LATE SIXTEENTH CENTURY--SYMMETRY IN
PLANNING.
The best known of the designers of this period is John Thorpe, who
lived in the reigns of Elizabeth and James; and his collection of
drawings, preserved in the Soane Museum, is of great value from the
light it throws on the house design of the time. Houses themselves
have generally undergone many alterations, from which it is difficult
to disentangle their history, or to tell with certainty what their
original plan may have been. But Thorpe’s drawings show what the
designer actually had in his mind as he worked. From them we learn
that in most cases the hall was still the chief apartment, and that it
still occupied its ancient situation between the family rooms on one
side and the servants’ rooms on the other. In the great majority of
examples the daïs is also shown, indicating that the ancient usage was
maintained of the family occupying the head of the hall at meals, while
the servants were ranged at tables in the body. But we know from other
sources that some families had already taken to dining in a separate
room, and that guests had complained of being set to dine with the
steward in the hall instead of with the family in the parlour. On some
of Thorpe’s plans a “dining parlour” is provided; on many of them there
is a “winter parlour,” placed within easy distance of the kitchen.
There is also an instance of a “servants’ dining-room,” and of a “hall
for hynds.” These all tend to show that the hall was losing its old
importance as the centre of life in the house. Such a fate was only
natural considering by how many other rooms it was now supplemented.
There were the “great chamber,” the “withdrawing-room,” and the “long
gallery” among the larger rooms; the “parlour,” the “breakfast-room,”
and the “study” among the smaller. In addition to these, which were
day rooms, were many “bed-chambers” and “lodgings,” which were in fact
bedrooms. The accommodation for the family and guests was therefore as
complete as could be desired--as complete, in fact, as at the present
day, if we except the very important item of bath-rooms and other
sanitary conveniences. The drawback is that the rooms, although far
more skilfully planned than of old, were subject to an almost rigidly
symmetrical outline, preventing that compactness which is now aimed
at; and as the various wings of the house were as a rule only one room
wide, it followed that some of the rooms had to be thoroughfare rooms.
This arrangement cannot have been held to be vastly inconvenient in
those days, nor for many days to come, for it continued until well into
the eighteenth century.
The subdivision in the servants’ quarters was as ample as in those
of the family. The “kitchen” was still, as it always had been, the
principal room on this side. The “buttery” and the “pantry” were also
of long standing. But the “pastry” had come in almost every instance
to supplement the kitchen, being the place where the baking was done,
and being furnished almost invariably with two ovens. The “dry larder”
and “wet larder” were equally frequent, and so was the “survaying
place,” or serving-room. There are also to be found in the larger
houses a “scullery,” a “meal house,” “bolting-house,” “spicery,”
“trencher,” “pewter,” and “brush.” The steward, his clerk, the butler,
the pantler, and the waiters are all found to have their own separate
rooms. How widely different is all this from the ancient custom of the
whole household living by day and night in the great hall!
The need for the great hall, indeed, was passing away. Already in a
few of Thorpe’s plans it is found to be arranged in a manner no longer
suitable for its old purposes. In some it is placed out of its central
position. By the end of the first quarter of the seventeenth century it
had practically lost its ancient character of the chief living room,
and had become little more than a fine vestibule leading to the actual
living rooms and the rest of the house.
Reproductions of a few of Thorpe’s drawings will serve to illustrate
the Elizabethan and Jacobean type of plan even better than plans of
actual houses. They link themselves at one end to the mediæval type,
and they lead at the other to that altered treatment of the hall which
marks the definite break with mediævalism. It is unfortunate that there
is no means of fixing their various dates; the sequence in which they
are placed is therefore not necessarily chronological. They represent
types of arrangement of which many other instances may be found in
Thorpe’s collection. First, there is the courtyard plan (Fig. 99),
the modernised version of the defensive court of earlier times. Here
all thought of defence is abandoned, save that the main entrance is
through an archway overlooked by the porter. Visitors are not repelled
by frowning gateways, a grim portcullis, and blind walls pierced with
nothing but hostile slits. On the contrary, access is made easy and
inviting. A flight of steps leads on to a terrace, and thence direct to
the main door; cheerful windows fill the walls, arranged not only to
give light within and a view without, but also to enliven the structure
itself with the ordered rhythm of their glittering panes. The
courtyard is handsomely furnished with stately bays running the full
height of the walls; a long range of arches faces the entrance, and
forms a loggia beneath which is the door to the screens. The external
façades are designed with equal care. At each corner there is a massive
pavilion, and from one to the other stretch the main walls sparkling
with windows, which are relieved from monotony by the introduction of
further bays.
[Illustration: 99. Ground and Upper Plans of an Unnamed House.
_From the Thorpe Collection._]
There is no haphazard planning about this house; everything is
carefully thought out; the effect of every projection, every window,
and every chimney is considered. Yet with all this symmetry and
formality, the underlying arrangement follows the old lines. The
hall is entered through the screens; it has its daïs, its bay, and
its fireplace near to its upper end; from this end are approached
the family rooms--the parlour, the chapel, and the principal stairs,
leading to the great chamber, the withdrawing-room, and the long
gallery. On the other side of the house, but downstairs, lie the
kitchens in the basement.
The next plan (Fig. 100) is that of a house with a fore-court, only
(as explained on the drawing itself) the court, with its diagonally
placed entrance lodges, should have been drawn on the front of the
house instead of being detached and at the back. But this correction
made--and it will be easier done by looking at Kip’s view (Fig.
101)--it will be seen that a reminiscence of the old jealousy of
approach is still found in the walled court and its entrance lodges;
otherwise the house is obviously built without a thought of protection.
It is contrived for display combined with convenience. Its terraces
and long symmetrical fronts are the means towards the first, while
the second is greatly helped by the passage, or “longe entry throughe
all,” which runs the whole length of the house. This is a feature
quite new in house planning, so far. Otherwise the ancient dispositions
are adopted; the hall lies to the right of the screens, and beyond
it the parlour and chapel; to the left the buttery, pantry, and (at
some distance) the kitchen. Kip’s view shows the dignified but simple
treatment of the exterior, and the surrounding courts and gardens. The
plan is not named in Thorpe’s drawing, but it agrees so closely with
Kip’s view as to leave little doubt that it is the same house--namely,
Beaufort House in Chelsea, built by Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury,
during the closing years of the sixteenth century, by way either of
enlarging or replacing an earlier house, which had been the home of
Sir Thomas More.
[Illustration: 100. Ground Plan (unnamed).
_From the Thorpe Collection._
It is probably Beaufort House, Chelsea.]
[Illustration: 101. Beaufort House, Chelsea, Kip’s View.]
[Illustration: 102. Ground Plan (unnamed).
_From the Thorpe Collection._]
The next plan is of the =H= type, which was widely employed at this
period (Fig. 102). Without entering into minute detail it will suffice
to draw attention to the maintenance of the time-honoured position of
the hall between the family rooms and the servants’ quarters; to the
provision of a winter parlour near the kitchen; to the strict symmetry
of the general plan, and to the many windows, arranged not only to give
light to the rooms, but also by their ordered disposition to impart a
distinctive character to the appearance of the building. To such an
extent is this symmetrical treatment carried, that in the “lodging”
near the winter parlour, two of the window’s are crippled by the
fireplace, with the result that they become in part shams. This is a
striking testimony to the change which was coming over house design.
Hitherto windows had been provided for the sake of light within; now
they are regarded as means of obtaining effect without. The other
characteristic features to be observed are the balustraded terraces on
the front and back; the arcades on either side of the porch; and the
court at the back with a fountain placed on each side of the central
paved walk. There is no elevation corresponding to this plan, but the
general effect of the front may be gathered from a view of old Somerset
House in the Strand, although this is on a rather more important scale
(Fig. 103). Here also is a central porch flanked by arcades which stop
against square projecting windows in the corner of the courtyard.
[Illustration: 103. Old Somerset House, in the Strand. (Now demolished.)
End façade of Courtyard.]
[Illustration: 104. Elevation and Plan of a House (unnamed).
_From the Thorpe Collection._]
The last of the series (Fig. 104) shows the beginning of a change in
the hall. The screen is no longer a continuous partition cutting off
a passage. It has shrunk to something that is a mere projection from
the side walls, affording no shelter from the cross-traffic of the
front door. Indeed the front door, which formerly had been the common
entrance for the whole household, was gradually being reserved for the
family and the guests, the servants being provided with a separate
entrance of their own. The elevation is an interesting specimen of
Elizabethan design in half-timber.
The arrangement of the hall shown in this example greatly detracts from
its comfort as a living room, in spite of the fact that the retention
of the daïs (indicated by the hatched line across the hall) points to
its use as such. It is a first step in the direction of using the hall
as a vestibule and not as a room. A more striking instance of this
change is to be found at Aston Hall near Birmingham (finished in 1635).
Thorpe’s plan of it shows the great hall following the ancient lines
with the entrance at one end into the screens. But when built the front
door was placed centrally at once with the façade and the hall. This
new position, delivering the traffic into its centre, wholly precluded
the use of the hall as a living room; it became in fact a vestibule.
With this change the link with mediævalism was severed. It marks in a
striking manner the parting of the ways; the change from the old to the
new; the closing of the long chapter of domestic planning which began
in the early days of the twelfth century; the final abandonment of the
principle which had dominated house planning for five hundred years.
Overlapping Thorpe in point of date, but out-living him by a good many
years--so far as the uncertainty surrounding the lives of such simple
persons enables us to judge--was the John Smithson whose drawings[4]
have been preserved with as much care as those of Thorpe. He died in
1634, and was buried at Bolsover: he left a son, Huntingdon Smithson,
who also was an architectural designer. The Smithson collection
rivals the other in interest. It does not afford quite so vivid an
insight into the methods of the house planner; but it contains a
greater variety of subjects. It shows equally clearly the change
which was taking place in the disposition of the chief rooms: how
the hall was being deposed from its pre-eminence; and how corridors
were becoming more frequent. The principal apartments include no new
names: they consist still of the hall, the parlour, the great chamber,
the withdrawing-room, the chapel, and the long gallery. The houses
still have terraces and arcades, and are still flanked by courts. The
courtyard type and the =H= type are the most prevalent. The elevations
are less full of fancy than those of Elizabeth’s time; the detail is
more ponderous and may even be regarded as clumsy. There are many
features--doors, windows, gateways--described as “Italyan,” showing how
the demand was increasing for detail which was more strictly Italian
in character than anything that had hitherto been produced. Thorpe,
it must be remembered, was in the heyday of his career in Elizabeth’s
time; Smithson in James I.’s. The earliest date connected with Thorpe
is 1570, in which year he tells us he laid the first stone of Kirby in
Northamptonshire. The latest date on the Smithson drawings is 1632.
The two collections afford an admirable panorama of house-building
during a period of sixty years--a period which saw architecture free
itself from the slackening grasp of mediævalism; which witnessed the
new birth of Science, and beheld Poetry gain the sublime heights to
which Shakespeare led it, and whither it has never quite succeeded in
ascending again.
[Illustration: 105. Montacute House, Somerset (1580).
The two-storey screen between the wings is of earlier date (_cir._
1520) and was brought from Clifton Maybank.]
During this remarkable period were built some of the largest houses
which England ever possessed. Holdenby (1580), so far as the house
itself went, was larger than the great palaces of Blenheim and Castle
Howard. Its fronts were 360 ft. and 224 ft. long, as against 320 ft.
and 220 ft. at Blenheim, and 324 ft. and 210 ft. at Castle Howard. But
in both the later houses there were subsidiary courts attached which
greatly lengthened the total extent. Audley End (1610) covered even
more ground than Holdenby, its frontages extending to 470 ft. and 280
ft.; but more than half its area was occupied by a subsidiary court,
whereas almost the whole of Holdenby consisted of important rooms. But
rivalry in dimensions apart, it must be remembered that the designer of
Holdenby had no precedent to look to, no great house to outvie. Hampton
Court excepted, his was the first mansion, built for pleasure and for
state, which had been conceived on so large a scale. There were also
many other houses which, though smaller, were of the first importance.
Such were Buckhurst House in Sussex; Burghley House and Kirby Hall
both, like Holdenby, in Northamptonshire; Theobalds in Hertfordshire;
Knole in Kent. The reason for erecting these large houses, or at any
rate for making them so extensive, was stated by at least two of their
builders. Lord Burghley and Sir Christopher Hatton both said that it
was in order to accommodate the Queen that they were led to so much
extravagance.
[Illustration: 106. Lyveden Old Building, Northamptonshire.
(Early 17th cent.)]
But the building fever seems to have been in the air. Almost every
nobleman and squire in the country either rebuilt, enlarged, or altered
his house. Sheldons manor house in Wiltshire is a charming example of
alteration (see Frontispiece). The original house, of which the porch
is a part, was built by the Gascelyns in the fourteenth century. The
sixteenth-century addition with its rectangular, mullioned windows, was
built over earlier walls by the Hungerfords, and to their successors
may be attributed the eighteenth-century gate piers. Like many old
manor houses, Sheldons has ceased to be the home of the squire, and has
become a farmhouse. In half the villages of England there is either a
house of the Elizabethan period or the memory of one. Not only did the
landed gentry build, but also rich merchants in London and many of the
provincial towns. A vast number of these houses have been swept away,
but happily a great many still remain of all degrees of importance,
from great seats like Montacute in Somerset (Fig. 105), or Burton Agnes
in Yorkshire, down to the unpretending manor houses to be found among
the steep declivities of the Cotswolds or the gentler undulations
of Northamptonshire (Fig. 106). A proof (were it wanted) of the
disappearance of many fine houses of this time is to be found in the
Thorpe and Smithson drawings, for it is but a small proportion of the
houses there shown that is known to be still in existence.