THROUGH SEVER CENTURIES
j Olive Cook with photographs by Edwin Smith
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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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OLIVE COOK
THEENGLISHHOUSE
THROUGHSEVEN
CENTURIESWith photographs by EDWIN SMITH
PENGUIN BOOKS
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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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
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
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,
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
2tt uSm
j vrjy^jk^J Lj^^H
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vX-- ^
xo^
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
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
.
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
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.
37
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
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
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
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
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
• *.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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
:'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
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
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.
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-
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
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.
•
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.
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
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4
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
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
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
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
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
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\
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
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
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
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
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
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
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).
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.
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
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
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.
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
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,
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.
*?>-'
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
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
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
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
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
4X *-
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.
uKsmaaaaoM
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
"
89
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
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
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
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.
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
95
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
104
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.
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
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.
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
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
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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
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
•
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
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
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
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.
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
Elizabethan Baroque
I y-v--
<*
*-»
!>^- *-* •^
- * 4
[19
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.
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).
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
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
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
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
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<<
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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^
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
4s**v
ftr *<
t A
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
I
oap ^C -af
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
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
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
I ^m
I
4m
i i
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
i 56
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
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.
'w*> -
»*--- fee***
tte> v
#*#•
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
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
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
[63
"M
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.
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
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
167
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.
I6i>
Form in Transition
170
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
171
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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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
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.
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
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
f
&
t8 3
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
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.
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
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
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.
Wf
m
v. .•*-.
-
.
t/S
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
191
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:
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
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
•95
-LJ* \
H*«*
-*
,^ •K
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).
»
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
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
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200
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
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
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).
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.
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
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
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
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
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 .
-•*,
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
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
213
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
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
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.
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
*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
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
Illl* i
[I iLJfp
Iff
UolLiuii j j
31IfP'iPHBIIBIiai
•Jill I
; pi t
1 1
1
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
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
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
§£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.
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
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
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
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.
229
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
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
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
233
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.
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).
"-:©£
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
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
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
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 /.#
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
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
-4i
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^
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
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.
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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
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.
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
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
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
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
smV'
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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
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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
*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
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
257
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
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
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.
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.
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.
rw
ii
i|jil a
*
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
g- \^^*
«L.
A
Z6<
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.
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.
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.
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
269
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
270
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
271
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-
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
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
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
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
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
277
1 Z:ii V
iff -;-.
^-
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.
[) HOUSE. 8EXLEV HEAIH Crpfffftj $001
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Dntiiff-rooM
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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
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
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
The drawing-room fireplace,
Penrhyn Castle, Caernarvonshire, byThomas Hopper (see page 292).
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
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
.
-
*
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
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
%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.
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
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.
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.
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.
iiffn
1\^J ^r j^rl ~« r- -~w
rYJ B
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sK SrWIWI
in aiifl
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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
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
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.
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
«' 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
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
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
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.
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
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
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.
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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
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
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
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 •
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
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
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 /'