In less pretentious houses the tendency was to avoid columns and ornamental details and to rely upon the sterling character of plain brick work. The so-called Flemish bond was introduced, a method of binding a wall into solidity by laying the bricks in courses of alternate stretchers and headers—bricks, that is to say, laid, respectively lengthwise with and at right angles to the outer surface of the walls. It differed from the English bond, in which stretchers and headers were laid in alternate courses. A single projecting string course might mark the division of the stories, while several, projecting one over the other, would form a cornice under the eaves of the tiled roof. Or this arrangement might be replaced by a wooden cornice. Windows, owing to the tax upon them, were reduced in number and often increased in size, especially in the direction of height. Correspondingly, doors were heightened until they had an effect of narrowness. In all these particulars, as also in the introduction of pediment-shaped gables and wooden cornices under the eaves of the tiled roofs, there was a disposition to follow the seventeenth century type of Dutch and Flemish domestic architecture. This so-called “Queen Anne” style—though it is more a manner than a style—involved a certain primness of effect, quite in keeping with the somewhat pedantic attitude of the time, but is characterised by simple refinement and suggestion of comfortable domesticity.
By the time of George III—1760 and onward—certain modifications were introduced into the Anglo-Classical style, which are sometimes characterised by the distinction, “Georgian.”
Anglo-Classical.—The Anglo-Classical is frankly a style of ostentation and magnificent pretension. So far as one man could be responsible for what was in effect an expression of the temper of an age that was amassing great wealth in the Indian and Chinese trade, the man was Sir John Vanbrugh. But it is significant that he first became famous as a writer of witty and spicy comedies. Then he “turned his attention to” architecture and wrote to his friend Tonson, the publisher, for a “Palladio.” With the aid of this he qualified himself as an architectural designer and having already gained the favour of society by his talents as a wit was readily accepted as an architect, enjoying particularly the patronage of Queen Anne, who sent him abroad on a special mission. His first important mansion was Castle Howard (1714), followed a year later by Blenheim Palace.
In both of these he achieved what may be described as a scenic impressiveness on a prodigious scale, but without much reference to architectural logic or to internal convenience. The two plans have a general similarity, consisting of a main block with an extensive garden front, connected at the rear by two corridors with the kitchen block and the stable block. These flank a great court, which at Blenheim is closed by a screen wall and gateway in the manner of a French château. The kitchen at Blenheim was some 400 feet distant from the dining room! Windows in both designs were disposed for exterior effect and not for proper lighting of the interior. In numberless particulars internal convenience was sacrificed to palatial planning and display. As Voltaire said, if the rooms had been as wide as the walls were thick the palace would have been passably convenient. Amongst the new features, introduced by Vanbrugh, was the converting of the ground story into a kind of mimic cellar, with inconveniently small staircases to the floor above, the main approach to which was on the outside of the building, by a grand flight of steps leading up to a superb portico.
Notwithstanding the magnificence of scale, these designs have a chill formality that makes their dignity rather dull.
Meanwhile they set a fashion exactly suited to the taste of the time, which in literature also was disposed to substitute dilettantism for culture, and, in its infatuation for what it called “style,” to attach more importance to form than to subject-matter. It was the age of the amateur. Lord Burlington, for example, a patron of art, designed a villa at Chiswick in a free translation of the Villa Capra, Vicenza by Palladio. Also, in conjunction with his protégé, Kent, he erected the Horse Guards and Devonshire House in London and Holkham Hall, Norfolk; the last-named presenting a central block connected by corridors with four outlying pavilions. One of the shibboleths of this time that passed for a principle was that to a style of this grandeur only one form of roof was appropriate—a dome. Interior proprieties were sacrificed to the securing of a dome, and where the exigencies of building necessitated a flat or pointed roof it was hidden behind an attic or balustrade.
Pope’s Satire.—The fatuities, however, of this craze for the monumental did not escape contemporary satire. When Lord Burlington published the designs of Inigo Jones and Palladio’s drawings of the “Antiquities of Rome,” Pope referred to them in one of his epistles—
“You show us, Rome was glorious, not profuse,
And pompous buildings once were things of use.
Yet shall, my Lord, your just, your noble rules,
Fill half the land with imitating fools;
Who random drawings from your sheets may take
And of one beauty many blunders make;
Load some vain church with old theatric state,
Turn arcs of triumph to a garden gate:
....... “’tis very fine,
But where d’ye sleep or where d’ye dine?
I find by all you have been telling
That ’tis a house, but not a dwelling.”
Chambers.—It was a reaction from this mania for magnificence that encouraged, in the case of more modest houses, the so-called “Queen Anne” style, and later, in large and small alike, the “Georgian.” The change to the latter, moreover, was assisted by the influence of Sir William Chambers, who acquired a real knowledge of architecture through long study in Italy and in 1759 published his “Treatise on Civil Architecture.” His most important work is the river front of Somerset House. He, too, however, was responsible for a craze. In early life he had visited China, where he made sketches of architecture, furniture, and costumes, which formed the basis of his “Designs for Chinese Architecture, Etc.” published in 1757. It led to an infatuation for the socalled “Chinese Style” which survives directly in the Pagoda at Kew Gardens and indirectly in the Chinese motives that Chippendale (d. 1779) introduced with so much taste into his furniture designs.
Adam.—Meanwhile, the Georgian revival was due even more to the genius of the Scotsman Robert Adam (1728-1792). Realising that the existing knowledge of Roman architecture had been derived from public buildings, he visited the only example known then of domestic architecture, the ruins of Diocletian’s Palace at Spalato in Dalmatia. Here in co-operation with the French architect, C. L. Clerisseau, and two experienced draughtsmen, he made the measurements and drawings out of which he projected a restoration of the building in a fine work entitled “The Ruins of the Palace of Diocletian” (1764). To him belongs the credit of inaugurating the modern idea, not yet sufficiently lived up to, of using the monumental style for a number of separate buildings, grouped in one design. His first achievement was on the banks of the Thames just east of Buckingham Street, where the steep descent necessitated a system of vaulted foundations that are said to be a remarkable example of engineering skill. On this Adam erected the dignified design, which, since his brother James co-operated with him, was called after the Greek word adelphoi, brothers, Adelphi Terrace. Other instances of his group designs are parts of Fitzroy Square, the older portion of Finsbury Circus and Portland Place. Among his country houses is Keddleston Hall, Derbyshire. Here he clung to the sprawling plan, in which the offices are widely parted from the main block; but, in the façades, employed large windows, finely grouped, and permitted the sloping roofs to be a strong feature of the design.