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
At Chipchase Castle, in Northumberland (Plate XXIV.), a square porch is
combined with a canted bay above it. The doorway follows the more usual
pattern; it has the circular arch resting on imposts, a projecting
keystone carried up to break the lines of the cornice, and is flanked
on either side by a circular column, which endeavours to justify its
presence by carrying an obelisk. The obelisks serve the useful purpose
of breaking the severe line of the splay which joins the octagonal
bay to the square porch below it, and they, together with the shield
of arms and the carving on the columns and the voussoirs of the arch,
impart considerable richness to the whole composition. At Gayhurst, in
Buckinghamshire, the columns, which are primarily introduced for the
sake of ornament, are made to do actual duty by supporting a slight
projection of the storey above them (Fig. 66); and there are two tiers
of them, a fact which helps to increase the importance of the entrance.
In this, as in similar cases, the cornices are continued along the
sides of the projecting porch, and are stopped against the face of the
main building. At Upper Slaughter, in Gloucestershire (Plate XXIV.),
the porch has more of the appearance of being an excrescence, the only
connecting member being the string over the upper windows of the
house, which is returned along the sides of the porch. The cornices
of the porch are in this instance only just returned round its outer
angles, and not carried back to the main building. The pilasters are
merely ornamental adjuncts: there is no pretence about them of doing
any work; the head of the upper window breaks unceremoniously into
the frieze of the cornice, the keystone of the arch is carried up so
that the lines of the lower cornice may break round it, and the whole
treatment shows that the designer was free from any morbid craving
after correctness. In the doorway at Hatfield, in the side of the court
(Plate XXV.), the work is handled in a more formal manner. There is
the semicircular arch, with its impost, and the two flanking pilasters
carried up in order to break the cornice, while a central projection
follows up from the keystone. There is no crowning pediment, but
in its place is a strap-work pattern terminating at the top with a
point which finds itself in the centre of one of the triglyphs in the
entablature which makes the circuit of the whole house at the first
floor level. The archway at the foot of the grand staircase at Wardour
Castle (Plate XXV.) is treated with still greater propriety; the
designer has allowed himself to take no liberties with his copy, but
the severity is relieved by the informal manner in which the steps wind
away to the left. This is an accident arising from the fact that the
staircase is of an older date; it is covered with Gothic vaulting, and
at its upper end the original pointed arch has been made semicircular,
and the stone round it has been recessed so as to surround it with a
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