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
The plan shown in Plate LXXXV. has no title, but it has the advantage
of having every room named; and its elevation is also drawn, which
was not the case in either of the two preceding examples. The plan
follows the familiar lines; it has a long narrow body, and at each end
a long narrow wing at right angles to it, with a staircase turret at
the internal angles. The porch and screens are in the usual relation
to the hall, beyond which are the parlour and two "lodgings," each of
which has a small inner room attached. The first of these lodgings
is a thoroughfare room, but there is an external door in the passage
connecting the two, which enables the hall to be gained by crossing the
court, thus affording an alternative route of a kind. On the servants'
side of the house are the buttery, the pantry, the winter parlour, the
larder, kitchen, bolting-house, and pastry. The kitchen has the usual
small oven; the pastry has the invariable two, one somewhat larger than
the other. The two wings are treated symmetrically on the principal
sides (towards the court), one incidental result being that the pastry
gets vastly more light than the kitchen. It has already been suggested
that the winter parlour was placed on the servants' side in order to
be near the kitchen. The bolting-house was the room where the meal
was bolted, that is, sifted. The "pastry" was, as its name implies,
the room in which were made pies, "cates," confectionery, and the
"pretty little tiny kickshaws" which Justice Shallow ordered when he
was furnishing his table for the entertainment of Sir John Falstaff.
The housewives of the time were accomplished in the making of such
dainties. The narrator of the _Progress of James I._ in 1603 remarks
upon the delicate fare provided by Sir Anthony Mildmay at Apethorpe,
rendered "more delicate by the art that made it seem beauteous to
the eye; the Lady of the house being one of the most excellent
Confectioners in England, though I confess many honourable women very
expert." When Queen Elizabeth was entertained at Elvetham by the Earl
of Hertford in 1591, a banquet was served in the evening "into the
lower gallery in the garden," when a thousand dishes were served by
two hundred gentlemen, with the light of a hundred torches, and among
the more notable dishes were some _tours de force_ in sugar-work,
representing the royal arms, the arms of all the nobility, figures of
men and women, castles and forts, all kinds of animals, all kinds of
birds, reptiles and "all kind of worms," mermaids, whales, and "all
sorts of fishes": all these, we are told, were standing dishes of
sugar-work. It is not suggested that the lady of the house herself
produced these masterpieces; but ladies were certainly skilful
in the making of cakes, and it was a recommendation in actual life, as
well as in one of the plays of the time, that the heroine could "do
well in the pastry."
[Illustration: PLATE LXXXV.
UN-NAMED PLAN AND ELEVATION. (PAGES 89, 90.)
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