The consideration of these two houses brings vividly before the mind the completeness of the change that had come over domestic architecture during the course of the seventeenth century. The description of Buckingham House from contemporary pens (one of them that of the owner himself) gives an air of vraisemblance to Campbell’s cold illustrations. The “arching galleries” indicate a disposition of plan which was being adopted in many large houses, and was for another half century employed in order to impart stateliness to what otherwise might have been a rather bald design.
Fig. 113a.—BUCKINGHAM HOUSE, St. James’s Park.
(from a water-colour by Edward Dayes.)
Fig. 114.—CLIEFDEN, in Buckinghamshire.
From an Engraving by Luke Sullivan.
The idea of this arrangement was to have a central block containing the principal rooms, and to flank it at some distance on each side by a subsidiary block connected to the main structure by curved colonnades—the “arching galleries” of Buckingham House. These outlying blocks contained the offices, which were sometimes the kitchens, sometimes the stables, and occasionally the library or chapel. The inconvenience of the arrangement is obvious; under it compactness was sacrificed to appearance. If these outliers looked out on to the approach, their windows embarrassed the access to the front door. If they looked the other way, they turned their dull backs upon the main approach. Windows suitable for a kitchen had to be balanced by similar windows in the stables which were not suitable; or, as an alternative, sham windows were employed. Designers found themselves obliged to resort to devices of one kind or another, which sacrificed the convenience of one block in order to assimilate it in appearance to the other. Nor did the sacrifice stop here; it affected more or less the whole house. The mistaken claims of “architecture” led to the external appearance being considered as of the first importance; the internal convenience was modified to suit it. Not infrequently rooms were wrongly placed, wrongly lighted, awkwardly shaped, given a bad aspect, or otherwise ill-handled, in order to preserve the symmetry and proportion of the exterior. The placing of the kitchen in a distant block, connected perhaps by an open colonnade, must have been a great inconvenience both to the family and the servants. But inconvenience counted for little so long as an imposing edifice was secured.
Fig. 115.—Plan of Stoke Bruerne, Northamptonshire.