ELEVATION OF GABLE ON FRONT.
The prevailing treatment of the ornament at Moreton is still Gothic (Plates [XV]., [XVI].), in spite of its date being beyond the middle of the century. Nevertheless the influence of the new style is seen here and there, especially in the carved pendants of the overhanging work. The fine bay windows were made, as an inscription tells us, by Richard Dale, carpenter, in 1559, a further testimony to the fact that it was English workmen who did most of the work of the time, even when it shows signs of foreign ornament. Although the bulk of the house was built in 1559, considerable alterations were made nearly half a century later, in 1602; and to this date may be assigned the long gallery, with its continuous row of mullioned windows reaching from end to end almost without a break. The effect is very quaint, but the room must always have been uncomfortable, whether in summer by reason of the heat, or in winter by reason of the cold; and as a comment upon the effect of time on the stability of these timber houses, nothing can be more striking than an attempt to walk quickly down the seventy feet of billowy floor which the gallery presents.
With our next plan we enter upon the Elizabethan era, an era marked by an extraordinary amount of house-building, which led to a great degree of attention being bestowed upon the planning. This attention, it is true, does not seem to have been directed so much towards comfort or economy as towards magnificence and display. No doubt comfort of a kind was aimed at, but people did not then require comfort as we understand it, and designers were not likely to be much in advance of their clients. The sacrifices of common sense to architectural effect were nevertheless few. The relative positions of the principal apartments were settled by considerations of convenience, not of external grouping. The kitchens, for instance, were always fairly in touch with the hall, not, as in later days, when Palladian architecture was in vogue, located some hundreds of feet away in a detached wing, connected by a curved colonnade, and balanced on the other extremity by the stables or the remainder of the servants' rooms, in a similar wing. Nor were the servants' bedrooms hidden away in the roof with windows looking out on to the back of a solid pediment, or even looking inwards and only lighted by borrowed light. It was the architects of a more strict Italian school who were reduced to such expedients in the early part of the eighteenth century; but in the late sixteenth the prevalent style was sufficiently elastic to enable the dictates of common sense to be obeyed. No doubt bay windows were placed in useless situations in order to balance others that were useful. Lofty windows were sometimes divided by floors halfway up their height in order that the uniformity of the front should not be interrupted; but the rooms themselves were cheerful enough and had good prospects. The features which the Elizabethan designer had to marshal were smaller and more manageable than those which fell to the lot of his successor in the days of Anne and the Georges; and this was particularly the case with his windows. In a mullioned window an additional row of lights in the width, or even the height, can be managed without attracting undue attention, but the sash window has to conform to the size and situation of its brethren.
Economy of planning, in the sense of avoiding waste spaces, or saving the footsteps of the inmates, was not much studied. The only evidence we have of its consideration lies in the occasional lopping off of extravagant features, or the substitution of a reduced set of plans for one of more extensive area.
The real aim of the designers seems to have been magnificence and display—sometimes on a large scale, sometimes on a small. The principal means used for this end was symmetry—not so much a symmetry of detail as a symmetry of parts, of large features rather than of small. We shall find this quality in almost every kind of plan, and an extremely valuable quality it is if not carried to excess. The symmetry of the Elizabethans was generally under control. It was sometimes wasteful and its results were occasionally amusing, but they were never ridiculous or fatal to the comfort of the house.
Up to the present the plans we have examined have not—with the exception of Sutton Place—shown any determined attempt at a symmetrical treatment, only a certain hankering after it. With Kirby Hall (1570-75) we get a more resolute effort in this direction (Fig. [46]). The entrance gateway and the screens are on an axial line running through the house and its green court. The inner court is quite symmetrically treated, door answering to door, and window to window; but the exterior façades were left to take care of themselves, and no attempt was made to balance one mass by another.
Plate XVII.
KIRBY HALL, NORTHANTS.
ELEVATION OF SOUTH SIDE OF COURTYARD (1570-75).