KIRBY HALL, NORTHANTS. DETAIL OF PORCH.
There are, of course, the usual classic columns applied with a liberal hand, and all the horizontal string-courses have classic profiles. The carving of the friezes is interesting, inasmuch as it is somewhat out of the common in detail, and its component parts were evidently carved in large numbers, and used as occasion required, for in many places where the length of a carved stone was too great for its intended position it was ruthlessly shortened to fit, and the carving was mutilated.
So far all the plans have shown a courtyard round which the house was built, first adopted, no doubt, from reasons of defence, and afterwards retained because it had become customary. We now come to another type of very frequent occurrence, in which two narrow parallel wings are connected by a narrow body, thus forming a figure like the letter H. It is in effect a curtailment of the older plan by leaving out the "lodgings" which enclosed the court; but there is no change in the old idea of placing the hall in a central situation and flanking it at one end by the family apartments and at the other by the kitchen and servants' rooms. At Montacute, in Somerset (1580), the original relation of hall and kitchen is preserved, but the intermediate rooms have been allotted to modern uses (Fig. [47]). It should be observed that the passage at the back of the hall was formed by inserting between the wings the porch and part of the walls from an earlier house at Clifton Maubank in the year 1760. This passage, which is a great convenience to the house, must therefore not be looked upon as part of the original plan. The detail of the part thus inserted is of Late Tudor character. The profiles of the mouldings are Gothic, the carving inclines towards Italian, the parapets have cusped panels, the pinnacles have the spiral twist so dear to the Tudor mason, and a battlemented moulding beneath the heraldic animals which they support (Plate [XX].). The treatment is quite different from that of the house itself. Another point to remark about the plan is that all thoughts of defence are here abandoned, and the windows look freely out on all sides. Indeed, far from desiring to exclude people, the builder, Sir Edward Phelips, wrote up over his door, "Through this wide-opening gate, none come too early, none return too late." It will also be noticed that in order to get a truly symmetrical disposition of windows, the bay is removed from the end to the middle of the hall, which is another indication of a tendency to depart from the ancient arrangements.
47.—Montacute House, Somerset. Ground Plan (1580).
1. Hall. 2. Drawing-room. 3. Large Dining-room. 4. Small Dining-room. 5. Smoking-room. 6. Pantry. 7. Kitchen. 8. Servants' Hall. 9. Porch. 10. Garden-house.
It is true that there is a court at Montacute, but it is enclosed by an open balustrade and not by solid buildings; it is there for delight and not for defence, and everything in the planning shows that the builder considered he could occupy his house in security.
48.—Montacute House, Somerset. West Front, with Court and Garden-houses (1580).