Early Renaissance Architecture in England / A Historical & Descriptive Account of the Tudor, Elizabethan, & Jacobean Periods, 1500-1625

by J. Alfred Gotch

11. Pastry.

12. Courtyard.

On some of these plans the room which is usually called the parlour is marked "dy pler" or dining parlour. This shows that even the eating of meals, one of the functions for which the hall had always been used, was being transferred from that apartment to smaller and more comfortable rooms. The heads of the household, more particularly, sought the quiet of a smaller apartment, and with them they took their special friends, leaving persons of less importance to dine with the household in the hall. There is a letter from a Mr. Marlivale, of Chevington, written to Sir Thomas Kytson, of Hengrave, complaining of having been placed to dine in the hall with the steward instead of with the superior persons in the parlour. As Sir Thomas died in 1540, the practice of withdrawing from the great hall must have begun previous to that date. On one of Thorpe's plans he has marked a room as the "Servants' dining-room," which indicates a further desertion of the hall, and from the other end. The purposes for which the hall had been used being thus provided for elsewhere, it became no longer necessary to plan it on the old lines. The first change that took place was at the end where the screens were. The screens, indeed, disappeared, and in order to go from the front door to the kitchen department, the hall itself had to be traversed. The following examples show various instances of this change, but in the absence of particulars as to the name and date of most of the plans, it has been impossible to arrange them chronologically: what sequence there is, is a sequence of stages in the development of the new idea of using the hall as an entrance.

The example in Fig. [220] has no name nor any writing upon it beyond the numbers of the stairs. The curious point about it is that the screen is in the side of the hall instead of at the end; otherwise it preserves most of the old arrangements. Although the rooms are not named, they are easy to identify. On the family side are the hall, with its daïs, the parlour, staircase, chapel and "lodgings." On the servants' side are the buttery, winter parlour, back stairs, kitchen and pastry. Owing to the altered arrangement of the screens there is no thoroughfare leading straight from the front door to the court beyond.

In the next example (Figs. [221], [222]) we have a further departure from the old type. Screens of a kind there are, but the front door leads only to the hall (through a vestibule), and the hall has to be traversed to gain the kitchen. The buttery is in an entirely novel position, and the tendency clearly is to preserve the front door for the family, and to relegate the servants to their own entrance. A curious point is that the only way from the kitchen to the buttery, to the upper floor, or to the outside, is through the hall. In spite of these changes the daïs still remains, as though the old custom of dining in the hall survived, notwithstanding the constant traffic which the service of the kitchen must have entailed. The upper plan shows the long gallery—apparently 62 feet long by only 10 feet wide—and the great chamber, 40 feet by 21 feet, which is over the hall. The draughtsman has apparently been led by the symmetry of his arrangements into placing the gallery on the wrong façade in his upper plan. According to a note on the ground plan it should be at the back, and the elevation confirms this disposition. Owing to the situation of the hall it can no longer obtain light from the sides, nor can there be any bay window to the daïs: the only light it receives is from a large window at one end, which must be greatly darkened by the arcade in front of it, carrying the gallery. The great chamber is subject in a less degree to similar disadvantages, receiving light only from one end. The treatment of the exterior is somewhat after the fashion of Wollaton, but of a plainer kind; there is a central block surrounded by rooms roofed at a lower level, and at each corner is a pavilion. It is quite possible that this is merely an exercise in design, and that it was never carried out, nor even thoroughly digested.

221.—Ground and Upper Plans, unnamed (PAGE 85).

1. Hall

2. Parlour.

3. Principal Stairs.