EXTERIOR FEATURES.

LAY-OUT OF HOUSES, LODGES AND GATEWAYS, DOORWAYS AND PORCHES.

There was a very remarkable amount of building done in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Plenty of money was available, much of it acquired from the lands of the dissolved monasteries; the country was at peace, and the strong rule of Elizabeth gradually produced a state of prosperity hitherto unknown. Defensive precautions, save such as seemed necessary against vagrants, were abandoned in all kinds of houses. The outer courts, the inner courts, and the gatehouses, which formerly were built for the sake of security, were now retained chiefly for the sake of appearance, and because they added to the privacy of the house. The porter at the gate exercised a certain amount of control over those who wished to enter, and on occasion he closed his gates against the populace, although sometimes without complete success, as we learn from a scene in Shakespeare's play of "Henry VIII.," where the people, in their anxiety to see something of the christening of the infant Princess Elizabeth, managed to crowd in, in spite of "as much as one sound cudgel of four foot could distribute" at the hands of the porter's man.

Everyone who could afford it seems to have built in the time of Elizabeth and James. The great nobles erected vast palaces like Theobalds and Holdenby, like Audley End, and Knole and Buckhurst. Men of smaller wealth built mansions like Kirby and Montacute, Wollaton and Blickling. Squires built their manor houses in the villages, merchants their homes in the towns, not infrequently, indeed, leaving the city for some neighbouring parish, and there ending their days as lords of the manor. When the condition of an existing house did not warrant its actual removal, additions in the new style were made; something had to be done to keep in the fashion. Throughout the length and breadth of the land the same activity was displayed. From Yorkshire and Westmorland in the north, to Cornwall and Kent in the south; from Shropshire in the west to Suffolk in the east, we find work of this period scattered up and down the country in mansion, manor house, cottage and church.

A good deal of building was done in Henry VIII.'s time, but vastly more in Elizabeth's. The examples left to us of the former period are few compared with those of the latter; but in both cases it must be remembered that the old gave way to the new. The builders of Elizabeth's days removed the work of their grandfathers to make room for their own, only to have this in its turn replaced in the times of Anne and the Georges. Many as are the houses of the sixteenth century which remain, we know that many others, of equal interest and beauty, have been pulled down.

Lay-Out.

It is not always easy in the present day to grasp the system upon which the larger houses of Elizabeth's time were laid out. Modern methods of locomotion, and modern ideas of convenience, have in many cases caused the approach to the houses to be altered. It is the same with regard to most of our ancient cities. The railway now brings us to a spot which has no relation to the old landmarks of the place, and instead of approaching our destination through the ancient arteries, which were the growth of many years, we slip in through by-ways and slums, or along a new street made expressly for the purpose. The approach to one of the larger Elizabethan houses was an affair of time. Roads were then of a very primitive description, and depended for their condition upon the nature of the soil. "There is good land where there is foul way," was a saying of the time; and conversely, where there was a hard road there was likely to be stony land. From the main road a similar rough track led, perhaps through an avenue of newly planted trees, in a straight line towards the house. There was no gate-keeper's lodge at the end of a finely gravelled road winding through a park. The lodge was part of the outbuildings of the house, and until you arrived there the road was generally left to take care of itself. After passing through the lodge, there were often two courts to traverse before the hall was reached. The lodge was on the great axial line of the house, so that as you stood waiting, if all the doors happened to be open, you could see right through the courts and the screens and get a glimpse of the garden beyond.

The accompanying plan of the lay-out of Holdenby (Fig. 55), from a survey made in 1587, gives a good idea of the surroundings of the larger Elizabethan houses. The road between two villages ran along the north side of the park, and from this road branched another one which led up to the house. While it traversed the park it was allowed to wind according to the undulations of the ground, but when it came to within a quarter of a mile of the lodge it was made perfectly straight, and so ran through the midst of "the green"—"a large, long, straight, fair way," as Lord Burghley called it. It led directly to the porter's lodge, which was a building separate from the house, and self-contained, and it passed the long range of stabling on the right. The porter's lodge opened into the first court, the "base-court," as it was called, walled round, and entered on its two sides by large gateways. At the further end of the base-court stood the house, raised a few steps above the general level, where Lord Burghley "found a great magnificence in the front or front pieces of the house, and so every part answerable to other, to allure liking." The house was built round two great courts, the first 128 feet by 104 feet, the second 140 feet by 110 feet, comparable in point of size to those at Hampton Court, and a good deal more intricate in detail. To the north of the house itself were two walled gardens, of nearly an acre each, and beyond these were spinneys, or small woods, and the little village with its inn. The ground on the south side of the house sloped pretty steeply away, and was laid out in a series of terraces. At the top of these, and flanking the whole length of the base-court, the house, and the orchard beyond, ran a broad straight path. In the midst of the terraces a great platform was run out at the level of this long path, containing a rosery laid out with paths in a simple geometrical pattern. At the extreme end of the long path was a cross-path leading each way to a prospect mount, up at least one of which wound a spiral path, ending (in all probability) in a banqueting house, such as Lord Bacon describes in his essay "Of Gardens," and such as the Parliamentary Commissioners describe as being at Nonesuch in the year 1650. At the foot of the terraces lay fishponds amid orchard-trees, and, in a small enclosure of its own, the church. Close to the church was the site of the old manor house, the home of Sir Christopher Hatton's fathers, but which he found far too insignificant a dwelling for the Lord Chancellor.

Such were the surroundings of one of the most splendid palaces of Elizabeth's splendid courtiers, and an examination of the contemporary survey shows upon what a large scale the house and its appurtenances were laid out. The house covered nearly two acres; the base-court more than one acre; the green more than seventeen. In comparison with the house the village is a mere collection of outhouses, not so extensive as the range of stabling. The garden has not acquired all the architectural adjuncts in the way of stone terraces, and garden-houses, lead vases, statuary and jets d'eau, which became fashionable a hundred years later; but it has a fine simplicity about it and a largeness of scale which are in keeping with the house it belongs to.

Theobalds, in Hertfordshire, was the model upon which Sir Christopher Hatton professed to have founded his own more magnificent house at Holdenby, and there is an interesting account, written by John Savile, of King James's visit to Theobalds on his first coming to London in 1603.[12] It is an early example of descriptive reporting which would do credit to one of our great daily papers. Theobalds was the house of Sir Robert Cecil, afterwards Lord Salisbury, and had been built and embellished by his father, the great Lord Treasurer. The writer particularly mentions the approach to the house, which stood back from the highway, unlike the "manie sumptuous buildings" in the neighbourhood, most of which belonged "to the cittie marchants." It was reached by a most stately walk raised above the general level, and beset about either side with young elm and ash trees extending from the common street way to the first court belonging to the house. In order to obtain full particulars of the proceedings, Savile stationed one of his party at the upper end of the walk, another at the upper end of the first court, while a third stood at the second court door, and he also arranged with "a gentleman of good sort" to stand in the court that led into the hall, and furnish particulars of the ceremonies invisible to the others. After the king had at length entered the house, the crowd of sightseers surged even into the uppermost court, apparently without protest from the porter, and to their view the monarch graciously displayed himself at his windows for the space of half an hour, previous to going into the "laberinth-like garden to walke."

Lodges and Gateways.

Sometimes the lodge formed part of the buildings enclosing the first court, in which case one or two rooms or "lodgings" of the wing on either side of the gateway would be devoted to the porter, in the same way as the entrance to most of the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge is still arranged. But very frequently it was separated from the house by a court enclosed by a wall, as it was at Holdenby, and again at the much smaller house at Doddington (Fig. 56). This wall was sometimes high and solid, and sometimes coped "leaning height," as John Thorpe has it on one of his plans, or sometimes pierced with ornamental patterns.

The lodge itself was generally large enough to accommodate the porter and his family, having two rooms downstairs and perhaps three above, but occasionally there were even three floors, as at Stanway in Gloucestershire (Plate XXII.), while at Hamstall Ridware, in Staffordshire, the lodge was merely a gateway between two flanking turrets only seven feet across inside. At Stokesay Castle, in Shropshire, is a charming lodge or gatehouse of timber and plaster, added in Elizabeth's time to the ancient castle (Fig. 57); and at Westwood in Worcestershire the lodge is formed of two separate brick buildings connected by an open timber roof and some pierced stonework, displaying the mullet or five-pointed star of the owner (Plate XXIII.).

The smaller houses had merely a gateway of more or less pretensions, such as may be seen at Cold Ashton, near Bath (Fig. 58), a charming little entrance on the roadside leading straight up by a paved walk to the front door of the house; or at Winwick, in Northamptonshire (Fig. 59), the stately remnant of a house now much curtailed in size. This example is treated in a more important manner than usual, the masonry flanking the archway on either side being of considerable width, and elaborately ornamented with sunk patterns and carving. The well-proportioned columns are disengaged from the wall behind them, and the whole treatment of the lower part as far as the top of the cornice calls to mind some of the Roman arches to be met with in Italy. The pediments above the cornice are hardly equal to the structure upon which they stand, but they give that variety and piquancy of outline which was considered indispensable in work of the time; moreover, the circular gable over the archway affords room for a panel containing the owner's arms, although, by an irony of fate which would have annoyed him deeply, the bearings are now indistinguishable. This gateway vies in importance with those at Holdenby (Fig. 61), but the house at Warwick could never have been more than a good-sized manor house. At Cold Ashton the gateway is more in scale with the house, and although the central feature above the cornice is mutilated, the arms still remain. The effect of this roadside gateway is heightened by the circular steps and the mounting-block. At Oundle, in Northamptonshire, there is an example of a small gateway in the front wall of some almshouses (Fig. 60) which, in spite of its insignificant size, imparts considerable interest and even dignity to the group of which it is the central feature. In large houses the entrance courts not infrequently had archways in their side walls to afford access to the gardens or the orchard. The base-court at Holdenby has already been mentioned as having a gateway in each of its sides, apart altogether from the gatehouse or porter's lodge. These two gateways still remain (Fig. 61), although most of the house and its adjuncts have disappeared, leaving them stranded in a position that is hardly intelligible without the aid of a plan showing the original arrangement. They bear the date 1585, and a shield of arms containing fourteen quarterings of the owner, Sir Christopher Hatton. In general treatment they resemble the similar gateways in the forecourt at Kirby, which also belonged to Sir Christopher, and they are more remarkable for their size and stateliness than for the beauty of their detail: but it should not be forgotten that the walls which supported them on either side, and which connected them with the great house, are gone, and that, denuded of their original surroundings, they appear much more heavy and cumbrous than when they were a small part of a large scheme. Much smaller than the base-court at Holdenby was the forecourt at Kenyon Peel, in Lancashire, a half-timber house with a symmetrical E front, and approached through a two-storey stone gatehouse, joined to the house itself by stone walls. The gatehouse is rather gaunt, like many of the stone buildings in that district, but in the little gateways in the side of the court (Fig. 62) an effort has been made to produce something less severe. The mixture of the stonework and the black-and-white work of the house is effective, and the small court, with its formal paved walks leading from the gatehouse to the porch, and from one side doorway to the other, is full of interest; especially as the house lies amid the chimneys of a busy part of Lancashire, and is surrounded by the abomination of desolation which accompanies the spread of populous places. The initials G. R. occur in the topmost step of the coping, and the date 1631 on the lintel of the doorway.

Entrance Doorways and Porches.

The lodge or the gateway, as the case might be, was generally adorned in some conspicuous place with the arms of the family, the squires of the time being as proud of their various cognizances as Justice Shallow was of his twelve luces. Five out of the eight examples already illustrated are so adorned. The same shield that appears on the gateway is also frequently to be seen over the door of the house itself, which is reached after crossing the court. The doorway generally formed part of a somewhat elaborate piece of ornament, for, however simple (and sometimes even monotonous) the general treatment of the house was, the front door was made handsome. At Doddington, in Lincolnshire, while the bulk of the house is of plain brickwork, including the parapet, the doorway is treated with a considerable amount of elaboration (Fig. 63).

The door stood more often than not in a projecting porch, which, although sometimes only one storey in height, as at Chelvey Court, in Somerset (Fig. 64), was usually higher, and was frequently carried up the full height of the building. It is round these doors that we find pronounced classic features employed in the shape of pillars and pilasters, friezes and cornices, and pediments. But it was seldom that the English mason did not introduce into his design some departure from strict classic treatment, suggested by his native traditions. At Chelvey the doorway has a flat-pointed head resting on an impost, such as usually accompanies a semicircular arch: there is also a keystone which protrudes from the straight lintel instead of crowning the arch, which in the ordinary way would be there. The twisted columns support pilasters of a different scale, which in their turn, however, are relieved of anything to carry. The broken pediment encloses a shield of arms, which rests in the usual fashion upon a base carried by the keystone. Over all is a pierced parapet divided into square panels by shallow pilasters. The spirit of the whole composition is Jacobean, but the treatment betokens a late date, with its twisted columns and broken pediment; and the arms confirm the conjecture prompted by the character of the work, though the exact date is not recorded. It is evident, however, that even in Somerset, the home of good masons, the lesson of making appropriate use of classic features had not yet been mastered. The treatment of the doorway at the neighbouring house of Nailsea Court (Fig. 65) is more logical and pleasing. There is a quaint mixture of pointed arch and classic cornice and corbelled bay-window; and the manner in which the central projection in the cornice is made the starting-point of the corbelling to the bay is a happy illustration of the freedom with which the new features were handled.

At Chipchase Castle, in Northumberland (Plate XXIV), a square porch is combined with a canted bay above it. The doorway follows the more usual pattern; it has the circular arch resting on imposts, a projecting keystone carried up to break the lines of the cornice, and is flanked on either side by a circular column, which endeavours to justify its presence by carrying an obelisk. The obelisks serve the useful purpose of breaking the severe line of the splay which joins the octagonal bay to the square porch below it, and they, together with the shield of arms and the carving on the columns and the voussoirs of the arch, impart considerable richness to the whole composition. At Gayhurst, in Buckinghamshire, the columns, which are primarily introduced for the sake of ornament, are made to do actual duty by supporting a slight projection of the storey above them (Fig. 66); and there are two tiers of them, a fact which helps to increase the importance of the entrance. In this, as in similar cases, the cornices are continued along the sides of the projecting porch, and are stopped against the face of the main building. At Upper Slaughter, in Gloucestershire (Plate XXIV.), the porch has more of the appearance of being an excrescence, the only connecting member being the string over the upper windows of the house, which is returned along the sides of the porch. The cornices of the porch are in this instance only just returned round its outer angles, and not carried back to the main building. The pilasters are merely ornamental adjuncts: there is no pretence about them of doing any work; the head of the upper window breaks unceremoniously into the frieze of the cornice, the keystone of the arch is carried up so that the lines of the lower cornice may break round it, and the whole treatment shows that the designer was free from any morbid craving after correctness. In the doorway at Hatfield, in the side of the court (Plate XXV.), the work is handled in a more formal manner. There is the semicircular arch, with its impost, and the two flanking pilasters carried up in order to break the cornice, while a central projection follows up from the keystone. There is no crowning pediment, but in its place is a strap-work pattern terminating at the top with a point which finds itself in the centre of one of the triglyphs in the entablature which makes the circuit of the whole house at the first floor level. The archway at the foot of the grand staircase at Wardour Castle (Plate XXV.) is treated with still greater propriety; the designer has allowed himself to take no liberties with his copy, but the severity is relieved by the informal manner in which the steps wind away to the left. This is an accident arising from the fact that the staircase is of an older date; it is covered with Gothic vaulting, and at its upper end the original pointed arch has been made semicircular, and the stone round it has been recessed so as to surround it with a square moulded frame in the manner prevalent at the beginning of the seventeenth century. At Cold Ashton we have a simple pedimented doorway in a shallow projection between the two wings of the house (Fig. 67), and at Cheney Court there is another simple form of doorway; it has no pilasters, but a curved pediment, supported on corbels, forms a hood (Fig. 68)—a mode of treatment adopted towards the close of the Jacobean period, and handled here with a pleasant freedom, a panel being contrived in the middle of the frieze to contain the family arms. At Woollas Hall (Fig. 69) there is a boldly projecting porch, thrusting itself out beyond the main face of the house, and giving from its oriel on the top floor a wide view over the surrounding country.

The ruins at Gorhambury, near St. Albans, a house built by Sir Nicholas Bacon, the father of Lord Bacon, present another treatment, which can still be made out in spite of the modern brick buttresses, and the brick arch which has been inserted below the original one of stone (Fig. 70). There is a projecting porch of two storeys, with all its three external faces carefully treated, the front being made rather more elaborate by the introduction of niches with statues. The employment of statues and busts as decorative features was a favourite device of the time. They were almost invariably of classic origin, and attired in classic garb, the most modern personages usually admitted to this distinction being those three of the Nine Worthies who were of Christian extraction. In the spandrils of the arch are circular medallions with busts, and in the parapet are the royal arms. There was also over the arch (we are told) a grey marble panel with four Latin verses, stating that the house was finished in the tenth year of Elizabeth's reign by Nicholas Bacon, whom she made a knight, and Keeper of her Seal. Below these verses was the aphorism "Mediocria firma," that is, "Firm is the middle state." Statues, busts, and inscriptions are all characteristic of the taste of the period, and will be more particularly dealt with later on in connection with the design of chimney-pieces. The house which was thus finished in the tenth year of Elizabeth, that is in 1568, was begun (according to an account in the possession of a local antiquary) on the 1st day of March, 1563, thus taking five years to build. It was not of vast extent, but it comprised two courts, one for the house, the other for the kitchens. The porch illustrated was approached in a direct line across the larger of these courts, and led into the screens in the usual way; the windows visible to the left of the porch lighted the great hall at the daÏs end. There is very little left of the old walls, but the extent of the hall can be made out, as well as the position of a clock tower; and at some little distance there remains another niche with a headless statue in it, no doubt that of Henry VIII., which we are told was put up on the occasion of the Queen's second visit to Gorhambury. Her first visit was paid in 1572, four years after the completion of the house, on which occasion the Queen told the Lord Keeper that he had made his house too little for him, whereupon he replied, "Not so, madam, but your Majesty has made me too big for my house." He was, however, resolved not to be open to such a reproach again, and on receiving an intimation that the Queen would visit him a second time (in 1577) he is said to have built a gallery of lath and plaster 120 feet long by 18 feet wide, beneath which were cloisters, and in the middle of their length the statue of King Henry in gilt armour. This enlarging of the house for the express purpose of receiving the Queen was only one of numerous instances, which will be referred to in a subsequent chapter, as also will the proportion of the long galleries so distinctive of the period.

The gallery, was panelled with oak gilt, and on the panelling were Latin inscriptions, so aptly selected that it was considered worth while to collect them in a small volume, illuminated with much beauty. In the orchard was a banqueting-house, which in its turn was adorned with busts and inscriptions. These all related to specific subjects—grammar, arithmetic, logic, music, rhetoric, geometry, and astrology; and each subject was not only depicted on the walls, but was further illustrated by appropriate verses and the pictures of such learned men as had excelled in it.[13] Although most of them were selected from the ancients, yet Sir Nicholas Bacon was sufficiently catholic in his taste to admit such modern names as Lilly, the grammarian, and Copernicus, the "astrologer," the latter of whom had only been dead some thirty years.

Another kind of entrance is afforded by the arcaded porch, of which a simple example is to be seen at Hambleton, in Rutland (Fig. 71), and a more elaborate one at Cranborne, in Dorset (Plate XXVI.), where it was added, along with other "modern" features, to an old manor house dating from the thirteenth century, in order to bring the house into the prevailing fashion.

So far all the entrances which have been mentioned were in the main face of the building, the front doors being in the centre of the faÇade. As the front door almost always led into the screens at the end of the hall, it followed as a matter of course that the hall itself occupied only a little more than half the length of the faÇade. In some instances, however, the hall was made to occupy the centre of it, and in such cases the porch could no longer be central, but was moved to one side, and made to balance a corresponding projection which served as the bay window of the hall: the doorway was then placed, not in the front face but the side face of the porch, as may be seen at Chastleton, in Oxfordshire (Fig. 72), and Burton Agnes, in Yorkshire (Fig. 52). The main approach was therefore still on the axial line, but on mounting the final steps, instead of going straight forward into the porch, you turned either to the right or left (in the two instances illustrated it was to the left) and so through the porch to the screens. At Chastleton the old arrangement remains perfect; the screen is there, and also the daÏs with the bay window at the end of it. At Fountains Hall, in Yorkshire, the same idea is carried out, but as the ground slopes very steeply, the principal floor is some feet above the ground at the entrance. The doorway is central, and immediately on entering, a straight flight of steps leads off to the right up to the main floor, which it gains just in time for a turn to the left to lead into the screens.

In situations requiring less ornamental treatment, a very pleasing type of doorway came into use, and lingered on in remote places far into the days of regular classic architecture. Such doors abound in the stone villages of Somerset and thence northwards through the Cotswolds and Oxfordshire, up to Northamptonshire and Rutland. They are usually flat-pointed, and the jambs have two moulded orders, the inner one going round the flat-pointed head, while the outer one forms a square frame round it, as in the example from Lyddington (Fig. 73). There is not much of the classic manner about such a door, especially when, as in this instance, the label is returned down the ends of the head. But the section of the jamb-mould is an adaptation of the contours found in classic work, and the label not infrequently was treated in the manner of a cornice, instead of being returned, as it is in this example and that from Broadway in Fig. 74. There is a small doorway of this kind at Aylesford Hall, in Kent (Fig. 75), which shows a curious mixture, for the head has a fairly high-pointed Gothic arch, while the label is of classic profile, and is ornamented with dentils: the spandrils are filled with shields of late design, one of which bears the date 1590, thus showing how long the old traditional forms lingered in places. The masons of the time made use of a type of door which was chiefly of Gothic descent, but they varied its features at will. The head was either high-pointed, flat-pointed, or elliptical, as their fancy dictated; and the label was either moulded after the fashion of their youth, or in accordance with the newer forms which they saw in use around them. It is in such unimportant matters as these, where no one was particularly concerned about the result, that we see how the workmen availed themselves indifferently of the old forms or the new.

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