Sometimes the embellishment surrounding the door was in stone or even marble, which being less susceptible of minute detail was more soberly treated. In smaller houses the treatment was naturally less elaborate, but even in places like St. Peter's Hospital, Bristol, and Abbott's Hospital at Guildford, the doorways had much attention bestowed upon them (Fig. 149 and Plate LV.). At Gayton Manor House, in Northamptonshire, there is a still simpler treatment, the effect being enhanced by projecting the door some inches into the room (Plate LV.). The hinges and latches of the doors and the fastenings of the window casements were of wrought iron, and were always more or less ornamental. There were invariably skill and ingenuity bestowed upon even the smallest piece of work. The latch from Abbott's Hospital, illustrated in Fig. 150, is an example of a spring latch, that is to say, instead of depending merely upon its weight to keep it in its place, it is furnished with a spring, and the whole of the simple mechanism is displayed to view. The plate to which it is fixed is shaped in suitable places, and the latch and its accessories are also ornamented to a certain extent. On the other side of the door would be a handle, something after the fashion of that shown in Fig. 151, which, however, is at Haddon. It is treated in a similar fashion: the plate is slightly ornamented, and the handle itself is wrought into a shape at once convenient to grasp and agreeable to the eye. In the casement fasteners a little more ornament was sometimes indulged in, advantage being taken of the fact that the ironwork was outlined against the light of the window. There are two simple examples shown in Fig. 152, and a more elaborate one in Fig. 153. The same treatment was applied to the escutcheons of keyholes, of which examples are shown in Fig. 152 and Fig. 154; the former also exhibits a lock plate and a drop handle and plate. It will be noticed that the whole of this ornament, although in some instances it looks rich, is in reality obtained by the simplest means, which consist in the main of cutting a thin plate of metal into a variety of shapes; there is hardly any modelling about it. This method is characteristic of most of the ironwork of the time; it was only seldom that modelled ornament was indulged in to the extent shown in the knocker and plate illustrated in Fig. 155. [Illustration: PLATE LV. DOORWAY, GAYTON MANOR HOUSE, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. DOORWAY, ST. PETER'S HOSPITAL, BRISTOL.] [Illustration: 154.--KEY-PLATE FROM ABBOTT'S HOSPITAL, GUILDFORD.] [Illustration: 155.--A KNOCKER (1618).] CHIMNEY-PIECES.