smaller houses, essentially English in expression, and charmingly
simple. In them lived men and women who helped to make the eighteenth
century famous--Addison and Cowper, Reynolds and Garrick, Mrs
Thrale and Frances Burney. But all through the eighteenth century
the artificiality which marks much of its sentiment becomes every
now and then apparent in its houses and their lay outs, wherein are
sometimes to be found manufactured ruins and strange attempts at Gothic
temples. Yet always is perceptible an earnest attempt at design. If in
architecture itself the sense of design became somewhat dulled, it was
still acute in the smaller matters of decoration, of furniture, and of
articles for household use; the ornament which prevailed towards the
close of the long period under review is quite admirable of its kind.
Such, very briefly indicated, is the ground to be traversed in the
following inquiry. Some of it must be trodden with a light and hasty
step; but it is hoped that the journey may not be without interest,
and may perhaps induce the reader to explore at his leisure parts of
the country of which here he will possibly catch but a glimpse. In the
meantime let us return to our starting-point, where the old order began
to give way to the new.
The history of English houses, from the time of James I. onwards, is
a record of development on lines that were laid down in the time of
Elizabeth. It was in her days that the great change from mediævalism
took place, and houses were built for comfort and pleasure without
any serious thought of defence. Such houses are still habitable;
there are plenty of people living to-day in Elizabethan houses,
but the enthusiasts are comparatively few who live from choice in
the ill-lighted, vaulted rooms of the Middle Ages. Spaciousness,
cheerfulness, dignity, and often magnificence, were the qualities aimed
at in houses of the end of the sixteenth century; and these qualities
are appropriate in the present day. Convenience is another matter; it
is a relative term, and its significance varies with the varying wants
of mankind, changes with their changing habits and customs.
An Elizabethan house provided admirable rooms for the common use of the
family and guests--reception rooms as they would be called now. It also
provided an adequate number of bedrooms. Further, so long as the great
hall was the customary place for eating, the kitchen was conveniently
situated, and the food was cooked within a reasonable distance of
where it was consumed. In these respects, therefore, a house of that
period fulfilled some of the chief requirements of the present day. The
direction in which it failed when measured by modern standards was in
its sanitary arrangements, which, indeed, judged by our own ideas, did
not exist at all. But we must be careful not to argue backwards, and
conclude that because things were lacking which we consider essential,
therefore houses were found uncomfortable at the time. The better way
is to accept what existed as satisfying the wants of the period, and to
argue from that, if we please, how vastly we have improved in our own
habits upon those of our ancestors.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--ASTON HALL, NEAR BIRMINGHAM
(FINISHED 1635).]
In tracing the changes which took place in the arrangement and
disposition of rooms during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
therefore, it will be found that not much was done which made houses
essentially more comfortable, according to modern notions, than they
had been in the late sixteenth century. Indeed, during much of the
time comfort was very little studied, and it is one of the reproaches
levelled at the architects of the early eighteenth century, more
especially those who were concerned with houses of vast size, that
their first thought was for display and their last for comfort. Pope’s
exclamation about Blenheim palace, “’Tis very fine, but when d’ye sleep
and where d’ye dine?” crystallises much of the criticism that might be
bestowed upon the large houses of that period, which, however, only
reflected the spirit of the age. In these houses the most striking
change that occurred was the abolition of homeliness. When the great
Elizabethan house was planned, the household was in the nature of a
large family. It is true that the members of the actual family grouped
themselves in one wing and the servants in another, but the great hall
was their common meeting ground, and the relations between the heads
of the household and their servants were more affectionate than they
became in later years. All the rooms, moreover, were intended for
daily use, however finely they were decorated. The whole effect was
one of stately homeliness. When the Queen Anne mansion was planned,
much of it was devoted to state functions as a first consideration,
and was intended for occasional use only; apartments suitable for this
purpose having been provided, the rest of the space was allotted to
the ordinary use of the family, and the servants were relegated to the
basement (which they sometimes shared with their employers) or to a
detached wing. Stateliness, not homeliness, was now the keynote. The
nobleman stood on a pedestal of grandeur, round which his dependants
grouped themselves as best they could, and among them struggled the
parson, the poet, and the man of letters. The glorification of the
individual found expression in his house and his gardens which were all
designed with theatric magnificence.
The changes here indicated will be dealt with at length in subsequent
chapters; the first step towards them was taken when the hall ceased to
be a living-room and became a vestibule, as the result of an alteration
in domestic habits, an alteration which rendered easy the adoption
of a house-plan more closely related than was formerly possible to
those Italian models to which architects had been approximating their
designs for half a century. So far, the models had been copied but
halfheartedly, partly because of the conservatism of English habits,
partly from incomplete knowledge of Italian methods of design.
But as knowledge increased, both from the study of books and from
the first-hand investigations of travelling students, so was the
Italianising of English buildings accelerated; and a great obstacle
to this progress was removed when the ancient use and position of the
hall--which had a tradition of three centuries behind them--were no
longer preserved. The movement indicated was by no means regular; it
was quicker in some places than in others, and in some hands than in
others: much depended upon the architects employed. Those who were
learned, those who had travelled, and again those who were influenced
by the cultured few, departed more completely from old-fashioned ways
than did those who had not enjoyed the same advantages. The main stream
of architectural development is fairly well marked and continuous; but
there are innumerable backwaters in which the impetus of the current
is hardly perceptible. As a consequence there are to be found as late
as the end of the seventeenth century buildings which look almost
contemporary with those of the beginning.
The man who did more than anyone else to bring learning to bear on
design, and to introduce into England a true and correct knowledge
of Italian detail, was that great artist, Inigo Jones. His first
architectural work of importance was the Banqueting House at Whitehall,
which was finished in 1622. It has no trace of traditional English
design about it (see Fig. 22). To us it appears a beautiful building,
but by no means abnormal, because we can see many others of the same
type. But to those who saw it when it was just built, it was something
entirely novel, something in which they sought in vain for any of the
customary devices for producing architectural effect. Doubtless it was
a stimulant, but it did not revolutionise English architecture. Indeed,
it was only Inigo Jones, and after him his pupil John Webb, who could
pretend to work on such learned lines. The ordinary surveyors--of
whom there must have been a large number, although their names have
not survived--still worked in the hybrid style in which they had
been trained, with the result that such a house as Aston Hall, near
Birmingham, which was completed in 1635, is thoroughly Jacobean in
character (Fig. 2), although of sufficient importance to have warranted
the adoption of the latest ideas in design, had they been at all
widespread.
There is one point, however, in which Aston Hall shows the impending
change in house-planning, and that is the disposition of the great
hall. It is entered in the middle of one side, instead of through
screens at the end, thus making a large vestibule of it instead of a
living-room. The same treatment is to be found in some of the plans of
John Smithson, an eminent architect of the time; and an examination of
his drawings will presently be undertaken, in order to illustrate the
steps which led from the Jacobean style to the more fully developed
classic.
Nothing illustrates this change more aptly than a comparison between
Smithson’s drawings and those of Inigo Jones and John Webb. The
first are Jacobean, the second are classic. In the Jacobean are seen
efforts to sever the ties which ancient traditions still imposed; a
striving after Italian detail, which was never thoroughly achieved; a
mixture of a little old-fashioned romance, with a little new-fashioned
learning. In the classic are seen an ignoring of tradition; a mastery
of Italian methods; a mixture of sound knowledge with a feeling for
good proportion. As an illustration of the first large building in
England conceived in the fully developed classic style, nothing could
be better than the drawing made by Thomas Sandby about the middle of
the eighteenth century, showing how the great palace designed for
Charles I. would have appeared (see Fig. 1). It is also interesting in
connection with the inquiry into the Jones and Webb drawings, which
will be fully dealt with in Chapter IV.
Incidentally a study of the drawings by Jones and Webb forces the
inquirer to reconsider the relations of those two men as hitherto
accepted, and compels him to readjust his ideas as to some of the work
he had been taught to attribute to Jones.
With the seventeenth century we get into much closer touch with the
designers of buildings than was possible in earlier times: in many
cases we can get behind the buildings to their architects. But the
chief purpose of the following pages is to trace the changes that took
place in the houses themselves and their accessories, and although it
would be neither possible nor desirable to omit all mention of the
architects, the latter will be subsidiary to the main theme, and will
be dealt with not so much biographically as by way of showing how their
training, their opportunities and their idiosyncrasies affected the
buildings with which they were concerned.
The present and immediate purpose is to give a brief and broad outlook
over the period dealt with in detail in subsequent chapters; and to
that end a series of houses has been selected, separated from each
other in point of date by intervals of some twenty or thirty years.
The first of the series is Aston Hall (Fig. 2), which may be
considered an example of how the old order lingered on. It has all the
characteristics of Jacobean design, with its two pronounced wings, its
curved gables, its fine chimney-stacks, and its mullioned windows:
not to mention an open arcade and a forecourt with garden houses at
the two outlying corners. These characteristics were gradually to
disappear from houses. The plan became more compact, and wings were
discarded, except that version of them which became fashionable later
on, and which consisted of a separate block on either side of the main
building, connected to it by a colonnade. Gables disappeared, the only
approach to such features being the flat pediments which were often
employed as central ornaments to the façades. Chimney-stacks became
plainer, and the flues were massed into solid blocks, instead of rising
in separate shafts from a common base. Mullioned windows lingered on
for some years, but the mullions were of wood, and were insignificant
compared with their stone predecessors. They were merely part of the
wood window frame, and they disappeared almost entirely after the
advent of the sash-window in the last quarter of the seventeenth
century.
In the meantime, greater attention was paid to the cornices which made
the circuit of the buildings; more especially was the topmost cornice
emphasised--that from which the roof sprang. The general proportions
of the building were more closely studied, and in particular the
proportion of the window openings to the plain wall space.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Broadfield Hall, Hertfordshire.
From a Drawing by Buckler, 1832.]
Broadfield Hall, in Hertfordshire (Fig. 3), illustrates the advance
along these lines. There are no wings and no gables. Stone mullions
are still retained; a bold cornice marks each story, the boldest being
that on which the hipped roof rests. The flues are massed in two large
stacks, and their existence is duly acknowledged, no attempt being
made, as was sometimes the case in later times, to conceal them among
irrelevant ornament. The dormer windows rise from the roof, and are
no longer placed in portions of the main wall carried up for their
reception. The unbroken cornice at the eaves necessitated this change.
The old love of light still shows itself in the size of the windows,
which are not yet subordinated to the claims of proportion.
The exact date of this house has not been ascertained, but the style
is characteristic of the middle of the seventeenth century, a period
when no great amount of building was undertaken, owing to the disturbed
state of the country consequent upon the Civil War. The time of
Shakespeare is marked by a distinct style represented in hundreds of
houses, but no such wealth of illustration enriches the time of Milton.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.--Moyles Court, Hampshire.]
With the return of Charles II. a more settled state of affairs came
about, and once more the stream of architecture flowed steadily
onwards. Such houses as Moyles Court, in Hampshire (Fig. 4), were built
in considerable numbers. There is nothing pretentious about them; they
depend for their effect upon the regular spacing of the windows, and
upon the strong shadow cast by the eaves cornice. The intermediate
cornices of Broadfield have given way to a plain string. The windows
are, many of them, sashes; but it would be rash to assert definitely
that originally they were all so, because sashes had only recently been
introduced. The chimney-stacks are large, and have a certain amount
of character about them. This particular example has two projecting
wings, which may indicate that the house followed the lines of an
earlier one, or they may merely be a survival of old ways; in either
case they are not of the essence of the period. The date of the house
is not recorded, but it was probably built between 1670 and 1680, by
that Dame Alice Lisle who suffered death in 1685 at the hands of Judge
Jeffreys for sheltering a Nonconformist minister and a fugitive from
Sedgemoor.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--HANBURY HALL, NEAR DROITWICH,
1701.]
[Illustration: FIG. 6.--HAMPTON COURT.
PART OF THE RIVER FRONT, 1689.]
Of much the same character, but loftier and more dignified, is Hanbury
Hall, near Droitwich, built in 1701 for a certain Thomas Vernon (Fig.
5). The façade is here emphasised by a pediment, which professes to
be partly carried on two columns. Ornament goes but a little way
towards producing the pleasing effect, which, in fact, is obtained by
the windows (including the dormers), the quoins, and the bold eaves
cornice. The cupola adds a note of interest; it is a feature which had
been used by Inigo Jones, and before him, although designed on other
lines, by Jacobean architects.
But a greater figure than the men who designed Moyles Court or Hanbury
Hall occupied the stage at this time. This was Sir Christopher Wren,
the greatest architect that England has produced. His work, however,
lay for the most part outside the scope of the present inquiry which is
chiefly concerned with domestic architecture. It was largely the city
churches, and especially the noble cathedral of St Paul, that occupied
and developed Wren’s uncommon powers. Of ordinary domestic work, but
little can be put to his credit with certainty. However, at the palace
of Hampton Court (Fig. 6), he showed the same strong hand, the same
virility of design which appear in his churches. Wren had mastered the
medium in which he worked, and he used it with freedom, unfettered by
slavish obedience to the rules which kept his less gifted successors in
leading strings, and induced them to tread the paths of safety rather
than those of adventure.
There was, perhaps, one exception to this slavery in the person of
Sir John Vanbrugh, who had a singular gift for grandiose design.
Kings Weston, near Bristol (Fig. 7), is one of his simpler and more
restrained efforts, but even here the scale is large and the detail
verging on coarseness. But it is neither the personal note nor the
minutiæ of design which concerns us at present. Kings Weston is
advanced as illustrating, not so much Vanbrugh’s style, as the complete
departure from the old ways which architectural design had by this time
taken. The date of Kings Weston is about 1715. It is not only in the
external appearance that this departure is noticeable, but also in the
plan, and in the internal embellishments. These points will be dealt
with fully in due course, but even on looking at the outside of Kings
Weston, it is obvious that it is disposed on lines widely different
from those of a Jacobean house.
These differences are still more apparent in the next illustration
of the series, Wolterton Hall, in Norfolk (Fig. 8). This house is
attributed to Ripley, and its date is put at 1736. It is staid and
eminently respectable, but there is none of the picturesqueness of
the Jacobean methods about it, none of those unexpected human touches
which help us to condone the ignorance of classic detail exhibited by
Jacobean designers; no “accident,” as Sir Joshua Reynolds puts it,
which might lead to variety or intricacy. In making the circuit of its
walls, the visitor knows exactly what he is likely to find. The appeal
is to narrower sympathies than of old, to sympathies which spring
from an acquired feeling for proportion, and are not merely roused by
quaint personal incidents attractive to all alike, whether trained in
architecture or not. The dignified effect is produced by the stone
base, the proportion of the windows in relation to the wall space, and
the bold cornice at the eaves. The chimneys are symmetrically placed,
but they have had no design worthy of the name bestowed upon them.
At Fonthill House, in Wiltshire, built about 1760 (Fig. 9), there is a
reversion to a type of plan which had almost died out, a central block,
namely, with detached wings connected to it by curved colonnades. This
type had been frequently adopted in the earlier part of the eighteenth
century, and was still advocated in some of the text-books on house
design. But its obvious inconveniences in dissipating the forces of
domestic service instead of concentrating them, so far outweighed
the advantages of stateliness and grandeur which it bestowed, that
it fell into disuse. Fonthill House was built by Alderman Beckford
in succession to a house which was burnt in 1755, and it is doing
the alderman no injustice to suppose that he strove to make his new
house a very splendid affair, and accordingly adopted a striking,
if inconvenient, plan. He succeeded to such an extent that the result
of his labours has been referred to as “Fonthill splendens.” His son,
the author of “Vathek,” is said to have been born at Fonthill in
1759, possibly in the new house, but there is no record of the actual
date of its erection. The son eventually sold it for £9,000, a mere
bagatelle in comparison with its cost, which was nearly a quarter of
a million. He was then, about 1795, building on a vast scale, with
the help of Wyatt, one of those freaks in which the late eighteenth
century delighted, a mansion in the guise of a sham abbey, costing
another quarter of a million. This wonderful edifice had but a short
life, for in 1825, two years after he had sold the estate, the great
tower fell and started the decay of the whole structure. So famous were
Fonthill Abbey and its contents that half England had flocked to the
sale, filling every inn for miles around, and eating the countryside
bare. Beckford the younger, like many of his contemporaries, was a man
of great wealth and of considerable culture; a great collector of art
treasures, and one who spent large sums in building in an ancient style
of which neither he nor anyone living knew the rudiments. Reynolds,
however, may be held to have countenanced the practice, for he says
that the imagination being affected by the association of ideas, and we
having naturally a veneration for antiquity, whatever building brings
to our remembrance ancient customs and manners, such as the castles of
the barons of ancient chivalry, is sure to give delight.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.--KINGS WESTON, NEAR BRISTOL,
_cir._ 1715.]
[Illustration: FIG. 8.--WOLTERTON HALL, NORFOLK,
1736.]
It is often very difficult to determine the date of old country
houses; no records of the building of them survive, or if they do they
are stowed away in unexplored muniment rooms. Tradition is vague or
unreliable. Additions may have been made from time to time of which no
precise account remains. The lapse of years may have toned everything
down to the same antique appearance, rendering the disentanglement of
the various periods a laborious task, and the results uncertain. The
work of a later period may, perhaps, predominate to such an extent as
to overwhelm what remains from an earlier, and cause the whole house
to be dated half a century later than it ought to be. This is the case
at Normanton Park, in Rutland, where such considerable alterations
were made about 1780 that the house is held to be of the Adam period,
whereas its main disposition was almost certainly settled fifty years
before that time. Enough of the earlier work remains in various
parts to support this idea, and to show that the plan adopted--that
of a central block with detached wings connected by colonnades--was
the production of the beginning of the century rather than of the end.
At the later period, however, many of the external walls must have
been recased if not rebuilt, and the garden front (Fig. 10) is a good
example of the time. The circular bay is a characteristic feature,
and so are the attic stories of the wings, although the placing of a
plainly treated attic over a more majestic substructure was by no means
a novelty. The real touch of the Adam period is to be found in the
detail, which has all the delicacy and refinement connected with the
name of the accomplished brothers Adam. That it is useless to argue
about matters of taste is a dictum as old as the time when thoughts
were usually expressed in the Latin tongue. Whether the delicacy of
Adam or the vigour of Vanbrugh is to be preferred is a matter of
individual liking. Some people admire Ganymede, others regard Hercules
as a finer type; yet others admire both. With such predilections we
need not be concerned; all that is necessary at present is to point
out the change that had taken place in architectural treatment during
the course of the eighteenth century.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.--FONTHILL HOUSE, WILTSHIRE,
_cir._ 1760.]
[Illustration: FIG. 10.--Normanton Park, Rutland, _cir._
1780.]