"I made Nottingham a palace royal,
Windsor, Eltham, and many mo'."
Princesses have been cradled here, Parliaments have met in the Great Hall, and kings and queens have betaken themselves here to meditate upon the waning earthly greatness. The gloomy Henry VII. at intervals retired to Eltham; Queen Mary or Queen Elizabeth would spend a few days in the almost forsaken palace; and James I. had been known to pass a morning here.
Eltham is now a regal ruin. "The fair pleasaunce, the echoing courts, the king's lodging, presence and guard chamber, and the rooms in which the royal attendants lodged, have all disappeared. The gateway and high walls of ruddy brick only remain to mark the site of the tilt-yard. The moat is half dry, and the sluggish stream is still spanned by the bridge of four arches, which is contemporaneous with the Hall; but 'the gateway and the fair front towards the moat,' built by Henry VII., have been replaced by two modern houses; and another, with three barge-board gables, and corbelled attics, to the east end of the Hall, retains the designation of the Buttery. There is a view of the Hall by Buck, dated 1735, which represents a great portion of the palace, with its quaint water-towers and moated walls still standing; but, although Parliament in 1827 spent £700 upon the repairs, the state of the Hall is sad enough now: full of litter of every sort, its windows unglazed or bricked up; with damp fastenings in the naked walls, and rough rafters stretching across from side to side, and reaching above the corbels. It is now used as a barn. It was at once an audience-chamber and refectory, 100 feet in length, 55 in height, and 36 feet broad. But the windows now admit broad streams of cheerful sunshine, which light up the thick trails of ivy that flow over the empty panes; its deep bay-window, now stripped of glazing, but enriched with groining and tracery which flanked the daïs, betoken the progress which elegance and security had made at the period of their erection: the lofty walls continue to support a high pitched roof of oak, in tolerable preservation, with hammer-beams, carved pendants, and braces supported on corbels of hewn stone; and although the royal table, the hearth, and louvre have disappeared, there are still remains of the minstrels' gallery, and the doors in the oak screen below it, which lead to the capacious kitchen, the butteries, and cellars, to tell each their several tale of former state."[37]
Hitherto, we have mostly spoken of palaces and mansions. It is, however, very difficult to discover any fragments of houses inhabited by the gentry, before the reign, at soonest, of Edward III., or even to trace them by engravings in the older topographical works; not only from the dilapidations of time, but because very few considerable mansions had been erected by that class. It is an error to suppose that the English gentry were lodged in stately, or even in well-sized houses. They usually consisted of an entrance-passage, running through the house, with a hall on one side, a parlour beyond, and one or two chambers above; and on the opposite side, a kitchen, pantry, and other offices. Such was the ordinary manor-house of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. "In the remains of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Somersetshire is especially rich. Almost every village has a house, a parsonage, or some building or other of this class, to say nothing of extensive monastic remains, as at Glastonbury, Woodspring, Muchelney, and Old Cleve. Among the Somersetshire houses, the original portions of Clevedon Court may claim the first place. Then comes a long list, of which, perhaps, the manor-house and 'fish-house' of Meare, near Glastonbury, are the most curious and beautiful."[38]
Larger houses were erected by men of great estates during the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV.; but very few can be traced higher; and Mr. Hallam, in his History of the Middle Ages, conceives it to be difficult to name a house in England, still inhabited by a gentleman, and not of the castle description, the principal apartments of which are older than the reign of Henry VII. There may be a few solitary specimens of earlier date. The Rev. Mr. Lysons says:—"The most remarkable fragment of early building which I have anywhere found mentioned, is at a house in Berkshire, called Appleton, where there is a sort of prodigy—an entrance-passage with circular arches in the Saxon (? Norman) style, which must, probably, be as old as the reign of Henry II. No other private house in England, as I conceive, can boast of such a monument of antiquity."
Wood and stone were the earliest materials used in house-building; but as great part of England affords no stone fit for building, her oak-forests were thinned, and less durable dwellings were erected with inferior timber. Stone houses are, however, mentioned as belonging to the citizens of London, even in the latter half of the twelfth century. Flints bound together with strong cement were employed in building manor-houses. Hewn stone was employed for castles, and the larger mansions: much stone was, in early times, brought from Normandy. Chestnut was much employed. Evelyn, in his Sylva, states that "The chestnut is, next the oak, one of the most sought after by the carpenter and joiner. It hath formerly built a good part of our ancient houses in the City of London, as does yet appear. I had once a very large barn near the City, framed entirely of this timber; and certainly the trees grew not far off, probably in some woods near the town; for in that description of London, written by Fitz-Stephen, in the reign of Henry II. he speaks of a very noble and large forest which grew on the boreal [north] part of it."[39]
Ducarel, in his Anglo-Norman Antiquities, says: "Rudhall, near Ross, in Herefordshire, is built with chestnut, which probably grew on the estate, although no tree of the kind is now to be found growing wild in that part of the country. The old houses in the city of Gloucester are constructed of chestnut, derived assuredly from the chestnut-trees in the forest of Dean. In some of the oldest houses of Faversham much genuine chestnut as well as oak is employed. In the nunnery of Davington, near Faversham (now entire), the timber consists of oak, intermingled with chestnut."
In the fourteenth century, ornamental carpentry had reached a high degree of excellence. There are many examples of ancient timber houses yet remaining in this country: they have massive beams and timbers, and are generally of unnecessary strength. The intermixture of wood, brick, and stone, or wood and plaster, in the exterior of houses, was, for a considerable period, the common style of building in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Weatherboard—that is, planks overlapping each other—was formerly much used for house-fronts, and possessed great durability. Overhanging roofs, walls of plaster with lofty gables, bay-windows, and porches of timber, with each story projecting beyond the other, are so many characteristics of a mixed style, when the rude dangers of the timber houses became progressively intermingled with the massive architecture of a subsequent period; and the external use of timber in the walls continued to prevail for a very long time. Beaconsfield Rectory, of the sixteenth century, has the basement story completely built of glazed bricks in chequered patterns; the superincumbent story has elevated roofs and gables, and is constructed with massive timbers placed near together, and plastered between. The staircase, which is semi-cylindrical and composed of timber, is added to the north side of the house. The entire structure forms three sides of a quadrangle, with a lofty wall and entrance on the fourth; its interior is rude and massive.
In an account of a topographical excursion in 1634, the hall of Kenilworth is described with a roof "all of Irish wood, neatly and handsomely framed;" in it are five chimneys, "answerable to so great a room:" then we read of the Guard, Presence, and Privy chambers, fretted above richly with coats of arms, and all adorned with fair and rich chimney-pieces of alabaster, black marble, and joiners' work in curiously carved wood; all the fair and rich rooms and lodgings in the spacious tower not long since built, and repaired at great cost by Leicester. "The priuate, plaine, retiring-chamber wherein or renowned Queene of euer famous memory, alwayes made choice to repose her Selfe. Also the famous, strong old tower, called Julius Cæsar's, on top whereof was view'd the pleasant, large Poole continually sporting and playing on the Castle: the Parke, and the fforest contiguous thereto." Kenilworth has been already described at pp. [101-103].
Many a middle-aged reader can recollect the disappearance of rows of gabled houses, with timber and plaster fronts, from the metropolis: great part of the High-street of Southwark, built in this manner, was taken down between 1810 and 1831; at the latter period, some houses with ornamental plaster fronts disappeared. In Chancery-lane, a very old thoroughfare, several houses of this class have been taken down within memory; and many an old house-front, with ornamental carving, is missed from the Strand; a few linger in Holywell-street and Wych-street. And, in 1865, was taken down one side of Great Winchester-street, stated to be one of the oldest specimens of domestic architecture remaining in the metropolis. The casement hung on hinges was the earliest form of window, properly so called. Sash-windows were not introduced till the early part of the reign of Charles I., and were not general till the latter part of the time of Queen Anne.