Many of the houses built during Tudor times had secret chambers and hiding-places, which were known only to a very few persons. And such hiding-places were much used, in the times of Queen Elizabeth and King James I, by priests, who ministered in secret to those who clung to the old faith. But though the churches were much out of repair, in some of them stately and costly monuments were erected in the sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth centuries. They were different from the monuments set up before the Reformation, and were usually built against a wall. They were of various coloured marbles, the effigies lying under circular-headed canopies, supported by columns in the Italian style. The effigies of man and wife were usually represented clad in robes of state, coloured, their children kneeling round the tomb in various attitudes. By and by, instead of the effigies being represented as lying on their backs, with hands clasped, they were shown lying on one side, supporting their heads on their hands. There are many such monuments, for instance, in Westminster Abbey, and in almost every old town church one or more can be seen. It became a very common practice for one of the old chapels, built on to the parish church in mediæval times, to be set apart as the private burial-place of a great landowner. Many new chapels were built for this special purpose. In them we may see specimens of the different fashions in monuments from Tudor days, or earlier, right down to the present time. CHAPTER XLIII Building after the Restoration: Houses The most notable architect after the Great Fire of London was Sir Christopher Wren, and his masterpiece is, of course, St. Paul's Cathedral. He designed, too, most of the city churches. The style was adopted in various parts of the country by various noblemen for building great houses. Brick was regarded as too mean a material for such very grand houses, and stone was used for facing them. In the houses which Wren built brick was very largely used. He introduced rubbed bricks, and had them laid with very close joints. We have some very fine examples of such brickwork in gables of various forms in the early part of the eighteenth century--the reign of Queen Anne. [Illustration: _House at Rainham, Essex, built during the reign of Queen Anne_] Designs for houses did not improve in beauty as the eighteenth century went on. Many of the houses were very substantially built, and were arranged with an eye to comfort and convenience. The hall, which had been the centre of the old English home, became smaller and smaller; the kitchens were placed below the ground-level, and in towns were often reached by a flight of steps down from the street to the area, which is still so common in London streets.