162. Boughton House, Northamptonshire (cir. 1700).
Boughton House in Northamptonshire lies outside the usual run of classic houses of its period. It was built, or rather rebuilt, by Ralph, Duke of Montagu, who incorporated in his new house a considerable portion of his ancestral home, which had been first erected in the middle of the sixteenth century. Montagu had been ambassador at the court of Louis XIV., and on his return to England towards the end of the seventeenth century, he built his house, as one chronicler affirms, after the model of Versailles. It was a very modest version, it is true; but there is a French feeling about it, in rather refreshing contrast to the innumerable Palladian mansions of later years (Fig. 162). The “long arcade” is there, but there is a welcome absence of overpowering columns and cornices, and the windows are all adequate for their purpose. Its restrained treatment, indeed, leads the casual visitor to pronounce it dull; but its very simplicity produces dignity, and its detail is refined. Within, it has ranges of noble rooms (Fig. 183), which, like those at Hampton Court, have the drawback of leading one into the other without the help of a corridor. They are all panelled with large panels, and are full of fine furniture of the period, and fine pictures. There are several excellent staircases, of different and somewhat unusual design; and many of the ceilings exhibit the masterpieces of Verrio or his school (Fig. 209). The house was the centre of a vast and magnificent lay-out, in which great avenues, sunk gardens, canals, lakes, cascades, and statuary all played their part. The whole place, in spite of the decay of the gardens, retains much of its original interest, and gives a vivid idea of the home of a great noble of the time of William and Mary.
163. The Entrance, Drayton House, Northants (cir. 1700).
Another house with much work of the same period is Drayton, in the same county. This is an interesting edifice dating back to the beginning of the fourteenth century. The early roof of the great hall has already been illustrated (Fig. 84). Considerable alterations were made in the reign of Henry VI.; a long wing was added in Elizabeth’s time; and the close of the seventeenth century left perhaps the most lasting mark of all. The hall was refronted and furnished with a fine doorway (Fig. 163), and enormous sash windows. At the ends of the front courtyard columned arcades were introduced. A chapel was contrived against the ancient windowless wall of fortified times. Most of the old mullioned windows were replaced by sashes. Two venerable towers were crowned with cupolas on columns, which lift themselves up against the sky and proclaim the identity of the house at a glance. New staircases were contrived, one covered with a coved ceiling on which Lanseroon tried his skill. Many rooms were panelled with the large panels of the time. The long gallery in the attic of the Elizabethan wing was made into a library with rows of carefully designed shelves. A little room leading out of the library was fitted up as a boudoir for the Duchess of Norfolk; its ceiling was coved and gilt, and a mirror placed in the central panel; the walls were partly panelled and partly fitted with cases of curious Chinese objects; the floor was covered with a charming design in parquetry, where formal patterns were interspersed with dainty little birds, admirably drawn. The great hall was ceiled below the ancient open-timber roof. The whole place was renovated within and without, and newly furnished with fine chairs, settees, tables, and beds, which remain to this day in the house where they went when they were new. Nor was this all. The gardens were rearranged; stables were built; long walls of enclosure were raised, pierced with gateways into which splendid iron gates were hung. The front court was enclosed on one side with a long stretch of excellent iron railings. Quaint flights of steps led from one level to another. Innumerable lead urns, large and small, but all bearing delicately modelled designs, were placed at intervals along the balustrades, or mounted on great stone pedestals as worthy to form central objects in the various quarters of the garden. The whole place is another admirable example of how noblemen housed themselves in those days, and it has this advantage over Boughton, that it preserves its gardens, and that it has a longer and more varied history to look back upon.
Shortly after the work at Boughton and Drayton was finished, Sir John Vanbrugh was laying his “heavy loads” on the earth in various parts of the country. Heavy they may be, but no one can deny them vigour and force. Vanbrugh, like his contemporaries, troubled himself little about the niceties of planning from the point of view of daily life, nor did he even provide rooms of a size and dignity proportionate to the vast palaces he designed. But no architect of the time succeeded better in pleasing the passer-by with his stately buildings. Blenheim, the gift of a grateful nation to her most distinguished hero, was rivalled by Castle Howard (Fig. 164), the private enterprise of a wealthy nobleman. Eastbury in Dorset was nearly as large, and from the outset must have been something of a white elephant to its owners. At the end of the eighteenth century its possessor is said to have offered an annuity of £200 to any one who would live there and keep it in repair. Finding nobody willing to undertake the responsibility, he finally pulled down all but one wing. Seaton Delaval, in Northumberland, though not so large, was still on an extravagant scale. The central block, a fine and massive piece of building, had nevertheless no great amount of accommodation, and it has never been rebuilt since it was burnt down in 1752. Both the outlying wings remain; the kitchen was in one, many yards distant from the dining-room; and some of the bedrooms in this block have to this day no direct communication with the outer air. The other wing contained, as usual, the stables; but so vast are its spaces that the standings within it that are used have had to be enclosed in order to keep them warm.
164. Castle Howard, Yorkshire (1714).
The plan of Castle Howard (Fig. 165) shows what splendour Vanbrugh and his clients aimed at. The house itself, with a long extending garden front, a lofty hall, and the prevalent curved colonnades flanking the chief entrance, is supported by two projecting wings, containing on one side the chapel, and on the other the kitchen and other rooms called the “hunting apartments.” Outside each wing is a large court—the stable court on one side, the kitchen court on the other, the whole disposition producing a frontage of 660 feet. Blenheim by the same reckoning extended 850 feet. The bird’s-eye view of Castle Howard (Fig. 164) shows the stately treatment of the exterior seen from the front; while Fig. 166 (from a photograph) shows the garden façade. It is a palace rather than a private house. The general view also shows how the buildings that compose the wings are treated absolutely alike, although their purposes are widely different. This practice must have resulted in extravagance and inconvenience at one end or the other, probably at both. Doubtless this aspect of the question occurred to the designer, but it must be remembered that the early eighteenth century frankly built for show rather than for use. Pope points this moral in his letter to Burlington—