Fig. 3.—Broadfield Hall, Hertfordshire.
From a Drawing by Buckler, 1832.
Broadfield Hall, in Hertfordshire (Fig. [3]), illustrates the advance along these lines. There are no wings and no gables. Stone mullions are still retained; a bold cornice marks each story, the boldest being that on which the hipped roof rests. The flues are massed in two large stacks, and their existence is duly acknowledged, no attempt being made, as was sometimes the case in later times, to conceal them among irrelevant ornament. The dormer windows rise from the roof, and are no longer placed in portions of the main wall carried up for their reception. The unbroken cornice at the eaves necessitated this change. The old love of light still shows itself in the size of the windows, which are not yet subordinated to the claims of proportion.
The exact date of this house has not been ascertained, but the style is characteristic of the middle of the seventeenth century, a period when no great amount of building was undertaken, owing to the disturbed state of the country consequent upon the Civil War. The time of Shakespeare is marked by a distinct style represented in hundreds of houses, but no such wealth of illustration enriches the time of Milton.
Fig. 4.—Moyles Court, Hampshire.
With the return of Charles II. a more settled state of affairs came about, and once more the stream of architecture flowed steadily onwards. Such houses as Moyles Court, in Hampshire (Fig. [4]), were built in considerable numbers. There is nothing pretentious about them; they depend for their effect upon the regular spacing of the windows, and upon the strong shadow cast by the eaves cornice. The intermediate cornices of Broadfield have given way to a plain string. The windows are, many of them, sashes; but it would be rash to assert definitely that originally they were all so, because sashes had only recently been introduced. The chimney-stacks are large, and have a certain amount of character about them. This particular example has two projecting wings, which may indicate that the house followed the lines of an earlier one, or they may merely be a survival of old ways; in either case they are not of the essence of the period. The date of the house is not recorded, but it was probably built between 1670 and 1680, by that Dame Alice Lisle who suffered death in 1685 at the hands of Judge Jeffreys for sheltering a Nonconformist minister and a fugitive from Sedgemoor.
Fig. 5.—HANBURY HALL, near Droitwich, 1701.
