The real aim of the designers seems to have been magnificence and display--sometimes on a large scale, sometimes on a small. The principal means used for this end was symmetry--not so much a symmetry of detail as a symmetry of parts, of large features rather than of small. We shall find this quality in almost every kind of plan, and an extremely valuable quality it is if not carried to excess. The symmetry of the Elizabethans was generally under control. It was sometimes wasteful and its results were occasionally amusing, but they were never ridiculous or fatal to the comfort of the house. Up to the present the plans we have examined have not--with the exception of Sutton Place--shown any determined attempt at a symmetrical treatment, only a certain hankering after it. With Kirby Hall (1570-75) we get a more resolute effort in this direction (Fig. 46). The entrance gateway and the screens are on an axial line running through the house and its green court. The inner court is quite symmetrically treated, door answering to door, and window to window; but the exterior façades were left to take care of themselves, and no attempt was made to balance one mass by another. [Illustration: PLATE XVII. KIRBY HALL, NORTHANTS. ELEVATION OF SOUTH SIDE OF COURTYARD (1570-75).] [Illustration: 46.--KIRBY HALL, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. GROUND PLAN (1570-75).] The symmetry of plan was carried out in the elevations too, at least so far as the courtyard is concerned. The south side, in which the projecting porch stands, is quite symmetrical, the great windows of the hall on the right being exactly balanced by similar windows on the left (Plate XVII.). The hall reaches from floor to roof, but the left wing had two storeys, and the floor of the upper one occupied one row of the glazed lights. This expedient cannot be justified on the principle of causing the exterior treatment to indicate the internal arrangement; but it can hardly be denied that the general effect would be marred were the left-hand windows divided into two tiers. The door below the windows to the left is a later insertion. A curious fact about this front is that the two outside gables, which contain much delicate detail, are partly blocked by the roofs of the side wings, which abut against them; yet it is quite certain, from the character of the detail, and from the badges which are used as ornaments in the wings, that the whole court was built at the same time, ends and sides, and it is equally certain that the whole building operations were comprised within the five years 1570 to 1575. [Illustration: PLATE XVIII. KIRBY HALL. JOHN THORPE'S GROUND PLAN. _From the Soane Museum Collection._]