75.—Doorway at Aylesford Hall, Kent (1590).
CHAPTER V.
EXTERIOR FEATURES (continued).
GENERAL ASPECT, EXTERNAL APPEARANCE, WINDOWS, &C.
Before proceeding to enter one of these doorways and to examine the interior treatment of an Elizabethan house, it will be well to look at the exterior more closely. We find that the effect, although often elaborate and striking, is produced by very simple means. The picturesque appearance of Haddon and Compton Winyates is chiefly due to the irregularity of the plan, which in the case of the former was largely the result of a gradual growth, extending over some centuries. The stately effect of the Elizabethan house is the result of regularity and symmetry in the plan, and its picturesqueness springs from its windows, gables and chimneys. The English designer avoided, as a rule, very large plain surfaces and long unbroken façades, differing in the latter respect from his Italian contemporaries. He diversified his long fronts by throwing out bay-windows; he broke up the skyline with gables; he grouped his chimneys so as to add emphasis to the design; and there were always the mullioned windows, of which the relatively small divisions gave scale and life to the whole. There are many houses which have no further attempt at ornament than these features, and these are felt to be quite sufficient; but occasionally, when a great effort was demanded, the Elizabethan designer borrowed his ornament from abroad, and added a multiplicity of pilasters and niches to his walls, extravagant and fantastic curves to his gables, while, in order to avail himself of classic forms to the full, he turned his chimneys into the semblance of columns. His zeal was not always accompanied by knowledge; he sometimes misapplied his borrowed features; he too frequently regarded a pilaster as in itself an agreeable ornament, without troubling to bring it into scale with the building or with his other pilasters used elsewhere, and without providing for it even a semblance of anything to support. The more ignorant masons evolved designs which bore but a distant resemblance to the originals which inspired them. All this is true, and it is so manifest that one cannot be surprised at the opprobrious epithets bestowed upon work of this period by purists of other schools. Still, in spite of errors and ignorance in the application of ornament, there is an exuberant vitality about the buildings of the time which accords with the vitality of its literature. Moreover, their character is essentially English: an Elizabethan house could no more have been designed by Palladio or Du Cerceau or Vriese than a play like those which Shakespeare gave us could have been written by one of the novelists, essayists, or dramatists of Italy, France and Germany, from whom the Englishman, however, did not hesitate to borrow some of his material.
76.—Kirby Hall, Northamptonshire. South Side of Court (1570-75).
External Appearance.
The courtyard of Kirby Hall is one of the finest examples that is left of the period (Fig. [76]), and although pilasters of different scale are employed as ornamental features rather than as constructional, the whole effect is both dignified and picturesque. The mullioned windows have a lively simplicity, the large pilasters prevent monotony, and the small detail about the central porch contrasts happily with the plainer treatment of the main walls. The external façade on the west, though not symmetrical, is kept in subjection; the strong horizontal lines of the strings and cornices bind it together, and the great chimney stacks are so ordered at regular intervals that they alone would give dignity and rhythm to the front (Fig. [77]). The work on this front is not all of one time, though the various parts cannot be separated by many years, and it is quite possible that the curved gables were added by a somewhat later hand. Sir Christopher Hatton's successor may have modified this façade towards the end of the century, when he built the stables, which have now disappeared.