It is worth notice that the picturesque element, inherited from the Gothic architecture of the middle ages, which before the eighteenth century had completely vanished from our public buildings, and the mansions of the wealthy did not entirely die out of works executed in remote places. In the half-timbered manors and farmhouses which abound in Lancashire, Cheshire, Shropshire, and Staffordshire, and in other minor works, we always find a tinge, sometimes a very full colouring, of the picturesque and the irregular; the gables are sharp, upper storeys overhang, and the treatment of the timbers is thoroughly Gothic (Fig. [83]); so are the mouldings, transoms and mullions to the windows, and barge boards to the roofs. In the reign of James I. a mode of enriching the exteriors of dwelling-houses, as well as their ceilings, chimney-pieces, &c., with ornaments modelled in plaster came in, and though the remaining specimens are from year to year disappearing, yet in some old towns (e.g. in Ipswich) examples of this sort of treatment (known as Jacobean) still linger.
In Queen Anne’s reign a semi-Gothic version of Renaissance architecture was practised, to which great attention has been directed in the present day. The Queen Anne style is usually carried out in brickwork, executed in red bricks and often most admirable in its workmanship. Pilasters, cornices, and panels are executed in cut bricks, and for arches, niches, and window heads very finely jointed bricks are employed. The details are usually Renaissance, but of debased character; a crowning cornice of considerable projection under a high-pitched hipped roof (i.e. one sloping back every way like a truncated pyramid) is commonly employed; so also are gables of broken outline. Dormer windows rich and picturesque, and high brick chimneys are also employed; so are bow windows, often carried on concave corbels of a clumsy form. Prominence is given in this style to the joiner’s work; the windows, which are usually sash windows, are heavily moulded and divided into small squares by wooded sash bars. The doors have heavily moulded panels, and are often surmounted by pediments carried by carved brackets or by pilasters; in the interiors the woodwork of staircases such as the balusters, newel posts, and handrails is treated in a very effective and well considered way, the greater part of the work being turned on the lathe and enriched with mouldings extremely well designed for execution in that manner. By this style and the modifications of it which were more or less practised till they finally died out, the traditional picturesqueness of English architecture which it had inherited from the middle ages was kept alive, so that it has been handed down, in certain localities almost, if not quite, to the present century.
SCOTLAND.
The architecture of Scotland during the sixteenth and succeeding centuries possesses exceptional interest. It was the case here, as it had been in England, that the most important buildings of the time were domestic; the erection of churches and monasteries had ceased.
The castles and semi-fortified houses of Scotland form a group apart, possessing strongly-marked and well-defined character; they are designed in a mixed style in which the Gothic elements predominated over the classic ones. But the Scottish domestic Gothic, from which the new style was partly derived, had borne little or no resemblance to the florid Tudor of England. It was the severe and simple architecture of strongholds built with stubborn materials, and on rocky sites, where there was little inducement to indulge in decoration. Dunstaffnage or Kilchurn Castles may be referred to as examples of these plain, gloomy keeps with their stepped gables, small loops for windows, and sometimes angle turrets.
The classic elements of the style were not drawn (as had been the case in England) direct from Italy, but came from France. The Scotch, during their long struggles with the English, became intimately allied with the French, and it is therefore not surprising that Scottish Baronial architecture should resemble the early Renaissance of French châteaux very closely. The hardness of the stone in which the Scotch masons wrought forbade their attempting the extremely delicate detail of the François I. ornament, executed as it is in fine, easily-worked stone of smooth texture; and the difference in the climate of the two countries justified in Scotland a boldness which would have appeared exaggerated and extreme in France. Accordingly the style in passing from one country to the other has changed its details to no inconsiderable extent.
Many castles were erected in the sixteenth and following centuries in Scotland, or were enlarged and altered; the most characteristic features in almost all of them are short round angle turrets, thrown out upon bold corbellings near the upper part of towers and other square masses. These are often capped by pointed roofs; and the corbels which carry them, and which are always of bold, vigorous character, are frequently enriched by a kind of cable ornament, which is very distinctive. Towers of circular plan, like bastions, and projecting from the general line of the walls, or at the angles, constantly occur. They are frequently crowned by conical roofs, but sometimes (as at Fyvie Castle) they are made square near the top by means of a series of corbels, and finished with gables or otherwise. Parapets are in general use, and are almost always battlemented. Roofs, when visible, are of steep pitch, and their gables are almost always of stepped outline, while dormer windows, frequently of fantastic form, are not infrequent. Chimneys are prominent and lofty. Windows are square-headed, and, as a rule, small; sometimes they retain the Gothic mullions and transom, but in many cases these features are absent. Doorways are generally arched, and not often highly ornamented.
Cawdor Castle, Glamis Castle, Fyvie Castle, Castle Fraser, the old portions of Dunrobin Castle, Tyninghame House, the extremely picturesque palace at Falkland, and a considerable part of Stirling Castle, may be all quoted as good specimens of this thoroughly national style, but it would be easy to name two or three times as many buildings nearly, if not quite, equal to these in architectural merit.
Heriot’s Hospital, Edinburgh, may be quoted (with part of Holyrood Palace) as showing the style of the seventeenth century. Heriot’s Hospital was built between the years 1628 and 1660. It is built round a great quadrangle, and has square towers at the four corners, each relieved by small corbelled angle turrets. The entrance displays columns and an entablature of debased but not unpleasing Renaissance architecture, and the building altogether resembles an English Elizabethan or Jacobean building to a greater extent than most Scottish designs.
When this picturesque style, which appears indeed to have retained its hold for long, at last died out, very little of any artistic value was substituted for it. Late in the eighteenth century, it is true, the Brothers Adam erected public buildings in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and carried out various works of importance in a classic style which has certainly some claim to respect; but if correct it was tame and uninteresting, and a poor exchange for the vigorous vitality which breathes in the works of the architects of the early Renaissance in Scotland.