The few drawings in the Smithson collection which refer to Bolsover are all, except one, connected with the castellated portion, and they go to prove that John Smithson must have been concerned with that particular building. But there is one drawing of a large doorway (No. 40) which closely resembles the central doorway on the terrace front of the gallery, and the general detail of this building, which is large in scale, heavy and rather spoilt by laboured freaks, is akin to much else that is to be found among the Smithson drawings. This gallery block is evidently of two dates. The eastern portion has a certain amount of detail in the simpler style of the Jacobean period, while that of the western half is more laboured and contorted. At the eastern end are five small projecting stones bearing initials and dates; one of them has on it H. S. 1629, and may conceivably commemorate Huntingdon Smithson. But as it has four neighbours with other initials and the dates 1629, 1630, it would appear that in any case he was only one out of five persons entitled to recognition. However, the evidence of tradition, the date-stone and the drawings clearly point to the Smithsons being responsible for the design of the buildings generally, and it may well be that the influence of the father is visible in the earlier and simpler work, and that of the son in the grandiose gallery, with which he may have been busy at some time between his father’s death in 1634 and the outbreak of hostilities in 1642. The riding-house is much quieter in treatment than the gallery, and its detail is more refined. In spite of the tradition that the designs were collected in Italy, the work shows more affinity to Dutch models than to Italian, as may be gathered from the illustrations (Figs. [13], [16]).
The riding-house at Welbeck (Fig. [20]) follows the established lines in its treatment; it has steep gables with finials, mullioned windows, and an open hammer-beam roof: the very heavy pediments over the doors are in keeping with those at Bolsover, and with many other details in the collection, and they show how crude Smithson was in his treatment of classic features. It is important to bear this in mind, because he may be considered (although he had an uncommonly heavy hand) as typical of the majority of English designers before the influence of Inigo Jones began to be felt.
Smithson’s house-plans are of great interest, inasmuch as they belong to the order of things which was shortly to pass away. Some of them follow the traditional lines which made the hall the principal apartment of the house, placing it between the family rooms and the servants’ quarters. The plan “for My Lord Sheffield’s house” is an example of this arrangement (Fig. [14]). It shows the rooms grouped in the old way round a courtyard, which had to be traversed in approaching the hall from the front door. The hall itself was entered through the screens at its lower end, and was flanked at its upper end by the parlour and other family rooms, and by the grand staircase. On the opposite side of the court were the kitchen, pantry, and other rooms for the service of the house. In the four corners of the court were square turrets containing subsidiary staircases. On the upper floor (Fig. [14]) the chief rooms were the dining-chamber, placed as far from the kitchen as the limits of the house would allow, and the long gallery. The fact of a special room being set apart for dining itself indicates a fairly late date in respect of this ancient type of plan. As my Lord Sheffield was created Earl of Mulgrave in 1626, the plan must be prior to that year, but the house was probably not more than ten years old when the change of title took place.
Fig. 16.—Bolsover Castle, Derbyshire. The Riding-House.
The other specimen of Smithson’s planning is one of the H type, with the hall in one of the wings (Fig. [15]). This is a departure from the old arrangement, which would have placed the hall in the central block, and thus have brought the buttery (which opens from the screens) into close touch with the kitchens. The hall becomes here more of a passage-room and less of a living-room than under the ancient disposition. There are no sitting-rooms for the family on the ground floor, but the principal staircase leads to the great chamber on the upper floor, thence to the long gallery and a distant “withdrawing-chamber,” as well as to the chapel and several bedrooms.
Fig. 17.—Elevation of a House, not named.
From the Smithson Collection.
Both these houses are rigidly symmetrical in their external treatment, and it is interesting to note how, in addition to preserving such old-established rooms as the great chamber and long gallery, they depend for their external effect upon old features, such as mullioned windows, arcaded entrances, turrets, and the breaking up of the various fronts with substantial projections and large bay-windows. These devices were customary among the designers of the time of Elizabeth and James I., but they were gradually to be superseded by other methods.