Fig. 258.—Door, 22 Buckingham Street, Strand.
Of the same type as the last is the doorway at No. 33 Mark Lane, London (Fig. [254]), but it is far more elaborate, and served as the entrance to one of the fine private houses which lined Mark Lane, but which now are utilised as offices, if by chance they have escaped the wholesale demolition and rebuilding which expanding commerce entails. Another good example is to be seen in Buckingham Street, Strand (Fig. [258]). Of later date is the double porch at Norwich (Fig. [256]), which is simple and dignified, and will so remain as long as the two occupants are of the same mind as to the colour it should be painted. It will be noticed that in all these examples the doorway is the only feature of interest; the surrounding work is quite plain. At the Stationers’ Hall, in London (Fig. [259]), we get a still later treatment, dating from the year 1800, when Robert Mylne cased the building with stone. The iron standards were probably devised to carry lamps, which shed enough light to help incomers up the steps; but all things are relative, and doubtless, at the time, two oil lamps were considered a brilliant illumination.
Fig. 259.—Doorway at Stationers’ Hall, London.
Fig. 260.—House at Yarmouth.
Here and there in old towns are to be found two-storied porches projecting from the face of a house like that at Yarmouth (Fig. [260]), which is the central feature of a front rather more elaborately treated than usual. In this case the porch stands on its own ground, but occasionally porches were built over part of the pavement, and the public traffic passed through them. It would be impossible for a private owner to take such liberty in the present day, when plans have to be submitted to the local council; but in those far-off times men of influence did many things which nobody was bold enough to stop; and while heartily agreeing that private interests must be subordinated to public, we may, perhaps, indulge in feelings of secret gratification that among our ancestors individuality had more play than is possible in these well ordered times. Another picturesque but, strictly speaking, intolerable effort at design is to be seen at The Martins, Chipping Campden (Fig. [261]). The great truncated corner pilaster, the porch with its cornice running into the window, can be defended on no grounds save that there they are. But so imperfect is our nature that this bit of haphazard composition gives more pleasure than many a more correct attempt at design; a pleasure allied, perhaps, to that cynical satisfaction we experience in watching shortcomings in our friends from which we ourselves are free.
The ironwork of the early eighteenth century is one of its most remarkable productions. In England ironwork design seems to have burst suddenly into full splendour, without any gradual preparation. There are no elaborate specimens to be found throughout the seventeenth century until its close, nor are there any drawings by Thorpe, Smithson, Jones, or Webb, which lead one to suppose that they treated ironwork in any but the simplest way. But with the advent in 1689 of Jean Tijou, a native of France, who was probably brought over from the Netherlands by Queen Mary, consort of William III., the whole aspect was changed, and a school of clever blacksmiths grew up who filled the country, and more especially London and its suburbs, with beautiful bits of design in gates, fences, sign-boards, mace-holders in churches, balustrades of staircases, screens, and other objects where iron could be employed. Their work is marked by great judgment in varying the sizes of the iron bars and scrolls, by the variety and elaboration of the design, and by the judicious introduction of thin sheet iron, hammered and modelled into foliage or some heraldic device. The craftsmen seem to have known exactly how to handle their material so as to combine strength with lightness, vigour with delicacy, the open effect of scroll-work with the solid effect of foliage. The due mixture of the curved line with the straight, the growth of one from the other, the repetition of straight lines in suitable positions, all seem to have come to them by intuition which seldom erred. Of the immense amount of work which still survives, the proportion of weak, unmeaning, or ill-adapted design is infinitesimal. Something, no doubt, they owed to France, but they worked largely on their own lines, and established a school of design which is essentially English.
Fig. 261.—The Martins, Chipping Campden, 1714.