Fig. 31.—COLESHILL. Ceiling of the Hall.
The plan is as different from the traditional plan of English houses as are those in Kent’s “Designs of Inigo Jones,” a collection which will be dealt with more particularly later on. There is no great hall connecting the parlours with the kitchens, and serving itself as one of the chief living-rooms. The servants are relegated to the basement, the whole of the ground floor is given up to the family, the hall is more of a vestibule than a living-room. In former times the staircase, although often handsomely treated, consisted of a single series of flights occupying a compact space. At Coleshill a vast hall is devoted to the staircase, or rather to two staircases, each equally eligible, starting from the same place and terminating at either end of the same landing (Fig. [30]).
Although the servants were sent half underground, some of the stateliness followed them, and the approach to the back door is flanked by two massive pillars, each of which contains a coved niche.
Fig. 32.—Raynham Park, Norfolk. Ground Plan.
The building is attributed to Inigo Jones on the testimony of a tablet in the house, and its date, according to the same authority, is 1650. In the absence of any other evidence this assertion, although not contemporaneous with the building, may be accepted;[21] but it should be remembered that Jones died in 1652, and that the last years of his life, or almost the last, were spent in the turmoil of the Civil War. So much did the unrest disturb his life that he appointed John Webb to be his deputy in the office of surveyor of the works.[22] In any case it must have been either Jones or Webb who designed Coleshill, for there was nobody else who had at that time received the training necessary to produce it.
There are several fine ceilings (Fig. [31]) wrought in Jones’s bold fashion, which was as different from that which produced the busy and slender patterns of Elizabethan work, as was the general treatment of plan and elevation from that of an Elizabethan mansion. It is interesting to find one of the smaller rooms panelled in an earlier style, Jacobean in character, with panelling designed for its position, not imported from elsewhere; and as it is difficult to suppose that Jones would have departed from his usual manner in this particular case, it is probable that the room was left to the unaided skill of some local craftsman, who relied on his own traditions.
Fig. 33.—RAYNHAM PARK, Norfolk, cir. 1636. Garden Front.
Of Jones’s connection with Raynham Park, in Norfolk (Figs. [32], [33]), there is no evidence beyond tradition and the style of the work itself; but much of this has touches about it which are quite in his manner. There are indications that the house was built at two periods, and these make it difficult to attribute the whole work to one designer. But the treatment of the front, with its two wings of decided though slight projection, and its rather heavily-curved gables, serves to make it a connecting link between the old and the new styles. The date of this house is generally stated to be 1636, but further investigation is required in order to arrive at its true history, and to account for the two periods of building.