CRANBORNE MANOR HOUSE, DORSETSHIRE.
THE PORCH (ABOUT 1612).
Another kind of entrance is afforded by the arcaded porch, of which a simple example is to be seen at Hambleton, in Rutland (Fig. [71]), and a more elaborate one at Cranborne, in Dorset (Plate [XXVI].), where it was added, along with other "modern" features, to an old manor house dating from the thirteenth century, in order to bring the house into the prevailing fashion.
73.—Doorway at Lyddington, Rutland.
So far all the entrances which have been mentioned were in the main face of the building, the front doors being in the centre of the façade. As the front door almost always led into the screens at the end of the hall, it followed as a matter of course that the hall itself occupied only a little more than half the length of the façade. In some instances, however, the hall was made to occupy the centre of it, and in such cases the porch could no longer be central, but was moved to one side, and made to balance a corresponding projection which served as the bay window of the hall: the doorway was then placed, not in the front face but the side face of the porch, as may be seen at Chastleton, in Oxfordshire (Fig. [72]), and Burton Agnes, in Yorkshire (Fig. [52]). The main approach was therefore still on the axial line, but on mounting the final steps, instead of going straight forward into the porch, you turned either to the right or left (in the two instances illustrated it was to the left) and so through the porch to the screens. At Chastleton the old arrangement remains perfect; the screen is there, and also the daïs with the bay window at the end of it. At Fountains Hall, in Yorkshire, the same idea is carried out, but as the ground slopes very steeply, the principal floor is some feet above the ground at the entrance. The doorway is central, and immediately on entering, a straight flight of steps leads off to the right up to the main floor, which it gains just in time for a turn to the left to lead into the screens.
74.—Doorway at Broadway, Worcestershire.
In situations requiring less ornamental treatment, a very pleasing type of doorway came into use, and lingered on in remote places far into the days of regular classic architecture. Such doors abound in the stone villages of Somerset and thence northwards through the Cotswolds and Oxfordshire, up to Northamptonshire and Rutland. They are usually flat-pointed, and the jambs have two moulded orders, the inner one going round the flat-pointed head, while the outer one forms a square frame round it, as in the example from Lyddington (Fig. [73]). There is not much of the classic manner about such a door, especially when, as in this instance, the label is returned down the ends of the head. But the section of the jamb-mould is an adaptation of the contours found in classic work, and the label not infrequently was treated in the manner of a cornice, instead of being returned, as it is in this example and that from Broadway in Fig. [74]. There is a small doorway of this kind at Aylesford Hall, in Kent (Fig. [75]), which shows a curious mixture, for the head has a fairly high-pointed Gothic arch, while the label is of classic profile, and is ornamented with dentils: the spandrils are filled with shields of late design, one of which bears the date 1590, thus showing how long the old traditional forms lingered in places. The masons of the time made use of a type of door which was chiefly of Gothic descent, but they varied its features at will. The head was either high-pointed, flat-pointed, or elliptical, as their fancy dictated; and the label was either moulded after the fashion of their youth, or in accordance with the newer forms which they saw in use around them. It is in such unimportant matters as these, where no one was particularly concerned about the result, that we see how the workmen availed themselves indifferently of the old forms or the new.
