145. Staircase and Doorway, Rawdon House, Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire.
146. Astley Hall, Lancashire.
The Long Gallery.
These staircases led up to important rooms: to the great chamber and the long gallery, as well as to the bedrooms. The great chamber was a room of state, and answered somewhat to the drawing-room of the present day. It was, of course, decorated in the usual way with panelled walls, fretted ceiling, and a large chimney-piece. So, too, was the long gallery, perhaps the most characteristic room of an Elizabethan house. The earliest instance of a long gallery seems to have been at Hampton Court, of a date about 1540. It continued in fashion, designers vying in their endeavours to give it extraordinary length, until the time of Charles I., when, under the changed ideas as to household arrangement which then prevailed, it disappeared. Its precise object is not quite clear. At Apethorpe it was intended as a music-room, as testified by the inscription on the chimney-piece:—
“Rare and ever to be wisht maye sownde heere
Instruments w^ch fainte sprites and muses cheere,
Composing for the Body, Sowle, and Eare,
Which Sickness, Sadness, and Fowle Spirits feare.”