At Cheadle, Staffordshire, the

roughcast on older houses assumes the shape of fish-scale tiles, the rounded ends

having been formed with the trowel. This purely local treatment of roughcast

has been imitated with an unpleasant mechanical finish on some modern houses

in Cheadle. In Scotland, where roughcast is known as 'harling', it became the

custom during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to cover the lower

stages oftower houses with this protective surface, the plain texture of the harling

providing a foil to the elaborate stonework of the corbelling, turrets and dormers.

From what has already been said, it is apparent that the composition of the

unbaked earth varied with the character of the soil. In Buckinghamshire white

clay known as 'witchit' was dug from a depth ofabout eighteen inches below the

surface of the ground; in heathy districts loam, gravel and sand were mixedwith the clay instead of the more usual straw; in Cornwall the clay was boundwith tiny fragments of slate; in some chalk areas, three parts ot chalk mixed with

one of clay were kneaded together with straw and moulded into huge unbaked

bricks, like those just mentioned in connection with Sawston Hall. This material

is often called 'clunch' in the Cambridgeshire area, though technically clunch is

the name for that harder, yet wonderfully tractable form of chalk, the startling

whiteness of which gives such a distinctive air to so many East Anglian buildings,

among them the Lady Chapel of Ely, the clerestory of Saffron Walden parish

church, the great nave of Burwell and the exquisite Saxon chancel arch at

Strethall.

Half-timber, like mud, might still occasionally be employed in stone districts

for humble purposes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but it flourished

noticeably in the west midlands, East Anglia and south-eastern England wherewood was still comparatively abundant and where it was treated with astonishing

and unprecedented ingenuity and variety. Owing to the very small number of

timber-framed houses of medieval date which still stand, it is not easy to make a

detailed comparison of the half-timber style of medieval and later houses. But

judging from fifteenth-century examples, it seems clear that regional charac-

teristics were far less in evidence at the time when wood was employed over the

whole of the country. Buildings as far apart as the gatehouse of Little Brock-

hampton. Herefordshire (p. 42), Pattenden Manor, Goudhurst, Kent (p. 72),

Porch House, Potterne, Wiltshire, and the De Vere House, I avenham, Suffolk

(p. 74). as well as main half-timber survivals at the backs of Cotswold houses

which were given stone fronts in the seventeenth century, show obvious affinities

111 the proportions and spacing of the timbers. The square panelling associated

with the west midlands. be< ause it formed the basis of later developments, is seen

not only in fifteenth-century houses at Weobley but also at Burwash and at

140

Page 143: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Cob at Bryant's Puddle, Dorset

The material of which these cottages

and walls are built is literally identical

with the soil on which they are stand-

ing. Wet mud was mixed with wheatstraw, trodden either by oxen, horses,

or sometimes by the workmenthemselves, turned, trodden again,

then forked in layers on to a solid

plinth, here a mixture of stone,

pebbles and brick. Each layer was left

to dry before another was put on, so

that it was a lengthy process. Whencompleted, the walls were given a

protective covering of plaster or lime-

wash. The wall in the foreground ofthe photograph is without this cover-ing and the composition of the cobwith some of the ends of the straw-

projecting can be clearly seen.

Crowhurst, Sussex; it occurs on the courtyard wall of Southfields, Dedham,Essex, at Sutton Barrington, Nottinghamshire, at Cheam, Surrey, and at

Chiddingfold, Kent. The close-set vertical studding, on the other hand, regarded

as essentially East Anglian, can be found in medieval houses in widely disparate

parts of the country. Kentish instances are numerous and a late fifteenth-century

house at Aston sub Edge, the lower part of which was encased in stone in the

seventeenth century, shows a range of tall, straight timbers, with the width of

the plaster panel roughly equalling that of the timber, which gives no hint of

locality.

It was, however, in the late Tudor period that this particular style of half-

timber, of which the town of Lavenham is such a superb example, began to

evolve the refinements which link it particularly to East Anglia. The contrast

between Lavenham and Weobley, Herefordshire, where the 'black-and-white'

walls are predominantly grid-patterned, is vivid but less intense, even so, than

that between East Anglian houses of the sixteenth century such as Office Farm,

Metfield, or the splendid house at Coggeshall known as the Woolpack Inn and

a west midland house, such as the one at Clifton on Teme, shown here, or the

celebrated Little Moreton Hall. And this contrast became yet more extreme

during the second half of the sixteenth century. Unless the walls have been sub-

jected to the stripping process prompted by the base fashion for exposed beams,

the framework of these later half-timbered houses, both in East Anglia and in

141

Page 144: The English House Through Seven Centuries

I ^m

I

4m

i i

Page 145: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Plaster and timber framing

The photographs on the left show the

same houses at Lavenham, Suffolk,

before and (below) after 'restoration'.

It was customary in East Anglia bythe late sixteenth or seventeenth

centuries to give the half-timbered

house a coat of plaster to protect the

interior from draughts and damp.Growing taste for classical forms also

prompted the substitution of smoothplain surfaces - and the horizontal

emphasis they encouraged - for the

insistent verticality of medieval East

Anglian timber-work. The timbers

revealed by the stripping process at

Lavenham may have been exposedwhen the houses were erected, but

the buildings have entirely lost the

stamp of authenticity which markedthem before the change was made.The alteration to the doors andwindows and the addition of a carved

corner-post cannot be justified. Theunmasked timbers are furthermore

pitted with holes left by the nails

which secured the laths of the casing.

Office Farm, Metfield, Suffolk (top

right), displays the typical facade ofthe late sixteenth- or seventeenth-

century East Anglian rectangular

timber-framed house, with smoothunjettied walls, encased in plaster

from the outset. The farm house near

Clifton-on-Teme (bottom right)

shows the wholly different andcharacteristic treatment of half-

timber in the west midlands, wherethe timbers were arranged in a grid

pattern instead of in close-set vertical

stripes, and were never originally

plaster-covered.

Page 146: The English House Through Seven Centuries

East Anglian pargework

Pargework, or pargetting (a wordwhich once described any form ofexternal plaster sheath, but which is

now used only of external orna-

mental plasterwork), is a peculiarly

English craft which developed in the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,

the finest examples of which are

found in East Anglia. The lively

calligraphic, floral decoration (top

left) on the wall of Hubbard's Hall, a

farmhouse at Bentley End, Suffolk,

was incised in the wet plaster with a

sharply pointed stick while the rowsof small motifs (lozenge shapes, wavylines and crosses) below the larger

panels were made both with sticks

and by pressing wooden moulds into

the plaster. The flowing, loopedornament which distinguishes a house

at Clare, Suffolk (top right) which is

a sensitive renewal of the original

seventeenth-century work, wasexecuted with a small trowel together

with a mould for the border roundels.

The rich encrustation (centre) on the

facade of Coineford House, Earls

Colne, Essex, dated 16X5, and arranged

in symmetrical panels was first

modelled then applied to the wall bymeans of wax or wooden moulds.

This method was also used to producethe sumptuous almost three-

dimensional frieze of cornucopias andflower heads running along the fascia

board of a house at Saffron Walden.Essex (bottom). The strapworkborder of the panel above it and the

dolphin it encloses were created bvpressing thin wooden templates into

the plaster. The head of the fish was

built up with the aid of a trowel andthe scumbling was added last of all.

Page 147: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Development of Regional Styles

south-eastern England, is totally concealed by plaster or some other form ofweatherproofing. These devices against the elements were not only necessary to

protect the more widely spaced and less substantial timbers resulting from the

scarcity of oak: they testified to a growing preoccupation with domestic com-fort which was also reflected in the introduction at this time of glazed windowsand, of course, in the increased number of fireplaces in all but the poorest houses.

The wattle and daub filling of the framework inevitably shrank away from the

wood as the building settled and must always have occasioned draughts anddamp, but it was only now that these disadvantages were taken seriously. Notonly were new houses of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in East

Anglia intended from the first to be plastered all over or protected in some other

way, but older houses were very often given a plaster coating, so that the general

appearance of villages such as Kersey (where a fifteenth-century hall house with

cross-wings, now turned into two dwellings, presents the same plastered front

to the street as its sixteenth- and seventeenth-century neighbours), Hartest,

Fowlmere, Ickleton or Kettlebaston diverges even more acutely from that of

Weobley than the vertical stripes of Lavenham.

The plaster sheath was composed of lime, sand, cow hair and dung, with the

occasional addition of chopped straw and stable urine, blended together with a

moderate amount of water. The mixture was both tough and thick, and it was

in accordance with the spirit of the age that this hardwcaring surface should not

always be left plain but should be covered with the decoration it so clearly in-

vited. And it is hardly surprising to find that external ornamented plasterwork,

known as pargetting or pargework, reached the height of its development only

in the seventeenth century, although a gild of pargeters had been formed in

London as early as 1501. The art was not entirely confined to East Anglia. G. P.

Banckart mentions a richly ornamented house in York, Bishop King's Palace,

Oxford, is covered with incised geometrical designs and sporadic instances occur

in isolated panels of Shropshire and Herefordshire houses. A sun head and a spray

of thistles and oak leaves, for instance, adorn one of the gables of The Ley,

Weobley. But owing to the fact that plaster was the form of weatherproofing

most favoured for half-timbered houses in East Anglia and the adjacent county

of Hertfordshire, the craft of pargetting is particularly associated with this region

and it is only there that it can be studied in all its vigour and homely variety. The

commonest designs were incised with a pointed stick, a fan of pointed sticks or

a comb, making the zigzags, scallops, herring-bone patterns or interlacing wavy,

flowing lines which so delight us on the walls ofhouses in such places as Stoke by

Nayland, East Bergholt, Hadleigh or Coggeshall; or the decoration was con-

trived with the aid of a simple square wooden mould, perhaps showing a four-

petalled flower, which was 'butter pressed' into the plaster, covering the whole

wall. A mould frequently used in northern Essex was cut with three bars which,

when pressed this way and that, produced a pattern resembling wattling. Ahouse in Littlebury is conspicuously adorned all over in this manner and there are

further examples near by at Saffron Walden and Ashdon. The Littlebury house

was recently restored by a local plasterer who cut his own mould and exactly-

repeated the traditional procedure.

But these are simple forms of pargework. Very often the plaster wall would

be divided into panels. The borders of these panels were either recessed, an effect

achieved by placing templates of thin wood on the surface of the last but one

coat of plaster, 'rough-casting' round them up to the level of the template boards,

and then removing the templates; or the panels themselves were recessed,

leaving the borders in relief. Both types can be seen at Ashwell, Hertfordshire.

The most developed and expressive pargework takes the form of moulded

ornament, either on the panels, as at Ashwell, or freely worked over the whole

wall, as at Clare, Suffolk. Designs such as the scrolls on the house at Ashwell and

the wonderfully free, bold leaf and flower pattern at Clare would be modelled by

145

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Page 149: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Decorative tiles at Capel, Surrey (top

far left), where the enormous slates

of the roof are of sandstone quarried

under the North Downs; plain tile-

hanging at Cranbrook, Kent (top

right), and at Brenchley, Kent(bottom right) ; a tile-hung gable-end

at Biddenden, Kent (bottom centre),

where the meagreness and wide

spacing of the timbers shows the late

date of the cottage (seventeenth

century) ; alternating plain and tish-

scale tiles at Brenchley, Kent (bottom

far left) ; slate-hanging at Dunster,

Somerset (top centre) ; and weather-

boarding at Wording, Sussex (above)

H7

Page 150: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Development oj Regional Styles

hand with a small trowel, the flowing line having first been described in rope on

the last but one coat of plaster. Figure-work, incised like the dolphin in a strap-

work frame on the facade of a house in Gold Street, Saffron Walden, the surface

iA which is wholly scumbled and pocked, or in high relief like the pretty,

naturalistic finches and leaf scrolls on a house in the High Street of the same town,

and the extraordinary fish-birds and crude representations ofThomas Hickathnft

and the Wisbech giant in seventeenth-century dress on a house in Church Street,

were also modelled by hand. The ambitious rosettes, leafy arabesques and

cartouches in the panels of a house in Hertford and the striking decoration of

strapwork, scrolls, fruit, rosettes, quatrefoils and shells which, arranged in leaf-

bordered panels, completely covers the upper part of Colnetord House, Earls

Colne, dated 1685, were executed by means of wooden or wax moulds. Occasion-

ally during this period, when more and more emphasis was being put upon

durable materials, plaster was made to simulate masonry. There is a fine example

of this in a late sixteenth-century house in Coggeshall, Essex. But such arts of

imitation were not widely pursued until later.

Sometimes the borders of plaster panels were painted in bright colours: apple

green, ochre or earthy red. A house at Newport, Essex, retains traces of such

colouring. But generally the whole plastered surface was given either a white,

ochre, peach pink or, less frequently, a deep terracotta wash, colours which are

thrown into exciting relief by the dramatic skies and gently undulating pastoral

landscape of East Anglia.

If the timber-framed house was not shielded from the ravages of the northern

climate by plaster, then it was protected by clapboard or tiles. Clapboard, which

is seen principally in Essex or Kent, the boards being pegged or nailed to the

studding, was known in much earlier periods, and C. F. Innocent records an

example thought to date from the Stone Age, discovered in 1833 in Drumkelin

Bog, Donegal. And when a medieval house at Linton, Cambridgeshire, was

being restored some ten years ago, it was found to be partially weatherboarded,

the irregular boards following the line of the tree's growth. But it is unlikely

that weatherboarding was commonly used before the eighteenth century whenit became possible to cut the wood, generally elm, mechanically. The em-phatically horizontal aspect it imparts to a facade was peculiarly suited to the

Georgian and Regency house, and it belongs essentially to the following section

of this book rather than to this.

Tile-hanging appeared towards the end of the seventeenth century and was

indigenous to Kent. Surrey and Sussex, and although it does occur sporadically

also in Berkshire and Hampshire, it is especially Kent and east Sussex that glowwith the lichen-stained russet red of this comfortable material. These wall tiles

were flatter and thinner than those used on roofs and they were fastened to laths

by means of pins of hazel, willow or elder and bedded solid in lime and hair

mortar. It is often only the upper floor of a half-timbered house that is tile-hung,

the ground floor, in many cases protected by the jetty, being plastered, as in the

cottage overlooking the churchyard at Brenchley, Kent, and as at Burwash,

Sussex: or the ground floor may have been covered with weatherboarding at a

later period or brick-faced as in the case of houses at Goudhurst and Tenterden.

But frequently the whole of the gable-end and occasionally the entire facade of

a Kentish or Sussex house is tile-hung. The plain tile is commonly varied by

patterning, fish-scale, flanged or semicircular tiles covering whole walls or taking

their place with rectangular tiles in intricate designs which enrich the already

robust texture of any tile-hung house.

In the west country, where the rare timber-framed house was not replaced bystone it was protected by slate, a material which Messrs Jope and Dunning have

shown was quarried in Devon and Cornwall as early as the twelfth century and

transported all over southern England for the roofing ofecclesiastic.il buildings.

I he important quarry at Delabole, the largest in England, was opened in the

Page 151: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Black-and-white work near

Pembndge, Herefordshire

This farm house at Clear Brook,near Pembndge, shows the lively

elaboration of timber-work in the

west midlands common for about a

hundred years from the last quarter ofthe sixteenth century. The startling

character of the pattern of plain andornamented square panelling is

strengthened by the tar or pitch withwhich the woodwork in this region

was traditionally covered.

reign of Elizabeth I, and it was probably soon after this that slate was first used

as a wall covering. The two upper, jettied half-timbered storeys of the fifteenth-

century house known as the Nunnery, Dunster, Somerset, were slate-hung in

the seventeenth century, the regular lines of the slates being interrupted bydiamond patterns between the window of the top floor. Slate-hanging even

occurs, very rarely, in another basically stone district, the Lake District. The front

of the timber-framed overhang of the porch of Fellfoot Farm, Wrynose Pass,

Westmorland, a predominantly seventeenth-century house, is sheathed in the

thick, green-grey slates of this region. These forms of protecting half-timbered

dwellings thoroughly disguise the basic similarity in structure of the houses just

described and their contemporaries in the west midlands with their increasingly

elaborated and exposed framing. In earlier houses of this region, such as LowerBrockhampton Manor, Brick House, Pembridge, and many of the cottages at

Weobley, the framing is simple, usually taking the form of a plain grid. But

houses built between c. 1575 and c. 1675 reveal an exuberant delight in rich

patterning for its own sake. Diagonal struts, bold zigzags, curved braces, pierced

quatrefoils (especially popular in the Ludlow area), fleurs-de-lis, trefoil-headed

arcading, concave-sided lozenges, semicircles and every variety of geometric

invention, cover walls and gables, the invariably black timber-work and dead-

white plaster starting up in the hilly, bosky landscape like giant examples of 'op'

art. Little Moreton Hall is the best known and certainly the most exotic of these

intricately decorated timber frames. But everywhere in the counties west of the

limestone belt and along the Welsh border, despite the destruction of countless

splendid half-timbered houses in the present century and the spread of subtopia,

the countryside is likely to be enlivened by some fantastic display of the

seventeenth-century carpenter's art and imagination. At Clear Brook near

Pembridge, for instance, three gables adorned with quatrefoils and cusped

braces above a stretch of small square-headed panels burst in a dazzle of black

and white from a rough, vividly green meadow, framed by ancient, knotted

[49

Page 152: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Development of Regional Styles

Thatch at Glencolumbkillc. Donegal.

Ireland

The method ot" thatching shown here

is tound all along the north and west

coasts of Ireland, but is particularly

associated with Donegal. The ridge

ofdie roof is rounded to offer the

lcjvt resistance to gales and the thatch

is held in place bv a mesh ot ropes

now of sisal, but formerly made ot

twisted bog Er) which are secured to

the walls bv means of rows of stone

peg^ below each cave and round the

gable-end.

Page 153: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Development of Regional Styles

oaks. The village of Berriew in Montgomeryshire, whose black-and-white

houses, shaded by huge oak and ash trees and watered by shallow, fast-running

streams, are set against a mountain backcloth, owes its dream-like character

almost wholly to the creative spirit of this great period of domestic building.

It is not only in the treatment of the framing that timber houses present such

different aspects in different regions. The black-and-white houses of the west

midlands stand on a stone or rubble base and are roofed with thick stone slates,

while in eastern England the steeper roofs are thatched or tiled and flint or brick

serve as a base. This contrast in roofing material, like that in the pattern of the

walls, was not nearly so marked in the Middle Ages. At that time thatch was the

commonest form of roofing and it continued to be used in all districts, except

for the grandest houses, until the late Tudor period. In remote rural regions such

as the west of Ireland and Scotland, thatch is still to this day the universal roofing

material for cottages and small houses. Mr Salzman cites an instance, recorded

in the accounts of St John's College, Cambridge, of a roof thatched in the last

decade of the fifteenth century in the place which is outstandingly famous for its

limestone roofing slates, Collyweston. A house in Winster, Derbyshire, is re-

ported as still thatched in the eighteenth century, and even in the Cotswolds the

humblest dwellings in a village such as Ebrington are thatched. With the gradual

expansion of tile-making in the seventeenth century, tiles replaced thatch in

districts where stone was not readily obtainable, while quarries opened up in

limestone and sandstone regions under Elizabeth I and James I provided the

stone slates which were generally preferred in those areas.

Thatched roofs require the steepest pitch; and it is the pitch of a tiled roof

(when this was not subsequently rebuilt) which often reveals that it was once

thatched. Old tiled roofs mildly undulating and sweeping almost to the ground

are occasionally seen in Essex, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, but are

most characteristic of Kent, where the sloping expanses, interrupted here and

there by minute dormers, were probably all thatched originally. Sometimes they

indicate the existence of a former aisled hall which assumed its present appearance

during the great period of rebuilding, c. 1570-c. 1640. The chimney ofone of the

most spectacular of these roofs, at Biddenden, shows the projecting drip-courses

under which the thick thatch ofan earlier roofwas tucked. The more widespread

use of tiles was accompanied by the emphasis of a feature already prominent on

the more important medieval house, the bargeboards, the purpose of which was

to protect the ends of the roof timbers. They were fixed to the ends of a gabled

roof a short distance from the face of the walls, and were invariably moulded and

carved. Some of the few surviving medieval bargeboards have been mentioned

in a previous chapter. Most of the bargeboards we see today are Elizabethan and

Jacobean, if they do not belong to the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. They

are generally straight-sided in contrast to the medieval cusped boards, and are

adorned with a running vine motif, as at Coote's Farm, Steeple Bumpstead,

Essex; scroll-work, strapwork, the guilloche pattern, or a row of dentils, as at

The Bangles, Elmdon; and sometimes exhibit the favourite period motif of a

pendant at the apex, as in the gatehouse of Lower Brockhampton Manor, where

the bargeboards and roof are certainly later additions.

Thatch itself was retained as the covering for many modest buildings and as

the most suitable form of roofing where walls, such as those composed of mud,

could not support a heavy weight or where no alternative and more permanent

material could be easily procured. Despite regulations antagonistic to thatch,

and despite much needless removal of thatch in favour of less attractive materials,

this form of roofing is still surprisingly common in East Angha, the southern

midlands and the south-west, and, of course, in Ireland and Scotland; and it is

not at all unusual for anyone travelling casually about the countryside to come

upon a matcher at his work. Like half-timber construction, thatching is one of

the most ancient and characteristic branches of vernacular building in the British

151

Page 154: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Isles. Its great interest indeed is that it is a survival in a developed form of the most

primitive type of roof covering, and thus, like the flint-knapping industry of

Brandon, is part of a tradition which has continued unbroken for some 3,000

years at least. The materials used in thatching are the straw of the cultivated

grasses, wheat, oats or rye; reed, the finest and most durable material, seen at its

best in Norfolk and Suffolk and the fen country; and sometimes, in moorland

regions where little corn is grown, heather. Thus the colour and texture of thatch,

ochre, rich brown, near black, smooth and velvety as a mole's back, stiff as a

hard brush, plump as a cushion, vary with local conditions. C. F. Innocent, whogives a most thorough account of the thatcher's methods, divides them into tour

types: the thatch can be sewn on to the rafters, pinned to them by means of rods

and broaches, worked into a foundation of turves, or merely held in place by

means of a rope mesh, the ends of which are weighted with large stones. This

last is the most primitive method, confined today almost entirely to Ireland and

the western Highlands. Sometimes, notably in Donegal, the ropes holding the

thatch in place are fastened to pegs fixed in the walls. The second method is that

most commonly followed in England, though the first also occurs and sometimes

the two are combined. As straw thatch has to be renewed after twenty or thirty

years, and even reed seldom lasts longer than eighty years, it is not possible to

refer to actual examples dating from earlier than the last quarter of the last

century. But there are indications that the fascinating varieties in the most

developed types ot thatching emerged during the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries. In the Middle Ages the law required that thatched roofs should be

red with .1 10.1t of limewash to retard burning in the event of tire (.-re in

Bibliography, C 1 Innocent, op at., pp. ji 1 -12), and during that period the

ridge \\ as often protected b\ clay or tun es So the traditions ofornamenting the

Thatch at Anstcy Cross, Dorset, and(right) at Trumpington, Cambridge-shire

The Dorset cottage is thatched with

'wheat reed', which is long, specially

grown and threshed wheat straw such

as the combine harvester, whichcrushes the straw, cannot yield. It is

used like true reed with the root-ends

of the stalks forming the exposed

surface. Bundles ot the straw . knownas 'bottles' or 'velms'. are trimmed,

wetted, laid slightly diagonally,

combed upwards and attached to the

underlying layer of bundles by meansot 'broaches' of hazel, which are

pointed at either end with a twist in

the middle. In the case ot straw

applied 111 the normal way, as at

I rumpmgton. the bundles are

combed downwards and are held in

position by row s ot hazel 'rods' or

'ledgers' The matchers of both these

roots, working from the eaves

upwards, would have tapped and

coaxed the straw into position with

their 'ligget' or leggatt'. a tool with a

diagonal handle and a square, ridged

face When the thatch is new. the tirst

laser ot bundles is usualK attached to

Is2

Page 155: The English House Through Seven Centuries

the ratters by means of j 12-inch steel

needle and tar rope. The ornamentalridge of the Trumpington cottage is

strengthened by rods and kept in

place by broaches, which havebecome loose and project like hairpins

in an untidy head. The way in whichthe thatch has been made to fit closely

round the dormer window to form a

pointed gable seems to be character-

istic of East Anglia.

Tiled roof, Biddenden, Kent (above)

Irregularities in the sizes and shapes ofthese tiles and undulations due to

sagging rafters, and also to the fact

that the tiles were fixed on hand-riventimber, give delightful variety to the

texture of this steep slope. The tiles

were provided with holes for the

reception of oak pegs by means ofwhich they were fastened to oaklaths. Each course overlaps the onebelow it, but adjacent tiles do not

overlap, and in order to make the-

reof watertight, the whole structure,

as Mr Alec Clifton Taylor has pointed

out, must be covered with two thick-

nesses of tile. (See also page 150.)

ridge and the surface of the thatch which exhibit the thatcher's art at its mostdiverse and most accomplished could scarcely have taken root much before the

sixteenth century; and the character of these ridge and surface patterns, generally

formed of different combinations of scallops, V-shapes and half-hexagons, bears

this out, for it is certainly related to the carved and moulded ornament of the

Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. It is worth noting that the first mention of

thatching as a craft occurs in the seventeenth century, in Henry Best's Rural

Economy in Yorkshire or Best's Fanning Book of 1641. It is significant also that twofamilies of East Anglian matchers trace back the practice of the skill by their

forebears to the early seventeenth century. Moreover, the dormer window,which has given the thatcher yet more obvious opportunities for the cultivation

of an individual style, did not exist until the small house had acquired a con-

tinuous upper floor, so the contrasts between the sharply cut semicircular dormerof the Ampthill district and the soft, wavy lines of Hampshire were unknown in

the Middle Ages. But differences in the pitch of roofs, in the treatment of hips,

between smooth rounded gable-ends and those where the thatch is drawn up in

the form of a crude, pert finial, must be due to the idiosyncrasies of inherited

styles, which, as Innocent pointed out, have never been thoroughly examined

and which are possibly less prominent now than formerly owing to the fact that

thatchers, who today are mobile as they never were in the past, now work in

many areas remote from their home ground.

The contrast between roofs of thatch and tile and the lower pitched roofs of

stone covering the timbered houses of the west midlands has already been

remarked. The growing popularity during the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods

of stone for both walls and roots, wherever it was available, still further enriched

the diverse patterns in texture and colour ot domestic architecture. The Nunnery

153

Page 156: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Northern stone

The house at Frosterley, Co. Durham(top), is built of coarse brown rubbleof Millstone Grit (so-called from its

forming excellent millstones). Themassive irregular masonry, the huge,dressed blocks composing the jambsand lintel of the door, the absence ofornament, the large, heavy stone

slates of the roof are all entirely at onewith the bleak moorland beyond the

village. The sandstone rubble andsquared stones of walls of the cottages

at Spaunton, Yorkshire (below), havebeen coated with protective plaster.

The pantiles, frequently seen in the

East and North Ridings, reflect the

popularity of this form of roofing in

districts bordering on the east andnorth-east coasts of Britain from the

time it was introduced by the Dutchduring the seventeenth century.

Page 157: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Slate and granite

The manor house of Glyn, Talsarnau,

Merioneth (top), seen in its mountain

setting with the Snowdonian mass in

the distance, is built partly of granite.

partly of the slate stone so abundant in

the district. The roof is of Welsh slate.

The typical Lakeland long houses

(below) are of slate stone. The cowbyre and hayloft in the foreground of

the photograph are distinguished

from the rest of the building in that

the rough, dry-stone walling has been

lime-washed, but not both plastered

and lime-washed. The stout chimneys,

plastered and protected by slate

ridges, are as characteristic of the

district as the broad, stalwart porches.

The slates of roof and porches are of

the kind common in the Lake

District, a greenish-grey colour,

heavier than Welsh slates and tar less

regular. The mechanical look of the

Talsarnau roofs is due to the fact that

Welsh slate lends itself to precise

trimming.

Page 158: The English House Through Seven Centuries

i 56

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The Development of Regional Styles

Oolite

The 'limestone belt' follows a

serpentine, tortuous course across

England through east Somerset (see

page 104), the Cotswolds and into

Northamptonshire (see page 38).

Of these regions the Cotswolds aboveall are outstanding for the regularity

and beautiful creamy colour of the

stones used for houses and walls

throughout the area. The material

gives a finished, architectural look to

walls of rubblestone (stones whichhave been left as they were quarried,

or only very roughly squared), for it

can be laid in courses instead of like a

jigsaw puzzle, as at Frosterley (page

154). The textures of the houses at

Finstock, Oxfordshire (top left), andBurford, Oxfordshire (top right), arc-

varied by the use ot ashlar (or cut

stone) for the quoins and the elegant

chimney-stacks with their simple

mouldings. These two houses, andthe celebrated row of cottages at

Bibury, Gloucestershire (bottom left),

show all the characteristics of the

Cotswold style: the gables, the

mulhoned windows with leaded

lights, surmounted by drip moulding,the occasional bay window of flat

projection, the straight-headed or

four-centred arched doorways, andthe magnificent slated roofs of the

same refined limestone as the walls.

The houses (once a single dwelling) at

Bidtord-on-Avon, Warwickshire(bottom right), on the fringe of the

limestone region, show courses ofroughly squared stones alternating

with courses of the lias which follows

the limestone belt throughout its

length. The small individual pieces ot

this material are especially evident in

the apexes of the gables. The roofhere is of tile, expressive of the clay

which underlies so large an area ofWarwickshire.

at Dunstcr is a perfect expression of the geology of the Quantock Hills, for it

incorporates both the slate and the hard, crumpled sandstone of the Devonianperiod, its slate-hung upper storey resting upon ground-floor walls of rough,

red sandstone. Its roof is of the same warm, charcoal coloured slate as the upperwalls, and is quite different in grain and hue from the green slates which roof

Fellfoot Farm in the Lake District or the extremely thin lavender, purple and

blue-grey products of Wales, which were so extensively and disastrously used

in all regions in the nineteenth century, but which so exquisitely harmonize with

their native mountains, as at Talsarnau, Merioneth. This sturdy seventeenth-

century manor house, like the Wrynose Pass farm house, is built of slate stone,

combined in the case of the Westmorland example with lumps of volcanic rock,

the colours of the walls, like those of the roofs, varying with each of these regions.

In the Lake District the walls, as at Fellfoot Farm and Birk Howe, are commonlylimewashed, while that part of the building devoted to livestock and barns is

often left plain and is further distinguished from the living-quarters of the long

house by the character o( the masonry, which is here laid dry. Slate stone andslate belong to the granite districts, and when this hard, intractable material wasused for domestic architecture it encouraged a distinctive style, massive and

sparsely ornamented. Craigievar Castle, Aberdeenshire (p. 136), rises from the

plushy green of its smooth-hilled setting like a huge, up-ended matchbox of the

clearest, glittering pink, for the famous granite of this county contains enormouscrystals of pink potashfelspar, which glint both in the harled lower part of the

building and in the plain granite parapet and turrets. It is, however, in Cornwall

that granite imparts the strongest flavour to houses of the sixteenth and seven-

teenth centuries. Here the stone is grey, yet not cold in colour, and determines the

rude character of the porch of Penfold Manor, still, in this outlying region,

medieval in feeling despite its date, and the silvery, yet tremendously compact

aspect of the manor of Trerice, built in about 1572. Even the immense square

window which illumines the hall, almost filling the space between the wings, does

not lighten the impact of this house, tor it is heavily mullioned and transomed and

the trefoil-shaped gable above it and the scrolly gables of the wings intensify

rather than diminish the effect ofimpregnability, for the simple mouldings which

embellish them remain as crisp as on the day they were carved.

Walls of a strength as crushing as these and, on account of their dark browncolour and the huge stone slates of their low-pitched roofs, of a far more beetle-

browed mien, were rising in the same century as Elizabethan Trerice in the

northern counties of Derbyshire, Yorkshire and Durham. The millstone grit and

coarse carboniferous sandstone which characterize large tracts of these territories,

take the form of large blocks of finely jointed masonry as at Ryber Hall, Derby-

shire, or of rubble and rough ashlar as at North Lees Hall (p. 117), whose for-

bidding tower embodies not only the material but the very spirit of the moors

behind Hathersage. Large lumps of millstone grit, used as they were picked up

from fields and the beds of streams or very summarily shaped, and gigantic

sandstone roof-slates imbue modestly proportioned houses of this period on the

treeless moors of Yorkshire and Durham with harsh, forbidding facades to which

the tradition of thickly outlining the door and window openings with ginger-

brown paint, so that they stand out like human features, adds a grotesque rather

than an animating note.

There could scarcely be a greater foil to this dark, cyclopean masonry, so

completely at one with its wild setting, than the refined architecture ot the oolitic

limestone belt, especially of the Cotswolds, which despite its elegance and grace

dominates the mild, uneventful wolds and pastures from which it rises, netting

the whole landscape in the shining mesh ot the small-stoned, dry-laid walls

which run out into the fields from every town and village. The houses ot this

celebrated district are distinguished by the fine quality of the stone of which they

are built and, still more, by a traditional style established during the sixteenth and

157

Page 160: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Development oj Regional Styles

seventeenth centuries and continued, in the case of cottages and smaller houses,

right through the eighteenth and part of the nineteenth centuries.

The cottages which J. C. Loudon added to Great Tew when he planted the

forest of evergreens which now embowers the whole irregularly-sited village,

are almost indistinguishable from those built in the seventeenth century. Therich yellow of the masonry at Great Tew is the strongest of the colours assumed

by Cotswold limestone, which is usually of a creamy, honied pallor, varying,

however, in tone according to the quarry from which it was cut; and at the time

when the Cotswold style was determined, nearly every village lay within reach

of a quarry. This style is announced above all by the predilection for gables. In

small cottages like those in the famous Arlington Row, Bibury, the gable takes

the place of the normal dormer window, the wall being carried up to form a

miniature gable into which the window is inserted. While in houses of greater

pretentions, such as a conspicuous example at Finstock, the facade may boast a

row of contiguous gables, adorned with carved finials in the shape of balls and

sometimes with a cartouche or an oval or circular datestone. The date is not always

an indication of the year when a house was built. It may refer to the rebuilding or

alteration of an existing house, a common process in Elizabethan and Jacobean

times when Arabic numerals first became fashionable and were used with pride

and enthusiasm to record building activities (see also pp. 123-4).

In addition to their conspicuous use of the gable, the Cotswold masons were

addicted to a counteracting, horizontal feature, the dripstone, dropped downa few inches on either side of an entrance or a delicately mullioned window, then

returned, as at Burtord (p. 156). In the same way the height of a Cotswold square

chimney is counterbalanced by the pronounced horizontality of the fine mould-

ings. The clear, simple lines of these structures are as far removed from the intri-

cate designs of the biick stacks of the sixteenth century as from the rough cylin-

drical or square shapes of the tall Lakeland and north Devon chimneys, where, in

a sheltered position, a tall chimney facilitates the escape of smoke. In a few

instances the decorative features of the reticent Cotswold style are varied by a

sudden burst of fantasy: chimneys are set diagonally on their square plinths and

twist like barleysugar sticks, and finials change from balls to obelisks and flaming

onion-shaped urns as in the remains of Campden House, Chipping Campden,built by Sir Baptist Hicks in 1612.

The Arlington Row group of cottages owes much of its picturesque charm to

its long, unbroken roof-line, a stone counterpart of the continuous roof of thatch

which distinguishes the terrace at Melbourn, Cambridgeshire. And the stone

roofs of the Cotswolds make a special contribution to the architectural style of

the region. After northern or west midland roofs, this limestone covering looks

unusually light and exactly matches and enhances the urbanity o{ the finely

dressed stone of the walls. In fact the weight of a Cotswold stone roof is tremen-

dous, for, as Mr Clifton Taylor remarks, every hundred square feet weighs

almost a ton. Although these slates are remarkably regular, they are not all the

same size and it is worth examining a roof at close quarters to see how they werelaid. The larger slates were placed near the eaves and they diminished 111 size

towards the ridge. It was when they were first widely used in the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries that the slates ofdifferent sizes were given whimsical nameswhich changed with the district. Randle Holme, author of The Academy of

Armour, writing in inxs, lists some of the names used in the north-west: 'Hagha-

tees', 'Shorts save one or Short so won*, 'Farwells', 'Wivetts'. 'Warnetts',

'Batchlers', 'Short Twelves', 'Long Twelves', 'Jenny Why Gettest Thou", and'Rogue Why Wmkest Thou'. In the Cotswolds the slates bore names such as

ks', 'Cuttings', 'Nobbities', 'Wibbuts' or 'Wivels', 'Becks', 'Movedays','Nines'. I levens to Sixteens', 'follows' and 'Eaves'.

The texture ot most stone roots is enriched with random pads of rust v-brownvelvet} moss and 111 most areas moss was once grown purposely on stone-slated

Varieties in texture

Banded limestone (top lett), creamywhite and warm brown, due to oxide

of iron staining, enlivens the walls ofa house at Caldicott, Rutland; roughflints with brick door and windowframes and brick quoins are seen at

Castle Acre, Norfolk (top right);

knapped flint and freestone (centre

left) make a diverting chequerboardpattern at Wylie, Wiltshire; and a

more unsophisticated and vigorous

version of this design, carried out in

brick and kidney cobbles (or oval

pebbles of approximately the samesize), comes from Manners' Score,

Lowestoft, Suffolk (bottom left).

Walls constructed entirely of kidneycobbles are among the delights ofEast Anglian coastal districts and the

example shown to the right of the

Lowestoft wall is found at Cley,

Norfolk. The stone-slated roof(centre right), enriched by moss andlichen, is characteristic of the refined

masonry of the oolitic limestone belt.

The example comes from Daneways,Sapperton, Gloucestershire. The slates

are so placed that they diminish in

size from the eaves to the ridge.

Page 161: The English House Through Seven Centuries

'w*> -

»*--- fee***

tte> v

#*#•

Page 162: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Development oj Regional Styles

roofs to keep out draughts and snow. Periodically the so-called moss man wouldcall to inspect the roof and. with the aid of a square-ended trowel known as a

mossing-iron, he would poke in new moss wherever there was a suspicion of a

gap-

To all the diverse textures and materials which make up the infinitely varied

aspect of the traditional English house must be added flint, that mysterious silica

found in nodules of strange, suggestive shape or in bands in the chalk districts of

East Anglia. Sussex. Dorset and Wiltshire. Flints, gathered from the fields and

f^J

Patchwork at Colchester

This Elizabethan fishing lodge

exhibits a patchwork ofthe building

materials which lav to hand (see

Opposite page 1 An inscription on the

freestone panel seen in this gable-end

reads 'THOMAS LUCAS MI I hi IKl ^nmDOMINI IS9I*.

16O

Page 163: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Development of Regional Styles

used in their rough state or quarried and knapped, form the material of the

majority of parish churches and monastic buildings in Norfolk and Suffolk, but

I have found no house of earlier date than the eighteenth century built entirely ofdressed flint, with the possible exception of South Flint House, Lowestoft, whichbears the date 1586, but which has obviously been altered later. Rough flints,

however, were widely used for domestic purposes before the end of the seven-

teenth century, especially in and around the district known as Breckland, whereNorfolk and Suffolk meet, and where at Brandon the flint quarrying and knap-

ping industry, now alas coming to an end, had been centred since prehistoric

times. Castle Acre, in particular, shows a number of earlier houses built entirely

of flint except for their quoins and door and window frames of narrow brick,

and here the larger flints have usually been halved to expose the black hearts and

enliven the walls with a jetty sparkle.

Flint is nowhere so dark or so lustrous as in Breckland. In the south the stones

are smaller and browner and are generally much less closely set than in East

Anglia. It is usual in the south, too, to find the flints laid in rough courses. Veryoften, as at Bingham's Melkham and Anstey Cross, Dorset, flint is banded with

brick ; and another wall pattern introduced in the seventeenth century and found

in Dorset, Wiltshire and Sussex consists of chequerwork of stone and knapped

flint, as at Martin, Dorset, and Wylye, Wiltshire.

A very different wall texture can be seen on the Norfolk coast near Cley and

Blakeney, where cottages are constructed of carefully selected oval pebbles of

approximately the same size, tightly and regularly set to make a design like that

of plain knitting. Such pebbles play a part in an odd and vigorous version of the

chequerboard theme which occurs on the walls of the Lowestoft Scores, where

cobbles and bricks alternate in irregular rows. Brick, as we know, had made its

appearance long before the sixteenth century, but it had by no means becomeuniversal, as it was later, and was at this stage of its development still to some

extent an expression of place in the varieties of its colour and texture, which

changed with the character of the soil. But these distinctions have already been

described. The Lowestoft walls exhibit a delightfully fresh approach to the

materials which lay immediately to hand, but for sheer invention in the use of

whatever stuffs could be found near the building site, the prize must go to the

house in Bourne Road, Colchester, which afterwards became a mill, but which

was probably originally planned as a fishing lodge for Sir Thomas Lucas in 1591.

The house stands beside a lake in what must once have been an enchanting

wooded valley, but which is now a depressing, litter-strewn suburb. It is as

exotic in form as in texture. Gigantic gable-ends disguise the basic simplicity of

the rectangular shape; they are composed of thoroughly Baroque concave and

convex curves festooned with obelisks, urns and balls, and this display of

Italianate ornament is combined with angle buttresses in the Gothic manner.

The compelling originality of this little structure owes as much, however, to its

fabric as to its design. The builder has used those iron-stained nodules of clay

which abound in east and north-east Essex and are known as septaria ; lumps of

dark-brown pudding-stone, which consists of coagulated flint pebbles; brick

from the massive remains ofRoman Colchester ; and fragments of masonry from

the near-by Benedictine Abbey. And each bit of this splendid patchwork is out-

lined in tiny, shining chips of flint, the galletting process, which can often

be seen in flint districts, but which has seldom been used with more effect than

here. This house, small though it is, is so wonderfully expressive of the ground

on which it stands, makes such individual use of classical motifs and so brilliantly

unites the horizontal and vertical modes that it could stand as a symbol of the

whole attitude to domestic architecture in this extraordinarily creative age.

161

Page 164: The English House Through Seven Centuries

8

Form in Transition

As the classical idiom became more fashionable and knowledge of its forms morewidespread, the synthesis between the vertical and horizontal modes, expressed

in such endless variety during the sixteenth century, yielded first to an eccentric

and often unbalanced combination of traditional and Renaissance motifs and then

to a wholly horizontal manner. There is, in general, a manifest distinction between

the uneasy juxtaposition of foreign and vernacular styles in many of the houses

built or altered in the decades immediately preceding the full establishment of the

classical ideal and that of the Elizabethan period. Sheer exuberance of individual

fantasy and force of conviction had then achieved a marvellous unity unaffected

by inaccuracies of detail or unorthodox renderings of alien practices. In a morerational age, a time in which all the ancient cathedrals of England and France

could be dismissed as 'mountains of stone, vast and gigantic buildings indeed,

but not worthy of the name of Architecture', a century which witnessed the

founding of the Royal Society, the discoveries of Newton and the introduction

by Pope and Dryden of disciplined systems of prosody, the power of invention

which could merge disparate elements in a new harmony sometimes faltered.

Foreign influences, moreover, were making themselves more directly and moredisturbingly felt and could not at once be assimilated into the traditional stream

of domestic architecture by craftsmen who relied on oral instruction and had as

yet no pattern books to guide them. (The first of the technical guides for workers

in the building trade which were to become so influential in the Georgian period

was Moxon's Mechanick Exercises, published in 1677.)

Many regional builders, of course, as the illustrations to the previous chapter

show, went on boldly disregardful or ignorant of fashionable trends, creating

compositions which fused the horizontal and the vertical with perfect assurance.

Houchin's, for instance, near Coggeshall, built at the very beginning of the

seventeenth century, still soars, top-heavy and three-tiered, with jetties and

prodigious angle ornaments to electrify a quiet, flat landscape, but its outrageous

height is made part of a satisfying design by the heavy horizontal lines ot dark

bressumcrs against white, plastered walls. The effect is repeated, less flamboyantly

and in brick, at Great Dunmow, where assertive string courses and broad, white-

painted transoms check the upward tendency o\\\ tall facade rendered yet taller

by curly, ball-topped gables and a clock turret in the centre of the steep roof.

Later on, as we shall see, certain architects, as distinct from local craftsmen, re-

created this synthesis of the vertical and horizontal in a more classical form. But

it was destined eventually to break down under the pressure of an instinctive

preferenc e tor the horizontal, and its collapse was accompanied by the appearanceot some extraordinary hybrids.

At Hall Farm, Kettleburgh, Suffolk, tor example, classical details have beenthrust upon a traditional pink, plastered Fast Anglian building without any unify-

ing inspiration. Ihe farm looks like a much altered hall house with one cross-wing.I he star-topped chimney-stack of an earlier age looms high above the irregular

roof-line, Inn what seems to have been the gable-end of the cross-block is m-

Ashdown House. Berkshire

Perhaps designed by John Webbc. i6so tor the 1st Earl of Craven,this house already exhibits some of

the features which were to determine

the Georgian style: it is conceived as a

square block ; the symmetrical facade

is articulated by rows of identical

windows and the pavilions flanking it

foreshadow the wings which were to

become an important component ot

English eighteenth-century country

house design. The tremendous height

ot Ashdown House is. however, in

kc\ with the Elizabethan rather than

the classical spirit and is typical o\

this period ot transition. Theprincipal influence behind the build-

ing, with its balustraded root parapet

and cupola surmounted by a gilded

ball, is Dutch. The house is built o\

chalk, with quoins and dressings ot

darker limestone, and the luminosity

and extreme pallor of the material add

to the startling appearance ot the tall

hloik 111 a wide landscape.

I<>2

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[63

Page 166: The English House Through Seven Centuries

"M

Page 167: The English House Through Seven Centuries

New and traditional torms

The three houses on these two pages

show how seventeenth-century local

builders combined ideas going back

to the Middle Ages with new trends.

Houchin's, Coggeshall, Essex (bottom

right), is the earliest and mosttraditional of the three. It dates fromthe beginning ot the seventeenth

century and is still constructed with

jetties, but the roof-line is not broken

by the gabled attics common m the

Jacobean period and one gable-end is

already half-hipped. The facade is

controlled by a rough idea of sym-metry and its lines are emphatically

horizontal. The L-shaped Old House,

Blandford, Dorset, c. 1660 (top right)

unites Dutch influences with fantastic

traditional chimney-stacks of finely

moulded brick. At Brick House,

Wicken Bonhunt, Essex (left), the

roof-line is concealed by a parapet in

the classical manner, which is also

reflected in the headless statue

standing upon it and the bust of the

Roman emperor in a roundel over the

door, but there are precedents for all

these features in Elizabethan houses

(see pages 107 and 1 10), and the gables

and tour-light, transomed windowsare traditional. The attempt at sym-metry is, however, notable in a house

as modest as this.

Page 168: The English House Through Seven Centuries

congruously adorned with huge bays, one above the other, the central windowsof which are flanked with tat, Tuscan pillars. A yet stranger, more unbalanced

image confronts the visitor to Blandford, where one of the few houses to escape

the great fire of 173 1 shows what uncouth forms could result from an attempt to

blend the classical and the traditional which was neither controlled by ack-

nowledged rules nor sustained by creative vision. The air of exaggeration, the

lack of proportion ot Old House, are almost nightmarish. The builder clearly

intended to impart a horizontal emphasis to the tall brick facade by the weight

of the root and the deep shadow cast by the grotesquely wide eaves, but the roof

is abnormally steep and its height is dramatically increased by fantastic chimney-

stacks. These remarkable structures dominate the elevation, an anachronistic and

striking display of the brickmaker's art in the Tudor and Elizabethan tradition.

It is only the design which reveals their later date. They are octagonal, rising

from square plinths with moulded corbelling, and surrounded by detached angle

shafts, all of brick, crowned, like classical columns, with annulets, and branching

out in corbelled and intricately moulded capitals.

The chimney of Haunt Hill House, Weldon (so called because it is reputed to

be haunted by the ghost of a man done to death there), though utterly different

in its impeccably classical dress from those at Blandford, is as visually disturbing,

for it is conceived on a different scale from the rest of the house, dwarfing the

facade and at the same time calling attention to the contrast between its ownelegant, classical proportions and the ungainly porch with its ogee arch flanked

by the mullioned windows common to traditional houses in the limestone belt.

The south gable of this small house displays an even more oddly assorted collec-

tion of classical and regional motifs: a stepped window, the arms of the Masons'

( ompany and giant, idiosyncratic volutesand shields on either side ot a mullionedopening. This composition, artless though it is. is conspicuously symmetrica] andhas something of the tire and abandon of Elizabethan fancy, although the mason.

Interior and (opposite) south gable-

end, Haunt Hill House, Weldon,Northamptonshire

The house was built by HumphreyFnsbey, whose initials, 'H.F.'. and the

date 1643 appear in the apex of the

south gable. Fnsbey came of a

family of masons related by marriageto the Thorpes of King's Chtfe (see

page 103) and to the Grumbolds,another celebrated family of masons,the most distinguished of whom,Robert Grumbold, figured promin-ently in the architectural history ofCambridge during the second half

of the seventeenth century. This small

Weldon house is interesting on twocounts : for its plan and for the

extravagant character of its decora-

tion. The plan derives trom the hall

house and resembles that of manyEast Anglian timber-framed houses ofthe period (see Office Farm. Metfield,

p. 143). except that it is perfectly

symmetrical, with two rooms on each

floor on either side of the huge,

central chimney-stack. In order that

the entrance should be strictly central,

it leads not into the principal room(the hall) but into a narrow vestibule

between the stack and the front door.

The niches (left) face the front doorand are contrived in the stack. Withinthe farther one is a low opening into

the main room, intended for a cat or

dog. The significance of the date,

1636, and the initials 'IR' and 'TE'

between the arches is not known. Theextraordinarv |uxtaposition oftraditional and individually inter-

preted classical motifs on the south

gable-end of the house is a memor-able instance of the eccentricity so

often encountered in English house

design.

[66

Page 169: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Humphrey Frisbey, was probably only reassembling motifs he had seen in his

neighbourhood at Kirby Hall and in the memorable works of Sir ThomasTresham. An altogether confused, disjointed feeling, on the other hand, informs

the facade of Old Hall, North Wheatley, Nottinghamshire, where decorative

brickwork, executed with astonishing skill, takes the shape of classically derived

motifs applied with neither understanding nor imagination. The pilasters oneither side of the door end abruptly before they reach the entablature they should

support, and the series of modillioned lunettes, curving heavily and meaning-

lessly along the cornice above the ground floor, is suddenly cut short by the

angles of the house. At Eyam Hall, Derbyshire, a traditional plan, a half-H with

projecting wings, has been forced into a semblance of the classical style with

considerable grasp of its implications but with little fantasy. The composition

needs height, but it has been rendered massively horizontal by bold string

courses, by the transformation of the gable-ends of the wings into tiny pediments

and by the concealment of most of the roof behind a parapet.

Very occasionally, a design of this period of transition does succeed in achieving

a harmony which is classical in atmosphere if not in actual form or detail. Thelong pale symmetrical front of Uffbrd Hall, Suffolk, magically conveys the sense

of order and proportion we associate with the classical style, although apart from

the treatment of its chimney-stacks and its arrestingly horizontal line it shows

no trace of Renaissance influence. Again, the modest front of Brick House,

Wicken Bonhunt, exhibits no obviously classical features other than its sym-

metry and well-marked string courses, for the segmental pediment above the

door was added later. Yet despite its gables, which are not only northern but dis-

similar, and its steep roof, it is as instinct with poetic feeling for antiquity as the

Temple of Venus at Stowe. The robed and headless statue standing on the

parapet and the stone bust of a Roman emperor in the roundel between the twofirst-floor windows invest this little house with a Virgilian and heroic quality

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Form in Transition

like that found in the epic poetry which enjoyed such special prestige in the

seventeenth century.

But the likes of Brick House and Ufford Hall were never seen in any classical

land. And it is extraordinary to think that before ever these houses were built the

Italianate terraces of the great Covent Garden Piazza were in course of construc-

tion and that a mansion in the purest Renaissance style had risen beside the Thames

to confront the robust individuality of vernacular architecture and the groping

attempts of native craftsmen to understand the rudiments of the horizontal modewith a perfected vision of classical order. Inigo Jones's Queen's House at

Greenwich, and his Banqueting House, Whitehall, both completed by 1635,

must have looked as strange to the eyes of those who first saw them as the stone

houses of the Normans appeared to the startled gaze of the Anglo-Saxon in-

habitants ofmud hovels and barn-like halls. Unlike the builders of the houses just

described, Inigo Jones designed according to rule and with a complete grasp of

the varying proportions ofcolumn and entablature, known as the Orders, which

formed the basis ot the architecture of antiquity. He had not only spent long

periods in Italy, but had absorbed the spirit of Roman art and that o{ its most

assiduous and scholarly admirer, Andrea Palladio. Without the inspiration of the

great Vicentine, the whole development of English building in the eighteenth

century would have taken a different course, yet the chance which attracted Inigo

Jones to his work rather than to that of Bramante or Michelangelo was as un-

accountable as that which led Palladio himself to base his art on the precepts of the

pedantic and aesthetically insignificant Vitruvius.Jones saw Palladio's masterpieces

at Vicenza and conversed with the aged Scamozzo, who had completed the mar-vellous Teatro Olimpico after the designer's death, a building which must have

fascinated the inventor of masques. He was never afterwards without Palladio's

book / Quattro Libri dell' Architettura and later published an annotated edition of it.

The Banqueting House, with its rusticated lower storey, alternating triangular

and segmental pediments, frieze of masks and festoons, was finished by the early

date of 1622 and is as amazingly beautiful in its present surroundings as when it

made its surprising appearance among the halt-timbered, jettied and gabled

houses ofJacobean Westminster. It uses all the motifs found in Palladio's Palazzo

Valmarana and Casa del Diavolo in Vicenza, though they are variously com-bined. The chief divergence is that the English architect replaced Palladio's giant

columns by two Orders, thus imparting a much greater feeling of horizontahty

to the composition than is ever seen in a building by the Italian. The square,

simple Queen's House is yet more static and much more severe. Both these

buildings, though so exquisitely ordered, make an alien impression, and it is not

astonishing that more than half a century was to pass before the full effect of Inigo

Jones's influence was telt in the domestic architecture of Britain. Even whenarchitects who had been close to Inigo Jones attempted to follow his example,

either tradition was too strong for them or they were attracted by the French

ideas encouraged by Charles II, or, later, they were swayed by Dutch fashions

and the taste for red brick brought over to England by William of Orange.

Lodge Park, Northleach, is a delightful example of how country masons

responded to the inspiration of Inigo Jones. The builder was Valentine Strong ot

I avnton, who was acquainted with the work of both Jones and his pupil and

nephew by marriage, John Webb. At first sight, the house that stands so

luminously against its backcloth of beeches looks like one of those villas of the

Veneto glimpsed between the noble piers that now and then break the monotonyof a high wall on minor roads m the neighbourhood ofVicenza and Verona. The

le is a plain rectangle, the window S are tall oblongs, of quite a different shape

from the broad openings of traditional houses, such as Lvam I [all, and a central

loggia instantly recalls .1 favourite Italian Renaissance feature. But the windowsare inullioned and transomed; and the curious and continuous row of pediments

along the cornice is related to the Elizabethan gabled facade, while the height ot

Lodge Park, North Leach.

Gloucestershire

The house was built c. 1655 as a

hunting lodge for John Dutton ofSherborne House by a local mason,probably Valentine Strong, who wasthe architect of Sherborne House.Traditional motifs such as mullionedand transomed windows have here

been absorbed into a classical mould,the total effect of which is stronger

than that ot disparate features such as

the tall, asymmetrically placed

chimnev-shatts.

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I6i>

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Form in Transition

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Form in Transition

The Double Cube Room, Wilton

House, Wiltshire

Imgo Jones's name was connected

with Wilton from 1632, when Philip,

4th Earl of Pembroke, invited himon the advice of King Charles I to lay

out the gardens and redesign the

south front of the house. The DoubleCube Room was part of the newwork and was in existence by 1640. In

1 'itruvius Britannicus, Campbellattributes this work wholly to Jones,

but Mr Howard Colvin, the Oxfordhistorian, has shown that Jones wastoo busy with the king's own projects

to undertake the rebuilding himself

and that he recommended Isaac de

Caus. But according to Aubrey, Causdid nothing 'without the advice and

approbation of Mr Jones', so Inigo

Jones remains the presiding genius of

this great creation. After a fire of

1647/8 the state rooms, including the

Double Cube Room, were redecora-

ted by Imgo Jones and John Webb.The proportions of this famous room,60 feet long by 30 feet wide and 30feet high, and the decoration were all

inspired by Jones. The design for the

magnificent central doorway with its

broken pediment, cartouche andreclining figures can be traced to a

drawing he made for Whitehall, and

the chimney-piece is based on an

engraving from Jean Barbet's Livre

d'Architecture , d'Autels et de Cheminees

(1633), a source to which Inigo Jonesfrequently resorted. The swirling

putti, urns, cartouches and swags offruit and foliage in the cove werepainted by Edward Pierce, and the

three central panels of the ceiling,

depicting the story of Perseus, werethe work of Emmanuel de Critz in

c. 1650. The large scale of Pierce's

bold painting, the shattered pedi-

ments, the tilting cartouches, the

gilded, light-reflecting figures andthe fat plaster ornament, for whichclosely parallel designs by Jones exist,

give this noble room a feeling of life

and movement which can best be

described as Baroque.

the balustradcd parapet and of the clustered chimneys, diagonally set andnoticeably asymmetrical, is disastrous, ifjudged by Palladian rules.

Even Webb did not adhere to Jones's formula. The most interesting houseattributed to him, Ashdown, in Berkshire, built in 1650, incorporates both Dutchand French elements, and although it is extraordinarily sophisticated when com-pared with vernacular buildings of the period, such as Eyam Hall and Brick

House, which it preceded by at least a decade, its height is so irrational, its contours

so picturesque that it seems closer in spirit to Chastleton than to the Queen'sHouse. The contrast between the incredibly tall central structure crowned with

a cupola above its steep, dormered and balustraded roof, and the pair of lowpavilions flanking it in the French style, is staggering, and must have made an evenmore shattering impact before the chimneys of the pavilions were shortened.

Originally they soared up to the roof-line of the house like great free-standing

columns, setting the whole composition in mysterious motion.

There is a distinctly Baroque feeling about this house, and of all the Roman-inspired styles, the Baroque, which like the Elizabethan achievement is a syn-

thesis of the vertical and horizontal, must surely have been the most congenial to

English architects and the mode they would have pursued if foreign influences

and the whole temper of the age had not militated against it. Even Inigo Joneshimself, with all his devotion to Palladio, was half carried away by Baroque

fervour when he came to design the famous Double Cube Room at Wilton. For

although it is planned according to Palladio's rules of symmetry and proportion,

the length being twice its height and width, the coved ceiling, the sumptuousgilded swags and broken pediments and the heroic mantelpiece, the crowningpediment of which is open to accommodate a coronated shield while its curving

arms support reclining figures, are closer in atmosphere to the exuberant

seventeenth-century rooms in the Royal Palace at Turin than to any interior byPalladio. And before Lord Burlington instigated a return to unadulterated

Palladianism, the Baroque spirit was often manifested in the design and detail of

English houses, adding to the remarkable diversity of the scene.

Sir William Wilson of Sutton Coldfield used the Baroque form of the classical

style to complete and enhance the lively movement ofprojecting wings, diapered

brickwork and tall mullions initiated by a Jacobean builder when he added the

dormers, the balustraded parapet, some of the second-floor windows, the cupola

and the great centre-piece to Sudbury Hall, Derbyshire, towards the end of the

century. The horizontal line of the parapet is offset by the steep pitch of the roof

and the high drum of the cupola, and this vertical emphasis is strengthened by the

Baroque frontispiece, which has much the same effect in relation to the rest of the

house as the porch of Kirby Hall to its long facade. The design is swept straight

up to the cupola by two tiers of lofty, high-based, coupled columns supporting

huge entablatures and curving pediments in which cartouches seem to float rather

than rest. Two of the upper-floor windows exhibit an unusual tracery design

which enriches the texture and quickens the rhythm of the facade. Each windowshows two round-headed lights crowned by two ovals. This is the horizontal

form of a pattern which occurs vertically in the frontispiece, where two arched

niches above the door are surmounted, in the head of the narrow windowbetween the first-floor columns, by two upright ovals.

At Raynham Park, Norfolk, the traditional and the classical styles are similarly

linked in a design moving both vertically and horizontally. The house is con-

structed on the H-plan with one side of the H between the cross-wings filled in.

The forceful line of the cornice is counteracted by the upstarting, shaped gables

of each wing with their swelling Ionic volutes and pediments, and by a central

double pediment, the upper of which rises from the broken curve of the lower.

Bold dentils give sparkling emphasis to these pointed and undulating forms, and

the buoyancy of the volutes is strangely animated by the Ionic capitals in which

they end. They are like columns cut loose from their bases, swaying and curling

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Form in Transition

as they float. This smooth, gentle movement contrasts with the sharp, upward

thrust of the three outsize keystones pushing through the lintels of the lower

windows of the wings. The central entrance of the west front, added, like that at

Sudbury, to a house begun much earlier, sustains the Baroque mood of the

facade. Broad, shallow steps mount in two short stages to a doorway framed by

lofty Corinthian columns and a broken pediment repeating the rhythm' of the

gable volutes, while the cartouche within it echoes the pattern of the scrolly

frame of the oval window in the pediment above it.

Another house which is more subtlely Baroque in design than either RaynhamPark or Sudbury Hall, is Thomas Archer's splendid creation at Chicheley, which

is entirely different from his later work at Hale Park built when he had suc-

cumbed to the spell of Palladianism. The composition of Chicheley fires the

imagination of the spectator in much the same way as it is kindled by the first

glimpse of Hardwick, by its overwhelmingly harmonious yet unexpected and

unorthodox character. The facades of white stone and red brick are articulated by

gigantic pilasters, the size of which is moderated, however, by the delicacy of

the fluting and of the precisely carved, luxuriant Corinthian capitals. The vertical

impulse of these prominent members is likewise checked by the ponderous frieze

immediately above them; but the frieze turns into a base for further simpler

pilasters and itself sweeps upwards on either side of the forward-jutting central

feature of the main front, a movement repeated by the line of the parapet which

crowns the attic storey. The bold advance of the entrance bay is stressed by the

rich adornment of the frieze in this section by carved cornucopias and masks; and

at each angle of the house the powerful accent of the projecting cornice is softened

by a huge sculptured leafy scroll from which emerge the three-dimensional,

ammonite-horned head and forelegs ofa ram. The doorway is surmounted by an

Chicheley House, Buckinghamshire

In this house, attributed on stylistic

grounds to Thomas Archer and beguntor Sir |ohn Chester r. ioyo, the

classical idiom, with which the

architect had become thorough!)

familiar during tour sears abroadspent mostly in Italy, is treated in an

unorthodox manner which gives it

Something of the excitement of the

great Elizabethan houses oi a hundred\c.irs earlier, although the angular

movement of those masterpieces is

here modified by curses. The detail

and proportions ot the entrance have

the exaggerated emphasis of a

Baroque conceit, but are unlike any-

thing seen in a classical land; and the

upward sweep o( the elaborately

carved cornice rising to surmount the

three tall windows above the strange

entrance, the design of the windowsthemselves and the brick aprons

below the first-floor windows are

equally individual.

Page 175: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The west front, Ravnham Hall,

Norfolk

Ravnham Hall, of brick and stone

like Thomas Archer's house opposite,

begun as early as 1622 for Sir RogerTownshend, an amateur of architec-

ture, and completed by about 1632,

has some affinities with Chicheley,

though the combination of new andtraditional forms which so remarkably

characterize it has not been achieved

with the controlled and highly

conscious grasp of all the componentswhich produced the Buckinghamshire

design. Ravnham may be the work of

a local mason, William Edge, whohad been taken abroad by Sir Roger111 1620, probably to the Netherlands.

Hutch influence is clear in the gable-

ends, and such pediment-crowned,curving gables were at that time

novelties. The awkward but aspiring

central feature, only part of which can

be glimpsed in the photograph, com-prising a segmental pediment inter-

rupted by a raised pediment, mayhave been based on an engraving.

The facade must have been lacking

in cohesion before the addition of the

exaggeratedly tall central door,

c. 1680. Before that time there weretwo doors which led into two screens

passages at either end of a seven-bay

hall. The sash windows date from the

Georgian period : the original win-dows were mullioned and transomed.

extraordinary pediment, a broken segmental arch in reverse like a diminished

mirror image of the strange roof-line. The carved stone frames of the windowsabove this doorway echo these curves, while the windows flanking the door are

curiously stepped like Elizabethan gable-ends and like the window in the gable

of Haunt Hill House. The step motif occurs in reverse in the design of the brick

aprons resembling inverted battlements below each of the first-floor windows.The idea of the looking-glass counterparts may be related to the theme of the

broad canals which enclose the great lawn in front of the house on three sides,

for it is the reflections in these geometrical expanses of clear, still water which

create the enchanted, sequestered atmosphere of Chicheley and calm the restless

rhythm of the house. This rhythm, marked though it is, is but a faint reminder of

the dynamism of the Baroque in lands where it was the accompaniment of a

religious revival of fanatical intensity and the expression of an inherent sense of

display and drama.

But there were at least two architects in Britain whose work may be compared

for heroic scale and command of contrast and chiaroscuro with developments on

the Continent. Sir William Bruce, who held the post of King's Surveyor and

Master of the Works in Scotland, was later, and with justice, described by Colen

Campbell in his Vitruvious Britatuiicus as 'the best architect of his time 111 the

Kingdom [Scotland]'. But his buildings show little respect for the Palladian

module which Campbell so much admired and sought to establish. Indeed they

are Baroque in the Elizabethan rather than in the continental tradition, and per-

haps Sir William, working in the remote north, should be regarded as a belated

Elizabethan. The symmetry and much ot the imagery of his designs are classical,

but Scottish and wholly individual elements mingle in the most unorthodox waywith the classical and the proportions change with each ot his vigorously ad-

vancing and retreating, aspiring or spreading compositions. Bruce's most ex-

173

Page 176: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Tilley Manor House. West Harptree,Somerset, and (below

the White Cottage, Claremont,Surrey

Both these houses are surprising for

the large scale and Baroque feeling ofthe ornament which in each case

embellishes a severe facade. Accord-ing to an inscription on an overmantel.

Tilley Manor dates from 1659, but it

was altered later and the low-pitchedroof, which stresses the honzontalityof the house, must belong to the later

work. The windows are traditional

mulhons. which intensifies the

startling effect of the vigorous

decoration over the ground-floor

openings, the cartouches breaking

through enormous, curving, openpediments and the detached segmentalpediments above them. The massive

doorway shows another oddity: it is

flanked by pilasters which look as

though they have been set upsidedown, for the bases are Ionic capitals.

The difference between this house andthe White Cottage resembles that

between Raynham Hall andChicheley (pages 172 and i

-;). If

the fantasy of Tilley Manor is parti v

the result of an incomplete grasp ofthe classical idiom, the huge andheavy rustications of the WhiteCottage are entirelv intentional. It

was built by Sir John Vanbrughafter 1708.

Page 177: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Form in Transition

citing house is Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfriesshire, begun in 1675 and finished

111 [688 for the Duke of Queensbury. Set on a high podium, continued round twosides of the great forecourt, Drumlanrig recalls Wollaton in its design, for it is a

hollow square with huge angle towers soaring up above the rest of the building

and rendered yet more conspicuous by fantastic pepper-pot turrets. From the

towers bays of graded heights make step patterns on each facade, converging in

the mam front onto a central upward-moving feature which takes the form of a

bold projection approached by a double, curving perron, flanked by tall pilasters

and crowned by an open, segmental pediment and a cupola on an octagonal

drum. So the most arresting aspect of this impressive pile is its eccentric roof-line,

the lively interplay against the sky of the verticals of turrets and chimneys, and

the horizontals of strongly defined balustraded parapets, all at different levels and

all seen 111 varying perspectives. The strange character of the house is emphasized

by certain details, by the exaggerated, height-promoting width, for instance. iA~

the entablature above each pedimented window, and by the way in which each

of these pediments is crammed with heraldic sculpture. This sculpture is remark-

able not only tor the high quality of the work but for the fact that it was carved

in situ from the stones of the wall face. This was also the case with the swags of

fruit adorning the entrance, with the deeply cut, animated coat of arms in the

open pediment and with the giant trefoils so prominently encircling the principal

cupola. The relation of sculpture and architecture in this building only hints at

the possibilities realized in the fusion of the two arts in extreme expressions of the

Baroque. But in his plan for Hopetoun House, his grandest enterprise, altered by

William Adam, Bruce intended to complete the movement of the balustrades by

gesticulating figures; and his grasp of the role sculpture could play in the archi-

tecture of drama and motion is further shown in the fabulous cornucopia offish

over the gate of his own house at Kinross opening onto Loch Leven.

It was, however, in the work of Sir John Vanbrugh, achieved just before the

advent of the Burlingtonians, that Baroque feeling allied to a complete grasp of

classical form most boldly took possession of English house design. Vanbrugh

composed on the gargantuan scale and with the irresistible rhythm of the author

of Bolsover. And indeed it is with Bolsover that the blackened rums of Seaton

Delaval, with its vast forecourt, colossal porticoes, stupendous ringed columns

and Titanic keystones and rustications, invite comparison. The vivid chiaroscuro,

the advancing, retreating and flickering movement of this great house and of

Castle Howard and Blenheim, are not so overwhelmingly present in Vanbrugh's

smaller houses, but they too are governed by an enthusiasm tor mass and un-

expected scale which can only be called Baroque. At King's Weston, near Bristol,

the facade is articulated by a commanding pedimented and pilastered projection.

The pilasters are Corinthian and of prodigious size, so arranged that two of them

flank the entrance while the remaining tour are coupled at either end of the pro-

jecting bay. The pediment contains an arch, the shape of which is dramatically

echoed in the arcade springing from the roof to support the six chimney-stacks

and to draw the design upwards. The small cruciform brick house, formerly the

gardener's cottage, which Vanbrugh built at Claremont, is weighted by heavy,

stark horizontal bands to counteract the bounce of high-arched recesses and the

pronounced verticality of the tremendous keystones and tall chimney-stacks;

and a theatrical note is added by the contrast between the plain little house and the

colossal wall enclosing the kitchen garden like an impregnable bastion.

The brick house at Somersby, Lincolnshire, known as Manor Farm, shows that

Vanbrugh, if it is indeed by him, was aware of the affinity between his work and

that of the Elizabethans, for in the design he consciously alludes to past practice

by juxtaposing Gothic and classic motifs. He combines angle turrets and battle-

ments with round-headed windows and a heavily rusticated porch on the north

front, while on the south side a central projecting bay with a flight of steps

ascending to a narrow door and a pediment rising above the parapet imparts .1

l-s

Page 178: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Great Chamber. Seaton Delaval.

Northumberland (left .

Manor Farm. Somersby. Lincolnshire

(below . and right DrumlanngCastle. Dumfriesshire

All three houses, so diverse in scale

and design, are dominated by a vivid

sense of drama and romance akin to

that which inspired late Elizabethan

mansions. The battlements and

turrets of Manor Farm, which was

probably designed by Vanbrugh.

surest the Middle Ages in the same

fanciful way as the towers and poin-

ted openings of East Lulworth Castle

pace 110. and as with the Dorset

house, these elements have been com-

bined with classical details. Theimpressive red sandstone house in the

Nith valley, built by Sir William

Bruce in [673 ^ > informed with

as bold a feeling for chiaroscuro and

movement as the great Baroque

houses of the Continent, such as

Bruhl and Pommersfelden. but in-

corporates traditional motifs like

pepper-pot domes and corner towers.

There is nothing traditional about the

Ciiiantic arcading. cvclopean masonrv

and animated sculpture ot the vast

ruined room at Seaton Delaval.

Vanbrugh's last great work, begun in

1

_i v vet it is informed with a grand,

theatrical castle air which at once

recalls Bolsover and is as peculiarly

English as Webster's two Italian

tragedies, for the violence and passion

of which it would provide a perfect

setting.

!III

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Page 179: The English House Through Seven Centuries
Page 180: The English House Through Seven Centuries

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Page 181: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Entrance to Clifton House, King's

Lynn, Norfolk (left), and (above)

Petworth House, Sussex

The rare ascending, spiralling

columns of the doorway ascribed to

Henry Bell, who built the King's

Lynn Custom House in 1685, so

suitably framing the further doorwith its broken pediment, and the

long, sophisticated facade of Petworthwith its strong horizontal emphasis,

show what very diverse influences

were at work towards the close of the

seventeenth century. The King's

Lynn doorway is wholly in the

Italian Baroque tradition, while the

source of the Petworth design seemsessentially French, whether it wasactually the invention of an English-

man inspired by French ideas, as Sir

Anthony Blunt has suggested, or the

work of Pierre Puget or Daniel

Marot, both of whose names havebeen associated with the house. Thefacade was built for the 6th Duke ofSomerset soon after 1686.

marked upward swing to the composition. The interior of the house reiterates

the references to the past, for the vaulted hall is entered by a mock screens passage.

Vanbrugh's flamboyant creations represent the climax of a mood which rarely

dominated an entire house, but which often showed itself in isolated details,

which was not altogether subdued even in Palladian England and whicheventually flared up again in another guise in the cult of the Picturesque. Amemorable instance of the introduction of exotic Baroque motifs into an other-

wise static, heavily horizontal design occurs at West Harptree, Somerset, where

the ground-floor windows of a stone house are surmounted by vigorously

curving pediments enclosing angel-headed cartouches. The queer detached seg-

mental pediments above these are typical of the period, always inducing a floating

sensation. The seventeenth-century addition to a house at Cubley, Derbyshire,

is enlivened by a centre-piece flanked by giant pilasters, a curving, urn-topped

pediment and by enchanting, quite unexpected scroll ornaments of dispro-

portionate size suggestive of an airy pediment. The doorway of Clifton House,

King's Lynn, by Henry Bell, assumes the thoroughly Baroque form of a curved

pediment set on spiralling columns; and at Rosewell House, Bath, as late as 1735,

the Baroque spirit breaks out in carved window frames which are equalled only

by those of Lerici in their wild exuberance.

It is always thought that Vanbrugh's invention was powerfully stimulated by

the massive architecture of the Bastille at Vincennes, where he was imprisoned for

two years on suspicion of being an enemy agent. Sir William Bruce was also

familiar with French architecture. But French influence showed itself moreclearly in works which were very different from the colourful architecture of

these two men. The rational temper of the age and its bias towards the horizontal

materialized in an extreme form in the long, excessively low west front of

Petworth, the monotony of which is unrelieved by the exquisitely refined detail

and could never have been much mitigated by the vanished saucer dome. William

179

Page 182: The English House Through Seven Centuries

311

Talman's work at Chatsworth is in the same vein; his composition there em-braces an even instead ot the customary odd number of bays so that a central

vertical accent is ruled out. At Dyrham Park, Gloucestershire, Talman's finest

design, shallow projections and a pillared entrance door with a pilastered windowabove it gently articulate the facade, though the impression is still one of flatness

and inordinate length. The strongly horizontal character of this house is, how-ever, extraordinarily effective in its setting, for it stands across the bottom of a

deep valley which opens out before the west front into a vast panorama of un-

dulating, wooded landscape, to which it provides the perfect foil.

All the disparate influences embodied in the houses so far described in this

chapter, the Palladian, the Baroque, the French, the Dutch and the traditional

styles, were gradually welded into a peculiarly English version of the classical

and horizontal mode. The process might have taken quite a different course if it

had not been for the example of Sir Christopher Wren. Very few purely domestic

buildings can be proved to have been his design, but he was none the less the

dominating architectural personality after Inigo Jones's death, and the fact that

popular opinion, however unfounded, has attached his name to houses which

unite the classical and the traditional in a smooth harmony which is immediately

recognizable as the precursor of what we know as theGeorgi in Style, is indicative

ot the strength ot his influence. For Wren's genius lay in his astounding ability to

assimilate and co-ordinate ideas from widely divergent sources, an ability most

clearly displayed, perhaps, in his brilliant designs for the towers of the City of

London churches, where even the Gothic past is recalled. However various m their

upp< these towers rise over a square plan like their medieval predecessors,

and, while making endless play upon the Orders, merge the aspiring character

ot medieval architecture with the language of classical horizontality. In Wren'sdesigns for Chelsea Hospital, Morden College, Blackheath, and the Orangcrv of

House at Stamford, Lincolnshire

This house has almost achieved the

predominant domestic design whichemerged at the end ot the seventeenth

century when various toreign in-

fluences had been assimilated andfused with native traditions. A white-

painted wooden cornice has taken the

place of the projecting cues o( a

house such as that at Blandford (page

165). the steep roof takes the form ofa truncated pyramid covering the

square block of the building, whichis two rooms deep instead ot the

traditional one It is interrupted bydormers and is surmounted by sym-metrically placed chimneys adorned

here with classical niches, but often

panelled. The first floor preserves the

sash windows, set almost flush with

the wall, which had been introduced

b) the late Stuart period. The door.

surmounted b\ a scrolled pediment,

should be central, but the facade is

here thrown out of balance by an

extra ba\ on the left.

Page 183: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The north front, Bclton House,Grantham, Lincolnshire

Belton House was built between 16X4

and 1688 for Sir John Brownlow andmay have been designed by WilliamWinde or Wynne, the author of the

house which once stood on the site ofBuckingham Palace. The mason wasWilliam Stanton. But the building has

always, until recently, been associated

with the name of Wren, and the skill

and harmony with which tradition

and novelty have been synthesized

and the clear logic of the design,

establishing so many features of the

Georgian style, are characteristic ofWren's genius. Belton harks back to

the old plan of the principal blockwith cross-wings, but it is perfectly

symmetrical and the nucleus of the

house consists of a central hall enteredfrom the south front with the

dining-room immediately behind it

facing north. All the remaining roomsare grouped round these apartmentsand are passage rooms. In each wingservice stairs give access to the kitchen

in the basement.

Kensington Palace, the lines are long and low but the facades are far from mono-tonous owing to the variegated colour of the fabric, an advancing and retreating

movement and the boldness of the ornamental detail. And the houses ascribed to

Wren show much the same characteristics of diversity allied to a definite pre-

dilection for honzontality. The first impression of Belton House, Grantham, is

that it is a flattened version ofAshdown, Berkshire. We are confronted by the same

prominent cornice, the same hipped roof and the same balustraded flat out of

which rises a cupola, but neither these elements nor the flight ofsteps impart morethan a suggestion of upward movement to this essentially horizontal composi-

tion. The oeils de boeuj are French in flavour, but the house is actually built on the

traditional H-plan, and the central pediment, despite its conspicuous modilhons

and garlanded cartouches, is constructed more like a gable than any southern

pediment. The wings do not end in gables but, like those of Sudbury Hall, are

hipped. This was an innovation of the period and a symptom of the tendency

towards greater horizontally.

At Honington Hall, another and much more charming house once attributed

to Wren, the cross-wings of the earlier tradition have become the merest shallow

projections and the alternating segmental and triangular heads of the dormers of

Belton have been replaced by straight heads which do nothing to break the roof-

line. The height of the chimneys, however, adds another dimension to the house,

and the whole facade is invigorated by the magnificent doorway and the huge

urn bursting through the broken segmental pediment. This idiosyncratic and

prominent doorway foreshadows the highly individual evolution of this feature

in Georgian house design. Another typical doorway of the last years of the

seventeenth century is that of Rampyndene, Burwash, where two richly carved

brackets support a semicircular hood carved with birds and a cherub head. Such

projecting canopies distinguish main houses of this period from later examples,

1S1

Page 184: The English House Through Seven Centuries

the semicircular hood often taking the form of a shell, as at Crown House,

Newport, Essex.

The poetical enrichment of the walls above the ground-floor windows of

Honington with classical busts represents the development of an idea originating

in northern Italy, but it links the house with others of an earlier period in England,

tor it occurs at Barlborough' and was hrst used by Wolsey in the great gateway at

Hampton Court where the busts, like their Italian prototypes, were of terracotta

and were made by Giovanni da Maiano. These stone busts, like that adorning

Brick 1 louse. Wicken Bonhunt, when seen in conjunction with homely brick and

tall chimneys, are piercingly eloquent of the strange metamorphosis of classical

antiquity in this northern land. They occur again, with magical effect, on a house

at West Green, Hampshire, where they take the place of the first-floor windows;

and they invest the otherwise rather forbidding and pedestrian front o( Ham! louse with touch of epic grandeur.

Helton. Honington and West Green House are all related in style and all con-

form in obvious ways to the type of house which became the established modeboth in town and country. This house differed from the traditional dwelling,

which was one room thick, with or without wings, in that it took the form ot a

square or near square block, as at Stedcombe House. Axinouth. It was sym-metrical with a central entrance and balanced windows, which normally, on the

two principal floors, were all of the same size, as at Lodge Park, Belton and

Rampyndene I louse. I he steep root w as hipped and shaped, in the case of the per-

fectly square house, like a truncated pyramid. The sides of the tall chimneys w ere

usually panelled and the roofwas interrupted by hipped dormers, as in the case ot

a particularly fine example ot the period m St George's Square. Stamford. Andanother characteristic feature is the deeply projecting wooden eaves-cornice w ith

modillions in the bedmould. The upper storcv ofRampyndene House, follow ing

the vernacular style ot Kent and east Sussex, is box-framed and tile-hung, but in

general houses of this type were fronted in brick ifthey were not. like the house

Door hood, Wootton Wawen,Warwickshire

The semi-circular hood supported onrichly carved brackets was a favourite

form of over-door in the late seven-

teenth century. This robust exampleby a country craftsman is filled withacanthus scrolls, flowers and fruit

modelled in plaster and brightly

coloured. The panels of the door are

as characteristic of the period as the

hood; the upper panels are taller than

the lower ones, and they all havebevelled edges, the bevels slightly

sunk below the face of the panel.

The dining-room, Belton House,Lincolnshire (opposite)

The bolection (projecting) mouldingframing the panels and the strongly-

defined segmental pediments of the

door-cases are typical of the style

popularized by Wren. The fielded

panel projects from the line of the

wall and the arrangement of the

panelling follows strict rules based onthe proportions of the classical

column. A moulded dado runs roundthe room some 2 feet 9 inches

from the ground; below it squat

panels are squared up with tall panels

above it, the panels varying in width

to accommodate openings andfeatures such as the chimney-piece.

The panelling is completed by a bold,

well-moulded cornice. The wood-work is all of oak, left its natural

colour and polished. The simply

moulded marble fireplace is no longer

of two storeys, like the ostentatious

compositions of the Elizabethan and

Jacobean periods {see pages 131-2),

but is surmounted by a panel

intended to enclose a portrait. This

panel, plain in more modest houses, is

here embellished with splendid

naturalistic carvings of birds, foliage,

fruit and flowers, the richest of several

similar decorations. Thev have alwavs

in the past been attributed to

Grinhng Gibbons, though no evi-

dence ofpayment to him has come to

light. Payment is. however, recorded

to have been made to one EdmundCarpenter for three of the carvings

(not including the masterpiece 111 the

dining-room), for the most elaborate

of which he received £25. Theportrait above the fireplace is of

Margaret Brownlow.

I

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f

&

t8 3

Page 186: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Form in Transition

at Stamford, built in a stone region with exceptionally strong traditions. Thequoins were often emphasized by the use of rusticated dressed stone, as at

Honington and Castle House, Launceston, though sometimes the quoins were of

brick made to counterfeit stone, or, more often, were stressed by the use of a

special crimson brick of fine texture, laid flush, with very fine joints, putty

taking the place of mortar. And occasionally the angles of the house were marked

by pilasters carried out in brick and painted to imitate stone, as in a delightfully

unsophisticated house at Spaldwick, Huntingdonshire, which has unfortunately

lost its original chimneys.

The house at Burwash, like several others shown here, is still lit by the typically

seventeenth-century transomed windows with lead glazing and swinging iron

casements which towards the end of the period were superseded by the wood-framed, double-hung sash windows such as are seen in the upper floor of the

house in St George's Square at Stamford. These windows are set flush with the

external face of the wall and are based on the proportions of a double square.

Only one sash, the lower, was at first movable.

The interior plan of such houses is extremely simple. They are generally two

rooms deep on either side of the staircase hall, though smaller houses might have

only one room on each side of the hall, with irregular rear accommodation in the

form of a wing or a lean-to. There is a little house of this type in Hill Street,

Saffron Walden. The rooms were carefully proportioned and panelled in a waywhich differed sharply from the small panel style of the Elizabethan Renaissance.

There was a low moulded dado with squat panels below it, made to square with

the tall panels above it. The proportions of these panels corresponded to those of

a classical column. Each panel was framed by a projecting moulding and the

panelling was completed at ceiling height by a bold cornice in wood or plaster.

The fireplace opening was conceived as part of the design of the room and was

quite unlike the ostentatious, monumental overmantel of the Jacobean period,

very often consisting of no more than a plain wood, stone or marble bolection

moulding without a shelf. Above the fireplace there was usually an oblong panel

for a painting or a mirror. In more pretentious houses, such as Belton, this panel

was marked by carved festoons of fruit and flowers. Plaster ceilings were muchplainer than in the preceding period, though that of the hall might be decorated.

The hall of Rampyndene boasts an exceptionally fine example of ornamental

stucco, an arrangement of leaves and flowers in such bold relief as to appear to be

almost detached from the ceiling. Modelled ceilings do occur in the rooms of

larger houses and then the decoration is generally a repeated pattern in high relief

of naturalistic flowers and truit or of ribbon-bound leaves, or it may consist of

a number of heavy wreaths built up of separately modelled flowers and leaves

surrounded by lesser geometric figures. The most remarkable example ot this

type of ornamentation occurs at Astley Hall, Chorley, Lancashire, where the

central feature of the drawing-room ceiling is composed of four enormousscallop shells and two pendant boys (modelled fully in the round and attached bvwires to the design) carrying festoons, all contained within a deep floral garland.

Giant roses and fern fronds fill the mathematical shapes occupying the corners ot

the ceiling. It all looks like a rich, forma] garden powdered with snow.

The staircase of the mature seventeenth-century house was of the well-type,

when space permitted, with flights at right-angles to each other. leaving a well in

the middle and providing intermediate landings. If there was no room for this

type ot stair, there were only two flights, the second returning in the opposite

direction to the first, with one intermediate landing. This so-called 'dog-leg'

stair proved ideal tor the terrace house, which was beginning to emerge, and has

continued in use in smaller houses until the present day. The staircase at

\shburnham 1 louse. Westminster, is a noble example of the well-type and ofthetranslation of the Italian marble staircase into English wood. The fluted Ionic

pilasters and columns, the arched niches and semicircular pediments over the

1-BOOMED PIAS

of chiniDeV-Macki

IS 4

Page 187: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Staircases at Ashburnham House,

Westminster, and (below) Castle

House, Deddington, Oxfordshire

The staircase at Ashburnham House

(c. 1660) is in principle of the sameform of construction as that at Knole

(page 128): it mounts in straight

flights at right-angles to each other,

leaving a well in the middle. Theearlier staircase at Castle House,

Deddington, is of the 'dog-leg' type

in which the second flight returns in

the opposite direction of the first

without a well-hole. Here the newel-

posts, though less prominent than

those of the Elizabethan staircase, still

rise high above the handrail, while at

Ashburnham House they are heavier,

squarer, without the finial, and no

higher than the handrail. The balus-

ters in both cases rest upon the

strings. At Deddington they are

vertically symmetrical and forceful.

The baluster form of balustrade at

Ashburnham House is an alternative

to the Caroline fashion for balustrad-

ing consisting of pierced panels of

naturalistic carving such as can be

seen at Sudbury Hall, Derbyshire, and

Thorpe Hall, Northamptonshire. Theprobable designer of the dramatically

lit and domed staircase at Ashburn-

ham House was William Samwell, a

Norfolk country squire as well as an

architect.

Page 188: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Coxwell Street, Cirencester,

Gloucestershire

The houses in this characteristic

seventeenth-centurv town street are

not designed as repeating units in

terraces, but classical influence, shownin the flat facades with rows ofwindows of uniform size, give the

little thoroughfare an air of harmonyto which the gables of the house in

the foreground, dating from the early

years of the century, impart a

wayward charm. The windows of the

house on the right are the typical

openings of the mid seventeenth

century, two-light windows,transomed to make a cross shape,

filled with square, leaded lights and

fitted with iron swing casements.

doors, echo Palladio, and one of Veronese's painted figures would not look out of

place leaning over the balustrade of the enchanting dqrne. But the material, the

modest dimensions, the foliated keystones and the plaster garlands of naturalistic

flowers are as unmistakably English as the sober movement and the actual design

of the staircase, which is a development of the form found in late Elizabethan

houses. It is of the close-string type, common at the time, with square newels

and a broad handrail in sections, connecting the newels but not passing over them ;

and the turned balusters rest upon the string and not on the treads. A comparison

between this staircase and an example from the earlier seventeenth century, that

at Deddington Castle, Oxfordshire, shows that the chief distinction is in the

height and termination of the newel-posts. The newel-posts at Deddington are

carried up well above the handrail and are, crowned with balls, a simpler version

of the heraldic finials favoured in grander houses. The balusters are clumsier and

more closely set than at Ashburnham House.

The gradual adoption of the classical manner was accompanied by a revolution

in urban building. English seventeenth-century towns were still predominantly

medieval, although gables were beginning to give way to long elevations topped

b\ eaves or cornices, as on one side of Coxwell Street, Cirencester, which is so

redolent of the atmosphere of the period. But the character of the Georgian townhouse had already been determined in London under Charles I in the building of

the Covent Garden Piazza designed by (nigo Jones for the 4th Earl ot Bedford

under the control of the King's Commission for Buildings - the object of which

was to control development in the capital and to insist on certain standards ot

struction. The north and east sides of the Piazza wore taken up bv private

houses, which were arcaded like those in northern Italian cities and presented an

unbroken facade to the square, while behind them were gardens with coach

ISO

Page 189: The English House Through Seven Centuries

King's Bench Walk, Temple, London

This fine red-brick range dates from1678 with Georgian additions. It is

much more formal than the Ciren-

cester street and depends for its grand,

cliff-like effect on the severity of the

facades, the long horizontal lines ofthe string courses and the repetition

of the window units, which in houses

of this early date are of the same size

on all the principal floors. King's

Bench Walk is still not conceived as a

complete terrace composition; each

house, although designed on exactly

the same principles as its neighbour,

is individual. The only enrichment ofthe austere facades is the doors. Thetwo nearest the eye in the photographare original, and comprise Renaissance

arches flanked by Corinthian pilasters,

all of brick.

houses and stables at the end. The germ of the terraced house had appeared before

this, but here for the first time it was subordinated to a controlling design. Each

house contained a parlour and a study on the ground floor, a dining-room and a

drawing-room on the first floor and bedrooms above. The rooms were prob-

ably panelled and the oak staircase was of the dog-leg type just described. Terrace

houses in the Italianate style also appeared during the reign of Charles I in Great

Queen Street and the adjacent Lincoln's Inn Fields, again the work of a specula-

tive landlord, William Newton, encouraged by the King. These houses, ofwhich

traces survive, were of red brick with the heavy wooden eaves-cornices of the

period, steep, dormered roots and facades adorned with pilasters rising from the

first-floor level to the cornice. The windows were casements.

The Civil War put an end to the Italianizing of London, but the opportunities

offered to speculative builders after the Great Fire were such as to encourage the

terrace-house idea to such an extent that it struck an observer like Roger North

as a new invention. And the man greeted as the 'inventor' of this new method of

building was the most prominent of the many amateur speculators of the period,

Dr Nicholas Barbon, whose singular history has been related by N. G. Brett

Young. He was born Barebone, though the Dictionary ofNational Biography calls

him Barbon. He lived from about 1640 until 1698 and took a medical degree in

Utrecht, though he never practised medicine. He was one of the most audacious

speculative builders of his day, and is said, in a letter written just before his death

and quoted by Nathaniel Lloyd, to have laid out £200,000 in building, most of

which he borrowed. It was Barbon who was inspired by the disaster of the Great

Fire to launch the idea of an insurance company in 1682. As a builder he was

chiefly active 111 the two areas to the south of the Strand and in Red Lion Fields,

west of Gray's Inn Lane, and he was also connected with the development of

187

Page 190: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Form in Transition

St James's Square. But it was in the Strand that he made his fortune, where the

aristocratic owners of the great riverside palaces were unable to hold out against

the chance of selling property they were too impoverished by war and exile to

maintain. Barbon's purchase and development of the Essex House estate is typical

of his character and his methods. He had bought the great Tudor mansion with

its elaborate parterres from the executors of the last owner, when Charles II

decided to present it to a faithful earl who had done brave work in Ireland and

asked to repurchase. Barbon refused, and before the King and Council could

press their demand he had pulled the house down and torn up the garden. In less

than a year the site was covered with brick houses, taverns, ale houses and cook-

shops, the houses as standardized and as mass produced as it was possible for them

to be at that age. A few of the Essex Street houses, their facades renovated in the

eighteenth century and their original casements replaced by sashes, still stand.

The fact that their fronts had to be rebuilt is a criticism of the original workman-ship, and Barbon's houses were no doubt as shoddy as they could be at a time

when the principles of Tudor craftsmanship were still observed. Yet they are so

infinitely superior in proportion and character to their modern counterparts that

it is easy to overlook the meanness of the planning and the repetitious style of the

detail. Each house contained a basement, a pair of rooms on each of its floors and

a staircase hall running from front to back.

This eruption of 'housing' instead of individual dwellings in London was

paralleled by a tenement development in Edinburgh which made this northern

capital unique in Europe. After the death of James IV at Flodden in 15 13, the

city's bounds had been defined by a new wall beyond which the people of later

generations did not care to risk building. As they increased in numbers, the

problem ofspace became acute, and so they built upwards until, in the seventeenth

century, the characteristic block of flats might rise to a height of as much as ten

storeys. These lofty structures were mostly the work of speculative builders and

were distinguished by vernacular features such as staircase turrets and crow-

stepped gables which added to their astonishing appearance. They were knownas 'lands', perhaps because they took the place of the land that was lacking for

building. These soaring Edinburgh tenements did not only present a visual

contrast to the London terraces: there was another even more striking difference

between them. In London each house was inhabited by a single family, living

vertically, but in Edinburgh each tenement contained as many families as there

were floors, living horizontally and using the communal staircase. Furthermore,

the 'lands' housed families of varied means and background under the same roof:

artisans, merchants, writers and even nobles. The best flats were on the lower

floors.

The proliferation of speculative building in the latter half of the seventeenth

centur\ is svmptomatic of far-reaching changes 111 the whole attitude to house

design at this period, and of the division of the art into two streams, the one still

drawing its strength from tradition, however moulded by classical inspiration,

the other based on formal canons bearing no relation to local peculiarities ; the

one guided by craftsmen, very often unknown and of no special culture, the

other guided by the architected who, although possessing a wide knowledge of

the classical and continental stvlcs. was not trained at the bench and had some-times, like Inigo Jones, Sir John Vanbrugh and even Sir Christopher Wren,distinguished himself in other spheres before turning to building. When Sir

Balthazar Gerbier. the painter and architect, wrote his Counsel and advice to all

builders for the choice oj their surveyors, clerks of their works, bricklayers, masons,

carpenters and other workmen concerned therein 111 1663, he took it for granted that

.1 man having his house built for him would pay an architect to design it. Thedivorce between the architect and craftsman, which was incipient in the sixteenth

century, w as now accomplished, though the end-results ofthis separation did not

make themselves fully felt until well into the nineteenth century.

Advocate's Close, Old Town,Edinburgh

The striking form taken by these

tenements was the result of lack ofspace in the Old Town and of the

strong influence in Edinburgh of

tower-house design, the source of the

round staircase turrets. An interesting

aspect of the lands', as these early

blocks of flats were called, was that

they housed the nobility and the

artisan under the same roof and

encouraged a spirit ot conviviality

among the diverse tenants; parties

were commonly given to those whoshared the same stair Boswell enter-

tamed Pr [ohnson in a flat in a similar

tenement near by James's Court

(now destroyed), where DavidHume lived.

Page 191: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Wf

m

v. .•*-.

-

.

t/S

Page 192: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Triumph of

the Orders

No style of domestic architecture has been more popular than the Georgian

;

none seems more familiar and none has been more frequently aped in our ownconfused and eclectic century. And yet this style is one of the most extraordinary

phenomena in the whole history of art. For it represents nothing more nor less

than the imposition of the temple architecture of an extinct Mediterranean

civilization upon the house design of a northern people. Not only the members of

the small governing class but every squire, tradesman and farmer who could

afford to modernize or rebuild his house, even the parson, deputy of Christ, lived

behind a facade which was conceived in the terms of a Classical Order, entered

his home through a doorway deriving from the portico of a pagan shrine and

sat at a hearth which resembled a miniature triumphal arch or an altar to the

Lares. In sharp contrast to its Italian manifestation, this last, belated expression of

the Renaissance of Roman architecture on English soil was primarily, grandly

domestic and at the same time, as nowhere else, comfortably middle class and

homely.

It has already been observed that this adoption of the classical formula repeated

the pattern of a much earlier phase in the history of the English house; and just as

the houses erected by the Romans in Britain were modified by local conditions, so

the scholarly understanding of pagan practice which obtained in Georgian Eng-

land was transmuted by tradition, especially in the case of the smaller houses. Thetwo widely separated periods show other affinities. They can be likened to twin

eminences o{ sanity and culture, rising up on either side of the mysterious,

Gothic, monkish and, to the Georgians, ignorant and barbaric centuries which

divided them. The new natural philosophy had explained Nature's laws and had

engendered a feeling of escape from the terror of inhabiting an unintelligible

universe. The laws of Nature were the laws of reason and unity, and proportion

reigned supreme. This sense of emancipation was accompanied by the relief of

living in conditions of security. The upheavals of the Civil War belonged to the

past, and by a combination of political and economic causes Britain was advanc-

ing to the front rank of European states. The Whig revolution and the victories

over the French had re-established Britain's greatness and confirmed her

authority. Most ofthose who were articulate during the first halfof the eighteenth

century felt they were living in an age of enlightenment. There was a remarkable

degree of conscious discernment among the members of the important class of

society at the top, who, prompted chiefly by Shaftesbury, displayed a new and

keen interest in the principles of critical discrimination. Above all there was a

general agreement as to what constituted correct taste. A system of control wasinaugurated which endured until the rise of an industrial and more democratic

society, but which produced its happiest results m the early and middle years ot

the eighteenth i entur) . At that time those with aesthetic sensibility and the meansto express it must have enjoyed the nearest approach to a Golden Age ever knownto such men. We know that the era was marked by horrors which the tender

Walden Place, Saffron Walden, Essex

The red brick and white paint of this

symmetrical facade, and the classical,

architectural composition of the

pedimented doorway, all introduced

across smooth lawns by a RomanDone, ball-surmounted column, sumup the Georgian style as it is embodiedin the mansions of country squires

all over England. This house,

distinguished by its truncated pyramidof a roof, half hidden behind a parapet

ornamented with recessed panels

and rising above a bold, plainly

moulded cornice; bv the complete

entablature of its doorcase without a

glazed light; and by its sash windowswith prominent glazing bars, graduated

m height, is indeed typical of its

period, c. 1740. It is equally character-

istic that the composition should be

marked by details depending on the

whim of the builder. The windowsimmediately above the entrance are

emphasized by thick, shouldered

easing, which in the case of the

uppermost window, projects onsquare, stepped brackets.

lyo

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191

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The Triumph of the Orders

Cottage at Lacock, Wiltshire

The ornament under the eaves of this

cottage, like the pillars of the doorwayof the house at West Harptree shownon page 174, is an instance of a local

craftsman applying classical ornamentwithout having grasped the significance

of classical form. The frieze is com-posed of the capitals of Corinthian

pilasters. Once the canons of design

had been established by the wide-spread use of pattern books, it becameimpossible for the village mason or

carpenter to confuse such different

members of an Order as frieze

and capital, even though craftsmen

continued to vary their work byindividual caprice.

social conscience of our own day would not tolerate. Dr Johnson calculated that

nearly a thousand people died of starvation every year in London alone. There

were no drugs, no anaesthetics to muffle the pain of illness and operations. Thetombstones in our country churchyards tell a harrowing tale of maternal and

infant mortality ; and it would take a more robust frame ofmind than our own to

maintain that this was a lesser evil than that engendered by the swollen, congested

populations of today. Yet immunity from many diseases and much pain, national

insurance, subsidized dentures and mass education do not and cannot compensate

for the loss of conditions which were peculiarly conducive to the creation ot

great works of art. And there is no more poignant reminder of this loss than the

houses built and once inhabited by the Georgians. Numbers of them still grace

nearly every village and small town in Britain, palpable evidence ot the propor-

tion and order which tor a short period dominated not only architecture but the

whole ot lite.

A great number ot houses were built in the preceding periods which were

conscious works ot art, some ot them never surpassed for their bold imaginative

grasp of form and dramatic sense oi place. But often the builders of smaller

houses, carried away by the spirit of fashion, seized on the detail rather than the

principle ot the Renaissance style without understanding either. There is .111

amusing instance of this in 1 acock w here a village craftsman has used Corinthian

capitals as a continuous frieze under the cues ofa small stone house. The Georgianstyle, however, is remarkable 111 thai it is expressed with equal perfection both 111

the mansion and the cottage, which alike embody the standards and ideals

19:

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The Triumph of the Orders

implicit in a canon of forms by which even the uninspired designer could achieve

a measure of distinction and which provided a stimulating point of departure to

those of more energetic and lively imagination. Yet unity of aim never gave rise

to barren uniformity of design. Although the Georgian style is at once recogniz-

able, it is so full of variety that it would be impossible to catalogue all the diverse

combinations and interpretations of the classical theme to be found in these

islands during the eighteenth century. Certain obvious changes in the style took

place within the period, but the details of individual versions of the Orders and

of fluctuating fashions defy analysis. The one constant factor is the awareness of

the house as a work of art, of the overriding importance of spatial relationships

and of the part played by ornament in defining and sustaining those relationships.

The interest in aesthetics rather than practical convenience is symbolized by the

building which more than any other stands for the inauguration of the Palladian

rule: Lord Burlington's Villa at Chiswick, in the planning ofwhich the biological

necessities of eating and sleeping were not even considered. It was primarily a

house for the display of works of art, the accommodation of a magnificent

library and the entertainment of friends whose minds were fixed on higher

matters than sleeping and dining. But if the stately, balanced and often pro-

foundly poetic great houses built all over the country on the principles formu-

lated by Lord Burlington, his friends and colleagues can sometimes, like Chiswick,

be accused of inconvenience, in most of the smaller houses of the eighteenth

century the simple, straightforward plan, uncomplicated by plumbing, combines

the aesthetic and the practical in a degree seldom achieved before or since. There

is no more eloquent proof of this than that such houses are still coveted for the

sake of comfort as much as elegance.

The ground for the establishment of the fully developed Georgian style had

of course been prepared, as we have seen, by the gradual merging of Renaissance

and traditional features in the two previous centuries and by Vanbrugh's grandly

theatrical classicism. But all Baroque tendencies and most of the traditional

features if not the materials of design were swept aside by the return to the strict

Palladianism of Inigo Jones. And while this imposition of the Classical Orders

on domestic architecture was a perfect expression of the habit of mind and the

historical background of the age, and while it was aesthetically so satisfying, it

tended to suppress the feeling for exaggeration and fantasy which had informed

English house invention ever since it had developed beyond its primitive origins

as a shelter from the elements. Richard Boyle, Lord Burlington, who led the newmovement, was the greatest patron of the arts and oflearning in early Hanoverian

days and a distinguished architect in his own right. He was also one of the first

of a succession of young Englishmen to complete his education by making the

Grand Tour, the journey through France and northern Italy down to Romewhich was to exercise such an important influence on Georgian architecture.

The revival of Palladianism actually began with the publication by the Scottish

Architect Colen Campbell in 171 5 of the first volume of I 'itruvius Britannkus, a

collection of large engravings of buildings in Britain of the seventeenth and early

eighteenth centuries inspired by Roman models, accompanied by a preface which

reads like a manifesto of the Palladian revival. Campbell laments the loss to Italy

with Palladio's death of 'a great manner and exquisite Taste of Building' which

rivalled those of the Ancients, and continues: 'It is then, with the renowned

Palladio we must enter the lists, to whom we oppose the famous Inigo Jones. Let

the Banqueting House, those excellent pieces at Greenwich, with many other

Things of the great Manner be carefully examined; and I doubt not, but an

impartial Judge will find in them all the Regularity of the former with an

Addition of Beauty and Majesty, in which our Architect is esteemed to have out-

done all that went before.

The publication of this work coincided with that of the most important

English translation of Palladio's / Quattro Libri dell' Architettura supervised by the

193

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The Triumph ofthe Orders

Venetian architect Giacomo Leoni. The immediate result of this renewed

enthusiasm for classical antiquity and Palladio was Campbell's Wanstead House,

destroyed in the nineteenth century, which was embellished with a huge hexa-

style portico like that of a Roman temple. This was the first instance of a feature

which was to be associated with the English country house and adapted to the

entrances of town houses for well over a century. Thomas Archer, abandoning

the Baroque style of Chicheley, created one of the earliest and most nobly

austere variations on this theme in the Ionic portico of Hale, his own house, built

between 171 5 and 1720.

The publication of the second volume of Vitrui'ius Britannicus was financed by

Lord Burlington, who was also responsible for the publication of The Designs oj

Inigo Jones, edited by William Kent, and Palladio's Antiquities of Rome. Without

the encouragement of this young nobleman and without his genius as an original

architect the establishment of that fixed canon of taste to which I have already

referred and which ensured a minimum standard of excellence throughout the

Georgian era might never have been achieved. The Palladian principles demon-strated in the buildings of Lord Burlington and his friends dominated the whole

field of domestic architecture until well into the nineteenth century, acknow-

ledged alike by the great patrons and architects and the humblest carpenters and

brick-layers, and underlying all the later innovations of Adam, Wyatt and Soane

and all the fantasies ofthe early Gothic Revivalists. These principles were enshrined

in two important houses directly modelled on a famous work by Palladio, the

Villa Almerico or Capra at Vicenza, an absolutely symmetrical Greek cross-

design with an extremely shallow central cupola, identical pillared and pedi-

mented porticoes and plain spreading staircases on each front. Mereworth Castle

by Colen Campbell is furnished with a much taller dome than the Villa Almerico,

melon-shaped and concealing twenty-four chimney flues, the smoke from which

escapes through an octagonal lantern. Large hexastyle porticoes project from

each side, but only two of them are approached by staircases. Inside, Palladio's

plan has been considerably modified to suit English domestic requirements. Therooms surround a central circular apartment approached by a narrow entrance-

hall with an identical room on either side of it. The circular apartment is

decorated by plasterwork pendants, jewel-like in their precision, and by classical

figures reclining on the arched doorheads, all by the Italian Bagutti. The south

and garden front is entirely taken up by a long gallery with a coved and painted

ceiling and a richly stuccoed freize and the east and west fronts are each occupied

by a state bedroom and an ante-room. The kitchen and offices are in the basement

and there are other bedrooms in the attic.

Although Mereworth in its wooded setting is still among the most poetic

sights in England, even without the moat on which it once seemed to float, Lord

Burlington's rendering of the Palladian theme is more subtle. He called his house

a villa after Palladio, thus reintroducing into our language a word which waswell-known in Roman Britain and which came to denote the peculiarly English

conception of the modest classical country house. Two other Palladian examples

are Marble Hill, Twickenham, and White Lodge in Richmond Park. ThoughLord Burlington adheres throughout to the famous Vitruvian Rules, his villa at

l ihiswick can no more be denigrated as a mere copy of Palladio's design than the

octagonal tower of the Radchffe Observatory by Wyatt can be dismissed as a

replica of the Tower of the Winds. Confronted with this inspired handling of the

Palladian theme, it is difficult to understand the refusal of earlier authorities such

as Sir Reginald Blomfield and Nathaniel Lloyd to acknowledge him as a serious

artist, though perhaps they may be excused by the facts that they never sawChiswick without the wings which, added by Wyatt 111 1788, destroyed the

proportions of the original design until they were demolished 111 the brilliant

restoration after tin List war, and that Lord Burlington's sole responsibility for

the plan and external treatment of tins building was not established beyond all

Hale Park, Hampshire

The Ionic portico of the house ThomasArcher built for himself is an early

instance of a temple-like feature

associated with the Palladian mansionand deriving from Palladio's Villa

l.ipr.i .it Vicenza, |ust .is the house

itself. .1 square block with pendant

pavilions (here set at right-angles to

the house and joined to it by low,

curving, balustraded walls) was a

popular form among the architects of

the Burlingtonian school. Hale was

originally a brick house. The stucco

casing dates from c. 1800.

I'M

Page 197: The English House Through Seven Centuries

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Page 198: The English House Through Seven Centuries

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Page 199: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Palladio's Villa Capra, Vicenza(above), Mereworth Castle, Kent(left), and Chiswick House, Middlesex(right)

Palladio's celebrated villa, also knownas the Rotonda, built in 1552, wasbased on the Roman temple archi-

tecture of Vitruvius's De Archiiectura.

It is planned as a Greek cross, a formnot previously used for domesticarchitecture. It is of brick coated withstucco. Colen Campbell's MereworthCastle (1723) and Lord Burlington'svilla at Chiswick (1729) were bothinspired by the Villa Capra, but, as

the photographs show, introducesubtle varations into the design to

adapt it to English individual

requirements (see pages 194, 198-9).

Page 200: The English House Through Seven Centuries

»

doubt until the comparatively recent discovery of the contemporary documents

and drawings relating to the villa.

During his Italian travels, Lord Burlington had examined not only Renaissance

works, but many surviving Roman buildings. He had also acquired a consider-

able number of drawings of those buildings made by Palladio and his pupils.

His villa at Chiswick is a masterly combination of elements from these studies

with a tree adaptation of the Villa Capra. The most obvious difference between

the two designs is that whereas the Villa Capra, although it crowns a hill, is

exquisitely horizontal and exactly like a temple, Chiswick gams height and a

sense ofdomesticity by the addition ofobelisk-shaped chimneys, the transforma-

tion of the central feature into a raised octagonal dome pierced by semi-circular

198

Page 201: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Gallery, Chiswick House,

Middlesex

The rich interior of Lord Burlington's

villa was designed by William Kent.

The walls of the apse at either end

of the Gallery are pierced by arched

openings yielding glimpses into

adjoining rooms, circular at one endand square at the other, creating an

effect of variety and space although

the apartments themselves are small. It

was in this room that the mostimportant pictures in Lord Burlington's

collection were displayed. Thehandsome doorway, with its brokenpediment, lead into the central,

octagonal, domed saloon.

CHISWICK HOUSE FlTII fioot

I. Entrance i. HaU ]. Gallrry

The Triumph of the Orders

windows and by variations in the elevations. Only the entrance and garden fronts

are adorned with stairs, and these, unlike Palladio's, consist of grand doublesweeps, leading in the case of the facade to a Corinthian portico, while onthe garden side the double flights meet in front of a Venetian or Palladian

window (with a semicircular arched central light and side lights framed in an

Order) which can be opened to form a doorway. Such windows became a

feature of Palladian and also, in a modified form, of Adam houses. The villa is

ot two storeys, the ground floor of which is of dressed Portland stone carved

with bold vermiculation. The upper storey is much taller. The proportions of

the two floors set the standard for most larger houses of the next fifty years and

are reflected in the arrangement of countless lesser houses.

For the interior the architect drew upon the drawings of Roman Baths byPalladio, now exhibited on the ground floor of the villa, and created an intriguing

variety of room shapes and vistas, which achieve unexpected grandeur in so small

a building. Some of the rooms are rectangular. The central hall is octagonal and

domed, and on the garden side, where a long dignified gallery with apsidal ends

opens into two tiny chambers, one octagonal, the other circular, the arrangement

appears to play upon the old hall house plan. The decoration of the Chiswick

interior was the work of William Kent, Lord Burlington's talented collaborator

in the establishment of the Palladian style. Originally trained as a coach painter

in Hull, Kent had been sent by a Yorkshire patron to Italy, where he attracted the

attention of Lord Burlington, who became his lite-long friend. Kent's imagina-

tion moved to solemn, stately rhythms which exactly suited the classic grandeur

of Lord Burlington's architecture, while the vigour and richness of his ornament

provided a perfect counterfoil to his patron's severely controlled framework.

As I have mentioned, Kent had just been editing Inigo Jones's architectural

drawings for Lord Burlington, and his decoration at Chiswick is imbued with the

same dynamic quality which characterizes the Double Cube Room at Wilton.

Doorways are surmounted by broken pediments and circular paintings in volup-

tuous frames held by fish-tailed amorini bursting from undulating foliage;

scrolled, festooned and gilded overmantels sit heavily upon robust marble fire-

places and above bold friezes of masks and garlands; powerful and elaborately

ornamented ribs divide the ceilings into rectangular compartments, while that of

the dome, inspired by the Pantheon, is formed of deeply moulded and profusely

decorated octagonal panels decreasing in size towards the crown. This contrast

between a plain, symmetrical exterior and unexpectedly sumptuous internal

decoration is characteristic of the Palladian style. It is even more marked at

Holkham Hall, Norfolk, planned by Kent and decorated by him with the utmost

magnificence.

Just as the villa marks a new departure in architectural design, so the garden,

largely Kent's work, opens a new chapter in the history of the house in relation

to its setting. The contrast between contrived order and the abhorred and

inimical chaos of nature expressed by the severely formal garden layouts of the

two previous centuries was no longer in key with the romantic attitude repre-

sented by such poetry as Thomson's. During his Italian travels, Kent had been

excited not only by Renaissance and Roman architecture, but by the Italian land-

scape. He was among the first of those who looked at the Campagna through the

eyes of Claude and Salvator Rosa, and who on their return to England set about

reconstructing the classical villas of Virgil and Horace in a garden which was a

three-dimensional interpretation of a painter's vision:

And scenes like these, on Memory's tablet drawn,

Bring back to Britain ; then give local form

To each idea; and, if Nature lend

Materials fit of torrent, rock and shade,

Produce new Tivohs.

199

Page 202: The English House Through Seven Centuries

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Page 203: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Triumph of the Orders

The gardens of Chiswick House,

Middlesex

Just as Chiswick House marked the

beginning of a new style in domestic

architecture, so the gardens ot the

Villa inaugurated a new Picturesque

conception of the house and its

environment. They were largely

planned by William Kent and were

inspired by Italian landscape as seen

through the eyes of painters such as

Claude, Poussin and Salvator Rosa.

The view of the Ionic temple on the

left is typical of the sudden encounters

at Chiswick of features and scenes

evoking classical antiquity in the

manner of these painters. The sphinx

on the right belongs to an avenue of

sphinxes and great urns leading to the

three statues in evergreen niches seen

in the background of the photo-

graph. They are reputed to have

come from Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli,

and represent Julius Caesar, Pompeyand Cicero.

Chiswick combines something of the architectural quality of the Italian Renais-

sance garden with a hint of the new Picturesque landscape conception which wassoon to give rise to Stourhead, Stowe and many another enchanted park, re-

creating with their pillared mansions the scenery of an imagined Golden Age. At

Chiswick the formality of long rectangles, ordered vistas, temples, obelisks,

sphinxes and terms is softened by the meandering of an artificial river, fore-

runner of the irregular sheets of water which later graced every country seat; bya wilderness threaded by winding footpaths and the asymmetrical placing of a

pool with an Ionic temple on its bank and an obelisk rising from its centre.

Two more English versions of the Villa Rotonda were built later in the

eighteenth century, one called Nuthall Temple in Nottinghamshire, nowdemolished, by Stephen Wright, and another at Foots Cray, Kent; and Sir

William Chambers's enchanting little Casino Marino on the outskirts of Dublin,

built for Lord Charlemont in 1764, echoes Palladio's villa in its cruciform plan.

But as house designs these, together with Mereworth and Chiswick, could never

appear other than eccentric, modelled as they were on a building which is itself

unique as a piece of domestic planning. Yet there could have been no better

advertisement of the Palladian revival than the startling images of these temple-

like structures in the English landscape. And the marvels of Chiswick were

'

i

I

Page 204: The English House Through Seven Centuries

extolled by those who saw it. In the fourth of his Moral Essays, dedicated to Lord

Burlington, Pope commends the Earl's approach to architecture and landscape,

his revival of Roman grandeur and his awareness of the importance of nature,

and addresses him thus

:

Erect new wonders and the old repair

;

Jones and Palladio to themselves restore

And be whatever Vitruvius was before.

Lord Burlington and his followers needed no urging, and soon the principles

exemplified at Chiswick were incorporated in many other splendid and moreorthodox houses, which in general took the form of a single symmetrical block,

like Leoru's Clandon Park and the majority of small Georgian houses or of a

central building with wings or subsidiary blocks which superseded the E- and

H-shaped houses as the most suitable plan for great country mansions. Amongthem are Stourhead by Colen Campbell: Thomas Archer's Hale Park, already

mentioned; Prior Park, Bath, by John Wood the Elder: Eversley, Warbrook, byJohnJames of Greenwich, the designer of St George's, Hanover Square; HolkhamHall, Norfolk, built for Thomas Coke, later Earl oi Leceister, by William Kentwith the collaboration of Lord Burlington and the owner; Wolterton Hall.

Norfolk, of which only one wing was completed, by Thomas Ripley, originally

a Yorkshire carpenter; and the immensely spread-out Wentworth Woodhouseby Henry Fhtcroft, also trained as a carpenter. These purely Palladian exampleswere followed by many later houses planned in the same way, Heaton Park andCastlecoole, Co. Fermanagh, b\ Wyatt; Harewood House, by Carr ot York:the entrance front and wings ot Kedleston, by James Paine; Kenwood by RobertAdam, and Southill by Henry Holland, to name only a few. Holkham. Clandon,Wolterton and other great houses ot the early Georgian period, among them

Stowe House. Buckinghamshire

Stowe began to assume its familiar

aspect as the result of improvementsmade to a late seventeenth-century

house by Sir Richard Temple. Butthe south front, towards which weare looking, only took on its present

form after Giovanni Battista Borra

had in 1774 altered and executed

a design prepared by Robert Adam.In its landscape setting, embellished

with sculpture and with classical

and Gothic temples. Stowe perfectly

embodies the Palladian idea]. Thelarge mansion, a central block with

lower wings, recessed here, and tall

end pavilions, completes a vista

which, with its artificial lake, knownas Oxford Water, and its flanking

trees, is like an imaginary scene

painted bv Claude. In the mid Georgian

period Capabilitv Brown enhanced

and unified the garden design begun by

Charles Bndgeman in i~2> and laid

out in part bv Kent, who in the

Elvsian Fieldv and the Grecian Vallev

developed the Picturesque conceits,

he had first tried out at Chiswick.

202

Page 205: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Triumph of the Orders

Hawnes Park, Bedfordshire, probably by Ripley, were built, like Palladio's villa,

and his palaces at Vicenza, and out of respect for Roman practice, of brick, and

thus the passion for antiquity fostered the use of a material which had already

taken the once universal place of timber in English house construction, and whichis associated more than any other with the Georgian style.

It is usually said that the perfection of form and proportion achieved by the

Palladians had degenerated into a mere cold monotonous 'correctness' of style

by the mid eighteenth century. Nevertheless, the traditions symbolized byChiswick House was still sufficiently alive to inspire the forceful rhythm of

Wardour Castle by James Paine, articulated by giant columns and pilasters,

paired and single; and as late as 1830 Sir John Soane was exhorting his pupils in

his lectures to 'follow closely the precepts of Vitruvius'.

Furthermore, the innovations in style, of which Adam was the source, were

in reality but variations on the original Palladian theme. The development of

this theme was effected by the shift of emphasis from the revival of RomanArchitecture by the Italian Renaissance builders to the works of antiquity itself.

The publication of two books by Robert Wood, The Ruins of Palmyra (1753) and

The Ruins of Balbec (1757), showed the trend of fashion; and they were followed

in 1764 by the splendid folio recording Robert Adam's visit to Spalato in

Dalmatia, The Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalato. The neo-

classical movement was quickened also by the excavations which were going on

at Pompeii and Herculaneum under Charles Bourbon and Maria Amelia

Christine. The style associated with Robert Adam's name reveals the influences

of these new discoveries compounded with that of his own studies in Italy, both

of Roman and Renaissance works, and moulded by the Palladian tradition. The

The south front, Clandon Park,

Surrey

The house stands on the site of an

Elizabethan building acquired bySir Richard Onslow in 1642, and was

redesigned by Giacomo Leoni in

1713-29, during the time when Leoni

was associated with Lord Burlington.

The house is of the rectangular

block plan assumed by the smaller

Georgian mansion and is built of

red brick. For all that Leoni published

the first English edition of Palladio,

Clandon does not entirely conform to

Palladian principles, for each facade

is different 111 design, and the front

shown here, with its four giant

central pilasters and its swags above

the first-floor windows, is French

rather than Italian in feeling. Certain

characteristics of the design, the brick

aprons below the windows, for

instance, link Clandon with Baroque

houses such as Chicheley (page 172).

Page 206: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Triumph of the Orders

originality of the style consists not so much in the characteristic ornament, the

garlands, vases, urns, tripods, gryphons, swags, festoons of husks, arabesques and

scrolls, as in the lightness and extreme delicacy with which they are treated. This

lightness informs not only the decoration but the entire building, as a com-parison of Ely House, 37 Dover Street, London, by Sir Robert Taylor, and the

house by Adam which still survives in Adam Street makes clear. The rustication

on the ground floor of the latter is merely decorative beside the bold treatment

in Dover Street, the heavy keystones and massive vermiculation of the arches

;

and whereas Taylor's facade is ashlared and strongly articulated in its upper

storeys by tabernacled or deeply set square windows, Adam's front is of brick

enlivened with contrasting stucco to mark the rusticated ground floor and the

tall pilasters above it. The windows are without pediments and columns and are

set almost flush with the walls, and the proportions (as Palladian as those of

Ralph Allen's House. B.uh.

Somerset

This wjs a seventeenth-century houseredesigned and enlarged bv |ohnWood the Elder for Ralph Allen, the

B.ith postmaster, in [727. It shows

the bold chiaroscuro and vigorous

character ofthe Palladian style as

embodied in a small town house ot

the early Georgian period Theground floor is strongly rusticated.

giant Corinthian columns articulate

the first floor and support the ornated

pediment, the central windows are

arched and it is to be noted that the

principal rooms m this town house

arc on the first instead of on the

ground floor The Italian.ue character

of the design is enhanced by the Stone

in winch it is carried out: Bath

stone from quarries at Combe Down,which Allen had purchased in the

vear when the house was built, and

which he made famous.

Page 207: The English House Through Seven Centuries

House in Adam Street, London

This house, which was part of the

Adelphi scheme planned by the three

brothers Adam in 1768, is basically

the same design as the example onthe opposite page, but it is flat andlinear in its elegance beside the strong,

almost three-dimensional relief of the

Bath composition. The ground-floor

rustications have been carried out in

stucco instead of stone; and the

powerful Corinthian columns havebeen replaced by thin, stuccoed

pilasters adorned with honeysuckle

ornament in the shallowest relief.

Whereas in John Wood's facade

contrast is achieved by the forceful

light and shade of heavy mouldingsand the great, smooth, cylindrical

forms of the columns, here variety

depends on the effect of light stucco

ornament against dark brick and of

extremely refined detail on a flat

elevation.

Taylor) are marked, as though by embroidery, with strips of wiry honeysuckle

ornament.

One of Adam's latest undertakings, Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, the most

complete of his terrace elevations to survive, again illustrates both his dependence

on the Palladian ideal and his divergence from earlier expressions of it. If it is

compared with the Palladian Queen Square, Bath, of some sixty years earlier,

the differences are again seen to lie in the character of the trimmings rather than

the form, in the replacing of pedimented windows by Venetian openings and in

the introduction of graceful ornament in the Edinburgh terrace, where the blocks

are both taller, much more thinly and flatly treated, and of greater elegance than

the Bath composition. The distinction is like that which divides the art of ancient

Rome from that of Pompeii. Even the most monumental of Adam's works, the

Roman Hall at Kedleston, with its columns of green-veined alabaster, gorgeous

anthemion frieze of gold on blue and coved ceiling stuccoed by Joseph Rose, is

ornate - albeit enchantingly, transportingly ornate - rather than noble beside that

most grandly Roman of all English eighteenth-century interiors, the Great Hall

at Holkham by William Kent which re-creates the spirit of antiquity more nearly

than any purely domestic apartment of the Italian Renaissance, and which,

although Kent makes use of actual Roman examples for details such as the

glorious frieze taken from the Temple of Fortuna Virilis, is a supremely imagina-

tive work, a fusion of classical inspiration and brilliant adaptation to existing

conditions.

Adam and his brother James prided themselves in having broken away from

205

Page 208: The English House Through Seven Centuries

what they called the rigidity of Lord Burlington and of having brought about

'a greater movement and variety in the outside composition and in the decora-

tion of the inside an almost total change'. They flatter themselves in the first

volume of The Works in Architecture of Robert andJames Adam (1773) on having

'adopted a beautiful variety of light mouldings, gracefully formed, delicately

enriched and arranged with propriety and skill' to take the place of 'the massive

entablature, the ponderous compartment ceiling, the tabernacle frame'. The first

of these claims, as Christopher Hussey pointed out in his classic on the subject,

is closely linked with the taste for the Picturesque which will be described later.

This is Adam's famous definition of his conception of movement as related to

the south front of Kedleston Hall

:

'Movement is meant to express the rise and fall, the advance and recess with

other diversity of form, in the different parts of a building, so as to add greatly to

the picturesqueness of the composition, tor the rising and falling, advancing and

receding, with the convexity and concavity, and other forms of the great parts,

have the same effects in architecture that hill and dale, foreground and distance,

swelling and sinking have in landscape; that is they serve to produce an agreeable

and diversified contour, that groups and contrasts like a picture, and creates a

variety of light and shade, which gives great spirit, beauty and effect to the

composition.'

Despite Robert Adam's admiration tor Vanbrugh, the kind of movementdescribed here has little in common with the dynamic upward sweeps, the

dramatic advances and recessions, the open tonus, the strong chiaroscuro and

complexity of the true Baroque. It would be impossible to characterize any of

Vanbrugh's buildings, still less a building by any of the great masters ot the

Baroque. Borrommi. Bernini or Longhena, as 'agreeable and diversified". Adam'sfacade is indeed 'diversified'; but even had the composition been completed bythe curving wings designed to echo the crab-pincer, concave shape ofthe perron.

The library. Kenwood, Middlesex(left), and (nght) the Red Drawing-Room, Syon House, Middlesex

Robert Adam completed Kenwoodfor Lord Mansfield before 1 770 andwas at work on the transformation of

Syon for the 1st Duke ofNorthumberland from 1762. TheKenwood detail shows one of the

apsidal ends of the library and part

of one of the screens ot fluted

Corinthian columns which divide

these apses from the centre of the

room. A comparison of this photo-graph with that of the Chiswickgallery (page ig.v shows the freedom

with which Adam has used the

apsidal form. The heavy coffered

decoration at Chiswick has been

replaced by the nch but delicate

arabesques of the stuccoistJosephRose The entablature earned by the

columns before each semi-domebrilliantly continues the frieze from

which the unusual barrel vault springs

The ceiling at Syon is another

typical expression ot Adam's style:

both coves and flat are sprinkled with

octagons and diamonds, each

enclosing .1 decorative paper panel by.mother of the architect's most

prolific collaborators, Angelica

Kauffmann.

206

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Drawing-room door, Syon House,Middlesex (above), and (right) viewfrom the saloon into the hall,

Kedleston, Derbyshire

The two photographs illustrate the

versatility of Adam's genius. TheSyon composition depends for its

effect on the sumptuousness of its

ornament. The doorcase, set against

wall hangings of crimson Spitalfields

silk, shows an ivory ground with

carved and gilded decoration on the

lintel and inlaid ormolu on the

pilasters. The door itself is of highly

polished mahogany with gilded

panels. At Kedleston, where Adamworked from 1760, the emphasis is

on Roman monumentality, and the

great hall is intended to correspond to

the atrium of antiquity. The severe

Ionic door pilasters and the

stupendous Corinthian columns of the

hall are of green-veined Derbyshirealabaster.

the building would still have appeared sedate and only intermittently animated,

even beside so pale a version of the Baroque as Archer's Chicheley. For Kedleston

remains a basically horizontal, Palladian building to which the central feature,

based on the Roman triumphal arch, has been added in the manner of a rich

ornament. Adam's treatment of this theme, transforming it into something

lighter, gayer and more elegant even than anything seen at Pompeii, is irresist-

ible. And the effect of his graceful, projecting columns with their rich capitals

supporting classical sculptures posed against a delicately ornamented attic was

not lost on his contemporaries and followers. The most memorable element in

Robert Taylor's design at Heveningham, built some eight years later than

Kedleston, was based on it, and Sir John Soane was inspired by Adam's use of

the triumphal arch motif for the facade of his own house, Pitzhanger Manor(1800-3) at Ealing.

In claiming to have achieved lightness and variety Adam was altogether

justified. It is in the way in which he adapts ornament to rooms of different

character and in his sense of contrast in the designing of the rooms that his genius

is most impressively revealed. Chiswick House is remarkable for the pleasing

diversity in the sizes and shapes of its rooms, yet Kent's composition appears

limited beside Adam's refinement and development of this aspect of interior

planning. A completely rectangular room is an exception in a house designed

by him, where apses, octagonal shapes, elliptical ends and curving niches create

endless spatial variety. Delicious ornament and the brilliant arrangement ofspace

characterize all Adam's houses, large and small, and he is as inventive a designer

of medium-sized houses for professional people, like those in the ill-starred

Adelphi, as of grand mansions such as Osterley and Syon.

Home House, 20 Portman Square, London, built for the Countess of Home,and now the Courtauld Institute, is much more than the symmetrical arrange-

ment of well-proportioned boxes which makes up the typical Georgian interior.

207

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Page 211: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Triumph o\ the Orders

Home House Ground floor

I. Hail 2. Front parlour

^. Staircase 4. Bad parlour

,. Library 6. Auu-rooin

- Servant/ stah 9.J

Attingham Hall, Shropshire

The architect of this noble mansion,

built for Noel Hill, ist Lord Berwick,

in 1784, was George Steuart, a Scot,

about whom little is known. Theaustere facade and the giant portico,

the starkness of which is relieved only

by the elegant Ionic capitals of the

surprisingly slender columns, reflect

the tendency towards greater

simplicity in design which followed

on the transference of fashionable

interest from Rome to Greece as a

source of inspiration. The plain

surface and the actual treatment of the

stone shows the influence of the

researches of the better-known JamesStuart at Athens. The plan of the

house is still Palladian, with

colonnades connecting the mainblock to low service wings.

Each room introduces and enhances the one beyond it. Thus the hall leads into

the circular stairwell, flooded with light from a dome at the top towards whichthe two steep and airy branches of the stair aspire like pleated ribbons. From the

hall also open the front parlour, with its three large windows and unusual angle

columns of porphyry, the back parlour, with its Corinthian pilasters and delicate

swags of drapery, and the library, with its recesses in the centre of each wall andpainted ceiling canvases by Zucchi. Upstairs a sequence of rooms lead one into

another, as intimately related yet as fully contrasted as the movements of a

Mozart sonata. A delicate boudoir gives on to the highly coloured and geo-metrically decorated music-room, once adorned with an organ and drapedlooking-glasses. This yields to a ballroom and through a tiny antechamber into

the completely contrasting Etruscan bedroom. Each room depends for its effect

on its relation to its neighbour and every detail is important in the creation of the

final effect. Adam designed everything himself, even the door handles, and it

was impossible to make the slightest change without disturbing his plan.

Among Adam's larger interiors, his most exquisitely contrived counterpoint

of space and colour is perhaps Syon, even though this, like nearly all his greater

enterprises, was an adaptation of an existing house. The contrast between the

exterior ofthis house, pale and uneventful except for its crenellations (reminders of

its medieval history as a nunnery), and the incredibly ornate interior is one of themost striking in all Georgian architecture. The marble floor of the vast, cool hall

repeats in black and white the bold, diapered pattern of the plastered ceiling. Atone end a great coffered apse houses a cast of the Apollo Belvedere, at the other

a Roman Doric screen leads into a square recess which opens into an ante-room

so richly coloured that the eye is dazzled. The floor is of highly polished scagliola,

yellow, brown and red ; and the walls are adorned with gilded stucco reliefs of

trophies of arms by Joseph Rose. The oblong shape of the apartment is brilliantly

converted into a square by twelve free-standing columns projecting into the

room and forming a screen at one end. These columns are of green marble with

gilt Ionic capitals and white and gold bases; and each supports a gilded figure

based on the antique. The bold compartment ceiling of this room, like that of the

hall, is more characteristic of Lord Burlington than Adam. The dining-room is

apsidal, screened at either end, and along the walls stand statues in niches. A flat,

fluted band runs trom the Corinthian entablature all round the walls and above

the band are long panels painted in chiaroscuro by Cipriani. This ivory and gold

room is a perfect foil to the crimson drawing-room with its damask hangings

patterned with ribbons and flowers. The ceiling is ornamented with small

octagons and squares, each enclosing a panel painted by Angelica Kaufmann,

and the carpet of red, gold and blue was specially woven for the room. Theivory-coloured door pilasters and the white marble surrounds of the fireplace

are decorated with inlaid ormolu. But the gallery which runs the whole length

of the east front is the most original and elegant room in the house. It of course

recalls the traditional long gallery and the long rooms at Chiswick and

Mereworth. Robert Adam himself explains the use of the gallery: 'It was

finished,' he says, 'in a style to afford great variety and amusement.' It was a

concession to eighteenth-century dalliance. The architect has overcome the

limitations of the immense length of the narrow room with superb skill by

dividing it into four pilastered units, and by concentrating on minute and varied

detail, classical arabesques, reliefs of polished stucco, entertaining oval portraits.

The deliciously frivolous atmosphere is enhanced by the faded pink and green

colouring of the gallery, and by the two little closets at its either end. One is

square and decorated with a pattern of exotic birds and trees; the other is circular

with a delicate miniature cupola from which hangs a golden bird-cage containing

a golden bird.

During the last quarter of the eighteenth century, house architecture was still

informed with the harmony deriving from the Palladian rule, though there

209

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The Triumph of the Orders

were many variations on the theme, among them striking attempts to clothe it

in different fancy dresses, some of which will be discussed in the following

chapter. Meanwhile there was a reaction against the extreme elaboration of

Adam's interiors and a predilection for Greek rather than Roman originals as

sources of inspiration. Adam himself introduced a thoroughly Grecian feature

at Osterley in the beautiful portico, which is the earliest instance, soon to be

repeated by Wyatt, of columns rising directly from a pavement at ground level

or with a few steps only instead of from a high podium. Adam was a friend of

James or 'Athenian' Stuart, and absorbed Grecian detail from the four volumes

of The Antiquities of Athens, published from 1762 onwards by Stuart and his

collaborator Nicholas Revett after they had made an expedition to Greece. As

a formative influence this work ranked with Wood's Ruins of Palmyra and

Adam's Palace of Diocletian at Spalato, though its impact was not widely felt until

after the beginning of the nineteenth century. Stuart's position was isolated and,

irresponsible and dilatory in temperament as he was, he was incapable of the

sustained effort necessary to achieve success and power. He introduced the

Athenian Ionic Order in a house he designed for Lord Anson, 15 St James's

Square, London, disposing the constituents, however, in the Palladian manner.

Stuart had in fact imbibed Palladian principles during his early training as a

painter, for his master, Louis Goupy, a fan painter, had attended Lord Burlington

in Italy. He was the author of the astonishing interior of the chapel of GreenwichHospital, and of some of the decoration at Shugborough, Staffordshire, wherehe embellished the park with copies of the Tower of the Winds, the Choragic

Monument of Lysikrates at Athens, a Doric Temple and a triumphal arch.

Revett too built an imaginative version of the Temple of the Winds for WestWycombe Park, as well as a Temple of Flora and a Temple of Music.

Another architect who exercised a far reaching influence through his pupil

Soane and through Nash on the domestic building of the later Greek revival wasGeorge Dance. Very few of his buildings survive, but photographs exist of his

masterpiece, Newgate Gaol, demolished in 1902, and show the remarkable wayin which he was able to create dramatic effects without using columns andpilasters, but merely by juxtaposing plain and many-windowed masses, vivid

rustication and sharp, rhythmic recessions.

The tendency towards greater simplicity was shown most clearly at first bythe work ofjames Wyatt, the son of a Staffordshire builder and timber merchant,who in his youth attracted the attention of a local landowner, Lord Bagot, byhis talent for all the visual arts and for music. Lord Bagot took him to Italy,

where he studied under a pupil of Canaletto, Antonio Viscentini. Six years later

he returned to England and astonished London by his sensational design for the

domed Pantheon in Oxford Street. From then on Wyatt never lacked patrons,

and for eighteen years after the death of Sir William Chambers, Wyatt wasSurveyor-General. He was a dissolute character devoid of moral convictions.

This is not remarkable, but Wyatt also professed himself to be without aesthetic

convictions. And yet he had absolute command of the late Georgian idiom, andwhile deriving .1 great deal from Adam, whose most serious rival he became, hecreated several houses and interiors which are wholly enchanting and un-forgettable 111 their restraint and serenity. Castlecoole in Co. Fermanagh, built forlord Belmore and completed in 1789, must impress the most casual eve withits severe, almost abstract beauty .\nd sensitive proportions. The composition, a

central pedimented block flanked by wings, is essentially Palladian, but thematchless poetry of this white stone building resides in the precise balance of thegre) '

' olonnades, rising straight from the stylobate in the Greek manner.and sin. ill end-pavilions with the bulk of the house and its Ionic portico. Thishouse is als,, wonderfully ..mined to the green landscape in which it is so closelyset that .1 How ei -st.ined meadow waves beneath Us very wails. ] he interior

decoration ol Castlecoole admirably illustrates Wyatt's simplification of the

The hall, Heveningham, Surtolk

The restrained harmony of this room.completed by James Wyatt 111 c. 1781,

cine (it the most unforgettable andenchanting creations of the English

classical style, owes much to Adam.The very design, a rectangular

apartment with a barrel vault divided

into compartments by open,

columned screens at either endcontinuing the design of the wall

frieze, echoes Adam's arrangement mthe library at Kenwood. Hut Wyatthas \ aried the theme by introducing

fan-vault penetrations, and the

decoration show s the samepredilection for greater simplicity

ih.it characterizes the facade of

Attingham Hall (page 208), although

the influence is Pompeian rather than

Greek and the colour is gorgeous.

I he stone floor is inlaid with red and

hl.uk marble, the walls are apple-

green, the chaste stucco decoration

white and the scagliola columnsbrow msh-vcllow .

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-•*,

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Adam style, and it is significant that the artists who carried out the designs forthis Irish mansion were a plasterer from the workshop ofJoseph Rose, Adam'sgreat collaborator, and Domenico Bartoli, a relative of Giuseppe Bartoli, whohad made the scagliola pillars at Kedleston. The circular saloon is the richest ofthe rooms, articulated by black, grey and white Corinthian pilasters of scagiola

and with delicate stucco swags and garlands above the doors and on the frieze

and ceiling, much more sparsely distributed than in Adam's elaborate designs.The lobby on the first floor, serving the bedrooms, is an even more chaste andgraceful room and an inspired interpretation of the Greek style. It is lit by a domeand surrounded by a gallery, the ceiling of which is supported by coupledcolumns. The four stoves which heat this apartment are set in semicircular nichesabove floor level and assume the delightfully unexpected form of fit. garlandedpedestals surmounted by casts of Greek poets.

Other celebrated interiors b) Wyatt include that at Hevenmgham. probablythe dining-room at Crichel, Dorset. Heaton Park. Lancashire, and the dining-room at Westport House. Co. Sligo. 1 he stucco decoration in all these interiorsis alw ays much more scattered and much less highly coloured than Adam's work.The patterns consist of circles, semicircles, and segments of circles, outlined b\fragile husk chains and reeding and enclosing urns and branching, spiralling

foliage, roundels, swags, and oval and circular wall plaques containing figurespainted or to relict, and festooned with husk chains describing loops and circles

above and around them.

I he most outstanding protagonist at the dose of the century of the severer

Fhilipps House. Dinton, Wiltshire

This house, formerly Dinton House.

was not built until [813 1 '. but it

still shows Pall.1d1.1n ancestry, thoughhere the style is modified bv the

extreme neo-classical simplicity

encouraged by Greek influence. Thearchitect wasjeffry Wyatt(1766-1840), nephew ofJamesWyatt, who changed his name to

Wyattville when he was knighted in

1s_:S. The gigantic portico of plain

Ionic columns rises directly from the

pavement instead of from a stepped

base as at Hale page [94) and

Attingham pigs- 208 . The severe

facade is otherwise unrelieved, except

Page 215: The English House Through Seven Centuries

tor the plain entablature below the

eaves and a string course.

At Attingham Hall, George Steuart's

rich interiors finely contrast with the

austerity of the exterior, but here, as

with Henry Holland's houses, withwhich Philipps House has obviousaffinities, the apartments are as

sparsely adorned as the outside. Thehouse is built of white Chilmarkstone quarried in the neighbourhoodand the material emphasizes the

idyllic aspect of the building in its

undulating park. It is the idealized

landscape setting in the style ofCapability Brown or Repton whichmakes Philipps House so poetical anevocation of the Palladian theme.

Attic mode, besides Wyatt, was Henry Holland (i 746-1 806), a builder's son

who married the daughter of Capability Brown, the landscape gardener. Thesources of his intensive classical studies were Desgodetz's Les Edifices Antiques de

Rome (1682) and Stuart and Revett's Antiquities ofAthens. His design for Carlton

House, built for the Prince of Wales in 1783, which was demolished in 1826 but

which is pictured in Pugin's Microcosm and Pyne's Royal Residences, is impressively

individual and yet maintains the spirit of the established tradition. It is very long

and low, rusticated like Dance's Newgate, with a Corinthian portico and an

Ionic colonnade of coupled columns shielding the facade from the street.

Holland's best-known surviving work is Southill, Bedtordshire, which he re-

modelled for Samuel Whitbread. The house, like Castlecoole, repeats the tradi-

tional composition of the main block and wings, connected here by loggias with

coupled columns, a feature which takes the place of the portico in the projecting

centre elevation. The effect here is of sharp angularity and the treatment is

austerely plain except tor light rustications on the end-pavilions and the lower

storey of the main block.

Whereas earlier eighteenth-century houses, as we have seen, exhibit the greatest

possible contrast between the exterior and interior, the interior of Southill is

closely related to the exterior in its fastidious elegance and extreme restraint. Theceilings are in some cases very gently vaulted, but very often they are quite plain

except for narrow ribs or bands of plaster adorned with Greek key patterns or

delicate running Greek foliage. Holland's severe treatment of surfaces, the pre-

cision of his design, the dignity and reticence of his neo-classical ornament are

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The Triumph ofthe Orders

characteristic of the last phase of the tradition which began with Lord Burlington,

the phase we know as the Regency.

Turning now from the architecture of the leading masters of Palladianism to

the ways in which the style was handled and developed by local builders, one of

the most fascinating aspects of the subject is the influence of printed books in

spreading knowledge of the classical mould. Palladianism was established not

so much by actual example as by the publication throughout the century, and

particularly during its first half, of books of plans, designs and practical instruc-

tions for builders which encouraged laymen to concern themselves with design

and provided craftsmen with a rule of thumb. Colen Campbell's Vitruvius

Britannicus has already been mentioned, and another important work of this

kind was Kyp and Knyff's Noblemen's Seats published in 1709. One of the ways

in which an architect sought to establish himself was to persuade his patron to

publish sumptuous volumes of the plans of individual great houses when they

were being built. The designs by Campbell, Ripley and Kent for Houghtonappeared in 1735 and Isaac Ware published a further volume on the plans,

elevations and sections, chimney-pieces and ceilings of this great house in 1760.

But more influential than these was the appearance of innumerable text-books

for the guidance of provincial builders and craftsmen. The most prolific author

of such productions and the most widely read was Batty Langley (1 696-1 751),

the son of a gardener, the writer, in addition to his other works, of four books on

gardening and one of the most fashionable landscape gardeners of the period

following the creation of Stourhead by Sir Henry Hoare. The list of his manuals

includes A Sure Guide to Builders (1726 and 1729); A Young Builder's Rudiments

(1730); The Builder's Compleat Assistant (1738); The City and Country Builder's

and Workman's Treasury of Designs (1740); The Builder's Jewel (1741); and The

London Prices of Bricklayers' Materials and Works (1747). Many editions were sold

of all these publications, which contained practical instruction in building and

surveying, mechanics and hydrostatics, drawings showing the proportions of the

different Orders with comparisons between those of Vitruvius, Palladio,

Scamozzi, Vignola, Serho, Perrault, Brossc and Angelo; a summary of Acts ot

Parliament relating to building, plates of designs for doors, windows, chimney-pieces, ceilings, and even of bookcases; and details of mouldings. Batty Langleyalso set up a school of architecture in Soho together with his brother Thomas, an

engraver. Their pupils were chiefly carpenters.

Another prolific author of textbooks was William Halfpenny, who described

himself as 'architect and carpenter'. Magnum in Parvo: Or The Marrow of Archi-

tecture (1722) and The Art of Sound Building (1725) contained instructions on howto set out geometrically buck arches, niches, columns and pilasters, and designs

ot various buildings and staiu.ises. Halfpenny collaborated later, in 1742, withthe Scottish architect and carpenter. Roger Morris, author ot the romantic,

turreted Inverary Castle 111 Argyllshire, with his brother John and with T.Lightholer. carver' m the production ot The Modem Builder's Assistant. TheBritish Carpenter by Francis Price (1733). Clerk of the Works and Survevor ot

S.ihshut \ c athedral, was another popular work which showed how to set out

rooi timbers, staircases, etc., and was furnished in the second edition with a

supplement illustrating the Orders according to Palladio and showing Palladian

doors and windows; this work went into four editions and was recommendedby I lawksmoor, John James and James Gibbs.

A more comprehensive and more influential publication than all these wasIsaa< Ware's A Complete Body ot Architecture (1756) dealing with terms and

Broad Street, Ludlow, Shropshire

This memorable street with its

cobbled slope is steeped in the

serenity which unites any eighteenth-

century row of houses even though

they are ot different dates and vary in

detail. The houses at the end of this

row, set back behind white railings,

display the steep roots, dormers andcharacteristic doorways off. 1700.

Neither of these facades is perfectly

symmetrical, probably because space

did not permit of double fronts. Thenext house has the quoins ot rubbedbrick of a deeper colour than the rest

ot the tacade and the sash windowsset flush with the external face of the

wall which marked the Queen Anneand early Georgian period. Its

neighbour exhibits a doorcase with

,1 broken entablature and triangular

pediment framing the fanlight, whichdates it about 1750: the windows are

slightly recessed in accordance with a

London building regulation of 1708

affecting country districts considerably

later. The house nearest the camerais distinguished by Venetian windowson all its floors, a legacy from the

Palladians and a feature made popular

by Adam 111 the late eighteenth

century.

- 1 1

Page 217: The English House Through Seven Centuries

u

r>srfi-

materials, the siting of the building, foundations, drainage, the shell of the house,

the ornament, the use of the Orders, proportion and design. According to the

author of the Life ofNollekens,). T. Smith, who was told the story by Nollekens's

father, Ware was a poor sickly little chimney sweep who attracted the attention

of a 'gentleman of considerable taste and fortune', who happened to be passing

one morning when the child was amusing himself by drawing a Whitehall

street-front upon the building itself with a piece of chalk. The gentleman was so

interested that he purchased the rest of the boy's time, educated him, sent him to

Italy and upon his return employed him and introduced him to his friends as an

architect. This generous patron may have been Lord Burlington himself; in

any case Ware was closely connected with the Palladians. His best-known workwas Chesterfield House, now demolished, and he designed No. 5 Bloomsbury

Square in London for his own use. But it is upon his book, tedious reading though

it is in parts, that Ware's tame rests. It was instrumental in forming the taste of

builders in remote counties and in helping to inculcate the Palladian principles of

design and building that determined the marvellously harmonious domestic style

of the eighteenth century. Ware's thorough exposition of these principles

remained a standard textbook until the early nineteenth century, and the matter

in it was repeated in a number of other manuals tor village craftsmen such as

215

Page 218: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Pallant House, Chichester, Sussex,

and (left) Rutland Lodge, Petersham.

Surrey (since gutted by fire)

Pallant House was built inf. 1 712 for

Henry Peckham, whose crest showedan ostrich, which may have

determined the form of the birds on

the gatepiers, though they have been

called dodos and even swans. This

brick house displays all the familiar

characteristics of the early Georgian

style: a hipped and dormered roof

half hidden behind a brick parapet

varied by recessed panels, symmetrical

chimney-stacks, bold quoins marking

the angles of the house and the

projecting centre, sashed windowsof the same height on both floors,

basement offices and a broad

doorway flanked by Corinthian

columns and crowned by a

segmental pediment. Rutland House,

which was built in 1660 and altered

c. 1720, is a fine and more modest

version of the style seen at ClandonPark, in which an attic storey is

added above the modillioned cornice,

continuing the plane ot the facade

upwards and finishing with a

parapet. The tall, handsome doorcase-

shows the unusual design of Doric

pilasters against a rusticated

background.

Page 219: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Clarence House, Thaxted, Essex

This house dates from about the sameas Rutland House, c. 171 8, according

to the information on a rainwater

head, and presents a different but

equally characteristic early Georgianfacade to the street. The windows are

segmental headed and are furnished

with large keystones in the stone

that sometimes took the place ofrubbed brick for dressings. Thedoorway, again with a segmental

pediment, is based on the Corinthian

Order, common at this time. Theentablature curves gracefully in the

middle, a form also associated withthis period. Although there is noeaves-cornice, the parapet, whichhad come into general use even in the

country by the second decade of the

century, does little to mask a

traditional roof and dormers. Thesedormers are also typical of their

decade in that they are alternatively

triangular and segmental and are

fitted with casements instead ofsashes.

those by William Pain, 'architect and joiner', whose Builder's Golden Rule (178 1)

and The British Palladia (1786) once more set out the details of the Orders, the

proportions of elevations and the use ofornament according to the Italian master.

The smaller houses built according to these textbooks and the Palladian rules

follow the same of development as their more stately contemporaries, the essen-

tially classical design becoming lighter, more elegant, flatter and simpler towards

the end of the century. But owing to the slow rate of change in fashion in manycountry districts, it is seldom possible to date a small Georgian house accurately

from its elevations alone. The so-called Great House in the corner of the Market

Place, Lavenham, for instance, is late Georgian according to the Greek Doric

doorway and thin glazing bars, but the steep pitch of the hipped roof suggests the

Queen Anne period. The house might have been built then and altered later,

or the local wheelwright, working in the last quarter of the eighteenth century,

may have constructed the roof in the earlier style. A strong under-current of

traditional craftsmanship, adjusted and modified to suit the ever-changing

details of fashion, yet always controlled by classical laws of proportion, produced

a distinctive, insular, vital style, always in a state of flux, never stereotyped yet

immediately recognizable.

Of the recognizable characteristics of the Georgian house, the foremost are

the symmetry of the facade and the sense of balance and repose imparted by well-

placed windows of exactly the right proportions. The typical elevation shows a

central entrance and two principal floors with an attic and the basement which

had been introduced in Elizabethan times. Sometimes in streets where space did

not allow for the double front, semi-detached houses are combined to present a

symmetrical facade, with the two entrances centrally placed beneath a single

pediment, as in Upper Cheyne Row, Chelsea. The steep, truncated pyramidal

roof of the late Stuart period, which tended to counteract the classical aspect of

the elevation, was now half-hidden by a parapet with a cornice of brick, or later

of stucco. The practical reason for this was the vulnerability to fire of the pro-

217

Page 220: The English House Through Seven Centuries

*r~H

minent wooden eaves cornices which were such a noticeable feature of late

seventeenth-century houses, and which were prohibited in London by a statute

of 1707. Visually the parapet gave more prominence to the facade; and this

emphasis was still more marked when, by about 1720, the square block of the

house was covered by two parallel roofs of gentle pitch which from the groundwere completely hidden by the parapet. Both types of parapeted roof can be

seen 111 North Brink. Wisbech.

Though always in classical dress and always reticent, the aspect of these

Georgian facades is extraordinarily diverse. Very often the parapet is no morethan a simple cornice concealing nothing of the attic dormers; sometimes the

tops of the dormers peer over a higher parapet; sometimes, following Leoni's

example at ( )landon Park, a parapeted and pedimented attic storey continues the

plane of the facade upwards above the cornice, as at Rutland House. Petersham,

1 requently the house soars up, as in many Dublin terraces and as at 1 ligh House.

Bawdsey, with no articulation on its plain cliff-like front other than the openings.

Often, in country districts, it stands fatly, of comfortable height, perhaps withneither basement nor attic. Sometimes tall pilasters frame or enliven the facade

instead of the more usual stone or brick coins, seen at the well-known Pallant

1 louse, ( hit luster.

Palladian motifs are handled with the most delightful freedom and are foundin the most remote and unlikely places An arched, rusticated doorwa) with a

( )rmsby 1 [all, Lincolnshire

( )rmsby \\ as designed by |ames Paine

in 1 752- 5. Paine began as .1

Burlingtonian and die Lincolnshire

house shows Palladian influence,

though n is quite individual. I he

south front, facing the camera, \\ as

not intentionally asymmetrical: the

( anted bay \\ as the centre of Painc's

composition and the extension

upsetting its balance dates fromI lie house of 1 ~s s w .is boldly

animated, .is now . by its central bay,

while the side-baysjutting north and

south took the place of wings. Agiant pediment emphasized the

Palladian aspect of the house and

< outlasted w ith the se\ entv of thewalls and the three-light windowsunder blank arches. The RomanDori( porch was part ol the later

addition, perhaps by John ( arr

218

Page 221: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Triumph oj the Orders

Red House, Withersdale Street.

Suffolk

In this rustic, mid-Georgian version

of the Palladian ideal, the parapet

only half conceals a steep, pantile

roof, the curving walls, pierced byround-arched doors echoing the

round-headed window above the

entrance, play the part of wings, and

behind the balanced, one-room-thick

block and at right-angles to it is part

of an older, traditional house. Thefacade, like that of most houses of the

mid eighteenth century, is no longer

enlivened by quoins but has becomea blank expanse, relieved only bythe openings, and classical detail is

limited to the doorcase.

heavy keystone, like the entrance Kent designed for Lady Isabella Finch's house

in Berkeley Square, looks out on the churchyard at Stamford; central Venetian

windows with Tuscan porches on either side of them grace the small limestone

village of Winster, Derbyshire, in a design embracing two houses. Pilasters rise

from a frieze running above the ground floor and Ionic columns frame the

central, triangular-headed light of the first-floor Palladian window. Between the

pedestals of these columns runs a row of crude little balusters, an arrangement

peculiar to the local builder of this engaging elevation, which he repeats, with a

variation in the shape of the balusters, beneath the plain rectangular windows.

At Bradford on Avon open triangular pediments emphasize the windows of the

important first floor of a seven-bayed house with a massively rusticated door,

while adjoining it the central window of a facade articulated by a bold cornice

above each floor and by an emphatic, pedimented, pillared doorway, is distin-

guished by a segmental pediment. At Withersdale Street, Suffolk, the Palladian

theme of the central block with wings is echoed by curving screen walls on either

side of the facade, each pierced by an arched door and terminating in brick, ball-

topped piers. And at Clare in the same county this same theme takes the form of a

Georgian front added to a sixteenth-century house with screen walls terminating

in tiny pavilions with round-headed doors and bulls-eye openings above square-

headed windows. At Burford, Gloucestershire, a seventeenth-century cottage

hides an oddly placed dormer and a detached chimney-shaft behind a Georgian

219

Page 222: The English House Through Seven Centuries

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Page 223: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Cuvus, Bath, Somerset (opposite),

and (right) The Crescent. Buxton,Derbyshire

The monumental Circus dates from

[754.-8 and was the last great workof the elder John Wood, who died

in the year it was begun. It was the

first circus to be built in England,

and when it was new it stood

isolated like a Roman circus and the

space it enclosed w as paved tor

spectacles and tournaments. Thedesign was intended to emphasize

the shape and unity of the Circus,

for the elaborately ornamentedarchitraves are continuous and the

powerful rhythm of the three tiers of

coupled columns, Tuscan, Ionic andCorinthian, is broken only wherethree streets enter the Circus. If the

house has become externally a

repeating unit in one great palatial

facade, it remains internally an

individual composition. There is nouniformity behind these splendid

facades: they conceal rooms differing

widely in number, shape, size and

decoration.

The waters of Buxton, like those ofBath, were known to the Romans,and in about 1780 the fifth Duke ofDevonshire conceived the idea offollowing the example of Bath andreviving the use of the springs. JohnCarr's Crescent was thus built close to

St Anne's Well and, based on a moreexact classical knowledge than the

Bath Circus, consciously7 and nobly,

it rather prosaically, reflected the

spirit of antiquity.

af~"""SS

parapeted front with heavy quoins and classically arched windows with big key-

stones.

Apart from a vivid expression of the Palladian conception in individual

houses, there is a further variation on the theme in the terrace. Terrace houses, as

we have seen, existed at least as early as the sixteenth century and the brand of

terrace house built by Barbon has already been discussed. But the terrace imagined

as one grand architectural composition, not as a row of individual or even repeat-

ing units, is the creation of the eighteenth century. The square had already comeinto existence as the nucleus of planned improvements in towns. Inigo Jones's

Covent Garden piazza, the only instance before Wood's achievements at Bath

of a consistent scheme in terrace design, had been followed by Bloomsbury

Square, St James' Square, Red Lion Square and Soho Square. But there had been

nothing like the stupendous plan by John Wood the Elder for Bath. The real

precursor of his grandiloquent conception was the ancient Roman city of Bath,

and one of the most fascinating episodes in this story of repeating patterns is the

building of Palladian Bath above the actual ruins of classical antiquity celebrated

by the Saxon poet. Wood's conscious intent was to revive the splendours of

Aquae Sulis. The Circus, indeed, the earliest of its kind in England, was directly

based on the design of the Roman circus and has been compared by Sir John

Summerson to the Colosseum. Wood even intended the enclosure to be used for

an 'Exhibition of Sports'. Queen Square is so designed that each of its ranges is seen

as a single palatial composition articulated by attached columns with a central

pediment spanning five bays.

At the time of Wood's death, only Queen Square and the Circus were com-

pleted. His son built a whole quarter round them, crowning his father's work

221

Page 224: The English House Through Seven Centuries

with the noble, monumental sweep of the Royal Crescent (1757-65), in whichthe great elliptical terrace is treated as a single composition facing a grassy openspace like one vast Palladian mansion. The sonorous and magnificent curve of the

Crescent is set in momentum by a hundred giant Ionic columns rising above a

completely plain ground floor and reducing the incidence of door and windowto faint shadows of these usually forceful elements in the Georgian facade.

The vision of the terrace as a monumental facade persisted well into the

nineteenth century. The grand crescent at Buxton by John Cart of York, built

less than ten years atter Wood's Royal Crescent, is a more scholarly interpretation

of the classical mode, reflecting the antiquarian interests of the second half of the

eighteenth century. The ground floor is taken up by a rusticated arcade fromwhich Roman Doric pilasters rise to support a metope frieze, deep cornice and

balustraded parapet. Robert Adam's Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, has already

been mentioned. Bedford Square, London, perhaps bv Thomas Lcvcrton. the

son of a builder of Woodford. Essex, is a handsome version of the Adam manner;each side is treated as a single composition with a pediinented. stuccoed and

pilastered centre bay. The broadly spaced vermiculated rustications ot the wide-

arched doorways, the bearded faces on the keystones and the capitals of the

pilasters appear to be made of stone but are fashioned of a species ot terracotta,

the famous Coade Stone, the precise composition of which remains .1 mystery.

It was manufactured at Lambeth from about 1770 when, as Mrs Esdaile revealed

111 two articles in Architect and Building News, published in 1940, Mrs Eleanor

Page 225: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Triumph of the Orders

Charlotte Square, Edinburgh

By comparison with the Circus and

the Crescent shown on the preceding

pages, Robert Adam's Edinburgh

terrace is strikingly elegant and even

gay. Yet it is conceived in the

PalladJan tradition and, carried out mstone instead of brick and stucco,

it has a tar greater solidity than the

house shown on page 20s. It was in

1 79 1, towards the end of his lite, that

Adam was invited by the Edinburgh

Town Council to design the Square

as part of the scheme tor the NewTown. It differs trom the grand

terrace compositions ot the earlier

Palladians in detail, 111 its greater

simplicity and in the lightness ot its

ornament - circular panels and

festoons - rather than form. It is

treated as a single pedimented

facade, though the relentless rhythmof both the Bath Circus and the

Buxton Crescent is here replaced bya composition like that ot a grandiose

mansion with a central feature andprojecting wings. Charlotte Square

is almost unique 111 retaining its

original lamp standards with their

pretty glass bowls.

Coade, 'the daughter of the person who discovered the composition', took over

an unprofitable business concerned with the production of artificial stone. UnderMrs Coade's skilful management and with the aid of a young sculptor, JohnBacon, the business prospered so well that most of the architectural ornament in

the West End of London, in the neighbouring counties and even farther afield,

came from the Lambeth factory. Excellent and durable as it proved to be, CoadeStone was a fake material and furthermore the ornaments made of it were mass

produced. The rustications, keystones, mouldings and capitals of Bedford Square

occur in other places in London, in Mansfield Street, Devonshire Street and

Harley Street. They were chosen from a pattern book instead of being designed

for a specific purpose in an individual setting, and, already breathing the air of

make-believe and standardization which together with other influences were

eventually to destroy the house as a work ot art, they mark a definite decline from

Burhngtonian principles.

Among later interpretations of the terrace composition, the east side of

Mecklcnburgh Square, London, by Joseph Kay, with a stuccoed central feature

with Ionic pilasters, is in the same tradition as the work of the Woods, but with all

the grandeur and solidity changed to prettiness. At Wilmington Square, a

version of the Adam style with a central pedimented feature and stuccoed ground

floor with mock rustications, the design, though well conceived as a whole,

betrays its late date by the close spacing and mean proportions ot the openings.

When, as so often happens, the facade of the Georgian house is quite plain, the

success of the design depends very largely on the character and disposition ot the

door and windows. From the time of Queen Anne the double hung sash was an

essential feature of the classical elevation. At first the upper sash was fixed, and in

cottages it was rare for both sashes to lift even as late as the nineteenth century.

Many examples survive all over the country of cottage windows with fixed

upper sashes. The lower half when raised is kept at various heights by means of a

series of notches and a catch to hook into them. The form of sash suspended by

a weight and line and moving over a pulley with a groove for the weight in the

solid, moulded frame is thought to be of Dutch origin. This was followed by the

box frame containing counter-weights attached to cords for raising and lowering

both sashes, and towards the end of the eighteenth century sash fasteners, attached

to the meeting rails, were invented.

The proportions ot these tall sash windows were at first based on those of the

double square, and the windows were of the same height on each floor, though

occasionally the upper windows might be shorter as at Creech Grange, Dorset,

where a Palladian front was added to the family seat of Sir Thomas Bond,

speculative builder, of Bond Street, by Francis Cartwnght in about 1740. The

attic windows, when they occurred in the same plane as the ground and first

floors were invariably shorter and usually square as at Clandon Park, thus effec-

tively preventing the composition from taking on a predominantly vertical

aspect. In later houses the windows were graduated in height : in mansions, where

the reception-rooms were on the first floor, they were marked by the tallest

windows, but in smaller houses the ground-floor openings were the tallest. The

window heads might be semicircular or straight, and although the latter were

most commonly seen in the individual small house throughout the century,

different rhythms were imparted to facades by diverse arrangements of the two

types, especially in terrace architecture. The window above the entrance was

often distinguished by special treatment; it might be a three-light Venetian or a

round-headed window in contrast to its neighbour, or the opening might be

treated as an alcove for sculpture. Bow windows, descendants ot the oriel,

became common about the middle of the century and assumed many tonus. They

might sweep round in a gentle curve, they might project as half-hexagons as 111

houses at Saffron Walden, Newport and Tenterden; sometimes they were

corbelled out like the true oriel and sometimes they were adorned with columns

223

Page 226: The English House Through Seven Centuries

§£No. 72 High Street, Saffron Walden.Essex

The rusticated brick quoins, the

doorway flanked by Doric brick

pilasters and the panelled parapet

indicate an early Georgian date for

this facade, but as bay windows did

not become popular until about the

middle of the eighteenth century,

these early features are probably dueto the persistance of outmoded details

in a country district. The fine cluster

of tall, diagonally set chimney-shafts

rising from a not quite central

position belongs to the seventeenth

century, and the front of this house is

one among countless Georgian facades

which have been added to an older

structure without being organically

related to it. The traditional

seventeenth-century timber-framed

house behind this classical composi-tion was built around the massive

internal stack.

and pilasters. The window-sills of some houses are emphasized by brick aprons,

as in examples at Ludlow and Harleston, and occasionally the head of the windowmay be accentuated by decorated brickwork. The openings of a house at

Ampthill. for instance, are surmounted by wavy pelmets ot brick constructed

and designed with incredible ingenuity.

The broad wooden frames of late Stuart windows were, as we have seen, set

flush with the outside face of the wall, but a building regulation of 1708, moti-

vated like the statute prohibiting wooden eaves cornices by fear of fire, enacted

that frames should be set back four inches. But this law did not arfect country

districts until towards the end of the century, when another statute of 1774 led to

the concealing of all the boxing of sash windows in the bnck-work. By this time.

the fat glazing bars of Stuart and early Georgian houses had become thin. Theglazing bars of Wren's time were two inches thick; by 1820 they were only half

an inch thick. White-painted window trames containing a white grill of from

twelve to as many as twenty-four panes contrast with the warm red brick in

which they are set in the facade, which in our imaginations is most typical of the

Georgian house; and which, though its formal source is in classical antiquity andPalladio. is so utterly unlike either, combining them with a vernacular tradition

which was in itself a guarantee that the academic formulas of the textbooks

would seldom produce sterility. The white paint associated with Georgian houses

was first used not for aesthetic but for practical reasons. Oak had become even

scarcer in the eighteenth century than it had been in the previous period, but nowthat the timber-tramed house had become obsolete there was no need for woodof such great strength and softwood was imported from Scandinavia. Althoughthis was easily worked it could not withstand the moist English climate like oak.

which hardened with age and exposure. Oil paint had been used bv artists since

the late fifteenth century, but it was only now that scientists discovered that it

could serve as .a protective skin on the surface of wood. Thev experimented with

lead oxide applied with an oil media, and factories for the manufacture of lead

oxide were opened along the I hames estuary. I bus the painted timber o\ both

the windows and door ot the Georgian house was invariably white, for although

the masons in some ot the stone regions carried out the whole facade composition

in stone, the doorw ays ot the vast majority o\ lessor Georgian houses were chief!)

ot wood, no matter where thev were situated.

Page 227: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Triumph of the Orders

The door frame of the Georgian house is its most individual feature, and

nowhere else is the local builder's fertility ofinvention more eloquently displayed.

The door, above all, was the expression of his mastery of the fashionable classical

style, and of his client's up-to-dateness. If the owner of a sixteenth- or seven-

teenth-century outmoded hall house could not afford to have it refaced, he wouldat least indulge in a pilastered and pedimented doorcase, and even the cottage

was embellished by a miniature, simplified version of the temple portico.

Although the proportions for external doorways were laid down in the pattern

books as a double square, the heights were generally more than twice the width

of openings, and designers permitted themselves every degree of latitude in their

interpretation of details.

It has already been remarked that at the close of the seventeenth century the

most prominent feature of the door was the projecting hood carried on elabor-

ately carved brackets. Country builders were still devising new variations on this

theme at the end of the last century and a few miserably attenuated and timid

ghosts of the idea can still be seen on some of the standardized brick boxes of

today. But in the centres of fashion the projecting hood gave way in the early

Georgian period to the pedimented entablature on engaged columns or pilasters.

The pediment was either curved, as at Pallant House, Chichester, and 3 High

Street, Harleston, or triangular, as at 42 West Street, Harwich. The compositions

are based on one ofthe Orders ; the Corinthian in the earlier part of the eighteenth

century followed by a predilection for Renaissance Ionic, and even more for

Doric in the middle and later years of the period. The Greek Ionic Order with fat

columns and a heavy entablature, became popular in the years following the

Napoleonic Wars. But no doorway exactly repeats another, and the endless,

unexpected ways in which column, capital, abacus, entablature and pediment

have been harmonized and decorated by individual craftsmen in every part of the

country are among the sharpest of the many pleasures to be derived from the

English vernacular. Scarcely ever does one come upon a doorway which exactly

reproduces an example in one of the pattern books. The Tuscan door in Langley's

Builder's Jewel has materialized between two bulging bays in Saffron WaldenHigh Street, but even here the proportions of the door at the head of a flight of

Doorway, 74 High Street, Saffron

Walden, Essex

This doorway, carried out in painted

wood, as were most Georgian door-ways, even in stone districts, showshow a country craftsman used one of

the most popular of the many pattern

books which established classical

principles of design in every district.

It is an interpretation of the Tuscandoor (reproduced alongside it) fromBatty Langley's Builder's Jewel (1741).

225

Page 228: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Triumph ofthe Orders

steps are slightly drawn out to give more breathing-space to the windows. The

same door, but with a flat head instead of a pediment and with an ornamental

keystone added, graces Cromwell House, Highgate. The metopes between the

tnglyphs of a fine Doric doorcase at Newport, Essex, are suddenly seen to be

carved with a pattern common in the Perpendicular period, while the under-side

of the nobly proportioned pediment displays an interlacing design popular in

the seventeenth century. And this is not a case ofGothic Revival but of a craftsman

working in a continuing tradition. The proportions of the architrave and frieze

of a doorway at King's Lynn have been fantastically elongated to make room for

the fanlight beneath the cornice. In the entrance of a house at Ampthill there is no

architrave at all, and the frieze, with its decorative swags, rests directly on the

abaci of the columns. Among the many enchanting doorways in Woodbndge,Suffolk, that ofthe White House, Market Hill, combines Adam ingredients, finely

fluted columns, bell-shaped capitals delicately carved with rosettes and palm

leaves, and a frieze of flowing arabesques in a precise, linear composition which

looks as though it might have served as a model for the portico of a palace in a

Pollock toy theatre set. The proportions of a door at Winchester, while perfectly

according with the scale of the house, resemble those of Alice after she had eaten

the little cake in the glass box, the case having been made to enclose a flight of

four steps for which there was no room in the unusually narrow street. Panelled

columns adorn a distinguished Saffron Walden doorway, in which a fanlight

occupies the exaggeratedly tall frieze and the whole pedimented design stands

out in low relief from a framework slightly larger and of the same shape as itself,

giving this country doorway an odd effect of movement reminiscent of, and

perhaps suggested by, Palladio's brilliant use of pedimented shapes one behind

the other in II Redentore. A shallow keystoned arch, repeating the semicircle ot

the fanlight, encloses the entrance, the arch springing from pilasters of exactly

the same height as the cornice, and the space between the keystone and the apex

of the pediment balancing that between cornice and architrave, thus imparting

a sense ofrepose and harmony to the composition despite the unusual proportions

of the doorcase.

Sometimes the columns of a doorway are free-standing and carry a porch roof,

pedimented as at the Mill House, West Deeping, Lincolnshire, or flat-headed, as

in a house at Woodbridge, where the smooth, semicircular sweep of the porch

recalls Roman circular temples and plain round columns and square pilasters are

surprisingly associated with rich composite capitals strangely and clumsily repeat-

ing in this little East Anglian town those of the Arch of Titus.

Instead of the complete entablature, doorways of the mid eighteenth century

and later very often exhibit a broken entablature and a triangular pediment, thus

providing a convenient setting for the fanlight which became an increasingly

conspicuous feature of the door. Where the entablature is complete and its pro-

portions have not, as at Saffron Walden and King's Lynn, been adjusted to

contain the fanlight, the two small top panels in the door itself are sometimesreplaced by glass, as at Marston House, Woodbridge. The much commonerarched fanlights lent themselves to radiating designs, scalloped, fretted or inter-

laced, describing a bold white flourish or suspended like a cobweb against the

clear glass. The more wiry patterns are of cast iron instead of wood, a form ot

window tracery invented by W. Purdon, the architect ot baton Hall. Cheshire.

The doors of entrances with semicircular fanlights were usually placed in arched

openings. In late Georgian and early nineteenth-century houses, arched door-

ways frequently occur which have neither flanking columns nor entablatures, .is

at Long Sutton. Lincolnshire, and Wilmington Square, London. Robert Adampopularized a type of roundheaded door, displaying an enormous segmental

fanlight spanning the door and two windows on either side ot it. pilasters separat-

ing the door opening from the side-lights. This arrangement derived fromPalladio and supports the contention that Adam's art is .1 development ot

Variety in the treatment of doorways

The remarkable diversity of design

based on free interpretations ot the

Orders found in Georgian doorwaysof painted wood is only meagrelyrepresented by this selection.

Top roir: At Woodbridge, Suffolk

(left), a semicircular porch shelters

three steps of Portland stone, the

lower of which is rounded, and an

arched doorway with a semicircular

fanlight. In the narrow doorway at

Winchester next to it (centre), the

door is at the top of three steps set

back from the external wall so that

the flanking columns and brokenentablature form a porch. A square-

headed, late eighteenth-century Doric

porch at Ampthill, Bedfordshire

(right), is adcrned with sculptured

festoons in the Adam style by GeorgeGarrard, a.r.a.

Middle row. The two early Georgian

doorways in Lawrence Street.

Chelsea (left), have been groupedunder one large pedimented hood onhandsome carved brackets in order to

make a symmetrical composition ot

the two facades. The two top panels

of the door have been replaced byglass at Woodbridge, Suffolk (centre),

to admit light to the hall in an

exceptionally pretty composition ot

c. 1770 showing Adam influence. Thebrass knocker is as typical of the

period as the urn-shaped examples onthe Chelsea doors. At Goudhurst,

Kent (right), the Doric doorway with

a broken entablature enclosing a semi-

circular fanlight represents a type

dating from c. 1750-80 to be seen in

many old towns.

Bottom rou i

: The two doorways in

Menon Square, Dublin (left . showan Irish variant on the Venetian door-way popularized by Adam, with side-

windows and a large tanhght

spanning both door and windows, as

at Bedford Square. London (right). In

the Dublin examples the fanlights are

the width of the doors and are

enclosed by delicately ornamentedstucco arches springing from the

architrave ot the pilasters flanking the

side-windows At Bedford Square the

door opening is not separated bvpilasters from the side-openings, andthe whole composition is trained byintermittent vermiculated rustication

m Coade stone [set page 2ij) Thedoor .a 1 ong Sutton (centre is of the

round-headed type, without flanking

pillars and entablature, which becamepopular in the late eighteenth andearly nineteenth centuries. Thedecorative panelling of this door stems

from a style introduced b) Sir JohnSoane at the dose ofthe eighteenth

centurs

226

Page 229: The English House Through Seven Centuries
Page 230: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Triumph of the Orders

Palladianism rather rhan a reaction against it. The gallery arcades of the Basilica

at Vicenza consist of arches incorporating side-openings intended to reduce the

uncomfortable width of the arches which had been conditioned by the propor-

tions of the arches of an earlier building behind the facade. The device enabled

Palladio to avoid an opening of disproportionate width without losing light. Theapplication of this motif to the English domestic doorway in the form of a huge

fanlight and side-windows brought much more light into the entrance hall than

the fanlight, which was no wider than the door itself. The most elegant and richly

diverse examples of this type of door are to be seen in Dublin, where it was

almost exclusively preferred and where it forms the principal adornment ofmanyan excessively austere and reticent facade.

The liveliness of porch and doorcase design persisted in country districts long

after domestic architecture had become rigidly academic, confused in style or

purely utilitarian. All materials, as we shall see, were later brought into play, even

corrugated iron, and some of the most charming interpretations of changing

fashion were carried out in treillage.

The chief material tor the Georgian house in all parts ot England, except the

stone districts, and it even invaded those on occasion, was brick, which was

handled with extreme sensitivity and resourcefulness. In the early part ot the

period, bricks were generally about two and a halt inches thick, though there-

were always exceptions. A substantial increase in dimensions was produced by

a series of duties imposed from 1784 onwards and abolished only in 1850,

because the tax on a large brick was the same as the tax on a small one. The same

duties encouraged the use of brick tiles, also called mathematical tiles, which

were made both as headers and stretchers, bedded in mortar and hung in the

manner of Flemish bond so as to be in some cases almost indistinguishable from

brick walling. In the south-east counties the custom of glazing these tiles pro-

duced the gleaming, blackberry-coloured facades that so arrest the eye in someof the streets and terraces of Lewes and Brighton.

Bricks varied in colour as much in the eighteenth century as they had done twohundred years previously, and it the moulded and carved work was less flam-

boyant than in the Tudor and Elizabethan periods, it was no less skilful. A hand-

some house in Woodbridge with an Ionic door and Kentian frieze is embellished

with a moulded cornice, panels beneath the windows and a frame round the

window immediately over the entrance: the brick pelmets at Ampthill have been

mentioned earlier. Flared headers often make a chequcrboard design of the

facade. Flint is combined with brick in some regions, especially in East Anglia,

to make entertaining patterns like those on the gable wall ofa cottage at Hingham.Norfolk, where diamonds and hexagons .ire outlined in almost poppy-red brick

and filled, the diamonds with kidney cobbles, the hexagons with flints knapped

to show their jet hearts. Many a handsome house in Norfolk, Suffolk and north-

west Essex was built wholly of flint during this period. Flint House. Stoke byClare, a square block with curving screen walls on either side of the facade,

displays a tweedy-textured fabric of closely set but roughly knapped small flints

varied by a parapet and quoins ^[ yellow brick and by vertical and horizontal

rows of bricks set flush with the flint and marking the positions occupied in

houses of rather earlier date and of other materials by cornices and b\ pilasters

defining the individual bays. Another striking flint house at Mundford, Norfolk,

is furnished with quoins and window frames of brick and with a broad, white-

painted, square-headed porch on Iiwan columns. The Hints here are knappedand brilliantly black, wing for lustre with the roof of the ^l.ucd pantiles often

seen in this part of the country.

Although the half-timbered style w as outmoded before the eighteenth century

began, in regions such .is East Anglia and Kent where, owing to the lack of other

materials, the tradition had flourished most vigorously, main small houses and

cottages were still built with a wooden frame, usually now ofimported deal. The

Page 231: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Georgian style m local dress

The white-painted weatherboardingwhich covers the timber-framing of

the house at Tenterden, Kent (left),

has been grooved to mutate stone,

which by the end of the eighteenth

century had replaced brick as the

most fashionable building material.

At Stoke-by-Clare, Suffolk (right),

the walls are of flint, both rough andknapped, patterned with yellow brick

giving a two-dimensional suggestion

of the elements of Palladian design.

frame was, of course, quite differently constructed from that of the hall house.

The studs were set much more closely to carry an outer sheathing of plaster, tiles

or clapboard, and there was no infilling. Internal partitions are still constructed

in this fashion today.

There is no more delightful version of the Georgian style than the wood-tramed, clapboarded houses of south-eastern England, particularly oi Kent,

where in nearly every town and village, at Meopham and Ightam, at Sandhurst.

Hawkhurst, Goudhurst, Cranbrooke, Rolvenden, Tenterden, Biddenden and

Brenchley, trim, symmetrical structures front the high streets with a distinctly

nautical air, or stand like dulls' houses at the end of brick paths behind a blaze of

cottage flowers, their white paint and horizontal lines contrasting with the rose-

red brick and tile ot their neighbours. Occasionally at the end of the eighteenth

century, when stone was the most fashionable building material and stucco was

being used as imitation stone on the facades of London houses, the weather-

boarding of Kent houses was grooved, as at Tenterden, to give the illusion of

masonry. The effect is of a house in a stage set: the deception does not work,

even from a distance, and remains an amusing curiosity of the carpenter's art. In

many cases the classically proportioned, tile-hung, plastered or clapboarded front

of a house in south-eastern England hides an earlier structure and sometimes the

character of the older house shines through the disguise. The Georgian owner of

a house at Little Common, near Hoo, Sussex, added new wings or rebuilt the

existing wings in order to enjoy rooms of greater height and in the correct taste.

The whole front was tile-hung with the low door in its panelled casing centrally

placed. But the steep roof of the original building remained and the line of the

modish parapet of the new front had therefore to be lower in the middle than at

the sides, where it juts up like two giant machiolations, all the more arresting

because, like the angles of the house, they are outlined in white-painted wood.

The design of this house has achieved the symmetry so indispensable to the

Georgian house, but the composition is unique. At the same time, with its tall

wings and low central block, it could be viewed as a late and charming develop-

ment oi the medieval hall house with cross-wings.

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The Triumph of the Orders

If the restrained facades of Georgian houses are enlivened by the conspicuous

treatment of the door, the entrance is given yet more importance by the approach

through wrought-iron gates and, in the case oflarger houses, the lodges. The piers

and gates of an eighteenth-century house are the successors of the Elizabethan

and Jacobean gatehouses and spring from the same desire to emphasize the

entrance. Just as in Italy or in the wilds of Sicily the noblest piers may rise abruptly

in the landscape to announce the approach to some humble farm, so in Britain

the grandest gates sometimes distinguish the most modest dwelling. At Willersly.

Gloucestershire, two enormous piers that would look more at home in a Mediter-

ranean land than in this region consecrated more than any other to a non-classical

style, dwarf the toy-like facade they introduce. And even it a town house is set

back only a foot or two trom the street, it cannot dispense with these sentinels

and symbols of consequence.

The commonest type of pier is square, perhaps rusticated, panelled or pierced

by a niche and surmounted by a large ball, urn or fabulous, heraldic beast like the

ungainly birds at Chichester or the griffins at Bingham's Melkham. The brick

piers of stoneless regions are frequently stuccoed, as at Cromwell House, High-

gate, and grooved to imitate masonry. The wrought-iron gates supported by the

piers, and the railings, which in town houses enclosed and often still do enclose

the basement area, are among the most outstanding productions of the period.

Iron became popular tor gates, screens and staircases during the last quarter of the

seventeenth century when Jean Tijou settled in England. Under his influence the

simple linear coils and spirals ot medieval smithery gave way to elaborate

Renaissance designs depending on variations in the thickness of the iron bars and

scrolls, on a combination of curved and angular forms and on the introduction

of sheet iron, hammered and modelled into the shapes of foliage, grotesques or

heraldic devices. The gateway ot Fenton House, Hampstead, with its splendid

overthrow, richly illustrates the revolutionary effect of Tijou's example. Veryoften the piers, railings and gate were all of wrought iron, as at Church Row.Hampstead. The massive work of the piers and overthrow of these gates contrasts

with the airy tendrils and curves ot gates made towards the end of the centurv.

Cast-iron railings appeared early in the period and robust, obelisk-topped

balusters of this material enclose the Senate House at Cambridge. But the usual

form ot these railings tor ordinary domestic purposes was extremely simple.

A tremendous and tantastic mustering ot both wrought- and cast-iron railings

adds to the high visual pleasures of Bath. Arrow- or pike-headed and plainlv

barred, they encompass the pavement in front of each house, follow the majestic

surge of each great composition, defensive, throwing the yellow stonework into

relief against the bristling ranks of their black verticals, playing the part of semi-

quavers to the tat brieves of the columns, enhancing even with their striped

shadows the insistent rhythm of the Circus or Crescent. The fine collective effect

of railings ot an even severer character can be seen on the north side of Adam'sCharlotte Square, Edinburgh, where the original lamp standards together with

their glass bowls still survive. Among the more decorative cast-iron designs.

which became increasingly popular and which were chosen from pattern books.

certain motifs, such as the anthemion and pahnette. were especially favoured for

gate design. Some charming gates at Writtle, Lssex. and some piers .it Harwichwith cast-iron shapes set on stucco bases like pieces of modem metal sculpture

show this trend.

The formal character ot the exterior of the Georgian house corresponded in

the smaller .is in the larger mansion to a simple and symmetrical arrangementwithin. I he type ot plan most favoured was four-roomed, two rooms deep oneither side ot the lobby or vestibule and staircase hall; it was symmetrical on everyside and formed a dignified square block, like \\ alden Place. Saffron YX'aldcn.

But often Georgian country houses, like that at Withersdale Street. Suffolk, andlike Chandlers. Harleston, Norfolk, presented a dignified f\^\- to the world.

230

Page 233: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Cast and wrought iron

Cast iron, like Coade stone, was a

substitute material which helped to

weaken the strong sense of the special

qualities of materials which hadpersisted throughout the earlier

Georgian period. It was employed byAdam for the mass production of fan-

lights, but cast-iron railings had

appeared much earlier: they enclosed

the Senate House, Cambridge, in

c. 1730, but this is a rare example. Thepiers, gate and railings at Writtle,

Essex (right), showing the honey-suckle ornament popularized byAdam, are characteristic of thousands

of the cast-iron introductions to late

Georgian and early nineteenth-

century houses which replaced the

noble stone or brick piers and the tall

wrought-iron gates with an elaborate

overthrow of the first half of the

eighteenth century exemplified at

Shepreth, Cambridgeshire (below) in

the fine entrance to Dockwraie'sManor. The ironwork, forged by a

local smith, combines scrolls and the

owner's initial with delicate

naturalistic tendrils and foliage withthe tulip and one of the many early

cultivated varieties of ranunculus,

both popular during the first half ofthe eighteenth century when Dock-wraie's Manor was given a Georgianfront and when the vogue for

wrought iron was at its height.

«M

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The Triumph of the Orders

though they were only one room thick with an unorthodox projection at the

back. The rear of the smallest houses often consisted merely of a lean-to. In the

more ambitious houses pilasters or columns marked the division between the

vestibule and the staircase hall, which were of the same width, forming one large

rectangular room the depth of the house. In town houses, from early Georgian

times onwards, the front and back rooms on the ground floor, and on the first

floor in grander houses, were divided by double doors which could be thrown

open to make one large reception-room. Robert Adam's emphasis on contrast in

the shapes of rooms led to the introduction of curved walls in quite modest

houses, to a vogue for elliptical or semicircular recesses, arched niches and arches

in passages, and to an increased predilection for bow windows. The staircase itselt

usually, in smaller houses, rose in straight flights, but the balusters were lighter

and simpler than in the Stuart period, and the lower end of the handrail otten

swept round in a volute supported by a cluster of balusters. In the early eighteenth

century the customary three balusters to a tread might each be of a different

design, reeded, twisted, or smooth and swelling. Wrought-iron and later cast-

iron balustrades sometimes took the place of wooden balusters in the Georgian

house. There is a graceful staircase of this kind at West Green House, Hampshire.

But nowhere does the combination of wrought iron and mahogany, that

exotic wood associated so specially with the eighteenth century, produce a

more ravishing effect than at Claydon, Buckinghamshire. The pressure of the

lightest foot upon the warmly gleaming stairs, each adorned with intricate inlay,

is accompanied by the rustle ot the delicately fashioned ears ofcorn twisting about

the trellis of the balustrade. A variant on this form of staircase, where one end of

each step is built into the wall, consists of a continuous flight of steps, often of

stone, leading from floor to floor, as at Moccas Court, Herefordshire, by Robert

Adam.

The fireplaces of Georgian houses continued at first to be framed as they had

been in the Stuart period. The shouldered architrave remained in favour and

the projection ot the cornice was exaggerated to form the mantelshelf. In

the morning-room at Peckover House, Wisbech, as well as in the dining- and

drawing-rooms of this house, in the dining-room at Little Haugh Hall, Suffolk,

and in the drawing-room of Langleys, Great Waltham, among many other

examples, the fireplace compositions are what Isaac Ware called 'continuous

chimney pieces' rising to the ceiling, the upper stage of the design enclosing a

mirror or a painting. They are basically like those of the Double Cube Room at

Wilton and like those favoured by Kent, although much more free in design.

Even the few mantelpieces I have mentioned by name suffice to show the

marvellous diversity achieved within the limits of this essentially Palladian con-

vention. At Little Haugh Hall inverted scroll ornaments, a favourite motif in

early Georgian chimney-piece design, are the conspicuous feature, an arrange-

ment which with the voluptuous pendants of flowers on either side of the mirror

sustains the mood ot the Rococo C- and S-shapcd scrolls of the border ot the

plaster ceiling. In the dining room at Wisbech the great open pediment dominates

the structure and the comparative reticence ot the overmantel throws into relief

the extraordinarv delicacy and precision ot the carved ornament of the frieze

and consoles, the curling fronds, the full-blown roses, the cable and egg and dart

enrichments. In the morning room at Peckover 1 louse the overmantel with its

foliated curving pediment is ot' plaster, repeating the shouldered shape ot the

fireplace opening, and the frieze is carved with luxuriant swags on either side ot

a ram's head, a popular motif for Georgian fireplaces, though it occurs moreoften on consoles than friezes At 1 angleys the simple, shouldered opening is

surmounted by a low carved overmantel in the shape ot a 1 Hitch gable, flanked

by inverted scrolls, and this shape is echoed by the tall, strongly moulded plaster

panel which carries this unusual composition up to the lofty height of the ceiling

tneze. An altogether different and equally original conception animates the

The staircase hall, Claydon House,

Buckinghamshire

The old Jacobean house of the

Verneys was modernized by Ralph,

2nd Earl Verney, after he hadsucceeded to Claydon in 1752. The1 erticy Papers disclose that Adam'scollaborator, loseph Rose, wasresponsible for the plasterwork oi the

staircase hall, in which the mouldedreliefs are white and the plaques

Wedgwood blue on pink walls. Thestaircase itself is unique. Thew rought-iron balustrading. with its

bold floriated scrolls and delicate cars

ofcorn, is the most exquisite exampleof a feature which had becomeestablished soon after the middle of

the eighteenth century, though in

important mansions wrought iron

had been favoured for balustrades

since Wren had used it at HamptonCourt. The mahogany stairs them-selves, both risers and treads, are

inlaid with geometrical devices in

woods ot different colour. The hand-

rail no longer, as in earlier staircases,

finishes as a capping to a newel-post.

but sweeps round 111 a bold volute

w Inch is not only echoed but

magnified by the extraordinarv coil

of the last Step

The open door yields .1 glimpse of the

North Hall, m which all the decora-

tion is wood-carved and the work ot

the local craftsman Lightfo.

page 242 tine of the richlv orna-

mented doorcases with its Rococopediment can be seen, and one of the

fantastic niches crowded with

carvings of birds, heads and plant

forms and enclosing .1 statue o( a

negro.

232

Page 235: The English House Through Seven Centuries

233

Page 236: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Chimney-pieces from the dining-

room, West Green House,

Hampshire, and (below) from the

saloon, Honington Hall,

Warwickshire

The panelling at West Green Houseis early Georgian and less boldly

treated than that of the late Stuart

period (page 183). The extremely

graceful chimney-piece shows a type

which made its appearance in QueenAnne's reign. It has a delicately

moulded cornice, a shaped frieze anda perfectly plain architrave. Theoblong panel above the fireplace is

intended for a picture.

In Palladian interiors such as this

apartment at Honington Hall

(c. 1740) the fireplace was surmounted

by a sumptuous overmantel, usually,

as here, a pedimented composition.

The fireplace itself is one of the most

characteristic designs of its period,

with side-pilasters, consoles supporting

the entablature and with a rectangular

tablet charmingly carved with a

classical relief attached to the frieze

and projecting slightly from it. Thestucco garlands adorning the angles ot

the octangonal room recall those at

Mereworth. though they are Rococoin feeling. They have been attributed

to an Anglo-Dane, Charles Stanley.

Page 237: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Chimney-pieces in the drawing-room, Peckover House, Wisbech,Cambridgeshire, and (below) in the

Alabaster Hall, Kedleston, Derbyshire

The plainly designed fireplace of

marbles of varied colours makes an

admirable foil to the arresting Rocococarving of the overmantel, which is

what Isaac Ware called a 'continued

chimney-piece suited to a DrawingRoom' because, unlike a composition

such as that at West Green House(opposite), which ends at shelf level,

it continues up to the ceiling. Thefireplace itself is basically very

similar to that at Honington Hall,

except that the consoles are here

immediately under the cornice. Theauthor of the brilliantly executed,

sparklingly gay and animated over-

mantel is not known, but it is a

superb example of the Rococo style

which, with its C- and S-shaped

curves, its garlands and ribbons,

became popular from about 1740. In

its tendency towards free, asym-metrical design it was opposed to

Palladianism and was one of the

influences which led to the overthrowof the Palladian Rule.

Robert Adam's fireplace at Kedleston

(c. 1760) is an individual interpreta-

tion of the classical pilastered design

with the central plaque. It is

embellished with some favourite

Adam motifs: wheatear drops andfestoons, palmette, honeysuckle andcandlestick ornaments. Adamchimney-pieces were in general of onestorey only, and earlier in his career

Adam had shown a strong bias for

compositions which included sculp-

tured terminal figures. Here statuary

of plaster is set on a base above the

fireplace to form an unusual over-

mantel. The work was carried out by

Joseph Rose, while the fireplace itself

was carved by Michael Henry Spang.

This fireplace is furnished with a

superb free-standing firebasket ofburnished brass and steel, althoughsuch firebaskets had by that time beenousted by the fixed grate with bowedbars and decorated cheeks seen at

Wisbech (above).

"-:©£

Page 238: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Fireplace in a bedroom at Harthill

Hall Farm, Alport, Derbyshire

This delightfully crude version of the

double ogee hob grate was added to a

seventeenth-century opening and is a

country mason's interpretation of the

elegant design shown on the opposite

page.

drawing-room at Peckover House. Above a mantelpiece of different coloured

marbles, with a marble panel occupying the centre of the frieze and marble

consoles under the cornice, two common motifs of the period, is exhibited a

staggering tour de force of the woodcarver's art. A mirror in a frame of rope

pattern is set above the marble head of Aurora, which adorns so many eighteenth-

century chimney-pieces, and the head is flanked by scrolls from which spring

tendrils coiling and proliferating about the sides of the frame and piling them-

selves up on top in a fantastic flourish. Above, at ceiling height, a huge eagle with

outstretched wings is on the point of flight, catching in his beak a festoon of fruit

and flowers and twisting it into loops and bows so that it falls in huge tassels

on either side of the looking-glass.

The richly decorated overmantel is not usually found in minor houses. Gener-

ally a simple arrangement of panels was all that was felt to be necessary above an

opening framed in one of the styles just described. Occasionally the small central

panel in the frieze, which at Wisbech is of variegated marble, displays figures

in relief. Sometimes in the middle of the century the 'continued' mantelpiece was

replaced by a fireplace with a stucco panel above it filled with a figurative or

floral design in plaster, recalling the Elizabethan and Jacobean tradition ot

pictorial plaster overmantels. There is a delightful and elaborate example at

1 [onington I [all, Warwickshire, where a figure composition in relief is enclosed

in a Rococo framework with a broken segmental pediment containing a head.

Marble or alabaster were the most prized materials for the frame of the fire-

place opening with Us entablature, but some were carried out in wood and mlater examples the ornament on these was cist in composition and applied instead

of carved, a practice which reflects the gradual, disquieting trend towards mass

production The chimney-pieces of the last quarter of the century were nearly

always onc-storeved only and showed the influence of Adam in the low relief of

the enrichment and the elegant combinations of the motifs associated with his

style, the anthemion and the palmette, the um and the patera, groups of flutes

and delicate festoons ot wheat-ear and guilloche patterns. The mantelshelf w as

136

Page 239: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Triumph of the Orders

wider and was often supported by engaged or free-standing columns and pilasters,

caryatids or terms.

At the beginning of the Georgian period fireplaces were open and the logs

which were the principal form of fuel were placed on firedogs, and firebacks of

cast iron protected the brickwork, as indeed they had done since the sixteenth

century. The Sussex iron-works produced quantities of these backs with designs

ranging from coats of arms to floral and figure subjects. But when coal super-

seded wood for domestic use, basket grates like those in the dining-room at WestGreen House, Hampshire, were commonly used and these were replaced in later

years by cast-iron grates which filled the whole width of the recess and which

assumed a variety of forms. The grate with the outward-curving bars and

decorated cheeks, like that in the drawing room at Peckovcr House, was a

favourite and practical design, while another popular form for less important

rooms was the hob grate, the hob consisting of a casing ofcast-iron plates on either

side of the grate. The handsome dining-room grate at Peckover House, with its

urn ornament and double ogee-sides, is another characteristic version of the hob

grate, though less usual perhaps than the 'duck's-nest' grate in the form of a double

semi-circle.

The walls ot early Georgian rooms were panelled, though with a lighter effect

than in the late Stuart period. The bold bolection moulding disappeared, panels

were slightly sunk in from the line of the wall, as in the dining-room at Little

Haugh Hall, and the dado rail and cornice were the only emphatic features of the

composition. The panelling, which had chiefly been of oak in the seventeenth

century, unpainted and polished, was now frequently of painted deal, the most

favoured colours being white or dull green. Wood panelling gave way after the

first quarter of the century to plastered walls articulated by plaster panels in plain

or delicately ornamented frames, very often showing the egg and dart motif.

But just as the fireplaces of many a lesser house were sometimes surprisingly

elaborate, so the plastcrwork of walls and ceilings and the carved decoration of

Dining-room fireplace, PeckoverHouse, Wisbech, Cambridgeshire

The character of the precisely carved

ornament of the fine marble chimney-piece with its elaborate consoles

suggests Rococo influence. The hand-some steel grate is a particularly

well-articulated example of the

double ogee hob grate, an alternative

form of the double semicircle of the

'duck's-nest' grate. Many such hobgrates were made at the CarronFoundry in Scotland, which wasstarted in 1759. The bowed fender is

ot hand-sawn, pierced steel, the tongs

and shovel of burnished iron. Thefireplace, equipped with a built-in

grate, fender and fire irons, was the

focal point of a fashionably furnished

room in the late Georgian period.

John Byng, in the TornngtonDiaries (1791), recorded that 'in

summer the grates and fenders arc-

polished up, the tongs, shovel andpoker laid up for the summer'.

237

Page 240: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Dirung-room ceiling, Little HaughHall, Norton, Suffolk

The plasterwork dates from c. 1740,

when Cox Macro (1683-1757),student of medicine at Cambridge and

Leiden and son of a wealthy grocer ot

Bury St Edmunds, was enriching his

house with the finest decoration ofthe period in Suffolk. The design,

with a large centrepiece and a deep

border, is both lighter and more free

than Palladian work, and the inter-

lacing arches of the central feature and

the curves and shells of the border

reflect both the Gothic and Rococotaste of the mid Georgian period. Theartist was a Mr Burrough, andNorman Scarfe has discovered a

reterence to him in a letter to CoxMacro from Sir James Burrough(168 1 -1 764), the amateur architect

and master of Gonville and Caius

College, Cambridge, which suggests

that the two men may have been

related.

doorheads and openings were occasionally of a splendour out of all proportion

to the size and importance of the building. No one would associate the reticent

brick front of Little Haugh Hall with the astonishing display of carving on the

top landing, where a niche adorned with trails of flowers suspended from a mask

is set between reeded Corinthian pilasters supporting a frieze of shells, flowers

and foliage and a great open pediment filled with a vase of roses, and flanked by

doors topped by scrolls and heaped flowers and overhung by ribboned swags.

The sober, unpretentious exterior ot Browston Hall. Suffolk, conceals a not of

Rococo plasterwork, which includes symbolic representations of the Four Ages

of Woman and of the Seasons and a unique relief of a country scene showinglovers, the watery pursuits of swimming, boating and fishing and in the back-

ground a cottage and a round-towered church like the one in the near-by village

of Bclton. At Honington, decorated half a century after the house was built,

stucco figures recalling those made by Artan and Bagutti at Mereworth recline

on the pediments above the doors; mirrors reflecting a coffered ceiling and a

flowing, flowery frieze are framed by luxuriant roses, scrolls, curling acanthus

leaves and Rococo heads; while pendants of flowers, birds and grotesques, evenricher than those it Mereworth, adorn the angles of the room.

It is above all. however, in Dublin that the reticence of the Georgian facade is

most forcefully contrasted with the exuberant plasterwork o\ the interior,

perhaps because the medium '\ associated with Catholicism in the

countries of its origin. Italy, Austria and southern Germany, is peculiarly suited

to the spiritual climate of Ireland. The magnificent flowering of the plasterer's

art m Dublin during the eighteenth century was inspired by the same French

style of Louis XV which influenced so much of the work m England. Theliberating force was that of two brothers Paul and Philip Francini. who came o\ a

Page 241: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Ceiling by Robert West at 56

St Stephen's Green, Dublin

The Rococo tendencies seen at Little

Haugh Hall, and also in the carved

overmantel at Peckover House(page 235), are developed in this

much looser, much more asym-metrical design, which is, however,

combined with astonishingly realistic

detail, especially in the treatment of

the birds, with which West's name is

particularly associated.

The Triumph of the Orders

Forentine family domiciled in France from the end of the sixteenth century. TheFrancinis arrived in Ireland in 1739 to work on the ceiling of the saloon at Carton

House, Co. Wicklow. Before their advent Irish plaster ceilings had been divided

into compartments of heavy static ornament in the earliest Palladian manner.

At Carton a bolder, looser sense of design harmonizes with broadly modelled

figures of gods seated and reclining on clouds, busts of classical poets and tossing

amorini. The native Irish plasterers were quick to visualize the possibilities of this

new, free style and produced some of the most vividly spontaneous, dramatic

and wildly asymmetrical compositions in the whole art of stucco. Among the

most outstanding of these Irish plasterers was Robert West, who was also a

master builder. His work at 56 St Stephen's Green, a house he and his brother

John built for Lord St George, is typical. Brilliant Rococo work, scattered in pale

colours, as if wind-blown, over walls and ceiling, includes figures of the seasons,

precariously balanced in swaying niches and birds everywhere, birds in flight,

birds perching and nesting, clamorous, vigorous and absolutely naturalistic. In

the last quarter of the century this delight in natural forms yielded to the flatter,

colder, more restrained style associated with Adam and most notably exemplified

in Ireland by the work of Michael Stapleton. In the following century in both

England and Ireland this delicate ornament was replaced by large, unbroken

surfaces and the plasterer's art was limited to the production of heavy, degenerate,

repetitious cornices and a huge central ceiling rosette, coarsened still further by

the application of successive coats of whitewash, from which the gas light

depended.

Plasterwork was replaced on the walls of the smaller house by this time bywallpaper, machine manufactured in continuous rolls from about 1830. Painted

papers had been used as wall coverings from at least as early as the first half ol the

Ir-.

.> ,. ^ > ,•*.

''' J&* L

I

6f

m

1.3 /.#

Page 242: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Triumph of the Orders

sixteenth century. An inventory made in 1 536 at the Monastery ofSt Syxborough

on the Isle of Sheppey mentions a set of chamber hangings of painted paper,

while a fragment of block-printed paper dating from the same century was

found in the Master's Lodge, Christ's College, Cambridge. The pattern is large

in scale and adapted from contemporary damask. Two block-printed papers

dating from about 1580 were found early in the present century on the walls of

Borden Hall, Kent, tacked to the filling between the timbers, the designs con-

sisting ot small conventional flowers on brightly coloured grounds. Similar

patterns were used during the seventeenth century, and on some papers the

devices were painted in oils or tempera, sized with gold and then dusted with

powder colour, producing a rather rough texture. Flock papers, in which the

design is printed with an adhesive, then sprinkled with finely cut pieces of silk

or wool to stand out like damask or velvet against the plain background - an

English technique - also made their appearance during the seventeenth century.

Towards the end of that period merchants and missionaries brought back from

China sheets of paper painted with gay designs, and gradually these, made up

into sets for the walls of rooms, became a fashionable though costly form of wall

decoration. As Lady Mary Wortley Montague wrote to her daughter from

Louverne in 1749: 'I had heard of the fame of paper hangings and had some

thought of sending for a suite, but was informed that they were as dear as damask

is here, which put an end to my curiosity.' These Chinese wallpapers were

painted with designs which fell into three categories: landscape, bird and flower

and scenes of domestic life. A characteristic Chinese landscape paper, combining

lofty peaks, pines and rivers, still adorns a room in Ramsbury Manor, Wiltshire.

In the mid eighteenth centuryjohn Baptist Jackson of Battersea was producing

paper imitating stucco as well as what he called 'chiaroscuro' printed papers,

offering such subjects as 'The Appolo of the Belvidere Palace, the Medicean

Venus and other antique statues, landscapes after Salvator Rosa, Claude Lorrain,

views of Venice by Canaletti, copies of all the best painters of the Italian, French

and Flemish Schools, in short every Bird that flies, every Figure that moves uponthe Surface of the Earth, from the Insect to the Human, and every vegetable that

springs from the Ground, whatever is of Art or Nature, may be used for fitting

up and furnishing rooms.' This description, taken from a book published by

Jackson in 1754, is daunting, yet Horace Walpole used some of these papers on his

walls and wrote of them : 'When I gave them the air of barbarous bas reliefs, they

succeeded to a miracle. It is impossible at first sight not to conclude that they

contain the history of Attila or Totila done about the very era.' Jackson's papers

were advertised in the London Evening Post of 8 January 1754 thus: 'The newinvented paper hangings for the ornamenting ofrooms, Screens, andc, are to be

had by the Patentee's direction of Thomas Vincent, Stationer, next door to the

Waxwork in Fleet Street. Note. These new invented paper hangings in Beautv,

Neatness and Cheapness infinitely surpass anything of the like nature hitherto

made use ofIn minor houses, needless to say, papers of a much simpler design than these

were favoured, often a perfectly plain, unpnnted paper was used, blue being the

preferred colour. Marbled and varnished papers were also popular because they

were more durable.

The method of hanging wallpaper bv this tune was to paste it directly on to the

bare wall. Before the middle of the century the paper was pasted on to strips ofcanvas or thick rice paper and then tacked or stuck on to the plaster, a procedure

which superseded .\n earlier method of applying the paper to wooden frames

stretched with canvas and set up over the brick or stone walls. Prior to our owncentury there was seldom any idea of stripping oft" previous papers, and in old

houses .is in the case of that at Harpenden mentioned earlier in this book, as

many as twenty layers of paper have sometimes been found, revealing a wholehistorical sequence ot designs.

240

Page 243: The English House Through Seven Centuries

10

The Gothic andPicturesque

The Rococo extravagances in plaster and carving described in the last chapter were

contrasted with the disciplined and often austere elevations and plans of Georgian

houses. They never actually jeopardize the Palladian framework of these

structures, but in extreme cases, such as the interior of Isaac Ware's Chesterfield

House, now only to be enjoyed in photographs, the arabesques, scrolls and curves

of the Rococo ornament, undulating about the Renaissance forms of doors and

mantelpieces, hint at a reaction against the Classical Order. And when the Rococo

mingles with the Oriental taste, creating a sense of mystery and outlandishness

entirely alien to the Vitruvian Rule, the hint becomes a threat. At Ramsbury, as

in other instances where the Oriental fashion is expressed by no more than a wall-

paper, the outlandishness is subordinated to the proportions and symmetry of the

room. But there exists one example of the Chinese mode, the most memorable

and probably the most complete in England, which shows how easily the Orders

could be swept aside by this particular form of fantasy. The fireplaces and door-

heads in fhe extraordinary lilac, white and vellow Chinese Room at Claydon

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Page 244: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Gothic and Picturesque

look, as though they are awash in petrified waves breaking about the pale frown-

ing masks of drowning Chinamen. But dazzling though these are, the eye is

distracted from them by a greater marvel, the enormous pagoda-like alcove

occupying a whole wall and vividly, minutely carved with fretwork, scrolls,

rocks and waves and hung with white-painted wooden bells. This is the setting

for an amazing, eternal tea-party. A Chinese man and woman sit at a table laid

with a fringed cloth and a tea-set and perched on a dripping, shell-encrusted rock.

Their two children stand on either side of them, each raising an arm in a wild

gesture of greeting, a gesture echoed with startling intensity by the squat figures

at the table, who seem about to clap their hands as part of a compelling ritual

which the onlookers cannot ignore. This remarkable tableau is the work ofa local

Buckinghamshire woodcarver, unknown apart from this one brilliant example

of his talent, his recorded surname, Lighttoot, and a description oi him by Sir

Thomas Robinson, the architect of the house, as an artist with 'no small trace of

madness in his composition'. There is nothing to compare with Claydon in this

country and although William Halfpenny included New Designs for Chinese

Temples and Rural Architecture in the Chinese Taste among his pattern books and

although Sir William Chambers published Designs oj Chinese Buildings, etc. in

1757 and was the author of the Pagoda at Kew, chinoiserie remained an indoor and

decorative rather than an architectural style, its influence being limited externally

to an occasional feature such as a trellised porch like that of Reydon House,

Harlcston, or the frieze on an otherwise classical doorway. Lightfoot's work at

Claydon is nevertheless symptomatic of an attitude of mind which eventually

proved to be incompatible with the classical ideal.

It was inevitable that the desire to break through the limits imposed byPalladianism should find its most prominent expression in the revival of the style

it had originally ousted, the Gothic, but, as we shall see, it took other waywardforms including the Egyptian, Moorish and Indian modes, was fostered by a wide-

spread interest in the antiquities of the British Isles as opposed to those of Romeand Greece and was encouraged above all by a passion for the Picturesque whichsubjected every style, even the classical, to its requirements.

The name of Horace Walpole and that of Strawberry Hill, the house he

purchased from Mrs Chevenix in 1747 and reconstructed as a miniature Gothic

castle, have been associated with eighteenth-century neo-Gothic by every writer

on the subject, and the building of the completely Gothic Strawberry Hill

certainly established the style as a fashion. But Gothic trimmings had appeared

before this. The embattled house at Somersby, Lincolnshire, ascribed to Van-brugh, has already been described, and Vanbrugh had built a huge sham fortifi-

cation at Castle Howard as early as 1709, thus already uniting the Gothic and the

Picturesque, as in his great Baroque houses he had combined the Picturesque and

the classical. Another early instance t.^' medieval detail occurs in Ivy Lodge, oneof the adornments of Cirencester Park, built for Lord Bathurst. possibly by Kentin the 1720s. If these and other examples of the delight taken by individual

architects in Gothic forms are considered m conjunction with the persistence ot

medieval traditions in much regional building during the sixteenth and seven-

teenth centuries, it might appear and has been abl) argued that the Gothic style

had never died. But the architectural character of all the houses mentioned in the

previous chapter is the very antithesis of Gothic, which the arbiters of taste

rejected as barbaric. And whether Ivy Lodge be by Kent or not. it most clearly

demonstrates that the Pallidum version of Gothic is as little related to the archi-

tecture of the Middle Ages as are most Elizabethan versions ofRenaissance formsto the work ot Palladio. The eighteenth-century situation reverses and exactly

balances that which obtained in the sixteenth centui \ . Ivy I odge conforms to the

v lassie pattern of a central block with w ings, although the main building suggests

a tat tower and the end pavilions are adorned with crow -stepped gables. Battle-

ments and pointed openings are part of the same composition as a Renaissance

-4^

Page 245: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Facade, Woburn, Bedfordshire

Gothic influence is here, as so often in

the minor Georgian house, confined

to the doorhead and some of the

window lights and does not effect the

Palladian proportions and symmetryof the facade. In the mid eighteenth

century, when a taste for the exotic

might be expressed in either the

Oriental or the Gothic style, it wasnatural that the curving ogee arch,

which in its original fourteenth-

century form probably came to

England from the Near East, andwhich thus embraced both fashions,

should be preferred.

frieze, a Palladian window and oeils de boeuf, an assemblage as charmingly

incongruous as the juxtaposition of battlements, Ionic pillars and gables in the

Elizabethan manor of Snitterton, Derbyshire.

The Georgian style was so basically hostile to the Gothic mode that whenpinnacles, pointed arches and battlements became popular, they had no im-

mediate effect on the insistent symmetry of domestic architecture. Despite the

serious antiquarian enthusiasm of the age, Georgian Gothic strikes the eye sobered

by acquaintance with the academic approach ot the Victorians as deliciously

artificial, a high-spirited interpretation rather than an imitation. And this view

of it was later endorsed by Humphrey Repton, who in 1 806, 111 his Inquiry into the

Changes of Taste in Landscape Gardening, pointed out that the Gothic house could

only avoid being a copy of a castle or abbey by using a travesty of the medieval

style and that 'a house may be adorned with towers and battlements or pinnacles

and flying buttresses, but it should still maintain the character ot\\ house of the age

243

Page 246: The English House Through Seven Centuries

and country in which it was erected'. Classical proportions are usually firmly

retained in the facade and plan of the average Georgian family house exhibiting

Gothic influence, an influence which is for the most part confined to the windowsand entrance externally and inside may appear only in the design of a door and

chimney-piece here and there. The central light ofa Venetian window may assume

the form of an ogee, as in houses at Porchester and Woburn, or the tracery of a

fanlight may echo the interfacings the quatrefoils and mouchettes of medieval

glass. The effect is always animating and sometimes adds just that touch ofvarietynecessary to redeem symmetry and severity from dullness, as in a plump, em-phatically horizontal facade at Hatfield Broadoak where ogee-headed lights

playfully relate rounded bays to turrets. Rarely does the introduction of Gothic

elements disturb the prevailing symmetry, though this does happen at WellWalk. Hampstead, where it is only the pretty, toy-like character of the jutting

oriel which prevents it from entirely ruining the balance of the tall narrow front.

The owners of houses which were originally built at a time when medievaltraditions were still alive were naturally often attracted by the idea ot gothicizmgthem. Simple examples of this tendency can sometimes be seen in Fast Angliawhere, as in a house by the Stour at Clare, pointed lights (much too regularly

disposed to be original) replace the straight-headed windows which must oncehave graced thejettied facade, imparting m\ irresistibly fantastic and picturesqueair to a genuinely sixteenth-century structure. Hut the most splendid instance ot

such gothicizing is Arbury Hall. Warwickshire, a I udor house transformed for

Sir Roger New digue ovei several decades, beginning in i~so, probably bySanderson Miller, Robert Keene and a local architect called Couchman. I heexterior is strutlv symmetrical and evokes rather than reproduces the Perpen-dicular Style with its gay battlements and fretted parapets The CUSped and

Ceiling of the sitting-room,

Castleward House, Co. Down,Ireland, and detail of the bay windowin the saloon, Arbury Hall,

Warwickshire (opposite)

These gigantic fan vaults are coarse in

detail beside those of Arbury, and ofa shape, an exotic ogee, peculiar to

the Gothic Revival. The principle

component of the decoration, the

mouchette or dagger, is one of the

most popular motifs of the mock-Gothic stuccoist. The work belongs to

the last quarter of the eighteenth

century, when the brilliant precision

of early Gothic Revival work, still so

remarkably evident at Arbury, wasbeginning to give way to a moresketchy approach.

The same spirit which animates the

brilliant Rococo work of the great

continental eighteenth-century

stuccoists, such as the masters

responsible for the decorations at

Sans Souci or the Amahenburg at

Munich, is manifest in the superb

Gothic fantasies in plaster at Arbury.There is the same playful relationship

between Rococo forms and their

classical sources as between these

mock-Gothic fan vaults, ribs,

pendants and clustered shafts and their

medieval prototypes. Stucco replaces

stone and a round arch consorts with

Perpendicular-inspired details, whichare elaborated and mingled in

patterns unlike anvthing found in

true Gothic architecture. The use of

trefoil cresting, for instance, to adorn

the inner and outer edges of the arch

framing the bay window, is entirely

original. This great window belongs

to the last stage in the gothicizing of

Arbury. which went on from 1746 to

1793. It was probably designed in the

1760s by Henry Keene, but wascarried out by his successor, the local

craftsman Henry Couchman. Theplasterwork was done by WilliamHanwell in 1786.

Page 247: The English House Through Seven Centuries

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Oriel window, Well Walk,Hampstead, London

This jutting window, the design ofwhich is charmingly repeated in the

straight-headed window above it,

again demonstrates the predilection of

early Gothic Revival enthusiasts for

the ogee design. The Gothic mood is

here intensified by the traceried lights.

The balance of the facade is seriously

disturbed by the shape and size of this

window.

crocketted interior superimposes Gothic detail on classically proportioned roomswith brilliant staccato intensity and a meticulous rhythm wholly unlike the

irregular movement of true Gothic. And whereas the forms of Gothic archi-

tecture, however richly they were ornamented, were dictated by function, the

groined and barrelled ceilings, the elaborate fan vaults, the shrine-like chimney-

pieces, the white and gold bosses, ribs and pendants, the chamfers and ogees, the

trefoil crestings and filigree tracery of Arbury, the very arches and fluted pillars

are pure decoration, all fashioned of plaster. The make-believe constitutes half

the charm ofthese ravishing interiors, the effect ofwhich was described by George

Eliot as 'petrified lacework'.

In two of the rooms at Arbury the essentially classical habit ot mind of the

designers is apparent in more than the proportions: in the dining-room, with its

mullioned windows in pointed embrasures and its huge fan vaults, copies of well-

known classical statues stand in Gothic canopied niches; and the Gothic bookrecesses and cusped panelling in the library are combined with a coved ceiling

painted with Renaissance arabesques and medallions m the manner of Angelica

Kaufmann.

Gothic and classic appeal side by side in a yet more astonishing manner at

( astleward 1 louse, ( o, 1 )own. The house, originally, like Arbury, a sixteenth-

centur) building, was first improved and enlarged for Michael Ward during the

first half of the eighteenth century , perhaps by Richard C iassels, who had come to

Ireland m 1 728 to design I lastle I louse, c 'o. Fermanagh, for Sir Gustavus I lume.

But the building we see now was only assuming its present unforgettable appear-

ance b\ 1 2 .u the hands of an unknown architect. I he south-west front is an

exen ise in the Palladian manner w ith .1 projecting centre block with three arches

246

Page 249: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Gothic and Picturesque

surmounted by four Ionic columns and a pediment bearing the Ward arms.

There is nothing particularly exciting about this design in itself. The originality

of Castleward is only revealed when the Palladian front is considered in relation

to the north-east facade. For this confronts the delighted spectator with an array

of battlements and Gothic windows. The unique arrangement is expressive of a

disagreement between Bernard Ward, son of Michael and First Lord Bangor, and

his wife, Lady Anne, over the rival merits of the two most fashionable styles of the

period. They finally resolved their difference of opinion by giving one front a

Gothic dress and building the other in the classical mode. Inside the house Lady

Anne insisted on Gothic detail while her husband maintained his preference for

the Palladian convention. A classical hall leads into a Gothic saloon and the

dining- and music-rooms are uncompromisingly classical. The sitting-room

exhibits perhaps the most eccentric Georgian Gothic decoration in existence. So

exaggerated, so inflated are the fan vaults of this apartment that they dwarf all

else, and yet, recognizably ot plaster, they seem to the affrighted eye buoyant

rather than weighty and about to swell to an even more nightmarish size. Here, as

at Claydon, fantasy has run riot and obscured the classical proportions of the

room.

There is another far more unassuming instance of this mingling of the Gothic

and the classic under the same roof at Beccles in Suffolk. St Peter's House stands

Interior of St Peter's House, Beccles,

Suffolk

As at Castle Ward (page 244), someof the rooms of this house are

decorated in the Classic, others in the

Gothic taste. The preference of the

Gothic Revivalists for ogival formsagain apparent. The fireplace is

conceived as a shrine with plaster

statues of saints in the canopied

niches.

Page 250: The English House Through Seven Centuries

on the edge of the Old Market on the site of a former chapel dedicated to St

Peter, and perhaps this earlier association with a medieval building suggested the

use of Gothic forms to the unknown architect. The facade towards the street is

classical and pedimented, while the garden front is Gothic. The interior shows

the designer equally at home in both styles, for some ot the rooms are in the

classic, others in the Gothic taste, sometimes combined with a marked Oriental

flavour. In an elaborate fireplace, characteristically and playfully carried out in

plaster instead of stone, Gothic motifs are treated purely dccoratively. with

strong emphasis on scallops and ogee shapes, while in the centre ot the com-position the Gothic mouchette, or dagger, is used in an unexpected way to create

a lotus-like ornament.

The strange juxtaposition of classic and Gothic in a single building at Castle-

ward provides an unusually compelling example of the ease with which architects

of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries built in cither style according

to the demands of their clients. Even Adam, who was so noticeably unconcernedwith the Gothic revival of his age. built Culzean in the form ot\i romantic castle.

felicitously placed on the edge o( a wooded cliffon the Ayrshire coast, and pre-

served a suggestion ot the cloistered beginnings ot Syon in its battlemented

exterior. John Nash, who is principally remembered for his classical terraces in

London, was the builder of Gothic Hafod, now no more, and the castellated.

asymmetrical, towered and turretted Caerhays Castle on the Cornish coast; and

Roger Morris, who planned the Palladian Bridge at Wilton and the centre block

of the classical White \ louse. Richmond Park, was responsible for the turretted

Caerhays Castle, Cornwall

John Nash built Caerhavs in [808 tor

J. B. Trevanion. Like Culzean, it

overlooks the sea. With its asym-metrical grouping of square and

round towers and turrets it shows the

architect of the Regent's Park

terraces as a master of the Picturesque,

though here the make-believe is moreearnest than in many Picturesque

inventions, tor the castle is carried out

in local slate stone and granite instead

of stucco. In the same year Nash built

Southborough Place. Surrey, .1

stuccoed echo of the pedimentedPalladian house. The interior of

( laerhays is chiefly Gothic, although

there are some c1.ismc.i1 details. For

instance, the arch leading from the

Gothic, galleried hall to the staircase

is supported b\ classical corbels.

U s

Page 251: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Gothic and Picturesque

Culzean Castle, Ayrshire, Scotland

This romantic and magnificently sited

house was an early work by Robert

Adam, begun in 1771 for the 10th

Earl of Cassilis. Adam's name is not

associated with experiments in the

Gothic style, but in his conception

of 'Movement' as an essential quality

of architecture and in his interest in

the pictorial relationship between a

building and its surroundings he was a

Picturesque rather than a classical

designer; and his topographical

drawings, which most frequently

show ruins, blasted trees, cataracts

and soaring irregular masses reveal

the naturally Picturesque cast of his

mind. Culzean is wholly classical

within, although the rooms are

shaped to fit the bastioned exterior,

which combines battlements andpediments, towers and turrets,

mullions and sash windows in a

composition which, like Downton,is not based on medieval practice, but

on a pictorial ideal.

and battlemented aspect of Inveraray Castle, Argyllshire, the first important neo-

Gothic house to be built in Scotland. It dates from 1746 and takes the form of a

square block with a massive tower rising from its heart, a play upon the tradi-

tional Scottish tower-house, but utterly surprising, especially when its pretty

Gothic windows are glimpsed above the roof-line. In a Palladian house of the

time the centrally placed hall would probably have been crowned by a dome; it

is the castellated outline of this feature and its bulk in relation to the rest of the

building which give Inveraray so exotic an air. And this tower must have

dominated the castle to a still greater degree before the attic storey was added to

the main building after a fire of 1877. The fantastic character of the architecture

is at one with the wildness of the setting on the banks of the Aray with the

jagged heights ot Glenorchy in the background; the very colour of the granite

fabric, a strange blue-green, seems to be compounded of the greens of the

northern landscape, of polished evergreen leaves, of frost-soured moss, of icy,

bottle-glass water.

Inveraray Castle is a very early work of the Gothic Revival, earlier than

Arbury. But, in general, fashions were slow to reach the north, and thus the

noble, classical sweep of Moray Place, Edinburgh, by Gillespie Graham has more

in common with the crescents and terraces of Bath than with the Picturesque

villas going up at the same time (1823) in the south. But the architect, who began

life as James Gillespie, a humble joiner and who changed his name when he

married a Perthshire heiress called Graham, was sufficiently abreast of the times

to favour the Gothic as well as the classic, and indeed in the precision and

Page 252: The English House Through Seven Centuries

authenticity of his medieval detail he foreshadowed later practice. Duns,

Berwickshire (c. 1812), is a richly imaginative, crenellated, irregular com-

position with a sturdy turretted bastion at one end, a square turret at the other

and a porch flanked by fat, tower-like pillars projecting from a square, asym-

metrically placed keep.

Wyatt, the designer of classical Castlecoole, gothicized Charles II's state apart-

ments at Windsor, and was the author of Ashndge and the most staggering of

Gothic inventions, the legendary Fonthill which, now reduced to an inconsider-

able ruin, once rose dramatically from the Wiltshire Downs in the shape of a

cathedral rivalling Salisbury in size and splendour. It perfectly matched the

character of its owner, William Beckford, a gifted, aloof, romantic and fabu-

lously wealthy amateur. He inherited _£ioo,ooo a year and wrote his Gothic

novel Vathek in French at a single sitting of three days and two nights. Fonthill

was a cruciform and irregular structure, breaking away entirely from the

balanced Palladian plan, with a central tower 225 feet high, twin turrets at the

west end and two long galleries of different proportions inside. To erect this

gigantic house Beckford employed two armies of workmen, each 500 strong,

who laboured night and day for eleven years, from [796 until 1807. The great

tower collapsed as soon as it was finished and was promptly rebuilt, only to fall

again and forever in 1825. The contractor later confessed on his death bed that

the tower had no foundations and expressed surprise that it had stood tor so long.

Fonthill was too extreme to encourage mutators, yet its image lives as the most

stupendous instance ofthe alliance ofthe Gothic and Picturesque tastes and ofthe

romantic disregard of clear logic and careful workmanship which finally under-

mined the Palladian rule. Fonthill was conceived as part oi\\ pictorial composi-

tion, the striking focal point o( Beckford's landscaped and exotically planted

Inveraray Castle, Argyllshire

The castle replaces a fifteenth-century

stronghold and was built in 1746 tor

the 3rd Duke of Argyll by RogerMorns. It is a basically symmetrical

classical composition to which

medieval and Picturesque details have

been added. The central tower recalls

the original medieval keep on the site,

and is also reminiscent ot Elizabethan

Wollaton and Barlborough (pages

106-7). The conical caps of the

angle turrets, which now seem so

inevitable a part of the composition,

were added shortly after 1877,

together with the attic storey.

2 50

Page 253: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Gothic and Picturesque

Downton Castle, Shropshire

This rambling, crenellated house

perched above the River Tone was

one of the first to be built in the

Picturesque castle style and to

challenge the classical convention

with its obvious assertion of

irregularity. Downton is not a copy

of a medieval castle but an attempt to

translate into three-dimensional

reality the romantic piles whichappear in the backgrounds ofpaintings by seventeenth-century

masters, and the builder and ownerof the Castle, Richard Payne Knight,

wished it to be judged as an original

conception. 'A house may be

adorned with towers and battlements

or pinnacles and flying buttresses', he

wrote, 'but it should . . . not pretend

to be a fortress or monastery of a

remote period and distant country;

for such false pretentions never escape

detection ; and when detected,

necessarily excite those sentiments

which exposed imposture never fails

to excite.' Knight was the author ofAn Analytical Enquiry into the

Principles of Taste and the mostvigorous champion of irregularity.

He inherited Downton at the age of

fourteen in 1764 and beganremodelling the house in 1772 andtransforming the grounds with

Salvatorial prospects. The Castle wascompleted except for some Victorian

alterations by 1778. Knight believed

in a mixture of styles and Downtoncombines a castellated, irregular

exterior with severely classical interior

decoration.

grounds and of all the surrounding country. The general effect was of far greater

importance to its creator than convenience of plan.

The conception of the Picturesque had at first been confined to the landscape

garden which, with its grottoes, sham ruins, temples, hovels, cascades and irregular

sheets of water, provided a contrasting setting for the classically proportioned

house. But gradually the Picturesque was accepted as an architectural style and

the notion of a house designed to suit its surroundings took the place of the

convention of adapting the site to the building. The idea had been put forward

by Reynolds in his 13th Discourse, where he spoke of old houses which had been

modified in the course of the centuries, pointing out that 'as such buildings depart

from regularity they now and then acquire something of scenery, which I should

think might not unsuccessfully be adopted by an architect'. This painter's view

of architecture was stated more forcibly by Sir Uvedale Price in his Essay on

Architecture (1798) when he seriously recommended irregularity as an alternative

to symmetry. He suggested that if 'instead of making a regular front and sides'

the owner of a picturesque site 'were to insist on having many of the windowsturned towards the points where the objects were most happily arranged, the

architect would be forced into the invention of a number of picturesque forms

and combinations which otherwise might not have occurred to him'.

One of the first houses to challenge the classical convention by its obvious

assertion of irregularity as well as by such usual Picturesque allusions to the

Middle Ages as crenellation and oriels, was Downton Castle, Herefordshire,

which was designed by Richard Payne Knight and built between 1772 and 1778.

Payne Knight, a local squire, was an archaeologist, anthropologist and con-

noisseur, and was also the original of Mr Milestone, the Picturesque landscape

gardener of Peacock's Headlong Hall. It was he who in his Analytical Inquiry into

the Principles of Taste first traced the origin of the word 'Picturesque' to the

Italian pittoresco, 'after the manner of painters'. He explained that this meant the

'blending and melting of objects together with a playful and airy lightness and a

Page 254: The English House Through Seven Centuries

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Page 255: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Gothic and Picturesque

The Convent-in-the-Wood,Stourhead, Wiltshire

The tastes for the rustic and the

Gothic, the irregular and the rough,

all ingredients of the Picturesque,

were fully indulged by the landscape

gardener at a time when the mansionwas still, with few exceptions,

dominated by the classical mode.The Convent-in-the-Wood, whichforms part of the Picturesque layout

of Stourhead, begun by Henry Hoarein about 1741, vividly proclaims these

qualities.

sort of loose, sketchy indistinctness'. As applied to architecture, the Picturesque,

Knight maintained, suggested a mixture of styles such as 'the fortresses of our

ancestors transformed into Italianized villas and decked with the porticoes,

ballustrades and terraces of Inigo Jones and Palladio'. Downton Castle is thus

not an attempt to counterfeit some Norman or medieval stronghold, but to

translate into a three-dimensional medium the romantic, battlemented, timeless

castles which appear in the backgrounds of paintings by seventeenth-century

masters, especially Claude. Downton does indeed recall the distant castle in the

National Gallery Narcissus and Echo. But the castellated, asymmetrical exterior is

combined with purely classical interior decorations.

Irregularity had never before been so consciously sought by the designers of

houses in these islands, but in the pattern made by the development of the English

house the idea of the Picturesque repeats the haphazard effects wrought by time

and changing fashions on the originally standardized forms of the medieval

dwelling and parallels the romantic attitude of the Elizabethans.

Before it became an accepted mode for the building of a mansion, the Pic-

turesque style was embodied in the sham ruins and mock-Gothic cottages built

as part of the furniture of the landscape garden. And some of these garden

structures had been used as dwellings. The well-known imitation church tower

at Tattingstone in Suffolk, erected by Squire White to complete the pictorial

arrangement of the landscape commanded by his library windows, screens three

cottages taking the place of the nave. The Convent-in-the-Wood at Stourhead,

the most perfect and idyllic landscape garden to survive in its original condition,

was the abode of a fancy-dress prioress in the eighteenth century and is still

inhabited. This fairy-tale little house, some two miles from the main garden,

isolated in a wood, approachable only by footpaths, was probably built in about

1780, at roughly the same time as the rustic cottage by the lake, and already

exhibits in miniature all the characteristics which were to supplant the classical

ideal, the irregular plan, the fantastic outline and the incongruity which were

later to be so massively manifested in such undisciplined piles as Knebworth

Manor, Hertfordshire, the home ofLord Lytton, and Harlaxton Manor, Lincoln-

shire, and ofwhich the suburban house, even today, has never altogether managed

to rid itself.

The Convent-in-the-Wood is two-storeyed with an oddly shaped room, an

irregular hexagon, on each floor and with a one-storeyed attachment such as

often occurs in small medieval houses. It is constructed of over-large, rough stones

and roofed chiefly with thatch but partly with stone slates. The chimneys

masquerade as obelisks, and two crooked, finial-topped turrets flank the west

front, which is pierced by crude, ogee-headed lights. A Gothic bay window with

an entrance through the central light projects unsteadily from the south side. The

panels of the main room were once decorated with paintings of nuns in the habits

of the various orders, but only a few traces of these remain.

At both Tattingstone and Stourhead the Picturesque takes the form of Gothic.

The connection had been supported by the writings of such antiquarians as

Dugdale, Evelyn and Anthony a Wood, by the poetry ofGray and the Wartons,

by the poetry and topographical works of Young and by the romantic attitude

to medieval ruins sponsored by Gilpin.

This fashionable interest in the actual remains of Gothic buildings led to the

revival of an activity which had earlier played a not inconspicuous part in the

history ofthe English house, the conversion ofsuch remains into dwellings. There

is an attractive illustration of this activity on a small scale in Suffolk where the

flint and one-storeyed Mendham Priory Lodge, built at the end of the eighteenth

century, was adorned with fragments of piers and pillars, corbel heads and a coat

ofarms which were all that then survived of the former Cluniac priory on the site.

At Lacock, the whole history and taste of the two ages ofconversion, the sixteenth

and eighteenth centuries, can be compared and studied within the limits ofa single

253

Page 256: The English House Through Seven Centuries

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building. The former abbey had already been made into a house soon after the

Dissolution when the property was acquired by Sir William Sharrington. Thesouth front remains much as he left it and shows that he was inspired by the newfeeling for Renaissance architecture (see pp. 79 and 80). The classical tendency of

Sharrington's conversion was reversed by the work carried out at the abbey in

the neo-Gothic manner by Sanderson Miller for John Ivory Talbot, a descendant

of Sharrington's niece, in 1754-60. The pretty ogee-headed windows of the hall,

the doorway between them approached by a two-armed flight of steps and the

polygonal angle turrets; and inside, the tunnel vault adorned with coats of arms,

the Gothic chimney-pieces, Gothic niches and crested doorheads light-heartedly

and superficially refer to the truly medieval survivals at the abbey, the perpendi-

cular cloister and two rooms in the former west range of the cloister garth.

At Butley in Suffolk the possibilities of the abandoned but miraculously well-

preserved gatehouse of the former Augustine priory were splendidly realized by-

its various eighteenth-century owners. The priory was surrendered in 1538 and

after brief tenures by the Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk passed to William Forthe,

a clothier of 1 ladleigh. Forthe built a Tudor house on the east side of the gate-

house while the rest of the monastery was allowed to disintegrate and to becomea quarry for road repairs and local building. On the death of Elizabeth Devereux,

descendant of William Forthe, the priory was inherited by her husband John

Clyatt. In 1737 the gatehouse was acquired bv George Wright through his

Mendham Priory Lodge, Suffolk

The Gothic aspect of this typically

Picturesque cottage has been en-

couraged by the use of fragments

from the former Early English

Cluniac Priory of Mendham.founded in the twelfth century.

254

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*X k(

Butley Priory, Suffolk

The fourteenth-century gatehouse ofthe former Augustinian priory wasconverted into a house after the

Dissolution and reconverted again bysuccessive eighteenth- and early

nineteenth-century owners,beginning with George Wright in

1738. The heavily buttressed

structure, with its rich ornamentalfacade, already satisfied most of the

requirements of the Picturesque

architect. It was irregular, it united

different styles in one building, it wasfull of variety in colour and texture,

it was Gothic (and partly ruined

when Wright acquired it) and it

made conspicuous use of traditional

materials. These qualities wererecognized by Wright and en-

couraged by later owners, the

Marquess of Donegal and LordRendlesham.

marriage to the Clyatt heiress. By that time the Tudor attachment was a ruin and

Wright demolished what was left of it when he decided to turn the gatehouse into

a residence. As it stands today the building is the product of several periods

harmonized by the Picturesque taste. Fourteenth-century cusped and canopied

niches, traceried windows and moulded arches consort with square-headed

windows, whose sills have been cleverly adapted to accommodate the pointed

tops of the sham, flushwork windows below them, and with roofs and chimneys

of Georgian and nineteenth-century origin. The curious proportions and the

astonishingly lively and diversely patterned texture of Butley make a staggering

impression. A great central gable shoots up between two projecting bays which

were once the towers of the medieval gatehouse but which George Wright

truncated and provided with the steep, sloping roofs, narrowing oddly towards

the eaves and adding much to the unusual aspect of the house. Behind loom tall

chimneys, a hipped roof and the shaggy outline of buttressed walls. The former

passageway through the gatehouse, consisting of a narrow pointed pedestrian

entrance cheek byjowl with a wide depressed arch for vehicles, at once challenges

the idea of symmetry, as indeed does the richly vaulted living-room now occupy-

ing the passage. The spandrels of the taller, broader arch are filled with flushwork

in the shape of large trefoils, while the pedestrian opening is surmounted by a

curvilinear flushwork panel more like a Georgian fanlight than any other flint

and freestone ornament of the fourteenth century, when this peculiarly East

2S5

Page 258: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Gothic and Picturesque

Anglian and essentially fifteenth-century art was very little practised. The

recognized rarity of flushwork in the period to which the Butley ornamentation

has been attributed gives rise to the suspicion that parts of the superb decoration at

Butley may be the work of the eighteenth-century restorer. It takes the forms

of playful chequerboard patterns and mock windows with flowing tracery of

disparate designs, and the brilliant black and white of this display is interrupted

here and there by the warm brickwork used by Wright to patch the fabric. This

already arrestingly intricate texture is further enriched by the magnificent

armorial, consisting of five rows of shields above the original entrance arches.

Each shield alternates with a carved fleur-de-lis, symbolizing the Virgin Mary, to

whom the priory was dedicated, centred upon two rows of squared flints, and

thus the design is a more elaborate version of the emphatic chequerboard patterns

on the tower walls. The shields themselves project from the stone blocks from

which they have been cut and the more important among them are surmounted

by quaint, peeping bogie heads or the portraits of canons, while the spandrels on

either side of the base point are filled with tiny, sprawling figures, some of themwinged, and with grotesque heads. The central shield ofthe top row is carved with

a Crucifixion and the shields on either side of it show the arms of the great

Christian countries. Below them appear the devices of the chief officers of state,

then come the escutcheons of great Baronial families, then those of East Anglian

families followed finally by the hatchments of noble Suffolk families. GeorgeWright transferred the Forthe and Glenham coats ofarms to the filling ofthe twopassage arches.

In 1790 Butley was purchased by the 1st Marquess of Donegal, who made an

addition to the western side of the gatehouse of which nothing now remains and

who built two pavilions to the left and right, at some little distance from the

priory. He enhanced the picturesque character of the conversion by planting a

fine avenue of beeches leading to the gatehouse, already romantically sited in

woodland on the fringe of the ancient forest of Staverton.

It is significant that a yet later owner of Butley, Peter Isaac Thellusson, after-

wards Lord Rendlesham, who came into possession of the property in 1800, wasthe builder of a great rambling house, Rendlesham Hall, in what seems, from a

description of it by Loudon dated 1826, to have been the most advanced Pictur-

esque style. This house was destroyed by fire in 1830, but two lodges survive

which must always rank among the most extravagant examples of Picturesque

Gothic. One takes the shape of an arch springing from a crumbling, ivy-mantled

tower with living-quarters hidden in its base; the other is hexagonal with a

crenellated, buttressed and pinnacled facade behind which three enormous flying

buttresses soar up and meet to support a heavy, profusely ornamented central

chimney.

The Rendlesham lodges are encased in a form of stucco, but the taste for

asymmetrical plans and picturesque outlines was sometimes accompanied bv a

predilection for rough and unconventional materials, such as previously had only-

been used for the rustic adornments of landscape gardens. Cinder Hall, near

Saffron Walden, an irregular, castellated, corbel-turretted house, is built ot flint

and red brick with enrichments in the form of fleurs-de-lis, lozenge shapes andtwo-dimensional, mock machicolations carried out in small, dark, clinkers. Andthe Jungle, Eagle Manor, Lincolnshire, is encrusted with higgledy-piggledy,dark purple-red, burnt bricks, jostling one another in the wildest confusion andmingling with huge, amorphous clinkers. A dense coat of ancient ivy with thick.

twisted stems still further encourages the knurled and jagged aspect of this

fantasy farm house. It suggests the ruin of a castle with a square tower at one end..1 semicircular-fronted one at the other and a central bastion-like projection.Some of the windows are arched, with typical neo-Gothic pointed lights, butmost of the openings are fashioned from curving oak boughs forming Gothicarches more crude than anything found in traditional crude construction, and

Woodbndge Lodge. Rendlesham.Suffolk

It Butley is a house constituted frompart ol an actual medieval priory, the

lodge at Rendlesham. built towards

the close ofthe eighteenth or early

in the nineteenth century, is

consciously based on monastic

architecture, assuming the form of a

chapter house. The walls are cementor stucco-rendered, the Gothic details,

which have remained astonishingly

crisp, are all executed in Coade stone.

This lodge, and another in a similar

Style, were contemporary with the

hall, which was burnt down in 1830

but which appears to have been a

large-scale exercise in the Picturesque

manner.

256

Page 259: The English House Through Seven Centuries

257

Page 260: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Jungle. Eagle. Lincolnshire

The Picturesque taste could scarcely

achieve a more complete expression,

functional requirements could

scarcely be more thoroughly dis-

regarded than in this extraordinary,

shaggy, Gothic composition built for

Samuel Russell Collett in c. 1S20.

Behind this trout lies a conventional

Georgian farm house The matted i\ yenhances us tangled appearance andrecalls Loudon's design of 1806 for 'a

house calculated for being decorated

with Ivy and Creepers'. But the

texture of the facade was alread\

\ aned and roughened by the dis-

ordered application ot burnt bricks

and clinkers The house was named,not. as might be expected, from its

character, but because its first ownerkept a menagerie in the grounds,

including deer, pheasants, burlalo and

kangaroos

Page 261: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Gothic and Picturesque

occasionally sweeping right round the window or, in one instance, a door, to

make pointed ellipses. The district in which the Jungle stands is still remote andno road passes near to disturb this tangled dream of the Picturesque imagination.

It was mentioned earlier that despite the frequent use made by the Picturesque

architect of Gothic forms, the loose, wide Picturesque style embraced manymodes and many periods. Charles Middleton's Picturesque and Architectural Views

for cottages, farmhouses, villas, etc., written in 1790 and published in 1795, showsneat, verandaed houses, and the charming drawings by the author in JamesMalton's Essay on British Cottage Architecture (1798) exhibit Venetian windowsand other Georgian features, although the writer contends that the excellence ofcottage architecture consists in 'combining irregularity with the picturesque'.

David Laing's Hints for Dwellings displays houses with Grecian elevations, thoughwith irregular plans, each in its particular setting forming part of a painterly

composition. J. Plaw's Sketches for Country Houses, Villas and Rural Dwellings,

Calculated for Persons of moderate Incomes and for Comfortable Retirement (1800)

includes designs for 'a monastic farm', 'American cottages' and a 'Gothic fold-

yard'. J. Thomson's Rural Retreats (1827) contains acquatints of 'Grecian' and'Corinthian' villas, of a 'Uniform Cottage' and of an appropriately named'Irregular House'. P. F. Robinson, the architect of the original Swiss Cottage,

St John's Wood, and of the famous Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, produced a

number of pattern books for Swiss, Italian, Grecian, Anglo-Norman, Eliza-

bethan, timber and Tuscan houses, all related to their scenic setting and recom-

mended as 'peculiarly picturesque'. The drawings and acquatints of Indian

buildings made by Thomas and William Daniell 111 India at the beginning of the

nineteenth century inspired an interest in the marble mosques and palaces of the

Orient as sources of fresh possibilities for Picturesque architecture. And finally

in 1833 J. C. Loudon, who had earlier produced a design for 'a house calculated

for being decorated with Ivy and Creepers', issued his enormous Encyclopaedia 0/

Cottage, Farm and Villa Architecture and Furniture with 1,300 pages oi Picturesque

elevations and plans in every conceivable style.

Realizations of the sketches and plans illustrated in these and countless similar

publications can be seen all over Britain. The cottages, lodges and little toll

houses with latticed porches, steep thatched roofs, arched and pointed windows,

extravagant bargeboards, and wide eaves supported by slender, decorative

pillars which are among the most delightful and characteristic features of the

English countryside represent the rustic element which figures so prominently

in these books, an element which was even more conspicuously embodied in the

conception of the planned Picturesque village. Milton Abbas in Dorset is an early

example, laid out, perhaps, by Sir William Chambers for Joseph Dormer, after-

wards Earl of Dorchester, in about 1790. The cottages are grouped in pairs and

built, with admirable regard for local materials, of cob on flint bases with straw-

ridged roofs of heather thatch. Although they are perfectly adapted to their

pastoral site, a valley with tree-clad slopes, the cottages are spaced with the utmost

regularity and set in two straight lines on either side of the broad, grass-verged

road. In the true Picturesque village, as described by Sir Uvedale Price, symmetry

should be eschewed and the houses should be irregularly disposed in groups, a

method still favoured by the planners of modern housing estates. Intricacy and a

play of outline should be encouraged, any inequalities of ground should always

be retained and massive chimneys and projecting roots and porches make

desirable features. Great Tew, Oxfordshire, answers all these requirements and is

probably the most perfect example of the Picturesque village in the rustic style.

The author of it, not surprisingly, was J. C. Loudon. The setting is hilly and the

cottages, which include several did. already existing dwellings, are scattered about

a tiny, rather steeply inclined, triangular green. Built ot th>^ deep-yellow local

stone with high-pitched thatched roofs, some long and low, others tall and

narrow, with hooded casements, Gothic porches of every variety and scalloped

259

Page 262: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Milton Abbas, Dorset

Milton Abbas was laid out for Joseph

Dormer, later Earl of Dorchester,

perhaps by Sir William Chambers in

c. 1790 to replace the original village

which intruded too closely on the

calm vista seen from the converted

abbey. It is not a fully developedPicturesque village, for the cottages

are formally designed and regularly

disposed in their valley setting.

Milton Abbas does, however, markthe appearance of the Picturesque in

a simple form, the rustic. The cob andthatch of the cottages illustrate the

architect's regard for traditional

building construction, the balanced

relationship between the village andits surroundings show his appreciation

of the rules of Picturesque

composition, and the grouping of the

cottages in pairs may be considered

as the first instance of one of the mostenduring legacies of the Picturesque

style, the semi-detached house. Thereare many model villages scattered

about England, most of themPicturesque, whether they make use

ot the classical idiom, like Lowther, in

Westmorland, where the square

stone cottages stand in hne contrast

to the sham Gothic Castle, or

whether their thatched roofs and mudwalls follow a meandering path on a

tree-clad slope, as at Selworthy.

Somerset. A complete Picturesque

village with church to match wasbuilt at Sulham, Berkshire, in 1838,

and many other examples of this

peculiarly English conception were

created throughout the nineteenth

century and greatly influenced the

design of building estates in the

present age.

Page 263: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Cottage near Hales, NorfolkRound house, Hatfield Heath, EssexLodge, Wivenhoe Park, Essex

The Picturesque view of architecturedid not only give rise to completevillages, but to innumerable isolated.

romantic cottages adapted to the parkscenery of great estates and set off bytheir own bursting flower gardensand box-edged paths. Such cottages,entrance lodges or casemented keepers'

dwellings might be circular, oval orpolygonal as well as rectangular; onedesign might resemble nothing somuch as a Gothic umbrella, another(that near Hales) could caricature thehuman face with exaggerated eye-brow arches in its thatch and a bonnetporch like a bushy moustache. Thewindows tended to be pointed, theroofs were preferably ofemphaticallysteep, ornamental thatch, while thechimneys were almost invariably tall,

central and of a Gothic or Tudorflavour. Early nineteenth-centuryexamples of these cottages ornes areoften constructed of local materials.The cottage near Hales stands on a

tarred brick and flint base with wallsof plastered clay lump. Countlesspublications by professional designersand amateur authors containillustrations which might have servedas models for the cottages shown here.Among them may be mentionedPocock's Architectural Designs for

Rustic Cottages, Picturesque Dwellings,etc. (1807) and Rural Residences . . .

consisting of Designs for Cottages,

Decorated Cottages, Small I 'i'llas andother Ornamental Buildings (18 18) byJ. B. Papworth.

Page 264: The English House Through Seven Centuries

or fretted bargeboards, these enchanting little houses are rendered yet more

picturesque by the forest of giant evergreens planted by Loudon to embrace the

whole village, protecting it and casting over it a dense infinity of reposeful shade.

In contrast to Milton Abbas and Great Tew, the hamlet of Blaise near Bristol,

laid out by John Nash for John Scandrett Harford, the Quaker banker, in 1811,

shows little if any feeling for local style. The cottages, mostly constructed of

rubble, are distributed about an undulating, curving green, each one differing

wholly from its neighbours. Some of the roofs are thatched, with exaggerated

ridges, sonic are stone-slated, while others are pantiled; some of the chimneys

rise m Tudor clusters and others stand in rounded or polygonal isolation. In the

villages Nash designed some thirteen years later on the edge ot Regent's Park,

Park Village East and Park Village West, the rustic element is barely present at all.

Here the idea of the Picturesque village is applied to suburban development with

such success that suburbs have ever since been Picturesque to a greater or lesser

degree. The Park Villages exhibit all the diversity of style advocated in the

pattern books and may indeed have prompted some of Robinson's and Loudon's

designs. Italian, Gothic and chalet-like villas with fanciful gables and balconies

are irregularly and closely set amid trees with the canal, which was part ot the

layout ot the Regent's Park scheme, running between them, thus conjuring up the

countrified atmosphere so dear to the Englishman 111 an environment that was

anything but rural.

I lu se Park Village houses are stuccoed and the name ofjohn Nash is associated

more than that of any other architect with the use of this fake material which,

since it was intended to counterfeit stone and create a trompe I'oeil effect, was an

essentially pictorial medium mk\ which was also the first of those synthetic

productions which have destroyed regional traditions and w hich have since come

Cast-iron veranda-balcony, Pershorc,

Worcestershire

The elegant display of black-painted

cast-iron, usually found on the fronts

of those Regency houses not affected

bv the Gothic or Fancy styles, adds an

exotic note to the pale, severe facades.

The veranda, a development of the

great overhanging, lattice-enclosed

window ot Saracenic architecture,

appeared among the Picturesque

cottage and villa designs of late

eighteenth-century publications such

as Plaw's Rural Architecture andCharles Middleton's Picturesque I tews

for Cottages, farmhouses, villas. Thecast-iron designs were taken frompattern books and mass produced, so

that although there was considerable

choice, repetition was inevitable. Theveranda at Pershore has its counterpart

at Cheltenham, where every combin-ation of the standardized cast-iron

units of the period, sometimes intrud-

ing in a wrought-iron design, can be

studied.

Cumberland Terrace, Regent's Park.

London, by John Nash

John Nash laid out Regent's Park, the

terraces surrounding it. Park

Crescent, Park Square, Regent Street

planned as a 'Royal Mile' from

Carlton House to the park1

!, Carlton

House Terrace and St James's Park

for the Prince Regent between 1811

and 1835. Although the scheme,

distupted by the destruction ot

Regent Street in the present century

and by the refusal of the Treasury mthe architect's own day to subsidize

the whole of the original plan,

represents only a part of Nash's

grandiose conception, it remains one

of the most visually satisfying

creations of the Picturesque

imagination. I he terraces are the

supreme example of the Picturesque

taste expressed in the classical idiom.

for though it is Grecian and Ionic,

this architecture is of stucco, not

stone, and the triumphal arches,

statues and columns, the pediments

and huge pavilions, so effective

scenically, and so lacking in finish,

rise like stage sets from the

surrounding green, palatially

exaggerated in size, their air ot shamreinforced bv the mean and careless

design of the Service quarters at the

back.

Page 265: The English House Through Seven Centuries

rw

ii

i|jil a

*

Page 266: The English House Through Seven Centuries

to be used almost exclusively for domestic building. Nash used Parker's Romancement on its introduction in 1798 and changed to Hamelin's mastic in about

1820. He was mentioned earlier as one of those architects who composed with

equal readiness in the classic or medieval styles. But whatever the forms he used,

his work is always Picturesque. His Regent's Park terraces are among the grandest

and are perhaps the noblest examples of the style. Like all Picturesque buildings

they are exquisitely attuned to their surroundings, rising like fabulous palaces

from the landscaped park, yet suggesting their proximity to a great metropolis

by their superb urbanity. Although the language of these terraces is classical, it is

only necessary to compare them with the Bath crescents to realize how superficial

is their connection with the Palladian concept. Instead of the continuing and

conspicuously horizontal lines of facades and parapets and the symmetrically

disposed chimney-stacks of the Bath houses, which even when they are forced to

go uphill mount the slope with the regularity oi a flight of steps, the Nashterraces advance and retreat more dramatically than Adam's composition at

Kedleston, and the diverse shapes of balustrades, sudden uprearing attic storeys,

enormous pediments and groups of sculpture break up the skyline. The execution

is careless, the detail summary; all that matters is the pictorial effect, which reaches

the height of its splendid, spectacular expression in the Ionic triumphal arches,

giant columns, statues and abrupt variations in height of Cumberland Terrace.

I his stu< to group in particular makes an impression of vast size and Burke hadproclaimed size as an indispensable quality of the sublime. Nash's command of the

colossal is yet more overwhelmingly demonstrated at Carlton House Terrace,

which looms above the trees at St James's Park like .1 stupendous glittering cliff,

the very image which, according to Price, grand Picturesque architecture should

bring to mind. Not even the Brighton Pavilion, w ith its exotic mixture ot Indian

domes, crimped Islamic arches and Gothic friezes of cusped lozenges, is moreexpressive of Picturesque principles than these London terraces, though the

Bow window, Hastings, Sussex

Cronkhill. Shropshire (right)

The form of this romantic stucco

house, built by |ohn Nash tor the

agent of the Attingham estate in 1802,

is entirely dictated bv Picturesque

principles. The round tower is purely

scenic, tor it does not contain .1 single

circular room ; and it is contrasted

with .1 big square tower (not visible in

the photograph) to which it isjoined

by the colonnade, which runs on twosides of the little rectangular block

squeezed between them.

Ckowmu CmWjlMv' Em*r

264

Page 267: The English House Through Seven Centuries

g- \^^*

«L.

A

Z6<

Page 268: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Pavilion remains the most striking statement of these principles in Oriental guise.

Nash expanded an idea already present in the design Repton had made for an

extension to the original Pavilion by Holland. Repton had previously been laying

out the grounds of Sezincote in Gloucestershire, a house built by S. P. Cockerel!

in 1805 for a retired Indian nabob. It is a gorgeous Indian palace with Saracenic

arches and a single huge bulbous dome hovering above a wooded park, an

irregular sheet of water and a miniature Oriental temple. But Nash"s Pavilion

far outshines Sezincote and the scheme Repton based on it as a composition in the

Picturesque manner, not only in its variety, but also in its use of stucco instead ot

stone and in its exuberantly arbitrary mingling oi styles to create an illusion

instead of an interpretation of Far Eastern architecture.

The results of Nash's application in stucco of the full register of Picturesque

effect to cottage, villa and urban architecture can be seen all over Britain. Thewhite and cream facades iA Regency houses display delightfully sketchy andunorthodox versions of the Greek, Gothic, Moorish. Egyptian and castle styles.

They may be battlemented, gabled, turretted or parapetted, their windowsfurnished with flimsy dripmoulds; or sashed or pointed and casemented, withtracery 111 the heads and margin lights; or they may be arched and fantastically

glazed to suggest the Orient. The door, occasionally panelled in the Gothicmode, may be set in a porch of medieval character flanked by clusters of narrowengaged shafts; it may be approached between squat pillars recalling the

entrance to an Egyptian temple; it may be announced by huge, heavily Greek.Doric or Ionic columns supporting a swelling projection in accordance with the

cult of the colossal as in a notable terrace. Albemarle Villas m Plymouth; or it

may, in a most theatrical manner, mereK hint at a style with a feu grooved lines

in the stucco head and jambs, as m the ( ase <,A~ a little house in Church Street.

Saffron Walden.

Egyptian House. Penzance, CornwallHouse in St lohn's Wood. London

The Picturesque did not always

assume .1 Gothic character. Manypublications of the first quarter of the

nineteenth century provided a choice

between Gothic, Grecian, Swiss.

Italian. Egyptian and Oriental Styles

ot domestic building The Egyptian

style became fashionable after

Napoleon's campaign in Egypt. Theexample at Penzance (left) is an

extreme instance of the style. It is all

carried out in brightly coloured

stucco irresistibly combining solar

discs, lotus flowers, terms andu mdow tracery showing eccentric

« inged, obelisk and hexagonal

patterns with the Royal Arms and a

Napoleonic eagle. I he StJohn'sWood house is Moorish in flavour,

and again even the window light-, are

m key with the exotic style.

Page 269: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Lighthouse keeper's lodge, Cromarty,Ross and Cromarty, and toll house onthe Bath Road, between Hungerfordand Newbury, Berkshire

The low tower of the lighthouse is

fused with the one-storeyed lodge,

which takes the form ot a small

temple in the Egyptian manner. This

lodge was not built until 1846, but is

still, in this remote place, in the

stuccoed style of the Nash period.

Perhaps the common root ot the

words Pharos and Pharoah promptedthe architect in his choice of style. Heincluded in his design a little altar (not

visible in the photograph) dedicated

to Aesulapius, physician to the

Argonauts.

In the charming Berkshire toll house

(now demolished), the stuccoed style

takes the shape of a toy castle with

fat turrets and emphatic, black-

outlined battlements, a torm copied

by Staffordshire potters a little later in

the century.

Page 270: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Gothic and Picturesque

Even when it remains perfectly plain, the Regency house, light and insub-

stantial looking with its low-pitched roof, wide eaves, lightly recessed windows

and excessively thin glazing bars, has the air of being part of a scenic design, and

the classical ideal, still faintly and exquisitely manifest in its simple, box-like

proportions, trembles on the brink of dissolution. Frequently the pictorial ele-

ment is enhanced by the intricate cast-iron verandas, balconies and porches which

are such distinctive features of the Regency period. Such verandas and balconies,

sometimes covered by Oriental-looking, up-curving or shell-shaped canopies,

though widely distributed, are especially associated with seaside houses, for the

development of the coastal watering-places as well as of some inland spas co-

incided with the age of stucco and the Picturesque. Another noticeable charac-

teristic of Regency seaside architecture is the frequent occurrence oi the curved

bay window. Two, three and sometimes four storeys high, these windows billow,

one after another, along whole terraces and crescents, echoing in true Picturesque

fashion the element they confront.

Cast iron, like stucco, was a substitute material which helped to weaken the

strong sense of the special qualities and varieties of stone, wood and metal which

had persisted throughout the earlier Georgian period and to encourage the facile

creation of Picturesque effects. Cast iron had been used by the Adam brothers for

the mass production of fanlights, and it was used structurally for the first time in

1 77 1 -8 1 for the famous bridge over the Severn at Ironbndge. William Porden

created a fantastic display of cast-iron Gothic tracery at Eaton Hall in Cheshire,

designed in the Perpendicular style for the Marquess of Westminster in 1803, and

by the Regency period this material had captured the market for balconies,

verandas, stair balustrades, bootscrapers, doorknockers and much else besides.

The veranda, a development of the great overhanging, lattice-enclosed windowsof Saracenic architecture, appeared among the Picturesque cottage and villas

designs of such late eighteenth-century publications as the already mentioned

Plaw's Rural Architecture and Charles Middleton's Picturesque Views for Cottages,

farmhouses, villas, etc. The cast-iron designs were taken from pattern books and

mass produced, so that although there was considerable choice, repetition wasinevitable. There is no better place for the study of every possible combination

of the standardized cast-iron units of the period than Cheltenham. The chief

architect of the town, J. B. Papworth, expressed his satisfaction that in view of

the cheapness of cast iron it could be expected that richly embossed work wouldcome into frequent use, 'particularly as this method is now generally substituted

for other materials*. His expectations were fully realized, for the filigree designs

of the early Regency soon gave way to a coarse flamboyance achieved by the

addition of embossed ornaments such as adorn the exuberant balustrades andporches of many a Victorian villa.

The close connection between the Picturesque and later suburban developmenthas already been noted. One of the most persistent components of the suburb, the

semi-detached villa, first became established through Picturesque example. Thecottages at Milton Abbas could be called semi-detached, and in his Georgian

London Sir John Summerson refers to a map of the Eyre Estate. St John's Wood,showing a complete scheme of development, dated 1-94, based entirely on semi-

detached houses. The originator of the plan may have known Milton Abbas, butit was revolutionary to apply the semi-detached idea to a district which wasregarded as .111 extension of the metropolis. When the Eyre Estate came to bebuilt up 111 c. [820, it consisted largely of semi-detached villas. Paired stucco

houses are common in other developments of the period, often, despite their

enchanting fragility and elegance, presaging in the variety ot their ornamentapplied to a repeated plan, the semi-detached excesses of the present century. Thesubstitution of semi-detached villas in urban architecture for the terrace, con-ceived .is .1 single classical composition, completed the conquest of the Palladian

Order by the Picturesque style.

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II

Victorian Dilemma

Nathaniel Lloyd ends his great work on the English house with a few examples

from the first half of the nineteenth century to show 'the trend of taste - or lack

of it .... The sight is a melancholy one, and when the course of the degradation

is realized, pursuit of the theme can profit little.' We, half a century farther

removed from the Victorian age and in the midst of a housing revolution which

is more alarming in its implications than any of the changes of the past, view the

last century with more sympathy, and even on occasion with nostalgia. It is a

period of peculiar fascination for us, for it is in relation to what happened then

that we now realize the disastrous potentialities, aesthetic as well as social, of past

tendencies, many of them going back to the sixteenth century. They came to

fruition in the Victorian era and are seen in retrospect to have exerted a malignant,

disruptive influence from which there has been no recovery.

The architect and craftsman were now irrevocably divorced from one another;

and in an industrial society the craftsman was replaced by the general contractor,

who became a dominant figure in the profession - one, moreover, whose only

interest was financial. The emphasis on economics was underlined also by the

entry of a new figure on the scene: the quantity surveyor, who provided the

information, calculated from the architect's plans and specifications, on which

different contractors based their competitive prices. It was inevitable that stan-

dards of execution should fall and that quantity should be preferred to quality.

And other factors hastened the decline. The expansion of industry and the

spectacular explosion of the urban population gave tremendous opportunities

to the speculative builder. The population of London alone increased from just

under a million to four and a half million between 1800 and 1900, and that of the

whole country was trebled by 1850, most of the growth taking place in the

northern or midland towns of Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield,

where new housing (a word first used in Victorian England to describe workers'

dwellings and tenements for the poor) created mile upon mile of mean, squalid

streets devoid of architectural merit. Furthermore, the revolution in transport,

the elimination of distance brought about with such extraordinary rapidity by

the advent of the steam railway, meant that the close, traditional relationship

between the house and its environment was broken, that one of the most vital

ingredients in domestic architecture was lost. Local materials no longer dictated

the texture and colour of the house: the builder had to make a conscious choice

of materials and this choice was usually decided by cost. Thus Welsh slates found

their way almost everywhere, creating harsh discords in regions ot halt-timber.

brick and limestone.

Many writers have pointed to affinities between the Victorian age and that of

Elizabeth I. In both periods society was undergoing dramatic changes, in both

patronage was passing into the hands o\\\ new class. The sixteenth and nineteenth

centuries were equally characterized by astonishing vitality, power of invention

and individuality. Architecturally they are alike in their love of ostentation and

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I 'ictorian Dilemma

bigness of scale and in their confident use of motifs from diverse styles to enhance

a predominantly vertical image. But the resemblances only shed a more glaring

light on the gulf that divides the two ages. The difference is that so acutely felt

by Matthew Arnold and expressed in his comparison of Glanvil's Oxford

Scholar who had 'one aim, one business, one desire' with the men of his owntune:

O born in days when wits were fresh and clear

And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames:

Before this strange disease of modern life

With its sick hurry, its divided aims,

Its heads o'er taxed, its palsied hearts, was rife.

Although Elizabethan prosperity was based on commerce, Elizabethan

civilization was based on an imaginative ideal, the ideal, as we have seen, of

breeding a nation of men who were Christian, chivalrous, valiant, merciful and

generous, just and free. The consciousness of this ideal, which implied a morally

responsible society, redeemed the preoccupation with wealth and property which

then, as in the nineteenth century and in all periods of violent change, was muchin evidence. Thus the Elizabethan artist, whether architect, writer or musician,

did not regard commercial enterprise as a dangerous, hostile development, but as

a glorious adventure, a parallel in the world of action to his own endeavours. His

age was one ot vivid contrast, but these contrasts were united in a view of life

and reflected in an art remarkable for their strength and cohesion. The Victorians,

on the other hand, failed conspicuously to synthesize the conflicting forces of

their age. They failed because they were dominated to a terrifying extent by their

single-minded pursuit ot wealth. Their very attitude to the wretchedness and

depravity of the new factory towns and the new working-class districts reveals

the degree ot their obsession and their blindness to their responsibilities. In their

subscription to the belief stemming from Adam Smith, that their prosperity

depended on the unimpaired operation of economic law, and that to alleviate

the sufferings of the poor would be tantamount to interfering with sacred

economic processes, they acquiesced in the appalling misery of a growingpercentage of the population as part of the price that had to be paid for the nation's

wealth. Instead of pitying the poor as victims of a fate which might have been

their own. they teared and despised them.

The Victorians' worship ot property is epitomized in their glorification of

"the Home'. For while many of the objects with which they crammed it - the

wax fruit, the leather flowers and stuffed birds under glass domes, the scrap

screens, the shell-framed pictures of ships and seaside scenes, the ships in bottles,

the sand bells, the pictures of cut paper and dried seaweed, the narrative paintings,

the paper-weights through whose convex glass a building or townscape leaps

into three-dimensional lite, the albums and mementos - conjure up for us a vision

ot snug, secure domesticity, their superfluitv in the Victorian house turned it into

1 personal museum, the deathly, stifling character of which was the antithesis ot

the concept ot the home. Many descriptions of Victorian interiors by those whoknew them confirm this strange dichotomy:

1 he Dormer drawing room was. in some curious way, reminiscent ot a

mausoleum. The vault-like air, the white marble mantelpiece recalling tombs;the wreath ot wax camelias made b\ Mis Velindre in early youth and by her

jealously treasured; the licavv curtains ofpurple cloth and the immense valence

weighted w ith balls and fringe, that concealed their union with the curtain-rodas it it were .m mdeceiu \ all these and the solemn hush that pervaded it,

slowly gathering Sunday by Sunday like a rising sea, made it less like a sitting

loom than a gra\ e.

Fhe quality ot creative imagination which gives individual relics of the

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I 'ictorian Dilemma

Victorian period an independent vitality even when they are hideous, is belied

by so obsessive a reverence of the keepsake and souvenir. Not only the ostenta-

tious villas of south London, Hampstead and Edgbaston but the little houses andcottages of respectable and thrifty artisans and farm labourers partook of this

museum and shrine-like character. The various palaces of the Queen weresupreme examples of the home as a memorial not of personal taste but of persona-

lity. After the death of Albert, Victoria retained all his rooms as he had left themand slept with a wreath above her head in the bed where her dead husband had

lain. Possessions were an expression of individuality and a guarantee of its

importance and survival in a period already threatened by the impersonality of

the modern world.

At a time when the outward forms of wealth were cherished beyond all else,

the English middle classes were pious as never before. The manufacturer or

mill-owner whose main concern on weekdays was to get rich regardless of those

whose labour he hired, took over the role of chaplain to his household on Sunday,

unconscious ot the hypocrisy of his behaviour. The contrast, as Taine drily

observed in a description ot the head of an English family conducting prayers at

home, was not just that between commercialism and piety, but between faith

and unbelief. In a period in which more churches were built than in any other

century since the Middle Ages - a period in which one of the foremost exponents

of the Gothic style could write that 'everything grand, edifying and noble in art

is the result of feelings produced by the Catholic religion in the human mind' -

religious faith was being ceaselessly undermined. After the publication in 1859

of Darwin's Origin of Species, it was impossible for the thinking man to pay more

than lip-service to the theological history on which he had been nurtured. The

scientific revelation accorded too well with the gospel of the materialist to permit

of doubt in its turn, or to arouse an answering realization ot the eternal, imagina-

tive truths, more important for men's understanding of his predicament than any

discernible facts, which underlie every mythology.

The position o( the architect, as of all artists, was fraught with difficulty in

this century of paradox. Something of the dilemma which confronted him is

summed up in a book of essays by leading architects such as G. F. Bodley and

R. Norman Shaw, painters and designers such as W. B. Richmond and William

Morris and teachers such as W. R. Lethaby, published in 1892 and entitled Archi-

tecture: a Profession or an Art? For in a commercial society it was natural that 'the

client' (as the patron had now significantly come to be called) - generally an

industrialist or tradesman, who with rare exceptions was devoid ofboth taste and

feeling - should want value for money and should therefore insist on evidence ot

his architect's ability. So, in 1855, the Architectural Association, which had been

formed in 1847, put forward a proposal that the Institute of British Architects

(founded in 1 834) should organize examinations and issue a diploma to distinguish

qualified architects from others. Despite the protests of many eminent figures

throughout the latter half of the century, and despite the excellent case presented

by the writers of the collection of essays just mentioned, architecture finally

became a closed profession. However great a genius a man might be, he could

not practise unless he had passed an examination which could not possibly put

artistic originality to the test. The multiplication ot the numbers ot men who

became 'architects' after the institution of the qualifying examination is sufficient

proofthat the system could not produce artists. By 1900 more than 1 .500 qualified

architects were members of the R.I.B.A. alone. The number of members prac-

tising architecture at the beginning of Victoria's reign was eighty-two.

The architect was caught up in this conflict between the profession and the art ot

architecture, and affected, moreover, by the social emphasis placed on his pro-

fessional standing. He was also faced with the antithesis of architecture as an art

and as a structural science. The Institute ofCivil Engineers had come into being as

early as iS,8 and had received its Royal Charter in [828. Hut at that tune, the

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Conservatory, Leominster,

Herefordshire

Thomas Hopper, the architect of

Penrhyn Castle, had built an

enormous Gothic conservatory at

Carlton House for George IV, and

Decimus Burton and the engineer

Richard Turner had designed the

elegant ogee-shaped Palm House at

Kew in glass and cast-iron in 1844-8,

but the essentially Victorian vogue for

the conservatory was stimulated bythe tame of Paxton's Great

Conservatory at Chatsworth, com-pleted by 1 K49, by the unique

specimens of tropical and rare plants

with which he filled it and, above all,

bv the giant greenhouse he designed

to house the Great Exhibition of 185 1.

Soon the smallest villa was not

considered complete without a

conservatory in which to cultivate

some of the exotic plants and shrubs

which, owing to the adventurous

botanical expeditions ot the

nineteenth century, 111 which Paxton

played a notable part, had become all

the rage. The glass used for the

Crystal Palace was thin, polished

sheet glass which was cast and not

blown, as earlier glass had been, and

which it had become possible to

produce commercially by 1S3N.

Without this cheaply produced glass,

the conservatory could never have

achieved its popularity. This humbleexample, attached to a house in the

Grecian style, has Gothic cast-iron

lights of a standardized pattern.

architect and engineer were scarcely conscious of rivalry. The architect indeed.

as we have seen, made ample use of the engineer's material : cast iron. And though

the purposes to which he put it were very often decorative, the material was also

used structurally in house design. The two staircases at either end ot the corridor

in the Pavilion, Brighton, are of cast iron, as arc the four slender columns ending

in palm fronds which support the kitchen ceiling. The Duke ot Portland was

making lavish use of cast iron combined with glass for the fantastic underground

palace he was hollowing out of the ground at Welheck Abbey in the second halt

ot the century. And no Victorian villa w as complete \\ ithout its immature version

of the glass-houses at Chatsworth: the conservatory. But by then the professions

ot architecture and engineer were sharply divided. For even though Scott in his

Remarks 011 Secular and Domestic Architecture (1858) proclaimed that 'metallic

construction is the great development of our age', the architect continued to

conceive his projects in terms ot brick and stone. \\ hile the engineer \\ .is supremein the domain of glass and iton. And although traditional building methods had

been distorted and undermined by nineteenth-century developments, the

architect still clung to what was left of them, while the engineer carried out his

u ork by means ot prctabrieation. Art historians have righth stressed the impor-

Page 275: The English House Through Seven Centuries

I ictorian Diletiiuia

Cast-iron railings. Cavendish. Suffolk

These exuberant, billowing railings

are composed of standardized parts

which were still being advertised by

O'Brien, Thomas & Company at the

end of the nineteenth century. Thefiligree elegance of the veranda at

Pershore (page 262) has given way to

a coarse flamboyance, encouraged bythe addition of solid, embossed

ornaments. But in this example the

inherent vulgarity of the new-

technique is disciplined by a vigorous

sense of design which has triumphed

over the condition of prefabncation.

tance of the brilliant technical achievements of the Victorian engineers - their

bridges, railway stations and exhibition buildings - 111 relation to the products of

our own age, but the widely held view that Victorian industrialized building was

the most significant aesthetic expression of the period is surely open to question.

The economic advantages ot factory-made buildings ensured the eventual triumph

of the engineer in the architectural field but at the same time relegated the

architect in his true role of artist to a minor position. The situation was already

foreshadowed 111 the partnership of Brunei and Matthew Digby Wyatt in the

building of Paddington Station. Brunei saw himself as the principal partner whowas 'to build a station after my own fancy which almost of necessity becomes an

engineering work', while Wyatt was fitted for nothing more than the 'detail of

ornamentation for which I neither have time nor knowledge . ..'. The spread of

this attitude, and its application in due course to domestic architecture, gave rise

to the pitifully limited conception of the house as 'a machine for living in'. Thefact that the originator of that phrase was one of the most celebrated architects

of the present century shows the extent to which the functions of engineer and

architect came to be confused. But I am looking too far ahead: this substitution

of structural science for building art in the domestic held was a reaction against

the development of the Picturesque in the Victorian period. Unchecked by the

controlling influence of a standard of taste imposed by a cultured minority, the

Picturesque reached disastrous proportions, the effects of which are with us still.

273

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I 'ictorian Dilemma

It was understandable that the Victorians should reject the classical, horizontal

mode, that Scott should find the Georgian terrace 'utterly intolerable', Disraeli

repudiate Gower Street as 'insipid and tame' and Burges speak of the eighteenth

century as 'the Dark Ages of Art', but the materialistic environment in which

this swing of the pendulum took place exaggerated and distorted its direction.

There is a parallel to the architecture of the nineteenth century in the literary

form which was most expressive of the period: the novel. With all its wonderful

vigour and creativeness. the Victorian novel is flawed, either by sentimentality

and flashy melodrama or by philistinism and a censorious morality. But just as

Dickens's genial power to create remembered life outweighs all his weaknesses,

and George Eliot's extraordinary power of insight into human motifs is more

important than her exclusively rationalistic moral standards, so the achievements

of the Victorian architects have the power to stir our imagination despite their

shortcomings.

To begin with, they almost succeeded, in the face of the overwhelming odds

against them, in establishing a style which was as valid for their period as was the

classical mode for the eighteenth century. This style was, of course, the Gothic.

It was eagerly advocated by all those who were most acutely conscious of the

destruction of the integrity of craftsmanship by commercialism. In his powerful

championship of Gothic, Ruskin seems to have been aware of the dangers of too

scholarly an approach to architecture:

The vital principle [he wrote] is not love of Knowledge, but love of change.

It is that strange disquietude of the Gothic spirit that is its greatness; that

restlessness of the dreaming mind that wanders hither and thither among the

niches, and flickers feverishly around the pinnacles, and frets and fades in

labyrinthine knots and shadows along wall and roof, and yet is not satisfied,

nor shall be satisfied. The Greek could stay in his triglyph furrows and be at

peace; but the work of the Gothic heart is fretwork still, and it can neither rest

in, nor from, its labour, but must pass on, sleeplessly, until its love of change

shall be pacified for ever in the change that must come alike on them that wakeand them that sleep.

Yet it was Ruskin's exquisite, hynotic prose and Pugm's informed passion for

medieval architecture which were the greatest influences in changing the scenic,

playful Gothic of the Georgian and Regency periods into a style based on

construe tional knowledge.

The rapidly accumulating know ledge of the Victorian designer indeed became.in additional obstacle to creative endeavour as the century advanced. Frequent andextensive travel, antiquarian research and the proliferation ot architectural

journals and sot ieties combined to present the builder with a bewildering choice

i't stvles and ornaments and a store of facts which were inimical to spontaneity

and as little connected with aesthetics as the examination he was expected to pass

it lie w ished to ( all himself an architect. But to Pugin, w hose role in the establish-

ment ot the nineteenth-century style may be compared to that of lord Burlingtonin the inauguration of the Palladian rule, knowledge was ot" fundamentalimportance I he skcu h\ approac h of those who had earlier built in the Picturesque

manner was anathema to him. I lis father, who had assisted Nash in supplyingthe demand for gentlemen's residences in the castellated Style, had made pioneerand exhaustive studies of medieval buildings and had published the results of his

work in his Books oj Specimens ami Examples oj Gothu irchitecture, both ofwhichwere full) illustrated with measured drawings After his father's death, Pugincontinued his work, travelling widely and making detailed drawings of medievalmonuments, lie thus began his architectural career as an antiquarian scholar.

1 torn a\) earl) ag< hi die Gothu style was basically different from that

ot the ( leorgians. 1 le designee! in the ( !othi« manner as readily as the\ had donein the < lassical idiom and as if he were quite unaware ofany break in the medieval

Page 277: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Master's House, Marlow.Buckinghamshire

Part of the house, designed, like the

school itself by Pugm, lies concealed

behind the clipped yew on the right

:

there are two further bargeboarded

gables and the facade, which could

have been contrived as a perfectly

symmetrical design, is slightly

irregular in accordance with Pugin's

belief that the exterior of a house

should exactly express the interior

arrangements. He was reacting against

the balanced Georgian facade whichvery often did not correspond to the

plan behind it or which forced a

design into symmetry which mighthave been more convenient if moreirregular. The Gothic-inspired style ofthe Marlow house, with its steep

gables, drip-moulds and casements,

harmonizes so well with the church-yard in the foreground of the

photograph that it might readily betaken for a pattern-book house in the

Picturesque taste, but in fact Puginwas as opposed to the Picturesque as

to the Georgian mode. In the Master's

House irregularity is not sought for

its own sake, but is the result of a

functional design, and the Gothicapproach signified for Pugin a return

to sound principles of construction

and to a native tradition which hadbeen ousted by Palladiamsm. In the

same way the local flint and brick ofwhich the house is built represented

a rejection of stucco and all

Picturesque, scenic effects.

tradition. The Georgians had applied the style of an alien and extinct civilization

to English domestic architecture and now Pugin was reviving a language that,

it is true, was moribund, but which was native to our country- English dwellings,

prior to the period when they were cast in a classical mould, were, according to

Pugin, 'suited by their scale and arrangement for the purposes of habitation: the

turreted gatehouse and porters' lodgings, the entrance porch, the high-crested

roof and louvred hall, with its capacious chimney, the great chambers, the vast

kitchens and offices, all forming distinct and beautiful features, not masked or

concealed under one monotonous front, but by their variety and form increasing

the effect of the building'. This idealized view of the medieval house is no less

worthy as an inspiration to the domestic architect than Colen Campbell's

introduction to I 'itruvius Britannicus or than the translation of Palladio's / Quattro

Libri dell' Architettura. Pugin's brilliant pamphlet. Contrasts; or a Parallel between

the Noble Edifices of the fourteenth and fifteenth Centuries and Similar Buildings oj the

Present Day: shewing the Present Decay of Taste. Accompanied by an Appropriate

Text, first published in [836, exhibited the dull, insubstantial character if late

Georgian architecture as compared to the variety and solidity of Gothic and had

as great an impact as Campbell's first volume. The edition of [841 sold in huge

numbers; and few who looked at Pugin's spirited comparisons of the early

'75

Page 278: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Cemetery keeper's lodge, Halstead,

Essex

Built shortly after the Interment Actof 1852 which resulted in numbers ofnew cemeteries, this lodge embodiesPugin's principles in its rational plan

and expressive use of local material

and also in the correct rendering ofthe Tudor openings; but the fanciful

glazing is Picturesque and the bold

polychrome brickwork of the tall

chimney-stack on the right shows a

reaction against the plain materials

advocated by earnest early Victorian

medievalists.

nineteenth-century and medieval styles could doubt the superiority ot the latter.

The author's association of classical forms with Paganism and of the Gothic \\ ith

Christianity partly accounted for his success with pious readers who eagerly

accepted his assumption that the only conceivable style for Christians was Gothic

and that 'the degraded state of the arts in this country is purely owing to the

absence of Catholic feeling'. Pugin's confusion of beautv and morality may seemridiculous to us. but if it is not altogether true that good men design goodbuildings, it is certain that men of divided aims cannot inspire or produce goodbuildings. Pugin's fiercely-held beliefs and intellectual certainty were the sources

of his profound influence and of his near success in giving direction to the

exuberance of the Victorian imagination. When he came to deal with the purely

practical aspects of building 111 the Gothic style, his approach was absolutely

rational. His explanation of construction and the role of ornament 111 The TruePrmaphs q) Pointed Christian Architecture is admirably clear. His two great

principles tor design were: 'First, that there should be no features about a building

which are not necessary tor convenience, construction or propriety ; second, that

all ornament should consist o\ enrichment of the essential construction ot the

building.' Pugin scorned both rigid symmetry and picturesque effect and insisted

that 'the external and internal appearance of an edifice should be illustrative ofami in accordance with, the purpose tor which it is destined'. In his Floriated

Ornament ot 1

s.40. Pugin followed Ruskin 111 affirming the dependence of art

upon natural tonus \\c also advocated a two-dimensional approach to design.

'Ancient artists.' he wrote, 'disposed the leaves .uu\ flowers ofwhich their design

Page 279: The English House Through Seven Centuries

House at Saffron Walden, Essex

This little town house is typical of the

kind of dwelling which resulted fromthe fusion ot Pugin's passionate

championship ot the Gothic stvle andlogical planning with the preference

for strong contrasts, patterns androbust, sculptural forms which werethe natural expression of Victorian

exuberance. The facade is carried out

in black, buff and red brick, formingdiapers, bands and ornamental arches,

designs for all of which appear in

pattern books of the period. Pugin

himself, with all his insistence on plain

walls, embellished his own house,

St Marie's Grange, near Salisbury,

with discreet diaper-work. Thetexture of the steep roof is varied byalternating plain and fishscale tiles, a

form ot ornamentation also recom-mended by contemporary pattern

books. The sharply angular andvigorously if mechanically mouldedchimney-stacks are as boldly

conspicuous as their most elaborate

Tudor predecessors, and the barge-

boards, the design of which is a

magnified outline of the trefoil

ridge-cresting, projects more force-

fully and throws a deeper shadowthan any surviving medieval example.

was composed so as to fill up the space they were intended to enrich : for instance,

a panel which by its very construction is flat would be ornamented by leaves or

flowers drawn out or extended so as to display their geometric forms on a flat

surface.' Pugin contrasts this method with the work of his contemporaries who'would endeavour to give a fictitious idea of relief, as if bunches of flowers were

laid on'. These ideas were realized in the wallpapers of Morris and the work of

the Arts and Crafts men of the late Victorian period.

Many of the houses built by Pugin himself and his followers exemplify his

principles in their avoidance of the regular facade which has no relation to the

building behind it and is of purely scenic irregularity. Their irregularity is not

that ot a deliberately Picturesque buildings, such as the Lodge at Rendlesham

(p. 257), where the rooms are made to conform, whatever the results in incon-

venience and lack of proportion, with an exterior in the form of a chapter house.

Pugin's little schoolhouse at Marlow. constructed of brick and local flint with

steep bargeboarded gables, could not possibly be taken tor anything but a dwelling

and the exterior and interior make an organic, logical whole. The considerable

number of small houses built after this fashion during the middle yean of the

century are among the few examples of Victorian 'architect designed' dwelling

which give us unalloyed delight. Many of them are. appropriately, parsonages,

like that at Bingham's Melkham, Dorset, built of the stone of the district and

romantically set on .1 green slope against a wooden background, or cemetery

keepers' lodges like the neat flint example at 1 lalstead, Essex.

Many larger mansions were built on Pugin's principles, many more than have

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1 Z:ii V

iff -;-.

^-

Page 281: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The Vineyard. Saffron Walden, Essex,

and (right) bedroom in a house in

Cirencester, Gloucestershire

Although earnestly Puginist, this red

brick house in its ample groundsplanted with trees and flowering

shrubs which are as much part of their

period as the architecture, is visually

as much in the Picturesque as the

Victorian Gothic taste. The Gothic

and Picturesque had always been

closely associated, and although the

Gothic details of the Vineyard, such

as the window lights, the pilasters andcapitals, are more archaeologically

correct than they were in Picturesque

houses such as Castleward and Arbury(pages 244 and 245), and

although the general character of this

building is more serious, heavier andat the same time more insistently

vertical and based on coarser

contrasts than earlier Gothic Revival

houses, the effect remains Picturesque.

And this impression is unaltered bythe fact that the irregular aspect of the

composition is not intentionally

scenic, but is the external expression

of convenient internal planning with

rooms compactly grouped about a

central hall. Like Philip Webb's RedHouse at Bexley Heath, it has nobasement, though here the DrawingRoom is on the ground floor and not,

as at Bexley Heath, upstairs. Thedesigner was William Beck. Thephotograph of the Cirencester

bedroom discloses a typical Puginist

interior with its deeply splayed Gothicwindow and oak panelling in the

Tudor style. The glazed, transfer-

printed tiles of the washstand are

pretty examples of a product in the

design of which the Victorians

showed inexhaustible invention.

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ever been heard ofbeyond the neighbourhood in which they stand. The famousRed House at Bexley Heath, built in 1859 by Philip Webb for William Morris,

affirms these principles. That it is not so revolutionary as is sometimes suggested is

shown by its similarity to a house built at about the same time on the outskirts of

Saffron Walden, Essex, a house designed by a local man, William Beck, which,

like many another ot its kind not yet demolished as too big to fit into the pattern

of modern living, is fast sinking into decay in neglected grounds, where the

evergreen shrubs, first cultivated in all their variety by the Victorians, have

grown into dense, sombre thickets, and the yew and Scots pine cast their shade

across unkempt lawns. Approached by a winding, wooded drive, this house is

set on a weed-encumbered terrace against a screen of magnificent beeches and

above sloping lawns shut in by broad belts of yew, fir and pine, chestnuts and

flowering shrubs, many ot the trees choked with ivy and some ot them gaunt and

dead. The house is L-shaped and ot red brick with freestone dressings and with

bands of purple, burnt brick outlining some of the openings. There are two

entrances in the arms of the L, which, with a hedge of yew, form a courtyard

into which the drive debouches. A narrow ogee-headed opening leads directly

into the domestic offices, while the main entrance is pointed, ornamented with

dog-tooth moulding and surrounded by red terracotta tiles decorated with

impressed cinquefoils. The roof-lines are broken by gables ot disparate height,

two of them bisected by tall chimney-stacks pierced by lancet windows which

form the overmantels to bedroom fireplaces. The sweeping roofs are crowned

with openwork cresting and covered with mossy tiles arranged in bands of

fishscale and diaper patterns, and from their midst soars a pretty spirelet sur-

mounted by a weather-vane. The house is three storeys high. Twin lancets within

a pointed arch light the uppermost floor tin the garden side, while the principal

rooms on the two lower floors are lit by square bays with trefoil-headed lights

or with square-headed lights separated by pronged shields. At the rear of the

house an immense window of four trefoil-headed lights tilled with coloured

lattices interrupted by clear roundels, rising the full height ot the first floor.

illumines the hall, where an imposing stair goes up to a balustraded gallery from

which the bedrooms open. This arrangement of[a central hall, very often with

179

Page 282: The English House Through Seven Centuries

a top light, was a development ofthe plan first seen at Wollaton and found again

at Inveraray Castle, but never fully exploited before it became part ofthe compact

design of the Victorian detached house.

The house I have just described no doubt looks more romantic to our eyes in

its present state of decay than it appeared m its prime, when the terrace was a

dry, firm, gravelled walk and when brilliant herbaceous borders relieved the

dusk of the evergreens. Hut although it conforms to Pugin's rules of design and

was the work of an architect who was not adding Gothic details to a structure

based on the classical plan, but who was designing three-dnnensionally in Gothic

forms, using them, as his predecessors had used classical shapes, to create some-

thing which was entirely new , this is nevertheless a Picturesque work. Picturesque

in its irregularity, its relation to its setting and its vain attempt to reproduce the

work of the medieval mason m an industrial age. Pugin's choice ofGothic madehis attempt to oust the Picturesque impracticable. The Gothic and Picturesque

were already inextricably united, and by replacing the fantasies o{ the early

R ival by solid, properly planned architecture, Pugin merely inaugurated

another stage in the development of the Picturesque m which his principles

were seldom regarded. He himself, at Alton lowers. Staffordshire, and at

Si arisbric k I fill. C )rmskirk, Lancashire, built Gothic piles as theatrical as Arburv

(p. 24s) and tar less suited to convenient living. The tremendously lofty, spired

tower of Scarisbrick is certainly not necessary for purposes of 'construction or

propriety', and apart from the great hall with its elaborate screen, the rooms are

ill arranged and badly proportioned and entirely subordinated to the architect's

eagerness to contrive a Picturesque elevation.

Before following the course of the Victorian architect's pursuit of the Pic-

turesque, a great ileal of pleasure is to he derived from looking at the work ofthe mam anonymous country builders of the period, whose traditional skills

hail not yet been corrupted h\ industrialism and who. with the help of patternbooks setting out the principles of the Gothic style in a more thorough mannerthan those >>t the eighteenth century, found no difficulty 111 substituting the

Porches at Llantrothcn, Merioneth,

North Wales, and (right) at

Dennington, Suffolk

The tour porches shown on this and

the opposite page all reveal the

vitality and variety of the imagination

nt the Victorian rural craftsman. Theporch at Llanfrothen is contrived in

slate and is part ot a wholly slate-hung

cottage The rusticated arch, with its

huge keystone, is classical in inspira-

tion, while the bonnet-hipped porch

root and slate bargeboards. showing a

design often seen on Victorian railway

stations, are traditional in origin 1 he

hinges along the ridges arc practical as

well as decorative, for they enable the

ridge to be fitted to roots of disparate

pitch, rhe Gothic cast-iron hinge-

fronts on the door are illustrated in a

hardware merchant's catalogue ot

1 B92, w here the) arc priced at 10.<. a

pair

I he wooden porch at Dennington is

as highl) individual as the slate

composition. It 1^ treeh composed ot

fragments of Victorian furniture: the

pillars were once the supports ot a

tour-poster bed. the pediment was

perhaps the cresting oi a sofa or side-

board and is combined with volutes

trom another source

Page 283: The English House Through Seven Centuries

J VI niir77

Porches at Great Oakley, Essex, and(right) at Downham Market, Norfolk

Some of the most delightful conceits

of the country carpenter were carried

out in trelliswork, and airy, white-

painted porches, playing freely uponGothic and classical forms, give

character to many a standardized

cottage and lighten many a for-

bidding facade. In this example at

Great Oakley the close mesh of the

latticed walls echoes the pattern of the

black and white tiled floor andcontrasts with the bolder and moreopen design of the frieze. The deepyellow carstone walls of the house at

Downham Market accentuate the

emphatic fretwork of the porch

bargeboards. painted bright blue andwhite.

medieval forms (for the creation of which, after all, their crafts had first been

cultivated) tor the classical idiom. In their designs for porches, bargeboards anddormers, they showed the same perennial liveliness ofinvention as their ancestors

had displayed in the application of the classical manner to the doorway. And their

range of patterns for leaded lights rivals that of the Elizabethans.

The vitality of rural craftsmen in districts untouched by the Industrial Revolu-

tion was also manifest in their continued and more enterprising use of local

materials. At Great Massingham, Norfolk, flints, alternating with bright red

brick headers, make a rich tweedy texture: at Stokeferry, in the same county,

big unknapped flints mixed with brick are galletted with tiny clinkers; at Saffron

Walden a jaunty row of artisans' cottages is built of rough flints boldlv banded

with redbrick. The glitter and rugosity of flint appealed to the robust imagination

of the Victorian builder, and by tar the most adventurous use of this material in

the domestic field belongs to the nineteenth century. Bands of sparkling flint

frame the pointed windows ofa brick house at Marlborough, and jet-black walls

of knapped flints set offthe white outlines of octagonal leaded lights at Wrentham.Suffolk, and the looped and undulating bargeboards of a gamekeeper's cottage

at Cockley Cley, Norfolk. The roots and walls of a cottage at Llanfrothen,

Merioneth, are wholly sheathed in bands of rectangular and hexagonal slate.

indigo and lavender coloured, while slate rustications frame the arched entrance,

and even the bargeboards are of scalloped slate. A one-storeyed house near

Kingussie, Perthshire, standing in pinewoods, is coated with trunks and branches

from the surrounding timber, left in their rough, spiked state but cut to ordered

lengths and arranged in forma! patterns ofsquares and zigzags. The halt-timbered

style is amusingly parodied in a pair of low, long cottages near Goudhurst, Kent.

And in north Norfolk the possibilities of a curious local material, carstone, were

exploited for the first time by the Victorian builder. There is a particularly

forceful exhibition ot this strange, toffee-like stone at Downham Market.

Varying in colour from light, sandy yellow to dark brown, the small, thin slabs

are used dry and combined with quoins, door and window frames of yellow

28l

Page 284: The English House Through Seven Centuries

T:

Row of cottages at Rendcombe.Gloucestershire (top). Lodge. Stratton

Hark, Winchester, Hampshire(centre), and (bottom) cottage at

Kingussie, Perthshire

The more conservative of Victorian

country builders continued to workwith the materials and in the ways of

their forebears. The row of Cotswoldcottages at Rendcombe. Gloucester-

shire, reveals its period only in its

trellised and bargeboarded porches

with their Gothic finials and the cast-

iron tracery of its casement lights and

is clearly in the same tradition as the

famous row at Bibury (page 156).

The Stratton Park lodge, on the other

hand, is a striking product of the

fashion for vividly contrasting

materials. The lights of the lower

window of this little house are of the

same mass-produced but enchanting

pattern as those of the Rendcombecottages, and, like the looping barge-

boards, enhance the incredibly rich

effect of the facade.

Wood used in its rough state was

associated with the follies whichplayed so conspicuous a part in the

Picturesque landscape garden. At

Exton Park, Rutland, a classical

temple was completely sheathed in

bark, and at Halsewell, Somerset,

there was 'a Druid's Temple in a just

style of bark". The Victorians were

fond of lining their conservatories

with bark and they delighted in rustic.

irregular porches composed of

boughs. Here, on the outskirts of

Kingussie (bottom), the trunks and

branches of pines have been used in

their rough state, though cut into

ordered lengths, to transform the

walls of a plain little rectangular

dwelling with an exotic texture and

pattern redolent of the forest.

Page 285: The English House Through Seven Centuries

I 'ictorian Dilemma

brick, and occasionally patterned with vertical and horizontal bands of brick.

The prevailing colour of the woodwork is cerulean blue.

Freestone is often combined with brick to yield bolder patterns than any seen

in the Georgian period: indeed, the zebra stripes adorning the lodge of Stratton

Park near Winchester are more startling than those that cover the great northwall of the Duomo at Orvieto. Bricks of different colour arranged in an immensediversity of shapes often give the front of a Victorian house the aspect of a piece

oi polychrome cross-stitch work. The designs take the form of diamonds,zigzags, lozenges, squares and rectangles in every conceivable association,

variations on the Greek key pattern and quatrefoils. The designs may be used as

individual units or m bands of differing depth, and are usually composed of blackand red, red and buff, black and buff, or of black, red and buffbricks. A small villa

in Debden Road, Saffron Walden, is adorned with diamond shapes, geometricfloral devices and a thin band oflozenges of only three courses deep in black andbuff bricks on a red ground, while the back of another tall house in the same road

shocks the neighbourhood with flamboyant bands ofGreek pattern, seven courses

deep, crimson on yellow. Another form of brickwork, which made its first

appearance at this time, was that known as rat-trap bond, where the bricks werelaid on edge instead of flat. The reason for this arrangement must have been

economical and this type of construction is found only in the most humblelabourers' cottages, and yet the visual impact of the big units is arresting because

of their unexpected effect on the scale of the cottage, reducing its already very

modest proportions to those of a doll's house built of toy bricks.

Not all the results of this high-spirited approach to materials are as captivating

as the use of slate on the Merioneth cottage or the flourish of freestone on the

lodge at Stratton Park. The most enthusiastic member of the Victorian Society

would be hard pressed to find anything to say in praise of the nineteenth-century

practice ot replacing the regular courses ofmasonry usual in Georgian architecture

by random stone-laying. The ludicrous intention is to ape the effect ot the rough

stone walling of regions such as Cornwall and the Lake District in the prim

outskirts of towns like Great Malvern, Cheltenham or Newton Abbot, and to

apply a cottage style to urban architecture. The result resembles crazy paving

stood on end.

This insensitive disregard of the appropriate was symptomatic ofthe Picturesque

attitude. In an age terrified and alarmed by the horrors ot industrial urbanism

and the rapidity and extent of the growth of the conditions described by the

reports of the Royal Health of Towns Commission and so graphically summedup in Engels's famous description of the Irk from Ducie Bridge, the Picturesque

bacame a form of escapism, in the search for which the severer disciplines which

Pugin had sought to impose were rejected. The cottage orne in particular, which

had been originally conceived as a pretty pictorial embellishment ot the land-

scaped park, was now viewed through a haze of sentimentality and cultivated as

a symbol ot rural felicity. Landowners, whose own position had been fatally

undermined by the Reform Bill and the repeal of the Corn Laws, delighted in

housing their dependants in model villages. It was very rare that these new estate

cottages embodied the vernacular style of the district as simply and unpreten-

tiously as those built by the 1 Hike of Bedford at Ampthill. which tit as successfully

into the traditional scene as do the cob and thatched cottages of Milton Abbas

into the Dorset landscape. A group of cottages ornes at Sudbourne, Suffolk, show

the grotesque exaggeration with which the theme was usually treated. Thickest

thatch envelops every roof sometimes sloping to within a foot or two of the

ground and ornamented with every pattern in the thatcher's repertoire. Fantas-

tically deep eaves, steep, widely projecting gables, canopied doors and windows

and assertive dormers magnify the wild irregularity of the compositions. Fretted

bargeboards and porches supported on rude logs and with their arches filled with

a criss-cross of twigs, tall chimneys and sometimes bogus halt-timber work

283

Page 286: The English House Through Seven Centuries

stress the rusticity of the dwelling, which is confirmed by the setting in which

yews and conifers predominate.

If these houses at Sudbourne proclaim the elephantine vulgarity which could

debase the pretty conceit of the cottage orne in a commercial age, those of the

model village of Edensor in Derbyshire illustrate the ingrained eclecticism of the

Picturesque and the oppressive effects of mixed styles at a time when the achieve-

ments of the past had begun to weigh too heavily for inspiration to take wing.

Edensor was probably laid out by Paxton, one ot the great gardeners of his

century as well as the celebrated author of the Crystal Palace. The houses weredesigned by a local architect, John Robertson. The setting on the edge of Chats-

worth Park m a landscape of swelling hills and ancient beeches could scarcely be

more congenial to the notion of the Picturesque, and the plan of the village, with

houses casually distributed on either side of an ascending, winding, grass-verged

road, is perfectly attuned to that romantic setting. It is the elevations which produce

the feeling of unease which so often assails us m front of a Victorian building. Weare faced with the full range of styles shown m such pattern books as Loudon's

Encyclopaedia oj Cottage, Farm ,;//</ Villa Architecture (1833) or Lugar's Country

Gentleman's Architect. But the engravings 111 these books are informed with a

grace altogether absent from the massive realizations of them at Edensor. This

planned village dates from the beginning of Victoria's reign, but it is already

hea\ \ with the pretentiousness and pedantry which so often mark the Victorian

version of the Picturesque. Concern for correct detail takes the place of the light-

hearted association of motifs from divergent sourics which so enchants us in the

plaster fantasies of the first three decades of the century; and without the fervent

sense of conviction, w Inch in a house such as I lanunoon Manor (see p. 121) fuses

conflicting elements into a vital whole, the juxtaposition of Gothic and classic

themes. Italianate windows, Adam fanlights, mullions, leaded lights, Tudordripstones. Romanesque arches, gables and castellated and machicolated bays

Edensor, Derbyshire

This planned village was laid out tor

the 6th Duke of Devonshire in 1839.

Despite its early date, it is already

heavy with the pedantry which

marked Victorian versions ot the

Picturesque when they were'architect designed' and not the

unselfconcious products ot local

craftsmen. Solid masonry replaces the

st ik 1 o which 111 the Regency period

had unified elements from sources ot

the utmost diversity, and instead ot

using these sources as a spur to

invention, widely different stylistic

motifs, all flatly and academically

correct, have been juxtaposed without

any harmonizing inspiration.

•M

Page 287: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Cottage at Sudbourne, Suffolk, and

house at New ton Abbot, Devonshire

The Sudbourne cottage caricatures

the cottage orne. No attribute of the

Picturesque has been excluded.

Exaggeratedly deep thatch, barge-

boards, hnials and bogus halt-timber

consort with a rustic porch of tree

trunks and twigs.

The facade of the house at NewtonAbbot (below), which is the centre of

a terrace, turns a basically classical

design with a projecting, pednnentedfeature into a Gothic-flavoured,

grotesquely Picturesque and strongly

coloured composition. The pedimenthas become a bargeboarded gable, the

keystones of the arches, the head ot

the central window , and the junctions

of arches and jambs are painted black

and adorned with white trefoils and

quatrefoils in imitation of the 'black-

and-white' work ot Cheshire; and

while the rusticated door and windowsurrounds and the cornice above the

first floor are of brick, the facade is

sheathed in masonry laid random so

that it resembles crazy paving stood

on end.

Page 288: The English House Through Seven Centuries

I 'ictorian Dilemma

remains dead. The only relieving touch of gaiety and sensibility occurs in the

bargeboards. which display wonderful vigour, variety and originality. The whole

village is built of the local stone, but some of the roofs are tiled instead of stone-

slated, an ominous sign of the coming disintegration of regional styles.

Edensor is indeed in many ways a forerunner of future developments. The

attempt to base a new style on Gothic precedent alone was bound to fail in a

period when the Picturesque predilection for variety in style had become so

firmly established. In a book by two of Pugin's devoted admirers. Cottage,

Lodge and I 'ilia Architecture by W. and G. Audsley. published in the 1 86os, the

designs for all three types of house include examples in the Gothic, Italian. Old

Scotch and Elizabethan modes. They differ only from anything found at Edensor

in that the styles are rather less mixed in the individual buildings. It was perhaps

natural that architects should pass from the Gothic to those other styles which

had developed from it, to the Tudor and even to the Elizabethan. Such a change

would parallel the progression from the Roman to the Greek revival in the

eighteenth century. But the stylistic sequences of the Victorian period were not

like this. The pace of change was so rapid and erratic that it cannot really be

treated as a logical development. Fashions overlapped and conflicted with one

another, each phase was preceded by much earlier examples and accompanied

by survivors ofolder styles and there were extraordinary instances ofindividuality

which cannot be fitted into any scheme. All that can be said is that the impulse

behind the whole of this frenzied activity was, consciously and unconsciouslv.

emphatically romantic and Picturesque.

This impulse and the fluctuation ot style is most dramatically expressed in the

larger Victorian country mansions mostly built for rich newcomers to country

life who wished to live as grandly as the old aristocracy and to enjoy the trappings

of manorial privilege and splendour at the very moment when the reality was

ceasing to exist. The situation instantly recalls the Elizabethan preoccupation

with the domestic shell of the feudal nobility after the life had gone from it. Apart

from their interest as more earnest and more adventurous excursion into the

Picturesque than any of the charming fancy-dress houses of the early Romantics,

these Victorian rural seats show an audaciously original approach to planning

which should banish any lingering doubt that their authors' preoccupation with

past styles was due to failing powers of invention. Ingenious, infinitely varied

plans, often based on the idea of the top-lit central hall already mentioned, and

nearly always more conveniently disposed than the Palladian country house.

provide tor the many new factors with which the Victorian architect had to deal

:

the modern plumbing which might include rudimentary forms ofcentral heating.

and the multiplicity of new types of room which were considered indispensable

to civilized living, and which took the place of the great state rooms of the

Georgian mansion - the gun room, the smoking-room, the billiards room, the

music room, the ballroom (if the house was very grand) and ot course the

conservatory opening from the drawing-room to display the potted Bourbonpalms and the collection of tropical and rare plants which had only becomeknown in England since Paxton had enriched the art of gardening with his

amazing horticultural achievements.

The wealth of material is such that it is not possible to mention more than a fewof these remarkable houses. They range from Barry's great Genoese palace ot

den. flinging us immense terraced length high above the Thames, andPugin's towered and fretted Scarisbrick Hall, to William Burges's fantastic castles,

Salvin s Elizabethan extravaganza at Harlaxton and Norman Shaw's free andidiosyncratic essays in a bewildering number ot styles among them TudorAdo -shire, built u lerrist Wood, Surrey, half-timbered and tile-

hung with .1 vast hall and open timber rool ;side, Northumberland, out-standing first tor its intensely dramatic smug on a rock) slope, and secondly tor

its spectacu llery built to house the collection ot' lord Armstrong, the

The hall and cedar staircase,

Harlaxton Manor. Lincolnshire

This exuberant interior was designed

b) William Burn, c. 1S40. for Georgede Ligne Gregory, who needed a

monster house tor his large and

growing art collection The effect of

immense height was achieved bv

raising the upper compartment in a

tower, which is invisible from the

outside of the house William Burn,

who had shown himself to be a

master of plaster illusionist effects in

the interior of St John's Church.

Edinburgh, here combines illusion

and realitv. plaster curtains, plaster

tassels and plaster trumpet-blowing

putti. a painted skv. mirrors, real rope

and real scythes, marble and bronze

sculpture, to create a fantasy rivalling

the most extravagant and theatrical

achievements of Baroque Italy.

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Page 290: The English House Through Seven Centuries

I 'ictorian Dilemma

:astle steel-master, where the chimney-piece is so vast it becomes the whole

wall and where the riot of strapw ork and arabesque ornament and the carved

alabaster rivals the decoration at Langleys (pp. 132-3 in its robust abundance:

and, entirely different, but as forceful. Bryanston (1899), in the Wren manner.

With some of these houses the seriousness with which the chosen style has been

emulated is. as might be expected, more in evidence than the spirit of adventurous

reinterpretation. Such are George Devey's Jacobean Betteshanger. Kent (1856),

W. E. Nesfield's Kimmel Park. Derbyshire, in the William and Mary manner, and

Sir Ernest George's Shiplake Court. Oxfordshire, a richly textured mansion

which is notably close in feeling to the Elizabethan Lake House. Amesbury. In

an account so necessarily superficial and inadequate as this, it is more profitable

and more interesting to dwell briefly on one or two of those mansions in which

the element of the Picturesque underlying them all erupts, as it was bound to do

from time to time in a situation so fraught with contradictions, in an architecture

so bizarre as to stun the beholder into astonished silence.

Among these tremendously exciting and monster houses. Harlaxton comes

first to mind. It invites direct comparison with Burleigh and is reminiscent also

ofMontacute and Wollaton but is at the same time a distinct and unforgettable

monument of the Victorian imagination at its greatest pitch ot intensity. Thevast golden stone building recaptures and develops to a new degrees ot drama

and intricacy the aspiring, advancing and retreating pattern ot the great Eliza-

bethan houses. Flanked by octagonal turrets, crowned with banded and spired

cupolas, the main tacade moves to the flicker ot strapw ork ornament, the flame-

like upsurge of ogee gables adorned with spiralling finials. to the curve ot an

ornate two-storeyed oriel and the angular thrust ot square and polygonal bays,

the rhythm quickening and culminating in the central arcaded turret and

elaborate cupola on its lofty octagonal base, to which is attached a gargantuan

clock. The ringed pillars of the turret arcade and the tapering, banded cupola

are more academically Baroque in their detail than any Elizabethan form : they

define the mood of the whole building and at the same time confirm the latent

Baroque character ot Elizabethan architecture. The interior of this extraordinary

house states explicitly what the exterior suggests and what so many Elizabethan

houses suggest: it is wildly, outrageously and entirely Baroque. The inspired

architect was William Burn, a Scot and a pupil of Robert Smirke. The opulence

ot the original dining-room, now a chapel, and of the present dining-room

recalls that ot Pclagio Palagi's apartments at Turin and Naples, it is so superblv

confident, but Burn's work is more intoxicatingly alive and more preposterous.

The first ot these rooms is dominated by its colossal frontispiece ot a marble

fireplace with its strange waisted pilasters, by the Baroque terms like those at

Pommersfelden supporting the roof trusses and by a stone screen which is a free

and ebullient transcription ot the one at Audley End Mansion: the sumptuousdining-room is resplendent with another gigantic chimney-piece, this time ot

black and red and white mottled marble, and with overdoors crowded with

shields and putti above pink and white marble surrounds. But it is the hall whichis the artist's masterpiece, the great hall with its cedar staircase embellished withbowed and kneeling Michelangelesque figures ot youths and statues ot vestal

virgins holding aloft richly ornamented candelabra. Even m southern Italy there

is little to rival the overwhelmingly theatrical effect of this composition. Thehall soars up to a balcony resting on giant scrolly brackets and the backs ot

•ous Atlas figures From the brackets, attached to them by real cord, suingplaster swags of flowers and fruit, and from the balcony itself hang billowingplaster curtains looped with cords from which depend huge plaster tassels lightly

swaying with every current ot air. Writhing, trumpet-blowing putti struggle to

tree themselves from the folds of the curtains Higher still, an arcade hung withcounterfeit drapery supports yet another balcony articulated b\ six Cyclopeanplaster pendants and swarming with putti. while two Father lime figures

The Tower Room, Cardiff Castle.

Glamorgan. Wales

This opulent room is as overpoweringand even more staggering in its

concentration on detail than the

interior of the hall at Harlaxton

shown on the previous page, with

which, curiously enough, it has clear

affinities, although, because WilliamBurges. the author of Cardiff Castle,

was exclusively a medievalist, it is

earned out in a totally different idiom

from that ot William Bum's master-

piece. Both rooms are remarkable for

a wholly intoxicating air ot tantasy

and dazzling splendour, based in the

one case on spectacular and partially

illusory effects of perspective and in

the other on amazing contrasts in

scale.

The entire south-west sector of the

castle, which dates trom the twelfth

century and stands on the site of a

Roman fort, was reconstructed for the

3rd Marquess of Bute during the

years is~o-s bv William Burges. Theproportions and decoration ot the

Tower Room, also known as the

Summer Smoking Room, represent

the most violent protest against

Georgian canons ot taste. Elegance

and uniformity are deliberately

spurned for the sake ot dramatic

impact, and abstract or formalized

ornament is eschewed in favour ot

figurative and narrative decoration.

As the room is at the top of the lofty

Clock Tower, the main theme of the

ornament is the firmament. The large

chandelier takes the form of sun-ravs

and the dome above it is lined with

mirrors to reflect its light. A bronze

model of the world is inlaid in the

centre of the tiled floor with the

words 'Globus hit monstrai

micfocosmum', and the enamelled tiles

themselves depict the spheres

encircling the globe. The huge,

unusually fresh and vigorous corbel

figures beneath the gigantic capital ot

the pillars supporting the gallery

symbolize the winds coming from

the tour corners of the earth. Theyw ere carved bv Thomas Nicholls.

who was Burgess chief sculptor in all

his later undert.is gs N cholls also

carved the figure ot" Cupid with a

love-bird on the extraordinary

hooded chimney-piece and the frieze

showing summer lovers and the state

of matrimony, represented by twodogs pulling in opposite directions

and a dog barking at a cat in a tree

(cynical enough images, thoughBurges himselfwas unmarried The

'

capitals ofthe pillars are painted with

portraits ofgreat astronomers ot the

past The hand-painted tiles covering

the w alls illustrate themes drawnfrom classical mythology. E\erv

detail of the room was designed b\

Burges himself.

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Page 292: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The hall, Adcote, Shropshire

The house was built by NormanShaw in 1879 and is externally in the

Elizabethan style. The hall is based

entirely on that of the medieval

manor house, fitted with a woodenscreen with a screens passage behind it

and a minstrels' gallery above it. Thedais end is lit by a large bay window.The exaggerated height of the hoodedfireplace between the stone arches of

the root is reminiscent ot the hall

fireplace at Bolsover, which alludes in

a similar romantic vein to the past,

and which, though less severe than

Shaw's striking design, is notably

plain beside most ot the elaborate

compositions m the keep. Thepanelling of the Victorian hall marks

the beginning ot a later, suburban

practice: it is carried out in thick,

embossed paper.

Interior ot the keep and (opposite.

below) the entrance, Castell Coch,Glamorganshire

William Burges built Castell Cochfor Lord Bute in 1 875 81. rhese twophotographs show that he was not

only able to translate fantasy into

unforgettable, spectacular, forceful

reality b\ means ot Ins concentrated,

unique conception of ornament, but

that he could also conjure up a world

of impregnable strongholds and

dungeons, as solid and ot .1 moreromantic character than any actual

medieval remains, in an architecture

ot noble simplicity ami bold

geometry 1 lie root's of the c\ lindri< al

tower and the gatehouse (based on

French example) give Castell Coch .1

fairy-tale air winch is particularly

picturesque and cttcctivc in contrast

to the severity of the rest ot the

building

Page 293: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The drawing-room fireplace,

Penrhyn Castle, Caernarvonshire, byThomas Hopper (see page 292).

Page 294: The English House Through Seven Centuries

I 'ictorian Dilemma

brandish real scythes, one decorated with a flag showing a plan of Harlaxton and

the other suspending a relief portrait of a woman over the abyss of the hall.

Overhead shines the pellucid blue of an illusionist sky.

Utterly different from Harlaxton, but as extraordinary in their combination

i^t historicism and imagination, are three great Welsh castles of such massive

character that beside them such castles as Downton, Inveraray, Culzean or

Caerhays seem like cardboard toys. The first ot these, Penrhyn, was begun

before Victoria came to the throne, but its prevailing atmosphere is ot the mid

nineteenth century and it is only a little less earnest than the other two. Externally

Penrhyn takes the form of a frowning Norman keep, and although the interior

docs not match this display of defence, the Norman theme is pursued and treated

with an originality which could only have sprung from thorough and enthusiastic

scholarship. The designer was Thomas Hopper, and the composition is deliberately

rambling. Long, winding, stone-flagged corridors yield mysterious and con-

tinually shifting vistas through round-headed arches and between smooth,

cushion-capitalled pillars. The seventy of these columns and of the plaster

vaulting overhead, with its plant-pot shaped bosses of guilloche ornament, is

brilliantly contrasted with the elaborate and eccentric treatment of Normanmotifs in the most striking apartment, the drawing-room. The columns have

become attenuated and impossibly tall and are completely encrusted with the

zigzags and criss-cross patterns of the Norman style. They rise up on either side

of the mantelpiece and at regular intervals round the room, with the upwardmovement common to Gothic, Elizabethan and Victorian architecture, to

support a lofty frieze of richly moulded arches. A lower arch frames the great

mirror over the mantelpiece, which is of dusky marble and is flanked by niches

and pairs of squat Romanesque columns. The cast-iron grate at once catches the

eye. It shows that odd lack of sophistication which sometimes occurs in Victorian

detail, and in this spendid room it appears like a late Staffordshire pottery figure

in a group of the finest Chelsea porcelain pieces. The opening, a broad, shallow

arch, is framed by a zigzag moulding prettily ornamented with tiny bosses and

b\ grim beak heads of disquieting vitality. The firedogs are cast-iron lion heads,

each set on a single giant paw, always an alarming motif, and the semicircular

fireback shows a flaming chimney in which every brick is firmly articulated,

with truncated pyramids of coal on either side of it.

William Burgess fireplaces at Cardiff Castle and at Castell Coch are, bvcomparison, superbly inventive. These and his ceilings are the dominant features

of his amazing rooms, and the hooded chimney-piece in the Tower Room at

Cardiff Castle is indeed the peer of any of the conceits of John Smythson at

Bolsover. Burges's two castles, both designed for Lord Bute on the sites ofearlier fortresses, both menacing and military without and jewelled and corus-

cated with ornament inside, have much in common with Bolsover, even thoughthe impact of the nineteenth-century work is bruising rather than poetic. No oneseeing Cardiff Castle or Castell Coch for the first time would think, as at Bolsover,

of the Faerie Queen, but in all three buildings romantic fantasy and the inspiration

isionary past reach a degree ofexultancy which sets them apart in recollec-

tion from all other houses; for houses they are. though scarcely recognizable as

su< h

At Castell Coch. which stands high above the River Taff. the extreme sim-plicity of the exterior, of the geometrical shapes of the plain cylindrical towers,

relieved only by their picturesque roof-line, and the austerity of the impressive

interior of the keep, forming the segment of a circle, are as nobly effective as the

uncompromising mass of fourteenth-century Borthwick (p. 46). Cardiff Castle

is less satisfying .it Jose quarters than this tine composition because of the harsh

mechanical texture of the masonry and because of the huge and ridiculous

sculptured animals peering ovei the curtain wall, recalling in their vulgarity the

-tone ( 1 lile basking by the waters of the canal at 1 l.ulnan's Villa. Both are the

Chateau hnpney, near Droitwich.

Worcestershire

In the last quarter of the nineteenth

century, a favourite style for the large

country house, as indeed for the

grander terraces of the speculative

builder, was that of the French

Renaissance. Chateau Impney, soaring

above its urn-flanked flights of steps.

is astonishing in its English setting,

combining as it does polychromeeffects and metal roof-cresting with

the pavilion roof, fretted balcony,

projecting bays capped by hexagonalspires, dormers crowned bv segmental

pediments and windows flanked bybig pilasters and surmounted bybroken pediments and heraldic

decorations, features seen at

Chaumont. Chambord, Chenon-ceaux. Bnssac and other chateaux ot

the Loire and conspiring to set mponderous movement this peculiarly

Victorian version of the Baroque.

292

Page 295: The English House Through Seven Centuries

monumental ancestors of the gnomes and rabbits of the modern suburban

garden. Viewed from a distance, however, the castle, a rather low, spreading

mass dominated by four assertive, rectangular towers, including the gigantic

Clock Tower with its turret and spire, the outline is both romantically irregular

and powerfully abstract.

In neither case does the outer aspect of the building give any inkling of the

shattering character of the interiors. Not only must they be among the most

lavish ever created, but they shock the senses with the boldness, the unrelenting

thoroughness, the sustained, almost maniacal energy with which every detail of

the unique decoration has been carried out. It was all, even the furniture, ot which

little now remains, designed by the architect himselt. Every inch ot these rooms,

of walls, floors and ceilings, is adorned with a riot of pattern and story-telling

themes, some of them painted or stencilled, some of them carried out in brightly

coloured tiles and some of them carved with such three-dimensional zest that,

by contrast with the flatness of the murals and painted ornament, they seem to

be hurling themselves violently from the walls and pillars. The Tower Room of

Cardiff Castle in particular is electrifying in the contrasts ot scale and material

293

.

Page 296: The English House Through Seven Centuries

-

*

ii&fe

which confront the eye on every side; and the Saracenic ceiling of the dining-

room with an eight-pointed central star surrounded by a swirl of three-dimen-

sional pattern surpasses the most extreme of Baroque conceits. There are some

exquisite passages among all this accumulated richness of ornament. The panels

of the ceiling of Lady Bute's bedroom at Castell Coch, for instance, are painted,

every one differently, with enchanting naturalistic coils of foliage among which

sport monkeys and birds. But such quiet undertones hardly make themselves

felt amid the brassy, battering and sometimes incoherent onslaught of Burges's

mosaic of gold leaf and bright colour and of the exaggerated bulk and weight

of his architectural units.

Burges's two Welsh castles are extreme expressions of individuality. And no

matter what style the Victorian architect adopted, the key-note of it was always

individuality and variety, two qualities which were clearly threatened by the

mass culture of which industrialism was the harbinger. The terrace house, which

already existed, was obviously suited to the increasingly industrial and urban

society of the age, but tor this very reason it was the least desirable of all houses

to the individualist and the romantic. The history of the terrace in the nineteenth

century is therefore particularly illuminating. The appearance ot the semi-

detached villa in an urban environment was recorded in the preceding chapter,

but tor a time the subversive effect of this phenomenon on formal street architec-

ture was checked by the strongly established terrace tradition of the Georgian

period. In Scotland, especially in Glasgow . the classical terrace theme continued

to inspire inventive treatment long after it had vanished from the scene m the

south. Alexander Thomson, for instance, designed Great Western Terrace as

late as i SCo as a long row ot t\\ o-storeved houses broken b\ massive three-

storeyed blocks, jutting forward as tar as the coupled Ionic porticos of the two-

storeyed units. The design would be drab and uneventful were it not for the

drama ot these forceful porticos, a heavy string course, and immensely wide

eaves, casting deep, pi rposeful shadows A touch of spontaneity is added by the

North side, Buckland Crescent, near

Swiss Cottage, London

These detached stucco villas, built in

i 843, faced by paired houses ofslightly different design on the other

side of the Crescent, still make a

unified composition, but the Georgian

idea of the terrace as a single palatial

facade is already giving way to the

preference tor individual houses, just

as the stucco style is becomingheavily Roman and Renaissance

instead of Greek. The characteristic

design of the broad, bracketed cuesis quite different from that ot the

Queen Anne eaves-cornice with

modillions in the bedmould. In the

latter the rain-water gutter was

contained 111 the upper part ot the

lead-lined cornice. Here the guttering

is separate.

^;4

Page 297: The English House Through Seven Centuries

I 'ictorian Dilemma

GUston Road. Kensington, London

This pair of semi-detached villas showthe 'Italian domestic' style whichprobably made its tirst appearance in

John Nash's Cronkhill (page 264).

The villas represent one unit in a

varied composition of alternating

detached and paired houses which is a

stage further removed from the

Palladian conception of the terrace

than Buckland Crescent.

cast-iron balustrading, where pointed arches enclose crisp anthemion ornaments.

'Greek' Thomson also adorned the severe little houses of Moray Place with

pretty cresting and with chimneys like Egyptian columns topped by palm-leaf

capitals, though this flight of fancy would have been better expressed in stucco

than stone.

The glittering, plastered mass of Hesketh Crescent, Torquay, designed 111

1846 by the brothers W. and J. T. Harvey, rises palatially above a fringe of palms

and oleanders with as grand a flourish as the Nash terraces in London; and

Chichester Terrace, Brighton, is still firmly Greek, only the aggressiveness of

its huge Doric porticos supporting pagoda-like verandas, only the coarseness of

its detail proclaiming its late date. Buckland Crescent, near Swiss Cottage,

London, shows the beginning of the substitution of the Italian Renaissance style

for the Greek or Roman manner in the arched or heavily pedimented windowsof its south side and its broad, bracketed eaves. It is more ponderous and moresolid than any Regency terrace, but at the same time its great height, the bold

articulation of its cornices and outsize quoins and the prominence of its balustraded

porches, make a splendidly scenic display. On a misty autumn morning or in the

lamp-lit dusk of early spring the curve of stucco facades, romantically blurred,

becomes one of the most eloquent of all the Picturesque realizations of Claude's

seaport palaces. The crescent is still conceived as one huge sweep, but the houses

no longer form part of a single composition. The scribble of laurels and labur-

nums fills the intervals between the single or paired houses, which thus mark a

stage in the transformation of the terrace into a collection of suburban villas.

A further step in the process can be seen in Gilston Road, Kensington, in a more

vpzxfrr .;*S

Page 298: The English House Through Seven Centuries

%M3

graceful interpretation of a style already present at Edensor, that known to some

of the pattern-book writers as 'Pisan Romanesque' and to others as 'Italian

domestic'. Here the houses are only partly stuccoed, in deference to the growing

scorn of all superficial imitations of ashlar, and take the shape of paired and

detached villas in which single, two- and three-light, arched windows play a

prominent part. The paired houses are conceived as a central block with separately

roofed recessed wings containing the entrances at either end, and with parapeted

bays enlivening the ground floor; while the detached villas are distinguished by

square, stuccoed campaniles adorned with arched niches and crowned by low

flat roofs rising alongside a rectangular block with its gable-end facing towards

the street across a small balustraded garden. A loosely formal arrangement

imparts a certain rhythm to the group, but this can no longer be called a terrace.

It was clearly difficult to reconcile the conception of the medieval house, as

extolled by Pugin, with its essential variety and irregularity with the formal idea

of the terrace. But there is at least one instance of a Pugin enthusiast using an

earlier vernacular style as the basis of a street design as regular as any Georgian

composition despite its utterly different feeling. Lonsdale Square by R. C.

C larpenter no longer presents those flat facades to the street which Scott found so

distressing in the Bloomsbury area. The plan o( the individual dwellings, like

that of most Victorian terrace houses, much resembles that oi its Georgian

counterpart, but Carpenter emphasizes the asymmetrical arrangement of the

individual facade by the projection of the rooms leading from the left or right ot

the narrow staircase hall, which is thus deeply recessed. Each projection is

surmounted by a strikingly steep pointed gable, which, together with the repeti-

tion of bold Tudor mullions and the extreme narrowness of each house, makes.111 impression of spiky, restless vcrticahty which is the negation of the harmonyachieved b\ the < lassii al terrace I he 1 udor style or this little square is reflected.

.is w (.- have already observed, in countless small houses built all over the country

before the middle years of the nineteenth century. Hut they do not take the form

Terrace housing at Newcastle uponTyne, Northumberland

This characteristic example ot the

nineteenth-century speculative

builder's housing for industrial

workers shows none ot the flam-

boyance and individuality ot the

Victorian mansion or villa. It is a

mean and diminished version ot the

Georgian terrace composition in

which each house consists ot a cellar,

a living room and scullery and twobedrooms. The front door opens into

a narrow passage and at the back

there is an enclosed yard with outside

sanitation.

Page 299: The English House Through Seven Centuries

I Ictorian Dilemma

A terrace at Weymouth, Dorset

This late Victorian terrace wasintended by the speculative builder to

house working-class families with

more pretentions than the occupants

of the little dwellings shown on the

opposite page. The bay windows, the

rough-cast panelling and the poly-

chrome brickwork were all designed

to impart an air of respectability to

this last degraded and distorted phase

of the noble, architectural theme of

the terrace. The step-movementoccasioned by the hilly street imparts

a spurious vitality to the grim,

mechanical rhythm of the repeating

units and accentuates the stark

monotony with which the bays

project one after another directly onto the drab street.

of terraces, and if they do not stand detached they are grouped in pairs or at mostin threes or fours. The mode, like all romantically inspired conceptions, demandedindividual treatment. The terrace proper only survived in the housing erected

by speculative builders for renting to factory-workers and in the houses designed

tor the middle classes, again by speculative builders, to combine pretention with

density. The rows ofworkers' back-to-backs with their squalid yards and outdoor

hv.itories were debased, shrunken versions of the Georgian terrace in which the

from door might lead straight into the parlour and where there was sometimes

no through access except by means of an arched passage in the middle of the row

serving all the houses. The details of fireplaces, doors and ceilings were of the

meanest. Although factory-made ornament could be cheaply supplied to suit

every type of Victorian house, it was limited in these working-class dwellings

to the barest minimum. The exteriors were usually severely plain, except for the

shutters of the front, ground-floor window, which in rough districts were an

absolute necessity. Poor but respectable terrace houses were occasionally

enlivened by a scattering of ornament. Argyll Terrace, Dunstable, is provided

with arched doors and windows which have prominent, rusticated keystones,

miniature cast-iron balustrading (surviving only in part) running along the sills

and trefoil cresting along the ridge. Inside such little houses there might be found

a meagre version of the florid plaster cornice and foliated ceiling centre-piece

which adorned the principal rooms of wealthier homes, but there would be no

glass doors or windows with pretty margin lights of deep blue and scarlet.

Terraces intended for the middle classes were, by contrast, loaded with

ornament both inside and out. The heavy marble mantelpieces of the period, at

first classical, with a broad, moulded shelf supported on scrolled brackets, but

later grotesquely Gothic, Tudor or Italianate, survive in such large numbers that

they need no description. Catalogues issued towards the end of the century by

manufacturers of household fittings, such as Pfeil, Stedall & Son or O'Brien.

Thomas & Co., convey something of the confusing variety of fantastic designs

Page 300: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Semi-detached houses in Lea Bridge

Road, Tottenham, Middlesex, and(below) terrace in Manilla Road,Bristol

The Tottenham houses are part of a

row of semi-detached villas erected

by a speculative builder for middle-

class tenants in the 1870s. The Gothicporch, with its pretty but incongruous

bargeboards (of a design closely

resembling that at Downham Market(page 281)) and Venetian Gothic

pilasters, and the pointed arches andEarly English ornament of the

ground-floor bay windows are nolonger part of a design which is the

logical expression of the interior, as in

the houses shown on pages 277-80,

but mass-produced trimmings appeal-

ing to a sentimentality nourished bythe Picturesque attitude and intended

to give consequence and an air ot

individuality to standardized houses

which have no greater practical

advantages than the straightforward

terrace design. The internal planning

does not differ in essentials trom that

of the Georgian terrace house: each

villa is two rooms deep above base-

ment offices. The difference is all in

the character of the rooms, the

proportions and style ot decoration.

The monstrous dwellings in Manilla

Road are still conceived as a terrace,

but purelv tor economic and not

aesthetic reasons. The restless bulges

and projections ot the tortured

facades and the encrustations of

factory-made terracotta tonus and

ornament wildlv contusing Gothic

and Renaissance motifs from disparate

sources are all intended to blur, tor

the sake of ostentation, the despised

and basic terrace plan, which in the

individual house results in an arrange-

ment differing only in detail trom

that of the Tottenham houses.

Page 301: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Houses in Fitzjohn's Avenue,Hampstead, London

The terrace house, even in thebedizened, pretentious form it

achieved in Manilla Road, Bristol(opposite), was eschewed by everyVictorian who could afford to buildhis own house, and thus the concep-tion of the street as a unifiedarchitectural composition gaveway to the Picturesque notion of a

leafy thoroughfare lined withindividual houses, each standing in its

own garden. Of the two housesshown here, one assumes the form inbrick and stone of a gigantic Scottishtower with corbelled turrets,

inappropriately furnished with anoriel window and twin Gothicentrance arches and combined with a

tall block in the French Renaissancestyle; while the other, built for thepainter P. F. Poole, r.a., by T. K.Green in the 1870s, is a blown-up,sprawling, multi-gabled cottage orneof variegated brick with prominentbargeboards of contrasting designs,elaborate ridge-cresting and patternedtiles.

Page 302: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Victorian Dilemma

in all conceivable styles which covered every surface and which were translated

into cast iron, glass, cast brass, ebony, oak or pottery according to whether they

were applied to bolts, door handles, lock plates, finger plates, casement fasteners,

chimeny-pieces, grates or the engraved tiles which flanked them and which

patterned the hearth.

Externally the Gothic ornament crowding about porches and bay windows

yielded to Venetian and French Renaissance influences. The climax of this

development in the deliberately ostentatious terrace is well represented by

Manilla Road, Bristol. Built of rough yellow stone and decorated with slippery-

smooth yellow terracotta, these houses are of formidable ugliness. They are of

irregular heights, crowned by steep French mansard roofs liberally festooned

with cast-iron cresting and projecting in ample hexagonal bays and huge square

porches with banded terracotta columns ending in Venetian capitals. Fussy

battlements adorn the ground-floor bays, while those on the first floor are

surmounted by classical cornices; and beneath each bay run bands of varied and

intricate decoration based on classical motifs. Shallow flights of steps go downfrom the porches between stone walls which shut off the basement area and at

the same time seem to be reaching out like clutching tentacles. For these houses

make a definite assault on the spectator. They have no connection with architec-

ture in the sense of that word as building art; forms and ornament are merely

there in order to impress: what the whole crushing image expresses is the

combative attitude of the Victorian materialist and its triumph over inherited

canons of taste.

But except when, as here, it was economically profitable, the terrace house

had come to the end of its days. Street architecture had become a collection of

houses of various design standing, isolated or in pairs, each in its own garden.

The Victorian suburbs of all our larger towns show this development. I will

describe a road in one of them. The extremely individual compositions of which

it is composed belong mainly to the 1870s. The exaggerated solidity and bulk

Annesley Lodge. Hampstead, London

This L-shaped house, built byC. F. A. Voysey for his father in

1895, shows the salient characteristics

of the style of an architect, no less

romantic than the builders of thehouses shown on the previous page,

who turned for inspiration to English

regional domestic architecture

instead of to the great historical andcontinental styles. The walls of

Annesley Lodge are roughcast (a

practice which later become one ofthe hallmarks of the suburban style),

and supported by sloping buttresses,

one of which can just be made out in

the photograph, under the creeper,

and the windows are mullioned andperfectly plain. The placing of the

long, low, first-floor windowsimmediately beneath the eaves recalls

the facades of many sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century timber-trained

houses. Annesley Lodge already

embodies many of the attributes ofthe typical twentieth-century

suburban house, whether lslated or

semi-detached.

Page 303: The English House Through Seven Centuries

iiffn

1\^J ^r j^rl ~« r- -~w

rYJ B

1 ^a'''*"5**

sK SrWIWI

in aiifl

1 •-*; • -a

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Houses at Bedford Park. Middlesex

Bedford Park was laid out byNorman Shaw tor |. T. Carr from

1875, and the architects included

Shaw himself. M. Adams, E.J. Mayand E. Godwin. The estate was a

descendant of Edensor and Nash's

Park Villages and prepared the wayfor the vast surburban developmentsof the present century. The BedfordPark houses are rural in flavour,

fenced and hedged and set in tree-

shaded winding streets, each with its

front and back garden, most houses or

pair of houses differing from its

neighbours. The pair shown here are

conceived as a single structure unified

by the wide, bracketed porchembracing the two entrances and bythe tall battered chimney-stack rising

immediately above the porch. Themock half-timber work, like the

tile-hanging on some of the other

Bedford Park houses, is already nearly

as flimsy and indeterminate as the

decoration of later suburban houses

and suggests no more than vaguetraditional associations.

of these houses and the confusion and abundance of detail from mixed styles

which adorns them so thrust themselves on the eye that years of daily familiarity

have failed to soften their fierce impact. Pointed and curly gables; ornate barge-

boards; oriels and bays filled with lancet, ogee-headed or shouldered lights, often

divided by Gothic columns with richly carved capitals; towers and campaniles:

conical turrets corbelled out from the wall in the Scottish baronial style; tall,

clustered chimney-stacks; gargoyles; crested ridges; porches flanked by Early

English columns; contracted versions of the castles and mansions raised by

wealthy magnates in the country; immensely blown-up version of the cottage

orne - each powerful image demands and competes tor the attention of the

passer-by. Between each house and the road is a garden, usually planted with

shrubs and protected by a wall of banded brick or stone. An elaborate cast-iron

gate or occasionally a form of heavy field gate, filled with massive Gothic

openwork instead of bars, hangs between sturdy pillars, which may be square or

rounded and which are encrusted with ball flowers, dog-tooth moulding or

some other medieval ornament. Very often either the gate or the piers bear a namesuch as The Towers, The Laburnums or The Laurels. This was the beginning of

that passion for giving houses names instead of numbers, another pathetic

expression of the desire for individuality, which is so typical of modern suburbia

and of which more will be said later.

Among the hundreds of roads lined with violently contrasting villas of this

kind, Melbury Road, Holland Park, where Burges and Shaw built next to each

other, should not go unmentioned. Some reference has already been made to

the stylistic range of Shaw's work He was one of the designers in a scheme of

suburban development which was <^~ particular significance for future estate

building. Bedford Park, Chiswick, initiated by Jonathan T. Carr in 1S-0. was

301

Page 304: The English House Through Seven Centuries

laid out in streets and avenues of small cottagey villas in gardens and was the first

example of an entire suburb planned with winding roads, carefully preserved

trees and irregular and individual exteriors. The houses are ot red brick and they

boast Dutch and tile-hung gables, casement windows, balustraded oriels and

rustic porches, and the paintwork is gleaming white. These modest houses have

considerable charm, and after the horrors of Manilla Road their simplicity is

deeply affecting. Many of them were bought by aesthetes who hung them with

Morns wallpapers or who furnished them in the new Anglo-Japanese manner

which captured the imagination of designers at the end of the century rather as

the Chinese fashion had excited Georgian artists and craftsmen. It gave rise to a

vogue for pottery tubes, shaped like the gnarled trunks of the trees in Japanese

gardens or painted with Oriental scenes, which served as umbrella stands in the

hall: tor blue and white plates and lapanese fans fastened to the walls above dados

of Indian matting: for bamboo tables and chairs. The style reached its zenith mthe Peacock Room at 49 Princes Gate, London (now in the Freer Gallery,

Washington', painted by Whistler for F. R. Leyland. the shipowner and art

collector. But like Art Nouveau, the sinuous, flowing character <.^~ which

imparted a new. langorous rhythm to the stained-glass imagery of main a front

door and to the ornament on many a mantelpiece, this was a decorative and not

an architectural style. The Bedford Park houses are neither Anglo-Japanese nor

Art Nouveau : they represent the final phase in the feverish quest of the Victorians

for escape from urban industrialism in one form of the Picturesque after another,

and of their impassioned and romantic partialis for vanishing traditions. In the

t\^\- of the break-up of the regional styles, there was now, at the end of the

century, a rediscover) of all the elements of old farm and cottage architecture.

Fireplace at Seaview, Bawdsey,Suffolk

Art Nouveau. the style which capti-

vated Europe in the 1 S90S. sprang

from the same desire as that whichmotivated the authors of the Arts and

Crafts Movement, of whom Voyseywas one, in their return to the

simplicity and honesty of traditional,

pre-industnal vernacular building

styles, the desire to break away from

Victorian histoncism. Viewed in

perspective, both attempts seem to

belong wholly to the Victorian

period, to represent but two morephases in a whirlwind sequence of

changing fashions which by the end

of the century had all become con-

fused and unreal. Art Nouveau is, in

fact, not as novel as its name suggests.

for it reflects mingled Rococo,

lapanese and Celtic influences and is a

development of the sinuous decor-

ative style of such designers as Walter

Crane and A. H. Mackmurdo. It was

essentially a decorative and not an

architectural style, and its most

obvious characteristic was its use ot a

flowing line which undulated and

coiled like waves, flames or plant

tendrils to create an asymmetrical

image. The name 'Art Nouveau' was

that of a shop which a Hamburg art

dealer, M. S. Bing. had opened in the

Rue de Provence. Paris, in 189s. and

it is significant that, apart from a very

few remarkable buildings, such as

those of Victor Horta in Brussels, it

was in the ephemeral rooms ot the

sireat exhibitions ot applied arts which

were becoming ever more popular

that the Art Nouveau style was most

completely expressed. In the private

English house the principal traces left

bv the short-lived style are in door

and fireplace designs, of which this

modest example is characteristic.

302

Page 305: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Victorian Dilemma

half-timbering, weatherboarding, tile-hanging and pargework together with

ingle-nooks and eatslide roofs. The simplicity of the houses at Bedford Park is

due not only to a revulsion of feeling against the pomposity and over-elaboration

of High Victorian architecture, but to the fact that the sources of this newenthusiasm were themselves simple and unpretentious.

The vernacular style inspired two kinds of activity: the close reproduction of

local methods and new syntheses of these methods. At Bourneville, a suburb of

Birmingham laid out for George Cadbury by W. Alexander Harvey from 1*94

onwards, some of the houses are astonishingly faithful copies of the Warwick-shire half-timbered style, and at Port Sunlight, built for Lord Leverhulme, the

Cheshire black-and-white style with its idiosyncratic patterning has been carefully

followed; the houses have even been given stone-slated roofs at a time whenWelsh slate was universal. Both these estates contain many more houses of the

other kind, in which a vague feeling tor tradition is conveyed in a Picturesque

fashion by overhanging eaves, dormers, rustic porches and pleasant rough-cast

irregularity. The author ot the craze tor rough-cast, which is now firmly associated

with suburban development, was C. F. A. Voysey, who, with Ernest Gimson,

was one ot the most original designers in the new manner, and who also designed

the wallpapers and tabrics, the turniture and fittings and even the spoons and

forks for every one of his houses. Annersley Lodge, at the corner of Piatt's Lane,

Entrance to a house in Belsize Avenue.

Hampstead, London

Art Nouveau influence is seen here in

the typical design of the coloured

glass filling the upper halt ot the door

and in the improbable asymmetrical

ornament above the lintel. Although,

with its bold freestone decoration

against red brick and the breadth of

the coarse arch spanning the fantastic

door and triangular oriel, it is t.ir

more robust in feeling than any

twentieth-century suburban house.

this semi-detached villa shows the

same insensitively eclectic character as

its modern successors.

Page 306: The English House Through Seven Centuries

I 'ictorian Dilemma

Hampstead, built for his father in 1895, is a typical example of his art. It is an

L-shaped house with buttresses and a long, horizontal band of low first-floor

windows just under the eaves. The walls are coated in Voysey's favourite rough-

cast. Gimson's White House, Leicester, has one distinguishing feature: a tall,

windowless, oddly canted wall with an external chimney-stack which is as

dramatic as the east wall of Parsonage Farm, Stebbing (p. 123). The house is of

brick, plastered white and otherwise unremarkable.

All these houses, however cosy, however well designed, form the prelude to

the vast suburban development of the present century. It became increasingly

rare for the revival of a regional style to be carried out in the district to which it

belonged. The materials of which suburban houses were tashioned counterfeited

those of all parts of the country mdiscriminatingly, and the beginning of this

development can already be seen at Bedford Park. This, and the proliferation of

houses like those of Voysey. which are anti-urban and yet which belong to nospecial region, encouraged that annihilation ol the distinction between the urban

and the rural dwelling and the collapse of domestic architecture as an art which

will be briefly described in our concluding chapter.

I he White 1 louse, 1 eicester

Built in 1897 for Arthur Gimson byErnest Gimson

304

Page 307: The English House Through Seven Centuries

«' tf

^53

12

The End of an Art

Houses at Port Sunlight, Cheshire

Port Sunlight was a factory estate

planned by the Lever Brothers in

1888 as a garden suburb. The houses

are stone-slated in the regional style ofthe district, and the one in the fore-

ground is, by comparison with

twentieth-century allusions to

vernacular styles, a remarkably solid

evocation of the earlier 'black-and-

white' work of the district in whichit stands.

This last brief chapter in the story of the English house, told from the point of

view adopted in these pages, cannot be anything but disquieting, for it must

record the final disintegration of a long and great tradition. It is one of the most

disconcerting paradoxes in a history full ot contradictions that a rise in the

material standards of living so prodigious that the factory worker in morecomfortably and conveniently housed than the wealthiest baron of feudal

England, has been accompanied by the rapid decline of all that differentiates a

house from mere housing.

In the first place, the kind of house which is aesthetically important because

it gives the widest scope to the architect - the large country house can play no

part in the modern state. Many of the most splendid historical examples of

domestic architecture have become museums. The few country mansions built,

chiefly by Sir Edwin Lutyens, in the early yean ot the present century, were

survivors ot a way of lite which was doomed before the reign ot Victoria was

over. These Lutyens houses are brilliantly eclectic, embracing the full, romantic

range ot Picturesque interests, the predilection tor mixed period styles and the

305

Page 308: The English House Through Seven Centuries

return to vernacular practices advocated by Voysey, Gimson and the supporters

of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Tigbourne Court, Surrey, begun in 1899 for

Edgar Home, is .111 impressively free interpretation of the Elizabethan style; it

even displays that touch of classical fantasv which imparts such intense poetry to

the great houses of the sixteenth century. Curving screen walls, tall, diagonally-

set and crisply severe chimneys and three adjoining gables are combined with

pedimented windows and a Doric loggia. And it is all carried out in Burgate

stone, quarried locally, near Godalming, galletted throughout like the fabric of

cottages seen in the neighbouring villages of Thursley and Hascombe. and

articulated by thin, horizontal bands of tiles. 'Orchards', also in Surrey, near

Munsted, is another most inventive variation on period and traditional themes.

This is a quadrangular, courtyard design of local brick and tile, with sometile-hanging. One side ot the courtyard has been extended in the form of a

buttressed, barn-like structure to make an L-shaped entrance and to harmonize

with the tall, bam-like opening into the quadrangle.

In his knowledge ot local materials, shown not only in his own imaginative

use of them, but in his reconstructions and restoration of old houses, such .is

Great Dixter (p. 48), and in his sense o\ the relationship <i( the house and its

environment. Lutyens surpassed his immediate predecessors, but he was returning

to a tradition from which the roots had already been cut. This gives all his worka depressing air of lifelessness and unreality. It is only necessary to compare any

house by Lutyens (not just indifferent examples like the feeble neo-Georgian,

Chussex and 'Dormy House' of Walton-on-the-Hill) with the most brutally

ugh Victorian villa, su< h as those in Manilla Road. Bristol (p. 298), so frankly at

one with the materialistic, ostentatious spirit of the age, to realize the loss ot

\ttality. Lutyens's houses are nevertheless works of art. It is when the absence o\

the sensibility so affrontingly proclaimed in Manilla Road and the absence o\ a

burning immediacy (which so flattens the impact of Sir Edwin Lutvens's evoca-

tions of the past) are merged m confused and imprecise suggestions of period

and locality that art is extinguished. The process can be observed in the \ast

spread ot suburbia. In tar the most prominent embodiment o\ twentieth-century

domestic aspirations.

Little Thakeham. Sussex

This house, built by Lutyens in 1902.

is .1 tree adaptation of the symmetrical

Tudor manor house. E-shaped with

the huge polygonal b.i\ taking the

place of the Tudor entrance porch

Despite the material of which Little

I hakeham is built local sandstone -

and the originality of Lutyens's inter-

pretation of a traditional theme (even

more apparent 111 the skiltul internal

planning where the hall is entered

through a screens passage the effect

is curiously lifeless

Page 309: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The End of an Art

Modern suburbia is the logical outcome of developments like those of Bedford

Park, Bournville and Port Sunlight, mentioned in the previous chapter, of later

garden suburbs, of which the best known is that at Hampstead, planned byParker and Unwin from 1907 with Sir Edwin Lutyens as consultant; and of the

garden cities, inspired by Ebenezer Howard's Tomorrow (1898), of which the

first was Letchworth, Hertfordshire (1903). Although many of the individual

houses in the Hampstead Garden Suburb or Welwyn Garden City are well

planned in neo-Tudor or neo-Georgian brick, with an occasional late seventeenth-

century feature, and although these developments make a conscious pattern of

tree-lined roads and squares instead of sprawling haphazardly or in ribbon

outgrowth, the distinction between them and surburban Hendon, Edmontonor Edgware is one of degree rather than kind. All are products of a final eruption

ot the Picturesque, growing ever weaker and more diffuse, of the antagonism to

mechanized industry preached by the Victorian medievalist and of a reaction

against the drab uniformity of the back-to-backs of Victorian working-class

areas. The rash of semi-detached and detached villas, bedizened with Tudorgables, mock half-timber work, rough cast and bay windows of every shape

which disfigures the outskirts of all our towns; the council estates in 'cottage'

modes; the new towns, which, like the garden cities, are suburban in character

although provided with factories and shopping centres; the recent 'architect

designed' housing estates, usually planned by a firm of businessmen who happen

to have qualified as architects and who in some cases never visit the site - all

express the same uneasy state of mind: a vague romanticism, a dimly sensed

nostalgia for the past, for a lost rural existence when house and home were at

one with their environment.

A very cursory glance at some of the common features of suburbia will

confirm this. First, the bosky, irregular aspect of developments like Bedford

Park has been doggedly maintained, despite shortage of land and the frightening

speed with which it is consumed by such extravagant use of it. Twentieth-

century suburban roads are the antithesis of town streets. They are seldom quite

straight, they often become cul-de-sacs, and footpaths are sometimes of shingle

instead of paved and are edged with grass and ornamental trees, the most popular

of which is the acid pink, alien almond. Roads are rarely called by that straight-

forward name; the typically urban Place, Terrace, Crescent and Square are not

popular, while Street is universally avoided. Instead, Drive, Avenue, Way, Lane,

Grove, Close and Ride conspire to excite rural memories. The effect is reintorced

in most instances by the names of the individual houses, which tend to have

even less connection with the actual buildings than those of Victorian suburbs:

The Leas, The Garth, The Barn (where none is to be seen for many miles), Dormers

(though there are no attics), Woodlands, Meadowcroft, Tanglewood, Wychwood

and Birchfield all occur in two or three adjacent roads of a north London suburb.

Where the names of the drives, lanes and ways arc not affectedly countrified

(Orchard Close, Manor Ride, Oakhill Grove, Clover Leas), they may com-

memorate a popular idol and incidentally provide a clue as to the date ot the

housing (Valentino Way, Molhson Avenue, Sinatra Rise), or create an ambience

of gentility (Beverley Drive, Chatsworth Grove) or of high romance (California

Close, Manhattan Chase, King Alfred's Ride). The house names, when not of

rural connotation, usually celebrate the scene of a successful holiday or honey-

moon, consist of words coined from the Christian names of the happily married

owners, or make a parade ofsome commonplace witticism. Whatever the names

of houses or thoroughfares, they seldom beai any relation to their particular

geographical situation and still more seldom do they celebrate local traditions.

personalities, activities or landmarks, as do the names of town streets and those

of farm houses, cottages and country mansions of the past, i he number unaccom-

panied by a name is hardly ever found. Where .ts use is unavoidable, it may be

given an arty twist. One 2 Six appears in bold Egyptian characters on a wooden

307

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The End of an Art

tjate framing an optimistic rising sun, and Forty-Nine slopes in wiry metal italic

across a flimsy ironwork structure divided into asymmetrical, rectangular

compartments, like a skeletal Mondrian.

The houses themselves exhibit a basic, semi-detached, two-storeyed, bay-

windowed plan, and though, in examples of the last two decades, bay windows

have been replaced by flat 'picture' windows and slight variations in grouping

occur, the general design remains much the same whether it is adorned with

details from the vernacular and period styles or whether it wears the flat-rooted,

metal and concrete dress ot the continental manner. The slates of the Victorian

era have yielded to tiles, very often pantiles, which may be green, red or brown:

and the bricks, where they are not hidden beneath a coating of pebble-dash,

range from salmon-pink to yellow or purple-brown. The upper and lower

polvgonal or rounded bays of houses built between the wars may be divided by

some form of ornamentation, an indeterminate spattering of plaster scrolls and

swags of fruit and flowers faintly echoing the vigorous pargework of East Anglia.

or an arrav of tish-scale riles in mechanical imitation ot the tradition peculiar to

Kent and east Sussex. The gables may be furnished with plain, anaemic versions

of the bargeboards. so energetically patterned and diversified by the Victorians,

and they are frequently tilled with thin, branching timbers recalling the black-

and-white work of Cheshire, while the new est. flat-fronted versions of the

suburban house often boast a band ot white-painted clapboarding. reminiscent

of the charming rural architecture ot Kent and the coastal districts of Essex, or

of cedarwood cladding in the Scandinavian tashion. The minute gardens which

separate these houses from the road may be enclosed by rustic palings or low-

walls of bnck or of coarsely pointed limestone. Whether they are dictated bv

economics, personal choice or the whim of a speculative builder, these variants

are never decided by regional practice: they are as common on the fringes of

Liverpool as of Leicester, Nottingham or Newcastle.

The entrances to these houses, which in the semi-detached pair may be set

side by side or flung to either end ot the shared facade, perhaps reveal moretransparently than any other feature the confusion of ill-digested detail and the

random character of the twentieth-century suburban dwelling. The doors of the

earliest senu-detacheds in a Middlesex suburban area embracing Cncklewood.Dolhs Hill and Queensbury. put up some rime in the 1920s, each show six

cushiony panels surmounted by a glass roundel encircled by belatedly Art

Nouveau, spoon-shaped depressions and flanked by leaded oval windows in

deeply moulded trames. A disproportionately broad canopy proiects over the

lintel, apparently held in position by two iron chains fastened to the wall on either

side ot a Georgian-style fanlight, which seems to perch on the canopy. Across the

road, a few yards further on, riled, round-arched brick porches shelter half-glazed

doors decorated with jazzy designs in toffee-brown and lemon-coloured glass,

while a turning to the right yields a glimpse of tiled and gabled overhangsjutting

out on brackets above limed, studded oak doors fitted with spiderv iron hmce-and lock plates. Irregularly disposed lozenges of plain glass set in a metal frametill the openings of a pair of houses erected in about i960, while the most recent

ot all the additions to the development display absolutely plain, smooth doors

shaded by thin, slab-like canopies resting on non-committal metal posts.

These variations attempt to provide meaningless, mass-produced designs witha reassuring suggestion ofindividuality. In the names thev choose, in the irrational

gn of their gates, the varieties of hedging they grow, in their sudden indul-

gence in a splash of mauve or orange paint, in their weakness for crazy paving,

concrete gnomes and rabbits crouching on the runs of bird baths or peering

from miniature caverns 111 the rockery, for concrete windmills and wheelbarrow s

tilled with primulas, the occupants themselves make faint, despairing gestures of

mahty 111 a world deprived of those attributes of period and locaht\ whichonce gave precise definition to every house and thus furnished a firm framework

Houses in Hebar Road. Cncklewood(left, top and bottom", in Geary Road,

Dollis Hill (top nghtl. and in

Mollison Way. Queensbury (bottom

right), all in Middlesex

If these villas are compared, even with

such decadent examples as those at

Tottenham and Bristol shown onpage 298, it is at once apparent howmuch these twentieth-century

descendants have lost in vigour and

precision. They show the samemixture ot styles, they are equally

divorced trom any connection with a

particular place, but these houses,

three of which date from the first

thirty years of our century, while the

last was built only in 1961, show a

diffuse, anaemic version ot the

mixture. Insipid pebbledash (deriving

from Voysey's example plays a

prominent part in the twentieth-

century suburban composition, and

where a reference to a particular

region is attempted, as in the orna-

ment on the uppermost Cncklewoodhouse, which recalls East Anglian

pargework, it is as vague and mis-

placed as the muddled allusion to the

Gothic Revival in the pointed lights

of the casements and the pathetic

imitation of the Georgian fanlight.

_ boards and a bit of bogus halt-

timber work in the gable, woodenpalings or walls ot random rubble

: a distant, unspecified country-

roofs, cavernous, round-

arched porches and leaded lights

dinilv hint at bygone ages: a Hat

roof and large windows with hideous

metal frames and horizontal lights

daringly suggest the "Modern' style,

some thirty years after it first

appeared, the flat root a ludicrous

mannerism on a house whichcompletely ignores the structural

possibilities of steel and concrete and

retains the traditional convention ol

weight-bearing walls No matter

what these facades seek to convey,

they all exhibit the basic, semi-

detached, bay-windowed plan first

created b\ the Victorian speculative

builder allied to the rural flavour of

the first garden suburbs. All are

eloquent examples of the anonymousarchitecture of no-man's-land.

Page 311: The English House Through Seven Centuries
Page 312: The English House Through Seven Centuries

for each individual life. For not only does the suburban dweller belong to no

particular part of England, but his house is never entirely and whole-heartedly

of its own time. If it follows new trends, it does so timidly, fifteen or twenty years

late, grafting them on to the familiar suburban convention. And if, as it mostly

does, it harks back to the past, the essentials are so feebly grasped, and interpreted

with so little conviction and invention, that the imitation can rarely be morethan approximately dated.

The most up-to-date of these estate houses are designed on the 'open plan'

which was first introduced by Shaw and Lutyens in emulation of the medieval

hall house. Although this plan may impart a feeling of space to a small interior,

it represents a further attack on individuality, a return to a communal form of

living which belonged to a period when the sense of autonomous identity had

still not reached the stage of evolution when privacy was considered essential for

its expression. In one of the most penetrating essays in his Language and Silence,

Mr George Steiner has shown how dependent the very concept of literary formis upon privacy, and how long and painful was the struggle which eventually

produced the man reading alone in a room with his mouth closed. This crowningtriumph of western civilization can scarcely be maintained in modem housing

conditions. Marshall McLuhan has given a vivid account of the retreat of the

read sentence before the assault of our mass culture and the electronic media of

communication, television, the photograph, the comic strip, the advertisement.

At the moment when hundreds of thousands, or rather millions, of human beings

arc tor the first time literate, the graphic mass media arc taking precedence over

the printed book. And at the moment when almost every family in Britain is

provided with material comfort, their home is changing from an expression oi

individuality into a standardized, anonymous unit.

It is in the form of housing winch has rightl) been hailed as an architecture

attuned to modem life, in the multi-storeyed blocks of flats constructed ot

pre-sectionah/cd concrete and steel, that the movement towards collectivity,

Copper Coin House, Englefield

Green, Surrey, and (right) house onthe Green, Queensbury, Middlesex

These two houses illustrate the ability

of the suburban builder to clothe a

dwelling in the 'Modern' style with-

out in any way altering its basic,

impersonal character and its alienation

from the realities of place and period.

Both houses derive from foreign

example. That on the lett feebly,

belatedly apes Frank Lloyd Wright's

high romanticism without anyattempt to follow the master's

combination of the picturesque with

the structural techniques of the age.

Exactly the same design can be seen

in many different parts of the country:

there is an identical house, tor

instance, on a new estate at Barring-

ton. Cambridgeshire, displaying the

same giant, 'primitive' chimnev-st.ick

and dry-stone construction (as

bizarre a phenomenon in Cambridge-shire as in tins part ot Surrey)

associated with brick, the same green

pantiles and the same large plate-glass

window The house at Queensbury.

with its long windows immediately

under the eaves exaggerating Voysey's

mannerism, is ot brick with cedar-

wood cladding in the Scandinavian

fashion, introducing a nostalgic.

forest-glade atmosphere among the

surrounding bay-windowed, semi-

detacheds of thirty yean earlier.

3IO

Page 313: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The End of an Art

already implicit in the uniformity underlying the pathetic trimmings of suburbia,

is most starkly expressed. The style of these buildings is not just a negation oflocal, but of national traditions. It is essentially international, and evolved on the

Continent before it established itself, slowly and with many setbacks, in the

country where the idea of individuality had been more prized and more aestheti-

cally fruitful than anywhere else. The very notion of a home on one floor of a

towering block, long familiar on the Continent, and for three centuries accepted

in Scotland, is outrageously alien to the traditional English concept of the house.

'New Ways', Wellingborough Road, Northampton, designed by the Germanarchitect Peter Behrens, appropriately enough for an engineering industrialist,

in 1925, was the first house in Britain to assume the cubic, rectilinear shape of the

modern manner. This was followed by a scattered number of other small,

privately-built houses, among them the austere, box-like structure with horizon-

tally banded walls of alternating glass and concrete erected in Frognal, Hamp-stead, in 1937-8 by Amyas Connell, Basil Ward and Colin Lucas; a similar

flat-roofed elevation incorporating a thin balcony projecting on concrete

cylinders over a terrace at Farnham Common, Buckinghamshire, by Harding

and Tecton (1935), who were also responsible for 'Six Pillars', Crescent Road,

Dulwich, built in the same year; and the house by Denys Lasdun (1938) which

introduces glass and concrete so incongruously among the small Regency villas

of Newton Road, Paddington.

The earliest instances of housing (as distinct from individual houses) in the

cubist style are to be seen at Silver End, Essex, a village estate laid out from 1926

by Lord Braintree for disabled men who had been provided with work in a newfactory on the site. But here suburban influence can already be seen at work on

the abstract, formal conception in arty little triangular windows which recall

the cinema buildings of the period. The semi-detached, flat-roofed concrete

houses already mentioned show the way in which the new style was eventually

fully absorbed into the suburban milieu, its alarming severity dulled by the

familiar plan and scale. The style cannot in fact achieve its full expression in the

small house. It deliberately eschews one of the most significent components of

the language of architecture - ornament - and therefore relies for articulation

exclusively on the relation of wall space to window space, of one storey to

another, of block to block and of solid to void, and as it is based on the mass

production of parts, it is only in a building of great size that a compelling rhythm

can be created. Size, indeed, is the only form of grandeur within the range of

the engineering work which has taken the place of traditional architecture in the

present century, and it is suggestive both of its intrinsic nature and of the exclusive

preoccupation with materialism which has produced it that its most represen-

tative and impressive examples are factories, office buildings and skyscraper

flats. The latter may show slight variations with changing fashions. Heavy,

chunky balconies may give way to white rails, windows may become more

dominant; or unbroken sweeps of concrete may take on the guise of an impreg-

nable fortress, as in the daunting Lawn Road Flats, Hampstead; aggressive

cubism may be replaced by smooth curves, but the inhumanity of the scale, the

forbidding, impersonal character of the building remain. There is a striking

relationship between these blocks offlats which serve masses instead ofindividuals,

and contemporary literature, music and the arts of sculpture and painting. Just

as the architect has limited himself to mass-produced components and has

rejected the ornament, rendered meaningless by suburban caricatures of past

practice, which formerly distinguished one style from another, articulated form

and related it to life, so the writer has turned away from language sullied and

made empty by the cliche and has taken refuge in obscurity, non-style or even

silence, the composer has moved away from the classical forms of organization

which once gave logic and precision to his developing themes, and the painter

and sculptor have retreated from their century-long involvement with visual

311

Page 314: The English House Through Seven Centuries

The End of an Art

reality into a restricted concern with mediums and an abstraction which has no

verbal equivalent.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that in the face ot present population trends

building methods may have to be even more intensively industrialized than

they are at present. Factories for the production of whole houses instead of for

the component parts of houses may have to be created. One designer already

speaks of concrete as an outmoded material and proposes Thermoplastic as the

ideal construction material of the future and the 'Archigram Group of forward

looking architects' have advocated 'throwaway buildings'. A growing realiz-

ation, eloquently expressed by Professor Peter Collins in his Changing Ideals in

Modern Architecture, that the creation of a humane domestic setting is the archi-

tect's most urgent task, has had little influence on the many thousands of new-

houses and flats which go up every year, a great proportion ot them part of private

estates or the work of local authorities. Instances of brilliant adaptations and con-

versions are not lacking but they are scarcely characteristic of the general trend

and only accentuate the sad aesthetic incoherence, monotony and mediocrity of

the debilitated suburban idiom and the nightmarish size and chilling imperson-

ality of the slab-tower block which dominate the scene, annihilating the sense of

place and continuity so vital to man's well-being and establishing an environment

which has to be endured rather than enjoyed. A change of direction can come only

with an unimaginable revolution in social and economic as well as architectural

attitudes. Meantime the story of the English house as an individual work of art

has virtually come to an end.

Golden Lane Housing. Cuv ot LondonNew Ash Green, Kent

Planning permission for New AshGreen, a Span development designed

by Eric Lyons and Partners, wasgranted in 1965 and at that time,

though within easy reach of London,this upland stretch of North WestKent was still completely rural. Thephotograph shows what wasbeginning to replace scattered

vernacular red brick, tile-hung or

weatherboarded farmhouses andcottages four years later. The short

two storey terraces are informed witha more conscious feeling for groupingthan the suburban houses already

seen, but the idiom remains basicallv

the same. The boarding, thoughvertical instead ot horizontal, vaguelyalludes to the local tradition ofweatherboarding, but is no morethan a meaningless ornamentaloverlay.

These houses are at least scaled to

man's stature and emphasize by con-trast the crushing inhumanity of the

giant monolith ot concrete, steel andglass in Golden Lane which dwarfs

even the seven storey block it con-fronts. A comparison of the twobuildings forcefully illustrates the

advantage of great size in the estab-

lishment ot a compelling pattern withprefabricated parts. The curtains anddrapes behind the glass units of the

small block bear pathetic witness to

human occupancy without human-izing the design: they merely spoil it.

I he proportions of the mammothblock are too vast to be disturbed bytraces of human habitation. Theeffect ot the precipitous \ertical move-ment of the twin towers on the short

side ot the structure and the dark

chasm between them, boldly oft-

Netting the strong horizontal

articulation of the facade, the

rhythmic alternations of glass andconcrete and the bands of light andshade created by balconies jutting

forward like half open drawers, is

wholly dependent on a precision ot

repetition which only the machinecould achieve. The building is indeed

literally a machine for living in' with

no more aesthetic distinction than a

well designed refrigerator. It

diminishes the human being.

Page 315: The English House Through Seven Centuries

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Henderson, Andrew The Family House in England, 1964

Hill, Oliver Scottish Castles ol the Sixteenth and Seventeenth

Centuries; with an Introduction by C. Hussey, 1953

Hoskins, W. G. The Heritage of Lancashire, 1946

Hussey, C. The Old Houses ol Britain : the Southern Counties,

1928

Hussey, C. The Picturesque, 1927

Innocent, C. F. The Development of English Building

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Jones, S. R. English I 'illage Homes, 1936

Jourdain, Margaret English Interiors in Smaller House?,

1600-1830, 1923

Kidson, Peter, Murray, Peter and Thompson, Paul AHistory ol English Architecture, 1962

Lenygon, F. and Jourdain, Margaret English Decoration and

Furniture from Tudor Times to the Nineteenth Century,

4 vols, 1914-24

Lister, Raymond Decorative Cast Ironwork in Great Britain,

i960

Lloyd, Nathaniel A History oj the English House, 1931

Lloyd, Nathaniel A History oj English Brickwork from

Medieval Times to the End of the Georgian Period, 1925

Lloyd, Nathaniel British Craftsmanship in Brick and Tile and

in Stone Slates, 1929

MacGibbon, D. and Ross, T. The Castellated and Domestic

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Mercer, Eric Houses of the Gentry Past and Present, 1954

Mercer, Eric English Vernacular Houses, 1971

Messent, J. W. Claude The Old Cottages and Farmhouses ot

Norfolk, 1928

Oliver, Basil Old Houses and I illage Building? oj East Anglia,

1912

Oliver, Basil The Cottage? of England: A Review of their

Types and Features Irom the 16th to the 181I1 Centuries,

1929

Oswald. Arthur Country Houses oj Kent, 1935

Oswald, Arthur Country Houses of Dorset, 2nd edn, 1959

Peate, I. C. The Welsh House. 1944

Pevsner, Nikolaus The Buildings ot England. 1951-

Powell, H. ). Glass-making in England. 1923

Richards, J. M. A Miniature History oj the English House,

2nd edn, i960

Richardson, A. E. and Gill, C. Regional Architecture oj the

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Richardson, C.J. Old English Mansions. 1839

Rural Industries Bureau The Thatcher's Craft, 1961

Shore, B. C. Stones of Britain, 1957

ShurYrey. L. A. The English Fireplace, 1912

Sinclair, C. Thatched House?. 1953

Sitwell, Sacheverell British Architects and Craftsmen, 3rd edn,

1947

Stratton, Arthur The English Interior, 1920

Summerson.SirJohn Architecture in Britain, 1530-1830, 1956

Tanner, H. Interior Woodwork of the XI 7-A'l 111 Centuries.

1902

Tipping, H. Avray English Homes. 9 vols, 1921

Tumor. Reginald The Smaller English House \300-1939,

1952

Victoria County Histone-

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Wright, L. Clean and Decent. The Fascinating History of the

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Yarwood, Doreen English Houses, 1966

FROM PREHISTORIC TIMES TO THE MIDDLE AGtS.

Banks, M. British Calendar Customs: Scotland. 1 'ol. I, 1937

Boon, G. C. Roman Silchester, 1957

Boumphrey, Geoffrey Along the Roman Roads, 1935

Childe, V. G. Skara Brae: A Pictish Village in Orkney, 193 1

Collingwood, R. G. Roman Britain, 1923

Collingwood, R. G. The Archaeology of Roman Britain, 1930

Collingwood, R. G. and Myres, J. N. L. Roman Britain and

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Harden, D. B., ed. Dark Age Britain. 1963

Harden, D. B. Domestic Window Glass: Roman, Saxon

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Haverfield, F. The Romanization oj Britain. 4th edn, 1923

Haverfield, F. and Macdonald. Sir George The RomanOccupation oj Britain. 1924

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Rahtz, P. A. The Saxon and Medieval Palaces at Cheddar,

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Shaw, H. Details ofElizabethan Architecture, 1 839

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Summerson, Sir John John Thorpe and the Thorpes of

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Williams, E. Carleton Bess of Hardwick, 1959

Withington, Robert Elizabethan Pageantry, 1918-20

Yates, Frances A. Elizabethan Chivalry: the Romance of

the Accession Day Tilts, Journal of the Warburg and

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THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

Adam, Robert andjames Works, 1773-8 and 1822

Ashley, Maurice England in the 1 7th Century, 1952

Aubrey, J. BriefLives and other Selected Writings, ed. Anthony

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Brett-James, Norman G. The Growth of Stuart London,

1935

Bolton, Arthur T. Robert andjames Adam, 1922

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Carntt, E. F. A Calendar ofBritish Taste, 1600-1800, 1949

Chambers, Sir William Designs for Chinese Buildings, 1757

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Society ofAntiquities of Ireland, LXX, 1940

Dutton, Ralph The Age of Wren, 195

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Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, 1928

Fiennes, Celia TheJourneys ofCelia Fiennes, ed. Christopher

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Forrester, H. The Smaller Queen Anne and Georgian House,

1964

Gerbier, Sir Balthazar A Brief Discourse concerning the three

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1919

Gotch, J. A. InigoJones, 1928

Hill, Oliver and Cornforth, John English Country Houses:

Caroline, 1625-86, 1966

Hussey, C. English Country Houses, early Georgian, mid-

Georgian and late Georgian, 3 vols, 1955-8

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Jones, Inigo Designs. Published by W. Kent, 1 770

Jourdain, Margaret and Ayscough, Anthony Country House

Baroque: Photographs of eighteenth century ornament.

mostly stucco-work in English and Irish country

houses and some Dublin houses, with a Foreword bySacheverell Sitwell, 1940

Jourdain, Margaret English Decorative Plasterwork of the

Renaissance, 1926

Jourdain, Margaret The Work of William Kent, 1948

Knight, Richard Payne Analytical Enquiry into the Principles

of Taste, 1808

Knoop, D. and Jones, G. P. The London Mason in the 17th

Century, 1935

Langley. Batty The City and Country Builder's and Work-

man's Treasury of Designs, 1740

Langley, Batty The Builder'sJewel, 1741

Lees-Milne, James The Age ofAdam, 1947

Lees-Milne, James The Age ofInigoJones, 1953

Lenygon, F. The Chinese Taste of English Decoration, Art

Journal, 191

1

Maxwell, C. Country and Town in Ireland under the Georges,

1940

Price, Sir Uvedale Essay on the Picturesque, 1 794

Ramsey, S. C. Small Houses ofthe late Georgian Period, 1924

Reilly, P. An Introduction to Regency Architecture, 1948

Repton, Humphrey Theory and Practice ofLandscape Garden-

ing, 1803

Richardson, A. E. An Introduction to Georgian Architecture,

1950

Richardson, A. E. and Eberlein, H. D. The Smaller English

House ofthe Later Renaissance, 1925

Rutter, John Delineations of Eonthill, 1823

Scarfe, Norman Little Haugh Hall, Suffolk, Country Life,

June, 1958

Stecgman.John The Rule of Taste, 1936

Stroud, Dorothy Capability Brown ; with an Introduction

byC. Hussey. Revised edn, 1957

Stroud, Dorothy The Architecture ofSirjohn Soane; with an

Introduction by H. R. Hitchcock, 1961

Stroud, Dorothy Humphrey Repton, 1962

Stroud, Dorothy Henry Holland, his Life and Architecture,

1966

Stutchbury, H. E. The Architecture of Colen Campbell,

1967

Sugden and Edmondson History of English Wallpaper,

1926

Summerson, Sirjohn John Sash, Architect to King George IV,

193 5

Summerson, SirJohn Georgian London, 1945

Swarbnck,John Robert Adam. 1 9 1 5

Trevelyan, G. M. England under the Stuarts. 21st edn. 1963

Tnggs, H. Inigo and Tanner, H. Architectural Works ofInigo

Iones, 1 90

1

Ware. Isaac The Complete Body ofArchitecture, 1 624

Webb, Geoffrey Wren, 1937

Whinney. Margaret and Millar, Oliver English Art jf>.>5

I7'4- Il^~Whistler, Laurence Sirjohn Vanbrugh, ig

Wood, lohn An Essay towards a Description ofBath, 1 742 and

Wotton, H. The Elements ofArchitecture, 1624

Youngson, A. [. The Making ofClassical Edinburgh. [966

315

Page 318: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Index

IHH NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES

Betjcman, John C. F. A. Voysey, the Architect of Indi-

vidualism, Architectural Review, Oct., 193

1

Brandon-Jones, J. The Work of Philip Webb and

Norman Shaw, Architectural Association Journal, June,

July, 1955

Burges, William Art Applied to Industry, 1865

Butler, Arthur S. The Architecture of Sir E. Lutyens, 3 vols,

1950

Casson, Sir Hugh An Introduction to Victorian Architecture,

1948

Conder, Neville An Introduction to Modern Architecture, 1949

Eastlake, Sir Charles History ofthe Gothic Revival in England,

1872

Ferrey, B. Recollections, 1861

Girouard, Mark Scansbrick Hall, Lancashire, Country Life,

March 13th and March 20th, 1958

Girouard, Mark Alton Castle and Hospital, Staffordshire,

Country Life, November 24th, i960

Girouard, Mark Red House, Country Life, June 16th, i960

Goodhart-Rendel, H. S. The Country House of the

Nineteenth Century, Victorian Architecture, ed. Peter

Ferriday, 1963

Goodhart-Rendel, H. S. The Victorian Home, Victorian

Architecture, ed. Peter Ferriday, 1963

Hitchcock, H. R. Early Victorian Architecture in Britain,

2 vols, 1954

Hitchcock, H. R. Modern Architecture: Romanticism and

Reintegration, 1929

Howard, Ebenezer Tomorrow, 1898, published as Garden

Cities of Tomorrow, 1946

Jenkins, Frank The Victorian Architectural Profession,

Victorian Architecture, ed. Peter Ferriday, 1 963

Lethaby, W. R. Philip Webb and his Work, 1925

McGrath, Raymond Twentieth Century Houses, 1924

Pevsner, Nikolaus Pioneers of the Modern Movement, 1936

Piper, John St. Marie's Grange, Architectural Review, Oct.

1945

Pugin, A. W. Contrasts, 1841

Pullan, R. P. The Architectural Designs of William Burges,

A.R.A., 1887

Richards, J. M. The Castles on the Ground, 1946

Richards, J. M. Introduction to Modern Architecture, 1940

Shaw, R. Norman andjackson, T. G., A.R. A., editors Archi-

tecture : a Profession or an Art?, 1 892

Stanton, P. B. Some Comments on the Life and Works ofAugustus Welby Pugin, Journal of the Royal Institute ofBritish Architects, 3rd series, IX, 1952

Thompson, F. M. L. English Landed Society in the Nineteenth

Century, 1963

Thomson, David England in the Twentieth Century, 1963

Trappes-Lomax, M. Pugin, 1932

Voysey, C. F. A. Ideas in Things. In The Arts connected with

Building, ed. Raffles Davison, 1909

Voysey, C. F. A. Individuality, 191

5

Weaver, Lawrence Lutyens' Houses and Gardens, 1921

Yorke, F. R. S. The Modern House in England, 3rd edn, 1948

Young, G. M., editor Early Victorian England, 2 vols, 1934

Index

Page numbers in italic indicate an illustration

oj the subject mentioned

Aaron's House, Lincoln, 28

Abbas Hall, Suff, 25, 27, 48, 76, 94; 25,

94Adam, James, 206-8, 240Adam, Robert, 202-10 passim, 214, 222,

226, 231, 232, 235, 240, 268

Adam, William, 175, 194, 210Adams brothers, 13, 199, 205, 206, 207Adams, M., 301

Adcote House, Salop, 286, 290; 290Adlington Hall, Ches , 82

Aisled halls, 23, 24, 25, 26-8, 31, 32, 35,

36, 39, 48; 22. 24, 25

Alabaster, 236, 288

Alport, Derbys.. Harthill Hall Farm,236; 2)6

Alton Towers, Staffs , 280Ampthill, 224, 226, 228, 283 ; 227Angelo, 214

Anstey Cross, Dorset, 152-3. 161 ; 152Aquae Sulis, 13, 221

Arbor Low. Derbys., n-Arbury Hall. Warks.. 82. 135, 244 5,

279. 280, 2.J.S

Archer, Thomas, 172, [94, 202, 207Arches, 21, 3 13 |8, 56, ''2. 66. 90,

114. ">'>.

Architect, the 101, 188,271-2Arnnsticld Cai 1 Dumf., 40Art Nouveau, 302; 102

Artart

Ashburnham House, Westminster, 184,

18ft; 1 S3

Ashbury Manor, Berks., 26, 58, 59,

64-5. 68, 137; 64Ashdon, Essex, 56, 14s; Place Farm, 69,

71, 73'. 70

Ashdown House, Berks.. 161. 171. 181 ; 162

Ashlar, 157Ashndge Park, Herts., 250Ashwell, Herts., pargework. 145;Dixie's, 69, 70; 71

Astley Hall, Lanes., 184Aston sub Edge, Glos., 141

Athelhampton Hall. Dorset, 79Attic storeys, 102, 172. 216, 218, 249,

250, 264; 2}0Attingham Hall, Salop. 209, 210,

212-13; 208, .'12, 21jAudley End Mansion, Essex, 13. 288Audsley, W. and G., 286Axmouth, Devon, Stedcombe House.1X2

BBacon, John, 223

Bagutti, 194. - ;s

balconies. 102. 1 14. jss. ; 1 : . cast iron.

211, 26^. 268 .-'P.'

ballinaboy. Co Galway, 1

1

Bajnagown Castle, Ross, 241

Barber, Jean, 171

barbon, Dr Nicholas, in- -s, 221

Bargcboards. -2. 1 s 1 . 2"Z. 20s. 2S2. 308;• Ml. 277, 281, 2*2. 2Ss. 286, ;.;S.

301 ;2--. itl, its, »9*

Bark, 282

Barlborough Hall, Derbys., 101, 102,

106. 107, 111. 122. 182, 250; 107Barmston Hall, 131

Barrel vaults, 102, 103, 125, 210; 103, 211

Barrington, Canibs., 140, 310barnngton Court, Som., 79, 80, 122

Barry, Sir Charles, 286

Bartoh, Domenico and Giuseppe. 212

Basements. 102, 106, 107, ill, 114. 116,

122, 217^230, 300Bath: Abbey, 77; The Circus, 221, 230;

221 : ironwork railings, 230: QueenSquare, 20s. 221 , Rosewell House, 179;

Royal Crescent. 222. 230: terraces. 264Bawdsey, Suff. fireplace, 303; }02: HighHouse, 218

Bays, 21. 24, 2~. 63, 64, 92-3. 104, 106-8,

109. ill, 114. 118, 121-4, is-

- 21V288, 296, 300; 24. 121, ziS

Beck, William, 2-9

Beckington, Thomas. Bishop. 62, 65, 67Beehive Huts, u>, 18, 312, 17

Behrens, Peter. 3 1

1

Bell. Henry. 179belton House. Lines., t8l, 1 s;. is;, km.tSt

Benthall Hall, Salop. 121. 122 1. 121

Bentle) End, surtolk. 144

Berriew, Moncgom., 151

betteshangcr. Kent, 2ss

Bexle) Heath, Herts . Red House. 2-y

Bibury, Glos , 1 s-, 1 58, ;S2, i.sr

Biddenden, Kent. 14-. 151, 153, 229.

1 J P. HiBidford-on-Avon, W.irks , is-, mo

Bignor. Sussex, Roman Villa, 16

Bingham's Melkham. Dorset, 161, 230,

277Birk Howe, Westm.. 157Birmingham, bourneviUc. 303. 307Bishop's Hatfield, 61

black and white work, Ki, 285, 303,

305. 308

blackhouses, 11,1/

blackmoor Manor, S0111 . 68

Blackwell-in-che-Peak Castle, 112

Blaise, Glos . 262

Blakeney, Norfolk, 139. 161

Blandford. Dorset. Old House. 16s. 166.

180; it's

Blenheim Palace, Oxon., 175

Blickling, Norfolk, 101

Bio' Norton, Norfolk. 14

Blomticld. F . s4

Blomfieid. Sir Reginald. 194

Bodley, G F .

2-1'

Bog Oak. 9. 6s

Bolsovei Castle, Pcrbss . 109, 111. 112.

114, 11-. 130-1, 175, 1-6. 290. 292;

1 1 2. 1 jj

Bolton Abbev. Yorks . 23

booths Pagnell, Manor House, 31, 34;

•v

Borden Hall. Kent. 240

Bom, Giovanni battista, 202

Borthwick Castle, Midloth . 46. 4". SJ,

108, 292 . .jf

Bosse. 21

4

Bourbon. Charles, 203

Box-frame construction, 23, 26

Braces, 24. 2s. 2-. 49. so. si , 25, 49. 51

316

Page 319: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Index

Bradford on Avon, Som.. The Hall, 106,

108, 122

Bramhall Hall, Ches., 79Brandon, Suffolk, 161

Bray. Berks., Ockwell's Manor, 54Braybrooke, Northants., 115

Breckland. 161

Brenchley. Kent, 59. 147. 148, 2 , y. 146.

U7Bressumers, 73, 82, 123, 163

Brick construction, 43-5, 74, 83, 86-96,

139, 161, 168, 186, 194, 203, 216, 228-9Brick and flint. 13, 34, 158, 161, 228,

261, 275, 277, 281 ; 139, 160

Brick and terracotta, 77, 90, 92-3Brick and tile, 306Brick and timber, 75, 83, 118, 120; 120

Bnck floors. 28, 51

Brick laying: English Bond. 83-4. 95;

95: Flemish Bond, 86, 228; rattrap

bond, 283

Brick nogging, 75, 89

Brickwork. 82. 83. 86, 89, 90. 93. ys. 96.

167. 171, 228, 277, 283; 88. gi, 9s. 2--

Bncks. English, 15, 44. 45, 83. 140, 228;

Roman, 14-15, 44Bndgeman, Charles. 202

Brighton, Sussex, Bricktiling, Z28;

Chichester Terrace, 295; Pavilion, 264,

266, 272

Bristol, Manilla Road, 298. 299, 300,

306; }08Brosse, de, 214Broughton Castle, Oxon., 34, 98Brown, Capability, 105, 109, 202, 213

Browston Hall, Suffolk, 238

Bruce, Sir William, 173, 175, 176, 179Bryanston, 288

Bryant's Puddle, Dorset. 140. 141, 141

Brymton D'Everecy House. Soni., 79Burford, Oxon, 157, 219, 221 ; 156

Burgate stone, 306Burges. William, 286, 288. 290. 291.

293-4Burgh Castle, Suffolk, 14

Burghley House, Northants., 99, 102,

109; log

Burlington. Richard Boyle Earl of. 171,

194, 201-3, 20°. 2I °. 2I 4. 21 5. 2 74:

Chiswick House, 193, 194, 198-201;

ig8

Burn, William, 286, 288

Burrough, Mr, 238Burrough, Sir James, 238Burton, Decinius, 272Burton Agnes Hall, Yorks , 100. 128,

131. 132. 133; 131

Burwash. Sussex, 140, 148;

Rampyndene House, 181, 184; 146

Burwell, Cambs., 140

Bury St Edmunds. Suffolk, NormanHouse. 28, 30

Butley, Suffolk., Priory, 254-6; 255Buxton, Derbys.. Crescent, 221, 222;

221

cCaerhays Castle, Corn., 248, 292; 248Caldicott, Rut , 158, 159Cambering, 49, 50Cambridge, Christ's College, 240;

King's College Chapel, 77; St

Catherine's, 74; Senate House, 230, 231

Camden, William, 99Campbell, Colen, 197. 202: Viuivius

Briiannicus, 171, 173, 193, 194, 214, 275Camulodunum, Essex, 14

Canterbury, Kent, 62

Capel, Surrey, 147; 146

Cardiff Castle, Glam , 288, 292-3; 28gCarew, Richard, 99Carpenter, Edmond. 182

Carpenter, R. C, 296

Carr.John, 202, 218, 222

Carr, Jonathan T., 301-2

Carstone, 281. 283

Carton House, Co Wicklow, 239Cartouches, 171. 172, 174, 179, 181

Cartwnght, Francis. 223

Casements. 54, 184, 187, 217, 275

Cast iron, 230, 231, 237, 262, 268, 272,

273, 280, 301 ; 231, 262. 272, 273, 280Cassels, 246Castell Coch, Glam., 290, 292, 2y4: 290.

2gi

Castle Acre Priory, Norfolk, 62, 65, 158,

161 ; 159Castle Hedingham, Essex, 28, 34; 29Castle House, Co. Fermanagh. 24'.

Castle Howard. Yorks, 175, 242Castlecoole. Co. Fermanagh, 202, 210,

212, 250Castlefield, Hants, 16

Castles, 28, 41, 45-7, 61, 100. 111,1 12,

248-9, 267; Scottish, 137, 139Castleward House, Co Down. 135, 244.246-7, 279; 244

Caus, Isaac de. 171

Cavendish. Suffolk, railings, 273; 273Cavendish, Sir Charles, 1 12

Cavendish, Sir William, 109, 112, 114

Ceilings, 75, 103. 246; 10), i)0; plaster,

51, 97, 132-5. 184, 199, 209, 213. 237-9,

244; 97, 'J2. 133- '34. '38. 2)g. 244.

245Cement, Parker s Roman, 264;Hamehn's mastic, 264

Chalk Houses, 161 ; 162

Chalk lump, 139-40Chalk stone, 140

Chambers. Sir William. 201. 210, 242,

259, 260

Chapels, 32, 34, 35, 62, 68, 1 1

1

Charlecote Park, Warks., 86

Chastleton House, Oxon, 9, 108, 1 1 1

,

1*5. 133. 135Chatsworth, Derbys., 56, 109, 180, 272Chateau Impney, Worcs., 292; 2g)Cheadle. Staffs., 140

Cheam, Surrey, 141

Cheddar, Som., 16, 26

Chedworth, Glos., Roman Villa, 13. 16

Cheltenham, Glos , 262, 268

Cherhill Barn, Wilts.. 23, 24; 22

Chester, 69Chesterfield, Derbys., 13

Chesterfield House, 215, 241

Chicheley House, Bucks., 172-3, 174,

194. 207; 172

Chichester, Sussex, 230; Pallant House,

218; 218

Chiddingfold, Kent, 141

Chilmark stone, 213

Chimney flues, 12, 25, 27-8, 31-2, 194;

*3

Chimney-pieces, 55, 114, 129, 171, 182,

232, 234, 235, 236, 237, 246, 269, 288,

292, 297; 170, 182, 2)4, 2)5, 2)7Chimney shafts, 93, 95-6, 102. 115. 116,

1 18, 119, 122, 168, 224; 92, 96, 169, 224

Chimney stacks, 38, 43, 75-6, 80. 81, 86,

89. 93. 94. 120, 123, 140, 157, 158, 163,

166, 167, 175, 276, 277, 301 ; j*, 4), 88,

120, 121, 165. 276, 277, )0l

Chimneys, 105. 108, 109, 151, 155, 158.

166, 180, 182, 198, 155. 180

Chipping, Camden, Glos., 51. 53. 54.

158; 52

Chiswick House, Mdsx., 193. 194, 198-

201, 201-2, 203, 206, 207, 209; 197. 19*

Christchurch, Hants., 29, 31

Chysauster Houses, Corn., 11, 12; 10

Circuses, 221 ; 220

Cirencester, Glos., 13, 279; Coxwell.

Street, 186, 187; 187: Park, 242-3

Clandon Park, Surrey, 202, 203, 216,

218, 223

Clanville, Hants., 16

Clapboarding. 59, 148. 229, 308

Clare, Suffolk, 95-6, 145; 144Claremont. Surrey, 175; 174

Clarence House. Essex, 217; 2/7

Clavering, Essex. -2. 73; 73Clay. 1 !-. 1 ly. 140. 157

Claydon House, Bucks., 232, 241 2.

'33Cley. Norfolk. i>8, 161 . 1.59

Clifton. Oxon. 21

Clifton-on-Teme. Worcs . 141. 143; miClinkers, 281

Cliveden, Bucks., 286

Clochans, 16, 18; 17, ig

Clunch, 140; and flint, 137Cluniac Priory, 254Coade Stone, 222-3, 226. 256Cob. 11, 139, 141, 259, 260; villages,

140, 283; 141

Cobblestones. 158; 159Cockerell, S.P.. 266C oikles Cley, Norfolk, 281

Coggeshall. Essex. 69, 74, 116, 141. 145,

148: Houchin's, 116, 163, 165; 165

Colchester, 14. 161; 160

Collyweston, Northants , 151

Colne Ford House. Essex. [48; 144Colonnades. 8y. 108, 111. 209, 210, 264Comp.on Wynyatcs. Warks . 58, 79,

82-3, 123; 58, 84

Concrete and steel, 3 1

1

Congresbury Old Rectory. Som.. 65. 66Coniston, Lanes., long house, 139Connell. Amyas, 311

Connemara, Co. Galway. Outhouse,

16; 17

Conservatories, 272. 282, 286; 272Coral ragstone, 137

Corner-posts, 72, 73 ; 73Cornices, 55, 58, 172, 180, 181, 184, 190.

217. 234, 237, 295; 58, 172, 180. 183.

lgi. 214, 2gsCotehele House, Corn., 50Cothay Manor, Som., 8, 41

Cotswold stone, 21

Cottages, 60. 66, 259-62, 283 ; mat,

283-4, 285, 299; 283

Couchman. Henry, 244Court House, Soni., 133

Courtyards, 86,90, 106, 118, 122, 279,

306Cragside, Northumb., 286

Craigievar Castle, Ab., 135, 137, 1S7:

,36

Cranbourne Manor, Dorset, 104

Cranbrook, Kent, 147. 22y, 146

Creeche Grange, Dorset, 223

Crescents, 295Crewe Hall, Ches., 98

Crichel House, Dorset, 212

Cricklewood, Middx., 308; )og

Critz, Emmanuel de, 171

Cromarty Lighthouse Lodge, 267; 267Cronkhill, Salop, 264, 295; 263Cross walk, 12

Cross-wings, 36, 38, 39, 41, 46, 60, 68,

69;57. 38<39. 4<>

Crowhurst, Sussex, 142

Croxden Starts., Abbot's Lodgings, 62

Crucks, 18, 19, 20, 21. 23, 36, 49, 60.

256; 18, ig, 20

Cubley, Derbys., 179Culzean Castle, Ayr, 248-9, 292; 249Cupolas, 105, 106. 114. 161. 171. 181,

288; 105, 162, 181

Cusps, 24, 27, 41, 49, 50, 66. 24<>

Cut stones, 9

DDados, 182, 184, 237Dais. the. 2-, 48. 56, 82, 290

Dale, Richarde. 103. 125

Dance, George, 210, 213

Daneways, Glos., 158; 159

Darnell. Thomas and William. 2S9

Datestones, 158

Daub, 24

De Vere, Aubres ,2s

Debenham, Suffolk, Crows Hall. 128.

129; 129

Deddington. Oxon. Castle House, 185,

[86; ,85

Dedham, Essex, Southticlds. 41, 140

Delabore quarry, 148-9

Denmngton. Suffolk. 280; 280

Dentils, 171

Devey, George, :^s

Didbrook Cottage, Glos ,21, 23, 26; 2.'

Dinton, Wilts , Phihpps House. 212-13;

212-13

Ditchle) Park, Oxon. 16

Ditton, Cambs., 61

Doddington. Sussex. 61

Doddington. Christopher, 130Doddington, Thomas, 35, 130

Dollis Hill, Middx., 308; J09Domes. 105. 109, 194. 19^-9, pepperpot.

116. 1 18. 137, 176; 119. 136, )--

Door knockers, 226, 231. 26s.

Doors. 89, 105, 106, 111. 182, 216,

218-19. 302, 303; 88, 111, 182. 303Doorways, 181-2, 224-8 passim, 241 . -4.

76, 170, 178, 182, 223: carved, 31. 39,

106, io8, 118, 157, 171, 172-3. 174,

179. 181; 74. 7*. 17". 178 pedimentcd.

190, 198. 199, 214, 216, 217, 225. 232;

191, ig8, 215, 216, 217. 233Dorchester, Oxon, cottage. 60; 60

Dormers. 38, 42, 46, 66, 153, 180, iH2,

214, 217, 281, 303; 66, 180, 215Dovecotes, 44, 44Downham Market. Norfolk. 61. 281,

298; 281

Downton Castle. Heref . 249, 251, 253,

292; 231

Dragon beams, 72; 73Dnpcourses. 1 5

1

Dripmounding. 157. 268, 275; 26gDripstones (label moulding), 66, ii*. n^Drumkehnbog, Don., [48

Drumlanrig Castle. Dunif., 175

Dry-stone walling. 11. 16. 18, 155, 157,

310; 17, 18, 19

Dublin, Casino Marino, 201 ; MenonSquare, 226, 228; 227; plaster work.

238-9; 2J9Duns Castle. Berwk., 250Dunsford, Devon. 140

Dunstable, Beds.. Argyll Terrace, 297Dunster, Som , The Nunnery. 149. 153.

154; 14-

Durleigh. Som . West Bower Farm, 41,

42:40Dyrhani Park, Glos., 180

Earthen houses, 139, 140

East Barsham Manor, Norf, 92, 93, 95;

9 2

East Bergholt. Suffolk, 145

East Hading, NorfoFk, 26

East Lulworth Castle, Dorset, 53, 1 1 1 —

112, 117, 176; 53, 110

East Quantock. Somerset, Court House,

133

Eastawe, John, 81

Eaton Hall, Chesh., 226, 268

Eaves, 69, 70, 72, 123, 294Eases-cornice, 182, 187, 218, 294Ebrmgton, Glos.. isl

Edensor, Derbys . 284. 286; 284

Edgcumbe, Sir Richard. 78-9

Edge, William, 173

Edinburgh, Advocate's Ci.

Charlotte Square, 205, 222, 223, 230;

222: St John's Church, 286;MorayPlace. 249-50. 295

Elmdon. Essex. The Bangles, 1 s 1

Elphinston Tower, Mdsx . 46

Els. Lines., Cathedral, 23, 140; Palace,

61

Engletield Green, Surrey, 310; 310Erwarton, Suffolk. 89

Eversley. Warbrook. 202

Exton Park. Rul

Eyam Hall. Derbys.. i<>-. i"i

Falkland Palace, Fin

Fanlights, 13, 214, 226. 231. 244 - •

308; 22-. 2 .

Fan-vaulting, 77, 210, 241. 244. 246.

24-. 211, 244

Farnham Common, Bucks, 31

1

Fascia boards, -2. 73

F.ns-lcs Manor, Northants

Fenestration. 109. 122. 123. 161,

199. 204, 210. 223. 266, 2-y. 301

;

1.'9, 1P2. \8t

Finstock. Oxon . is". isS; jsP

Firebaskets, 2 .•

Firedogs. 237, 292

317

Page 320: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Index

fireplaces. 2 • . 4 2,

7

84, 199.

94, 112,24- -

Geor.marb - J 5. 236. 288 : stone.

-

Ragstones, 9Rats, 188: muln-storeyed, 310-11. 312:

J"Reming's Hall. Suffolk, 118: 120

Rim, 14, 39, 44, 160, 281

Hinr-knappir .. ____.159.22)

Rint and freestone. 255-6

Hint and rubble, 12

Rint and stone

Hitcroft, Henr 2 2

Roors, 51, 94, 210Rushwork, 255-6Follies, 86. 116.282

Fonthill, Wilts., 250-1

Foot's Crag. Kent. 201

Forde Abbey. SonFounuins Hall. Yorks., 101. 102, 106,

7

Fowlmere, Cambs., 145

Foxton, CambFramlingham, Suffolk, Ufford Hall. 69,

Franbni, Paul and Philip, 238-9Freestone and brock 2

Fressingfield Church Farm. Suffolk, 49fieston, Suffolk. 86

Fretw : •• - • .-281Friezes, 13, 15 89,90.

93, 102. 116, 118, 172 _ 222 - -

234,238,292 ... 2)4

Frisbey, Humphrey. 166-7

Frosterlev. Co. Dur., 154, 157

Fyfield Hall. Essex . J

Gable? 2 to. 81. 82-3, 105.

106. : 2 22 :+. 139.

58, 163, 188, 255, 275, 288, 296.

- • . - - . '.20,

\$t

Gable-ends, 94 12 ...161. 166; 95. 146.

149. 1'

Gallen. . .-.63,100,112,

1 18. 286. 290: lo: .

101. ill, 125-7 . . . 126

Gallcrus Oratory. Co. Kerry-. 18-19. 21

;

19

Galletting. 83, 161. 281. 306Garden suburbs, 3 :

Gardens. 80, 105, 109, 124

200. 201 : landscac-.

-

Garderobes. 31. 32 . .

199Gargov...

Garrard, Geor_Gatehouses, 41-3. 86-92, 98, 10c .

.

;. 291

Gates, w-rought-iron. 230: 2)1Gavels, 21

George. Sir Ernest

Gerbier. Sir Balthaz

Gibbons. GnnlingGibbs,Jamc-Gilhng Casde. York.Gimson. Er

Girolamo d

Girouard, DrGlasgow. Gt Western Terrace. 2

Glastonbury. Som . 15. 16. 61, 62Glazn . . 125

Godwin. E .

Gothelney Manor. SomGoudhurst. Kent. 148,

Graham. Gillespie . .

Granite building. .

Grate

Great Chalfield Manor, Wilts., 39Great Chambers. 31. 32. 106, ill, 114,

USGreat Cornard, Suffolk, 25

Great Coxwell. Berks.. 26

Great Cressinghani Manor, Norfolk, 93

;

Great Oixter, Suss., 48. 50-1. 5: -

306: 4

Great Easton. Essex, Warren's Farm, 128

Great Durunow, Essex, 163

Great Halls, 32, 36. _ . . -y. 50,

. 17 100; 36. 4$• '.assingham. Norfolk, 281

Great Oakley, Essex, porch. 281 ; 261

Great Tew, Oxon. 158, 259, 262Green. T. K.. 299Greenwich, Queens House, 168

;

Hospital, 210

Grilles. 53. oc

Grumbold family, 166

HHaddon Hall, Derbys., 26, 41, 56, 100

Hadleigh, Suffolk. 145

Hafod, Card 2 _

Hale Park. Hants., 172, 194, 202, 212;

195Norfolk, cottage. 261 ; 261

Hall-timber construction, 26, 36, 69-70,

74 " . 1 S. 120, 123, 137, 140-9,

.. 268, 281 ; 120. 142. 14 ...mock, 301, 303, 308; 301. 309

Halfpenny. Wwiar. . .

Hall houses, 12, 16. 26, 35, 41, 46, 47. . • 3. 62, 66 ff. 80; 4b. 2-

and cross-wings, 39. 60, 105, 1 1

9

45, 163: denvaoves, 106,- :i8. 122. 166. 199

Halls. 31, 48. 101-2, 103. ill, 128, 139;

archaisms, 82, 100, 106 central, 279-80,

286, 288, 290; upper floo- . .

:. 62

Halls, staircase, 230, 232, 296; 233Halsewell, Som.. Druid's Temple .

.

Halstead. Essex, cemetery lodge. 272— . -

Ham Hill store

Ham House. Surre\

Hammer be= 27,4 .

Hammoon Manor. Dorset, 118. 121,

284, 286; 121

Hampton Court, 79, 107, 182, 2 _

gardens, 80

Hampton Luc.

Handrails, 128. 185. 186, 2.;.

Hanwell, William.

Harding and Tecton. 311

Hardwick Hall. Derbys.. 13. 14. 56, 99,

:2. 108-11, 125-7 -

'

Harewood House. Yorks . .

Hanngton, Sir John, water-dose:

Harlaxton Manor. Lines.. 2

290; 2S6

Harleston, Norfolk

Harling.

Harston, Can'tHartest. Suffolk. 145

Harvey, W. and J. J., 295, 303Harwich. Es^.

Hashngfield. Camb-Hastings. Sussex, bow window. .

Hatfield Broadoak.. 2*1

Hatfield House, Herts.. 100Hawkhurst. Kent .

Hawnes Park. Bed-.urton. Devc:

Hcaton Park. Lam39

.

Hemingford. Payne de. 31

Hcmingibrd Manor. Hunts . 31-2. 33.

Hcngrave Hall. Su~ •

Herstnn 41. 44

Hevemngham, Suffolk, 207, 210; 211

Hexham Castle, Northumb., 129

Heytesbury Parsonage, Wilts., 135Hicks, Sir Baptist, 158

Hingham, Norfolk, 228Hipped gables, 66, 153, 165, 217: roofs.

255; '55Hoare, Sir Henry, 214. 253Holdenby Palace, Northants., 126-7

Holkham Hall, Norfolk, 202, 205Holland, Henry. 202. 213-14. 266

Holme, Randle, slate names, 158

Homngton Hall. Warks., 181,182. _ 235.236.238; 234

Hopetown House. W'LothHopper. Thomas, 269, 272, 291, 292Horeham Hall. Essex, 82. 83. 84. 94.

100; 84Houghton. Hunts., 31

Houghton Hall. Norfolk. 214House names, 301, 307Housing estates, 307, 311, 312Hussey. Christopher, 206

I

Ickleton, Cambs., 16, 145

Ightham, Kent, 229; Mote, 41

Inbuilt furniture. 9, 139: 138

Inglenooks, 94; 94Innocent. C. F.. 21, 148, 152, 153lnverary Casde. Argyll, 215. ._

280, 292 .

Ironbndge, Glos.. 231, 268

Ironstone banding. 115. 116

Isaac's Hall, Norwich, 28. 31

Iweme, Dorset, 12

Jackson, John Bapn?: ..

James, John. 222. _ : 2

Jenny, Sir Christopher, 77Jenny, Jot 77

Jetrying, 68-72, 148. 163, 165; rv-

Jones, lnigo, 168, 171, 186, 18S, 193, 194,

199. 221

Jungle. The. Lines.. 256. 259 .

KKaufmann, Angelica. 206, 209. 246Kay. Joseph ..

Keck. AnthonJ

. |

Kedleston Hall. Derbys.. 13. 202 .

- . . _ . - .

Keene, Henry and Roben —Keeps. N - . -bam.

- -

Kemlworth Casde, Warks.. 100

Kent. William. 194. 19S. 199. 222......Kenwood, Mdsx.. 202, 206. 212; 2*6

Kersey. Suffolk .

Ketdebaston. Suffolk .

Ketdeburgh. Suffolk. Flail Farm. 162,

166

Kevstones. 217Kniimel Park. Dcrb

.

Kingussie. Pe-

King's Lynn. Clifton HousCustom Hou^King\ Weston. SonKirby Hall. Northants., 13. 101. .

-. 1 03

Kirtling Tower. CarKitchens, basement. . 7, 114.

IS>4

Knapton Church. Norfolk 17

Knebworth Manor. Hert-

Knight. Richard Payne. :-

Knole Park. Kent. 9-. 125. 126. .

. --

• ' 14

• X 109

Lacock. Wilts . Abbey. 79. 80. 86.

-9 cotugc. 192, 192: cruck-

built house. 19. 21 . it; King John's

Houv

Laing. David. 259Lake District. 9. 139, 149, 155, 157; 138Lake House, Wilts., 122, 288Lamp standards, 223, 230Langley, Batty and Thomas, 214, 225Langleys. Essex. 135. 232. 288; 132, 133Lantern towers, 41 ; 40Lasdun. Denys. 311

Laths. 24Lamce windows, 54. 118, 268; 121. 269Lattice work, 28 1 ; 281

Launceston, Com., Casde House, 184;Trecarrel Manor. 49Lavenham, Suffolk, 69, 73-4, 140. 141.

143- 145 - " 74 '-42

Layer Marney Towers. Essex. 79, 90,

92; go, 91

Leaded lights. 90, 93, 121, 124-5, 157.

184. 187. 281. 282, 308; 90. 93, 124.

12}. 131, 282, 309Leez Pnory, 86. 89; 88Leicester. White House, 304; 304Leoni. Giacome, 194. 202, 203, 218Letchworth, Herts.. 307Lethaby. W. R . 271

Lettering, Gothic and Roman, 158Levens Hall. Westm., 100, 124; 124Leverton, Thomas. 222

Sussex, 228Lewis, Hebrides, 1 1 ; 1 1

Lightfoot, woodcarver. 242; 241

Lightholer. T.. 214Limestone. 137. 151. 158, 161; 139:

belt. 157, 166

Lime-washing, 155. : 57Lincoln. Norman houses, 28

Lmenfold panelling, 55, 58, 59, 82; 55,

5«Linton. Cambs., 148

Litde Brockhampton. Here:

Lirde Cbesierford Manor, Essex. 3

i

Litde Common, Hoo. Sussex .

.

Litde Haugh Hall, Suffolk. 2:2. 2;-.

238, 239; 238''.oreton Hall, Ches., 123. :..

141. 149; 125

Litde Sodbury Manor. Glos., 26Litde Thakeham, Sussex, 306 ; 306Litde Wenham Hall. Suffolk. 32. 34. 44.

7 -

Lirtlebury. Essex 143

Litdemore Park. Wilts., 13

Llanfrothen. Menon.. 280. 281 : .

Lochlev en Casde, Kinross, 46Loggias. 100, 168, 213, 306London: Adam St, 204-5 -

Banqueting House. Whitehall. 168,

193: Bedford Park. 301-3, 304, 307;isedford Sq, 222 .. .. ..

Berkeley So,.. 219: Bloomsbury Sq..

221 Buckingham Palace. .•

Buckland Crescent. 294 2

Carlton House. 2 ..: .

2-2 Carlton

House TeiTaie .... v. hebca

Hospital. 180: Govern Garden piazza.

-21 : Cromwell Hou-i ..

Palate, 2"2. 2*4 CumberlandTeiTa - l>evonshire S: ..

Dulwich. 'Six Pillars'. 311: Els House.

. I tham Palace. 4y t--. Si

Gilston Road. 295-6. 29} Golden Lane

Housing. 312; 112; Great Exhibinon.2-2 Great Queen St. 187: Hampstead.Annesley Lodge. 300; 300. Belsize

Avenue. 303 : 303. Church Row I

fitzjohn's Avenue . gnal.

3 1 1 : Garden suburb. 12-. Lawn Roadflats. 311. Well Walk, 244. MHome House .

Kensington Palace. 1 hi Kcw Gardens.

... K-nch Walk. :M; Lawrc: .* Lincoln's

Inn fields. 18-. Lonsdale S..

add Si 22: Meibury Road. 301:

o:c gaol. 210. 213 Paddington

Station. 2-3 . Pantheon. Oxford St.

rice's

Gate. 302 Regent's Park . . . .

M James's Palace. -9 : St James's

St John's Wood. 2 •

Page 321: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Index

London— continued

2bb: Upper Cheney Row, 217; WhiteLodge, Richmond Park, 194, 248:

Wilmington Sq., 223, 226

Long houses, II, 12, 139, 15s. 1ST: 138,

155

Long Melford Hall, Suffolk, 1 id, 1 18,

122; iig

Long Sutton, Lines.. 22(1

Longleat House, Wilts,, 79, 101, 102,

104-5. 109, ill

Longthorpe Hall, Northants., 32-4, 35,

$6, 89; 33, 34< 15. 57Loudon, J. C . 158, 256, 258, 259. 284

Louth, Lines, doorway, 226; 227

Louvres, 82

Lower Brockhampton Manor, Heret..

41, 42, 149, 151 ; 42

Lowestoft. Suffolk. 15X, 161; 159

Lowther. Westm., 260

Lucas, Colin, 31

1

Ludlow, Salop, 149, 214, 224; 213

Lugar, R ,2X4

Lunettes, 167

Lutyens, 48, 53, 54. 74. 305-6, 307, 310

Lyminge, Robert, 100, 101

Lytes Cary, Som.. 26

Lyveden New Build, Northants . 115-16

MMachicolations. 46. 256

Mackmurdo, A. H , 302

Macro, Cox, 238Maes Howe, Orkney, 9

Maiano, Giovanni da, 1N2

Malton, James, 259Mantelshelves, ss. 232, 236-7

Marble Hall, Mdsx., 194

March church, Cambs., 27

Market Deeping Rectory, Lines., 51

Marlborough. Wilts., 281

Marot, Daniel, 179

Martin, Dorset, 161

Mass production, 268, 297, 298, 308,

310,311,312Master, John. 135

Master's House. Bucks . 275; 275

Mattcrdale, Farmhouse, Cunib., 139;

138Maxstone Castle. Warks., 41

May, E. J., 301

Meare, Som., Abbot's palace, 62, 68;

Manor House, 61, 6s, 63

Medallions, 106, 107, 130

Melbourn, Cambs., cottages, 67, 140,

158; 67

Mells, Som., New St, 67

Mendham Priory Lodge, Suffolk, 253,

254; 254Meopham, Kent, 229Mereworth Castle, Kent, 194, 201, 209,

234, 238; 196

Mernst Wood, Surrey, 286

Metfield Office Farm, Suffolk, 141, 143.

166; 143Methwold Vicarage, Norfolk, 94, 95; 95

Middleton, Charles, 259, 268

Middleton Towers, Norfolk, 44Mill House, Lines., 226

Miller. Sanderson, 244, 254Millstone Grit, 154. 157; 154Milton Abbas, Dorset, 139, 259, 260,

268. 283; 260

Moats, 28, 31, 36, 41, 42, 43, 82, 83, 93,

1 16, 1 18; 42, 4), 85, 120

Moccas Court, Heref, 232Modilhons, 130, 167, 181, 182, 216,

294Moion, William, de, 121 ; 121

Monastery houses, 61-6

Monolithic slabs, 9Montacutc House, Som., 98, 104, 105-6,

122, 133, 288; 98, 104, 103

Morden College, Blackheath, 180

Morley Old Hall, Norfolk. 1 16

Morris, Roger, 214, 248, 250Morris, William, 43-4, 271, 277, 279

Morstcm, Norfolk, 139

Mortar, 83, 148

Mosaics, 13. 14. 14

Mount Edgcumbe. Corn . 78

Moyns Park, Essex, 122

Much Hadham. Herts , 61

Much Wenlock, Salop, Prior's

Lodgings, 56, 62-3, 64, 69; 6*

Muchelney, Som., Abbot's Lodgings,

55, 129; 55: Priest's House, 66, 76, 66

Mud houses, 2), 139, 141 . 141

Mulhons, 51, 53, 92, 123; 52, 91

Mundford, Norfolk, flint house, 228

Murals, _,2 34, 35, so. X9; 33, 57

NNash, John, 210, 248, 262, 264, 266, 295Naworth Castle, Cumb., 100

Needham Market church, Suffolk, 27Neidpath Castle, Peebls., 46-7; 47Nestield, W. E . 288

Netley, Hants., Abbot's Lodgings, 62

New Ash, Kent, 312, 312New towns, 307Newcastle upon Tyne, 296; 296Newdigate, Sir Richard, 244Newels, 64, 65, 116. 128, 18s. 186; 64,

t>5

Newport, Essex, 148, 223, 226;

Chimney, 96; 9(1. Crown House, 182:

Martin's Farm, 54; Monk's Barn, 73,

7S, 76. 53Newton, William, 187

Newton Abbot, Devon, 285; 285

Niches, 105, 106, 112, 165, 179, 201;

interior, 166, 232, 238, 246; 166, 21 1

Nicholls, Thomas, 288

Nith Valley, Dumf, 175, 176; 177

Nonsuch Palace, Surrey. 79, 132

North Brink, Cambs., 218

North Lees Hall, Derby's., 117-18, 157

North Wheatley Old Hall, Notts., 167

Northampton, 'New Ways', 311

Northborough Hall, Northants , 38, 39.

137; j>«

Northleach, Glos., Lodge Park, 168, 171,

1 82; 161)

Norwich, 28: Sir John Fastolf's house,

54Numerals. Arabic and Roman. 123-4,

158

Nuthall Temple, Notts., 201

oOakwell Hall, Yorks , 118, 122

Obelisks, 105, 106, 109, 116

Ockwell's Manor, Berks., 54Oeih de boeuf, 181, 243

Ogle Castle, 112

Okehampton, Devon, tower house, 32

Old Lark Wood, Sheffield. 18

Old Soar Manor House, Kent, 35, 36;

35Oolite, 157, 158

Open Plan houses, 310Oratories, 47, 65

Orchards, Surrey, 306

Orders of Architecture. 100-1. 168.

214, 217, 225

Oriels, 42, 51, 53, 73, 79, 81-2, 86, 105,

109, 223, 244, 246, 299; 43, 79, 81, 246,

299Ormsby Hall, Lines , 218; 218

Osterley Park House, Mdsx., 207, 210

Outhouses, 16; 17

Outshuts, 66, 76

Outwell, Norfolk, Beaupre Hall. 98

Overhang, 68-72, 149

Overmantels, 129-32, 133-4. U5. '99.

232, 234, 235, 236; j 11. 1 12. 214. 235

Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk, 41. 42-4. 81,

1 1 8 ; 4 1

Oxford, 56, 145. 194

Pain, William. 217

Paine, lames, 202, 203, 218

Palgrave church. Suffolk, 50

Palladio. Andrea, 168, 1-1. u;; 4. 214.

226. 2-n. Basilica, 22s Vill1

t apra,

194. 19". 198; 107

Palmer, George, 79Panelling, 26, 98, 140-1, 149, 184, 237;embossed paper, 290; 98, 149, see also

Linenfold

Pantiles. 42, 43, 139, 154, 219, 228, 262,

308; 42, 43, 219

Papworth.J. B , 261, 268, 273Parapets, 46, 61, 79. 80, 106. 10X. 109,

165, 171. 190, 216, 217-18; 79, 108',

191 : balustraded, 161, 171, 175,222,

254. 169

Parclose screen, 26

Pargework, 144, 145, 308; 144Parker and Unwin, 307Parsonage Farm, Cambs., 140; Essex,

123, 127-8, 304Patchwork, 161 ; 160

P.ittenden Manor. Kent, 42, 48, 59, 72,

75-6, 140; 72, 75. 76

Pattern books, 98, 101, 163, 192, 214,

221, 225, 259, 268, 277, 280

Pavilions, 105, 106, 114, 161, 171, 210;

105, 162

Paxton, Thomas, 272, 284, 286Pebbledash, 308

Pebblestones, 161

Peckover House, Cambs., 232, 235, 236,

237, 239; 2)5, 2)7Pediments, 89, 102, 114, 118, 120, 122,

131, 168, 173, 179, 218, 219. 226, 232,

238, 249. 120, 111. 169, 227, 249Pembridge, Heref, black and white

work, 149, 151 ; 149: Brick House, 68,

69, 70, 149; 70

Pendants, 50; 30Penfold Manor, Corn., 157

Pengersick Castle, Corn., 34Penrhyn Castle, Caern .. 272, 291, 292;

291

Penshurst Place, Kent, 26

Penzance, Corn., Chysauster Houses, 1 1,

12: Egyptian House, 226; 266

Perrault, Claude, 214Pershore, Worcs., 262, 273Petersham, Surrey. Rutland Lodge, 216,

218; 216

Petworth House, Sussex, 179; 179Pevsner, Dr Nikolaus, 102, 127

Piccott's End, Herts., 56; 37Pilton, Som., medieval barn, 26

Plaster and timber, 143, 145-8; 142, 143

Plasterwork, 123, 131-5, 144, 145,

237-9. 241 ; 123, ill, 144: Victorian.

286, 288, 292; 287Plate tracery, 34; 33, 34Plaw.J., 259, 262, 268

Plymouth, Devon. Albemarle Villas.

266

Pole huts, 16 18

Polychrome masonry, 61

Porch roofs, 226; 227

Porches, 26, 38, 61, 62, 64, 65, 80, 82,

93,98, 101, 102, 105, 106, 108, us,

122, 157, 166, 218, 219, 268, 280, 281,

308; 38, 61, 92, 103. 121 ; Victorian,

280, 28 1, 282. 295, 300, 301, 303; 280,

281, 282, 300, 301Porden, William, 268

Port Sunlight, Ches , 303, 305, 307; 303Porticos, 194, 199, 210, 212, 294; 193,

208

Post and truss houses, 21, 23-8; 22

Potterne, Wilts , Porch House, 140

Preston, Suffolk, 96

Price, Sir Uvedale, 251, 259. 264

Prior Park, Bath, 202

Pudding stone. 161

Puget, Pierre. 179

Pugm, Augustus Welby, 6-, 213. 2-4 -

passim, 280, 2St. 2V>. 296

Pulham church. Norfolk, 27

Purdon, W . 226

Quadrangular design. 41, 42, 50. 80, 81,

86, y2. 101. 106. 107, 109

Queensbury, Mdsx., 308; jog; House on

the Green, 310; 310Quoins. 86. 157. 163. 184, 214. 216. 228,

2VS

RRatters, 23, 24, 27, 49, 50, 51 ; 24, 49Railings, 230, 231 ; 231

Ralph Allen's House, Bath, 204, 205;

205

Ramsbury Manor, Wilts., 240, 241

Random stone laying, 283, 285, 308;

28}

Rayleigh Park, Essex, 74Raynham Hall, Norfolk, 171, 173, 174;

•73Recess, Co Galway, 16

Rectangular houses, 11, 12, 16. 18-19,

20-1, 60 ff, 122; 11

Rendcombe, Glos., cottages, 282; 282

Repton, Humphry, 105, 213, 243-4, 266Rendlcsham Hall, Suffolk, 116; Lodge,

256, 277; 237Revert, Nicholas, 210Rcydon House, Norfolk. 242

Ridge-pieces, 24, 27Ripley. Thomas, 202. 203, 214Robertson, John, 284

Robinson, Sir Thomas, 242Roche Abbey, Yorks., 62

Rolvenden, Kent, 229Romsey, Hants . Hunting Box, 29

Roof-trees, 19

Roofs, 51, 67, 82, 148, 217, 300:

concealed, 165, 167, 190. 217-18; flat,

308, 311 : hipped, 181, 182, 218. stone,

84, 153, 157, 303; 84, 156; timber, 21,

23-8, 36, 39, 48, 49-51, 67, 102; 36,

4*. 49. '<>3

Rose, Joseph, 13, 205, 209, 212, 232, 235Roughcast, 137, 140, 303Round huts, 16, 18, 19; 17

Roundels, 167; 164

Rubblestone, 157, 262

Rudston, Yorks , 13, 14; 14

Rufford Old Hall, Lanes, 82

Rushton, Northants , Lodge, 115, 116;

"5Ruskin.John, 274, 276Rustication, 105, 106, 112, 114, 175, 204,

205, 210, 213, 222, 223, 224, 280, 297;

285

Ryber Hall, Derbys., 157

Saffron Walden. 53, 140, 223, 226, 266,

277, 279, 281, 283; 277: The Close, 73:

High St, 224, 255-6; 224, 223; Hill St,

184, 225 : King St, 69: pargework, 145,

148; 144: The Vineyard, 279; 279;

Walden Place, 190; 191: 'wealdcn-

type' houses, 69, 72

St Marie's Grange, Wilts., 277St Osyth, Essex, St Clere's, 38-9; 39St Peter s House, Suffolk, 247-8; 247Salisbury Cathedral, 23

Salvin, Anthony. 286

Samwell. William. 185

Sandhurst, Kent, 229Sandstones. 137, 147, 151, 157. 306; 146,

154Sapperton, Glos., Daneways, 158; 159

Sawston Hall, Cambs., 9, 59, 65,

139-40; 65

Scagliola, 209, 210, 212

Scales. Lord. 44Scamozzi, Vincenzo, 168, 214

Scarisbrick Hall, Lanes., 280. 286

Scott, Sir George Gilbert, 272. 296

Screen-walls, 219; 219

Screens, 23. 26. S2. 97, 100, 101, 106,

139, 209, 210. 288, 290

Screens passage. 12,25,26-7, (6,38,48,

62. 6s, 67, 76, 80, 101, 106, Il8, 173,

179, 290, 306; 76

Sculpture. 175, 176, 202, 223, 236, 264,

292 3, i-f. 2 if

Seaside houses. 264, 208

Seaton Delaval, Northumb . 175. 176;

176

Selworthy. Som , 140, 26c

Semi-detached houses (villas), 217. 260,

26S. 2V4 V 307. }08, 3" . 294- Of

Serlio. Seb.1st1.1no. 101, 129. 214

319

Page 322: The English House Through Seven Centuries

Index

Sezincote, Glos , 266

Sherrington, Sir William, 79, 80

Shau, Norman, 271, 286, 290, 301, 310

Sheppey, Isle of, Kent. SyxboroughMonastery, 240

Shepreth, Cambs., 140; Dockwraie's

Manor, 231

Sherborne House, Dorset, 168

Shiplake Court, Oxon, 288

Shrewsbury, Elizabeth Countess of,

108-9, III. "2, I20

Shrewsbury, Salop, 69Shugborough, Staffs., 210

Shute, John, 1 01

Shutters, 54, 67, 296; 67, 296Silver End, Essex, housing, 31

1

Single-room dwellings, 23, 26; 22

Skara Brae, Orkney, 9, 12; 8

Slate, 148-9, 157; roofing, 148, 151, 153,

155. '57. 281 ; wall-covering, 149, 281

;

•47Slate-hanging, II, 147, 280; 146, 280

Slate-stone, 155, 157, 248

Slea Head, Co. Kerry, 16, 18

Smirke, Robert, 288

Smith, Abraham, 15, 134Smokeholes, 11, 1 16

Smythson, John, 100, 101, 292

Smythson, Robert, ioi, 106, 107, inSnitterton Hall, Derbys., 118, 122, 137,

243Soane. Sir John, 194, 203, 207, 210, 226

Solars, 28, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 39, 45, 48,

54, 55, 61, 65, 66, 68, 1 18; 33Somersal Hall, Derbys., 116, 120, 123,

137; 120

Somersby, Lines., 242; Manor Farm,

175. 179. 242; 176

Somersham, Hunts., 61

South Petherton Manor, Soni., 51, 54Southborough Place, Surrey, 248Southampton, Hants., 15

Southill Park, Beds., 202, 213

Spaldwick, Hunts., 184

Spandrels, 24, 26, 27, 51, 73, 255; 255Spang, Michael Henry, 235Sparke.John, 81, 83

Spaunton, Yorks., 154Speculative building, 296, 297, 298, 308;

296Speke Hall, Lanes., 79Spinning Gallery, 139; 138Square houses, 180, 182, 184, 194Squints, 48; 48Staircases (stairways), 28, 31, 32, 34, 35,

36, 64-S passim. 112, 114, 117, 118,

127-9, 140, 184, 186, 187, 188, 230,

232; 36, 64, 63, 127, 128, 185

Stamford, Lines., 56, 180, 182, 184; 1*0

Stanley, Charles, 13, 234Stanton, William, 181

Stanton Drew Rectory, Som., 65Stapleton, Michael, 239Statues, 165, 167,201,209,23s. 24''

164. ;nSteel and concrete, 312Steeple Bumpstead, Essex, 151

Steuart, George, 209, 210, 213

Stoke by Clare, Suffolk, Flint House,228, 229; 229Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk, 145;

Giflbra s Hall, 50, 51 ; 50Stokcfcrry, NorfolkStokesay Castle, Salop, 36, 100; 36, 37Stone construction. 23, 28-9, 139, 153,

1 S4. 157-60, 206, 209, 229; manorhouses, 61, 68, 137:61 quoins, 1 ".4

.

stairways, 64-5, 129. 64Stone-slating, 16,63, !$» i>4. 155, '57.

158-60, 253, 262, 305; 42. <m. 154. 1 SS.

•59

Stone-walling,

Storcycd dwellings. 28 19 passim

Stourhead, Wilts , 202. 214

Stowe House, Bucks.. 202; 202

Stxapwork, 98, 102, 130, 134, 13$, 148,

288; 98, 133, 1)4

Stratford on Avon, Warks., 'wealden

type' house, 69

Stratton Park Lodge, Hants., 282, 283;

282

Straw roofing, 24; thatch, 152

Strawberry Hill, Mdsx., 242Strethall church, Essex, 140

Stucco, 184, 194, 205, 209, 212, 226, 230,

234, 239, 256; imitation stone, 229,

262, 264, 266-8; mock Gothic, 244;

244: villa houses. 294Suburban houses, 253, 262, 268, 300-4,

306, 311 : Basic plan, 308-10; 309, 310,

Suburbia, twentieth-century features,

307-10Sudbourne, Suffolk, 283-4; cottages

orne, 285 ; 283

Sudbury Hall, Derbys., 27, 171, 185

Sulham, Berks., 260

Summerson, Sir John, 101, 268

Sutton Barnngton, Notts., 141

Sutton Place, Surrey, 92-3Swaffham, Norfolk, Oxburgh Hall, 77Swaffham Bulbeck, Cambs., Manor, 69Swaffham Prior, Cambs., 69Symondes, John, 109

Syon House, Mdsx.. 207, 209, 248; 206,

207

TTalman, William, 179-80Talsarnau, Menon., Glyn Manor, 157;

•55

Tamworth Castle, Staffs., 56Tapestries, 56, 59, 126

Tattershall Castle, Lines., 44, 45, 55, 77;

44. 45Tattingstone Wonder, Suffolk, 253Taylor, Sir Robert, 204, 207Temples, 201, 202; 200

Tenement developments, 188; 189Tenterden, Kent, 148, 223, 229; 229Terrace houses, 66-7, 184, 186-8, 221,

226, 264, 294-330; 186, 220, 263, 294-8Terraces, 11, 112, 114, 221-3, 264, 268,

294-8; 112, 220, 294-8Terracotta work, 77, 89, 90, 92-4, 182,

222, 298, 300Thatch roofing, 24, 1 18, 121, 139, 150-3,

253, 260, 261, 262, 283; 121, 130, 138,

232, 260, 261

Theobald's Palace, Herts., 126-7Thetford, Norfolk. 15

Thomson, Alexander, 294-5Thomson, J., 259Thornbury Castle, Glos., 79, 81, ys 96Thorpe, John, 101, 103; 101

Thorpe, Robert and William de, 32Thorpe, Thomas, 103

Thorpe Hall, Northants., 185

Thynne, Sir John, 79, 104Tic beams, 16, 21. 23, 24, 27, 49, 50, 51,

76; 20, 22, 24

Tigbourne Court, Surrey, 306Tijou, Jean, 230, 231

Tile-hanging, 147, 148-9, 153, 157, is;.

229, 301, 306; 147, 15!1 iles. 44, 277, 279. 308 . 19

Tiling, roof. 24. 137, 151, 153; ,33Tilley Manor House, Som., 174; 1-4

Timber construction. 16,21,23 s

68-74, 75. 139; 2.'

Timber-framing, 228-9Timber-work, 124. 149, 124. 129. sti

• I tlf-timber

Toll House. Berks . 20-, .-C-

nl I'll, \ I I ill. I sH'\, sy

Tomb monuments, 114 is

Topiars. 124. 124

Torquay, Devon, terrace, 295Tottenham, Mdsx., 298, 308; 298Tower-houses, 32, 45-7, 114, 117; 46,

47, 117: Scottish, 137, 140, 188, 249;

,36

Towers, 28, 32, 34, 36, 44, 45-7, 79, 80,

82, 86, 90-2, 106, 109, 111, 175, 290;

79, 91, 108, 291 : clock, 288, 293 : neo-

Gothic, 248, 249; 249Transoms, 53, 92, 163, 165; 33, 91, 164

Trecarrell Manor, Corn., 49Treillage, 228

Trellis work. 242, 282; 282

Trericc Manor, Corn., 157Tresham, Sir Thomas, 115-16, 167

Trumpmgton, Cambs., 152-3; 132

Trunch church, Norfolk, 27, 50Trusses, 18, 24, 49; 18, 49Truthall House, Corn., 12

Turner, Richard, 272

Turrets, 43, 44, 45, 89, 93, 106, 109, 1 12.

116, 118, 122, 137, 139, 175, 176; 43,

44, 88, 92, 109, 119, 136: clock, 163,

288: neo-Gothic, 248, 249, 250; 249,

230: Victorian, 288, 299; 299,Picturesque, 253; 232

uUfford Hall, Suffolk, 167

Upper storeys, 182, 199

VVanbrugh, Sir John, 174, 175, 176, 179,

188, 193, 206, 242Vaulting, brick-stella, 45; 43Verandas, 262, 268; 262

Vernnculation, 112, 114, 199Vignola, Giacomo Barozzi da, 213

Villas, 190, 262, 268, 271, 272, 283:

Georgian, 193, 194-9, 201; Roman, 12,

16: semi-detached, 294-8, 307; 294,

293, 298: stucco, 294; 294: twentieth

century, 308, 309, 310; 309, 310Vitruvius, 20, 168, 203, 214Volcanic rock, 157Volutes, 98, 1 18, 129, 171, 232; 98, 121,

Voysey, C.F.A., 300, 302, 303, 304Vnes, Vredenian de, 101

wWalden Place, Essex, 190, 230; 191

Wail Chambers, 46, 47Wall Plates, 23, 24, 49, 58

Wall posts, 16, 23, 24, 36; 36Wall tiles, 148

Wallpaper, 239-40, 277; Chinese, 240,

241

Walton Old Parsonage, Som., 65Walton-on-the-Hill, Surrey, 306Wanstead House, Essex, 194Warbrook, Hants., Eversley, 202

Warbstow, Corn., 11

Ward. Basil. 311

Wardour Castle. Wilts., 100, 203Ware, Isaac, 214-15. 21-. 232. 2 36, 241

Warwick Castle, 1 1 5

Water-closets, 98-9Waterspouts, 1 14

Watling, Sussex, 147; 14-

Wattle and daub, 16. 19. 21. 24. 44. \<>.

68, -4. 145; regional names, 74-5W.i\ e moulding, 27Wealden-type houses, 09. 73Weatherboarding, 1 4>. 229. 14-. 220

Weatherproofing, 14s, 148 *;

Webb. lohn. 168, 1-1

Webb. Philip. 279Welbeck Abbes. Notts .

2-2

Weldon, Northants., Haunt Hill House.166, 173; [CO. ic-

Wells, Som., Vicar's houses, 67Welwyn Garden City, Herts., 307Wentworth Woodhouse, Yorks., 202

Weobley, Heref, 21, 72, 140, 145;

half-timber, 140, 141, 145, 149West, Robert, 239West Green House. Hants., 182, 232,

234, 235, 237; 234, 233West Harptree, Som., 179, 192

West Stow Hall, Breckland, 89

West Wycombe Park, Bucks, 210Westport House, Co. Shgo, 212Weymouth. Dorset, Terrace, 297; 297Whitewash, 239Whittington Castle, Salop, 41

Wicken Bonhunt. Essex, 165-8, 171,

182; 164

Willersly, Glos., piered gateway, 230Willoughby, Sir Francis. 106

Wilson, Sir William, 171

Wilton House, Wilts., 171, 199, 232,

248; 170

Wimbish. Essex, Tiptofts, 24, 25, 27, 28,

49; 24, 23

Winchester. Hants., 226; 227Winde (Wynne), William. 181

Wmdbraces, 49, 50, 102, 125

Windporches. 9s; 9?

Window glass, 15-16, 41, 54. 124, 272,

311

Windows, 29, 31, 32, 33, 51, 54, 63-4,66, 67. 82, 89, 155, 219, 256, 295; 33,

37, 219, 293, 296; bay, 48, 31, 33. 34.

137, 224, 244, 233, 268, 297, 298, 308;bow. 82, 118, 223, 232, 264; 264;

Elizabethan. 102, 105, 108, 111-12, 114,

124; 103, 124, 123: mullioned, 80, 92,

102, 118, 157, 166, 174, 246, 300; 91,

169: sash, 54, 180, 184, 190, 214, 223,

224, 249; 1*0, 191, 213, 216, stained

glass, 51, 54, 56: Venetian, 205, 214,

219, 223, 244; 215Wmford Old Rectory, Som., 65, 66Windsor Castle. Berks, 250Wings, 161, 167. 181, 202; 162

Winster, Derbys., 151. 219Winterbourne Came Old Rectors',

Wilts., 139

Wisbech, Camb., 61, 148

Witchit, 140Withcrsdale Street. Suffolk, 219. 230; 219Wisenhoe Park Lodge, Essex, 261

Woburn, Beds . 243, 244. 241Wollaton Hall, Notts, 99, 101. 102, 106,

107, 1 12, 174, 250, 280, 2tsS

Wolterton Hall, Norfolk. 202

Wood. lohn. 202. 204. 221

Wood, Robert. 203, 210

Woodbndge, Suffolk, 226, 22s ; 227Wooden framed houses, 228-9Wooden shingles. 24

Woodlands Manor, Wilts.. 26, 35.

49-50, 51, 128, 130. 134. 49. 1 30Wootton Lodge. Starts., 101

Wootton Wawcn. Warks .182. ill

Worksop, Notts., 109

Wren. Sir Christophet, 180 2. 188, 232

Wrentham, Suffolk. 2s 1

Wright. Frank Lloyd, 310Wright, George. 2x4. 2s s. 2 so

Wright. Stephen. 201

Wnttle, Essex. 230, 231 ; 231

Wrought iron work, 230, 231 . 2,1

Wrynose Pass. Westm., Fellfooi Farm.

149. 157

Wvatt. lames, 194, 202. 210. 212. 250Wyatl (Wyatville),JefIry, 212

Wyatt, Matthew Digby, 2-2

Wslic. Wilts . is*. 1*01. 139

York. Bishop King s Palace. 145

Youlgreave. Herbs. . 1;-

320

Page 323: The English House Through Seven Centuries
Page 324: The English House Through Seven Centuries

f

4

\om Norman

defensiveness and Tudor flourish

/ to Georgian elegance and Victorian

superiority, the English house has

moulded, adapted and reflected the

passing fashions of the centuries — it is

at once a work of art and an important

expression of human individuality.

Nowhere is there such a wealth of

domestic architecture as in the British

V Isles and this beautiful book is a >

\ magnificent and inspirational

\ record of one of our most

\ treasured traditions. A'^ Cover photographs by Edwin Smith /'