The houses, even in large towns like London, were built mainly in wood, in some cases down to the 17th century; in the country, the smaller houses were constructed with trunks of trees in pairs, one end of the trunk being sunk in the ground, the other bent over and secured by a ridge piece, thus forming a pointed arch, the opening of which was about 11 ft. The pairs were fixed 16 ft. apart, and the space included constituted a bay, any requisite increase in the size of the house being made by doubling or trebling the bays. The roofs were thatched with straw on battens, and sometimes with a collar beam carrying a floor, which constituted an upper storey. The end walls were closed with wooden studs and wattle-and-daub filling. The pairs of trees were known as forks or crucks. Vitruvius (ii. 1) suggests a similar kind of building in ancient times, except that the interlaced twigs were covered with clay, so as to carry off the rain. In Yorkshire there was another type of house, known as a coit, which was a dwelling-house and barn (shippon) united; the latter contained the cow-stalls with loft above, and the former was in two storeys, with a ladder inside the room leading to the upper floor.[1]
| Fig. 1.—Houses at Cluny. |
Passing now to structures of a less ephemeral character, the earliest houses of which there still remain substantial relics are those built in stone (see [Manor House]). The Jew’s House at Lincoln, 12th century, is one of the best-known examples, and still preserves its street front in stone, with rich entrance doorway and first-floor windows lighting the principal room, which seems invariably in those early houses to have been on the first floor, the ground floor being used for service and stores (see Plate I. fig. 5). To the 13th century belongs the old Rectory House at West Dean, Sussex, and to the 14th century the Parsonage House at Market Deeping, Lincolnshire. The principal examples of the domestic architecture of this early period in the country are castles, manor houses and farm buildings, as town houses occupied sites too valuable to be left untouched; this, however, is not the case in France, and particularly in the south, where streets of early houses are still to be found in good preservation, such as those at Cluny (fig. 1) and Cordes (Tarn), and others at Montferrand, Cahors, Figeac, Angers, Provins, Sarlat (fig. 2), St Emilion, Périgueux, Soissons and Beauvais, dating from the 12th to the 14th centuries. One of the most remarkable examples is the Musician’s House at Reims (see Plate I., fig. 4), with large windows on the first floor, between which are niches with life-size figures of musicians seated in them. Generally speaking, the ground storeys of these houses, which in many cases were occupied by shops, have been transformed, but occasionally the old shop fronts remain, as in Dinan, Morlaix and other old towns in Brittany. Houses of the first Renaissance of great beauty exist in Orleans, such as the house of Agnes Sorel; and the example in the Market Place illustrated in fig. 3; in Tours, Tristan’s house in brick with stone quoins and dressings to windows; in Rouen, Caen, Bayeux, Toulouse, Dijon and, in fact, in almost every town throughout France. Of houses of large dimensions, which in France are termed hôtels, there are also many other fine examples, the best known of which are the hôtel de Jacques Cœur (see Plate II., fig. 7), at Bourges, and the hôtel de Cluny at Paris (see Plate I., fig. 6). In the 15th and 16th centuries in France, owing to the value of the sites in towns, the houses rose to many storeys, the upper of which were built in half-timber, sometimes projecting on corbels and richly carved; of these numerous examples exist at Rouen, Beauvais, Bayeux and other towns in Normandy and Brittany. Of such structures in English towns (see Plate II. fig. 9) there are still preserved some examples in York, Southampton, Chester, Shrewsbury, Stratford-on-Avon, and many smaller towns; the greatest development in half-timber houses in England is that which is found more particularly throughout Kent, Sussex and Surrey, in houses of modest dimensions, generally consisting of ground and first floor only, with sometimes additional rooms in the roof; in these the upper storey invariably projects in front of the lower, giving increased dimensions to the rooms in the former, but adopted in order to protect the walls of the ground storey from rain, which in the upper storey was effected by the projecting eaves of the roof. In the north and west of England, where stone could be obtained at less cost than brick, and in the east of England, where brick, often imported from the Low Countries, was largely employed, the ordinary houses were built in those materials, and in consequence of their excellent construction many houses of the 16th and 17th centuries have remained in good preservation down to the present day; they are found in the Cotswolds generally, and (among small towns) at Broadway in Worcestershire and (of brick) throughout Essex and Suffolk. Among the larger half-timber houses built in the 15th and 16th centuries, mention may be made of Bramhall Hall, near Manchester; Speke Hall, near Liverpool (see Plate III., fig. 10); The Oaks; West Bromwich; and Moreton Old Hall, Cheshire, one of the most elaborate of the series (see Plate III., fig. 11).
| Fig. 2.—House at Sarlat. |
On the borders of the Rhine, as at Bacharach and Rhense, and throughout Germany, hall-timber houses of the most picturesque character are found in every town, large and small, those of Hildesheim (see Plate II., fig. 8) dating from the 15th and 16th centuries, and in some cases rising to a great height with four or five storeys, not including those in the lofty roofs. Houses in stone from the 12th to the 16th century are found in Cologne, Metz, Trier, Hanover and Münster in Westphalia, where again there are whole streets remaining; and in brick at Rostock, Stralsund, Lübeck, Greifswald and Dantzig, forming a very remarkable series of 15th and 16th-century work.
Of half-timber work in Italy there are no examples, but sometimes (as at Bologna) the rooms of the upper floors are carried on arcades, and sometimes on corbels, as the casa dei Carracci in the same town. The principal feature of the Italian house is the courtyard in the rear, with arcades on one or more sides, the front in stone or brick, or both combined, being of the greatest simplicity (examples in San Gimignano and Pisa). At Viterbo are small houses in stone, two of which have external stone staircases of fine design, and the few windows on the ground floor suggest that the rooms there were used only for stores. Houses with external staircases, but without any architectural pretensions, are found throughout the Balkan provinces.
| Fig. 3.—Detail of house at Orleans. |
The introduction of the purer Italian style into England in the 17th century created a great change in domestic architecture. Instead of the projecting wings and otherwise picturesque contour of the earlier work the houses were made square or rectangular on plan, in two or three storeys, crowned with a modillion cornice carrying a roof of red tiles; the only embellishments of the main front were the projecting courses of stone on the quoins and architraves round the windows, and flat pilasters carrying a hood or pediment flanking the entrance doorway. In the larger mansions more thought was bestowed on the introduction of porticoes (scarcely necessary in the English climate), with sometimes great flights of steps up to the principal floor, which was raised above a basement with cold and dark passages; a great saloon in the centre of the block, lighted from above, took the place of the great entrance hall of the Tudor period, and the rooms frequently led one out of the other, without an independent entrance door. On the other hand, in the ordinary houses, the deficiency in external ornament was amply made up for by the comfort in the interior and the decoration of the staircase and other rooms. Towards the close of the century the square mullioned and transomed windows, with opening casements, gave way to sash windows, introduced from Holland, and these with moulded and stout sash-bars gave a certain character to the outside of the houses, which are valued now for their quiet unpretentious character and excellent construction. In the closes of many English cathedrals, on the outskirts of London, and in some of the older squares, as Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Queen Square, are examples of this style of house. The substitution of thin sash-bars in the 19th century, and their omission occasionally, in favour of plate-glass, deprived the house-front of one of its chief attractions; but the old English casements and oriels or bow-windows have been again introduced, and a return has been made to the style which prevailed in the beginning of the 18th century, commonly known as that of Queen Anne.
Plate III.
| Photo, Frith & Co. |
| Fig. 10.—SPEKE HALL, NEAR LIVERPOOL. |