Larger Elizabethan and Jacobean Houses
We have said that the Tudor period was a time of building of big
houses and mansions. Every county in England has some such houses
to show. Many of them were built of stone, some partly of brick and
stone. Their style shows that the English or old fashion of Gothic
building was dying out. Italian ideas and Italian ornament were
coming into favour. No doubt one reason why so much of the old work
was ruthlessly destroyed was because it was out of fashion. It is
astonishing, even in these days, how much good work is destroyed
just because it has gone out of date. Among the most famous of
these houses we may mention Burleigh House "by Stamford Town",
Haddon Hall, and Knebworth; and, belonging to a rather later date,
Hatfield House.
For a big house the idea was to build it round a quadrangle.
Smaller houses were in plan very like the half-timbered houses of
the yeomen, only on a larger scale, and more richly ornamented. The
hall and its wings were extended considerably, and, with a handsome
porch, formed in plan a big capital E, thus:--
[Illustration: _Diagram of a Large House_]
Some people have thought that this plan was chosen in honour of
Queen Elizabeth, but the truth is that it was the most convenient
form, and fitted in best with the ideas of the time. It had grown
up quite naturally, in the course of many generations, from the
simple hall with the hearth in the middle, the beginnings of which
we saw in the huts of the pit-dwellers.
[Illustration: _Hall and Staircase, Knole House, Kent, 1570. The
broad heavily-carved staircase of oak was a special feature of
Elizabethan houses_]
Quite early in the fourteenth century brick had begun to come into
use for building, but the first bricks were probably imported from
Flanders. Hull, which had been founded by King Edward I, had many
buildings of brick, and by about the year 1320 it had brick-yards
of its own. Flemish weavers were encouraged to settle in England by
King Edward III, and they used brick in buildings which they set
up. There are a good many houses in the eastern counties and in
Kent still standing, which show Flemish and Dutch ideas.
[Illustration: _A Room in an Elizabethan House. A reconstruction,
in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, of panelling and
furniture removed from a house at Bromley by Bow, London_]
Cardinal Wolsey's palace at Hampton Court is a good specimen of the
brickwork of his time; and all through the reign of King Henry VIII
the chief material used was brick, terra-cotta[20] being employed
for mouldings and ornament. This was chiefly the work of Italian
artists, and they produced also some very beautiful ceilings in
plaster-work[21] for many of their fine houses.
[20] _Terra-cotta_ is a compound of pure clay, fine sand, or
powdered flint.
[21] See the picture on p. 144.
After King Henry VIII's quarrel with Rome fewer Italians were
employed, and English artists were left to work out these new ideas
in their own way. From about the middle of the sixteenth century
the use of terra-cotta dropped out, and moulded and shaped bricks
began to be used, though stone was used for the more ornamental
portions.
When we reach the reign of King James I, we find that the leading
architect was Inigo Jones. We do not hear very much of architects
during the Middle Ages. The man employed to do the actual work
was allowed to select his own materials and carry out his own
ideas pretty much in his own way. But in the sixteenth century
the architect became a more important person than the craftsman,
and the craftsman had to work according to the pattern and design
provided for him.
The Jacobean[22] houses show that the old English styles of
building were being left behind, and a newer type of house, plainer
and heavier, was taking its place. The Civil War was a very bad
time for architects and craftsmen, but after the Restoration a
better time came to them again.
[22] _Jacobean_ means of the time of James I and on to James II.
The Great Fire of London, which swept away almost every mediæval
building in the city, gave a great _impetus_, or push forward, to
building. You can quite understand that, with so much building
going on, the work would be somewhat hurried and very much plainer
than it had been. So London became a city of bricks and mortar.
Middlesex has large quantities of good brick-earth; and though
bricks were made in that county long before the Great Fire, the
Great Fire developed the industry greatly. There was a worthy old
Royalist knight of Hammersmith, Sir Nicholas Crispe, who, after
the execution of King Charles I, went over to Holland, as so many
other Royalists did. There he watched very closely bricks and
brick-making, and when he came back to England he introduced many
improvements in the art of brick-making along the Thames valley.
[Illustration: _Blickling Hall, Norfolk, built 1619. Illustrates
the typical features of a Jacobean Mansion_]