The two most distinctive characteristics of the new style were the absence of gables and the substitution of sash windows for the old mullioned form. Both these changes had a sobering effect on the appearance of a house. In the absence of gables roofs had to be hipped, thus compelling a greater simplicity in their plan, and a much plainer sky-line. The sash window was more stubborn of treatment than the mullioned window. The latter could be either lengthened or widened by a row of lights and yet be in harmony with its neighbours; the sash window was not susceptible of such variation; it had to be of the same width and height as others of the same range. For these reasons it lent itself ill to the forming of bay windows; it was too wide and too high, and altogether too large a feature to be adapted to the purpose, and accordingly bay windows went out of fashion. The elements of design being thus greatly restricted, they required much skilful handling, and a keen sense of proportion to render the result satisfactory. It was just in these points that Inigo Jones’s natural gifts and careful training enabled him to succeed.
Raynham Park (Fig. 148) is a link between the two styles; its projecting wings, finished with gables, are reminiscent of the past; its sash windows and its bold, carefully profiled cornice are a foretaste of the future. Coleshill (Fig. 150) has left Elizabethan times far behind, and retains nothing of their peculiarities either in plan or appearance. There are no gables, the roof is hipped at each corner and starts from a widely projecting cornice. The chimneys are gathered into large stacks, symmetrically placed; not into groups of single, slender shafts. The dormers have no stonework about them; they belong to the roof, not to the walls. The designer, having eschewed picturesque details, had to rely for his effect upon proportion and the careful spacing of his windows. Coleshill may be regarded as typical of the style adopted for large country houses down to the end of the seventeenth century. Up Park, Squerries, Melton Constable, and many others built towards the close of this century or in the first years of the next, are of the same type, although somewhat varied in treatment. There were many intermediate steps between Jacobean houses and houses like Coleshill. Some of these steps have been attributed to Inigo Jones himself—taken by him, the chroniclers assert, before his visit to Italy. Such are St John’s College, Oxford, and the house at Houghton Conquest, in Bedfordshire, built for the Countess of Pembroke, “Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother.” But expert opinion is now inclined to doubt the correctness of such attribution. If Inigo Jones made no use of a transitional style, others did so.
Swakeleys in Middlesex (Fig. 152) is a case in point. Here mullioned windows are still retained, but the cornices, breaking out into pediments, and the gables crowned also with pediments, indicate the impending change.
152. Swakeleys, Middlesex (cir. 1630).
153. Houses in Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields (1640).
(From a Drawing by J. Nash, about 1840.)
154. Sparrow’s House, Ipswich.