Early Renaissance Architecture in England: A Historical & Descriptive Account of the Tudor, Elizabethan, & Jacobean Periods, 1500-1625Gotch, J. Alfred (John Alfred)
History
Early Renaissance Architecture in England: A Historical & Descriptive Account of the Tudor, Elizabethan, & Jacobean Periods, 1500-1625
There is one other plan for a town house; it is called "A London house,
Lady Derby, Channell Row" (page 110). It is the plan of a much finer
house than any of the foregoing, and as it is built round a courtyard,
there were no special difficulties in providing light and air. It
follows the usual type of large houses, having a central entrance, from
which a flagged path leads across the court into the screens of the
hall. The staircases, chapel, winter parlour, kitchen and other rooms
are grouped round the court in the ordinary way, the only difference
being that those which occupy the sides of the court have no windows
on their outside walls, but only such as look inwards into the court
itself. The restrictions imposed by the fact of the house being a
"London house" are therefore very slight. The "Channell Row" where this
house was built was probably the street of that name in Westminster.
These plans of Thorpe's are of considerable interest, as they show the
first steps taken towards developing a plan suitable for the confined
spaces available in large towns.
[Illustration: 191.--THE "SWAN" INN, LECHLADE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.]
Reverting to the smaller examples under consideration, we find that
a great variety was introduced into the corbels which carried the
projecting floors; many of them were grotesques after the fashion of
that on the "King's Arms" at Sandwich, in Kent (Fig. 187), others were
simpler, like the examples from Canterbury (Figs. 188, 189), while
others, like that from Orton Waterville, Huntingdonshire (Fig. 190),
combined both ideas. But the characteristic common to them all is
boldness, both of size and treatment. They generally had a spiral about
them in one form or another, varied by foliage or projecting bosses,
or some variation of the strap-work _motif_. The great corner-posts of
such houses as formed the corner of a street were often wrought with
a remarkable amount of care. They were not only of sufficient size to
make suitable angle-posts, but they were brought out at the top in a
diagonal manner in order to support the storey above, which overhung
the lower one on both faces; an instance of this treatment may be
seen in the example from Sandwich (Fig. 187). In some places it was
customary not only to bring out the face of each storey beyond that of
the one below, but to bring the whole house out over the footwalk. The
Rows at Chester are a well-known example of this practice. The Long Row
on the great market-place of Nottingham is another instance, but here
the arcade has been almost entirely rebuilt, one of the last specimens
of a Jacobean front having recently been removed in the course of
making a new street.
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