67.—Doorway at Cold Ashton, Somerset.
68.—Doorway at Cheney Court, Somerset.
Plate XXVa.
Wardour Castle, Wiltshire. The Grand Staircase.
Plate XXVb.
Hatfield House, Hertfordshire. Doorway in Court (1611).
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.