In many instances the kitchen with its dependencies occupied an outlying wing, and the food had to be brought a long distance, and frequently through an open corridor. The inconvenience of this arrangement must have outweighed the advantage of getting the smells and noise of the kitchen away from the house. The family rooms were the chief concern of the designer, and his aim was to make them stately. The arrangement most often adopted was to have a large entrance hall, and beyond it a dining-room; on either side were two or more rooms with a staircase between them. The hall occupied two stories in height, being as much as 30 ft. or 36 ft. high, and it must have been cold and cheerless, if grand. The principal rooms were lofty, and over each was another of the same size; in some instances small rooms of less height were placed next to the staircases, thus enabling others over them to be reached from a landing half-way up--“intersoles,” as Gibbs calls them. The same device had already been adopted by Hawksmoor at Easton Neston. The symmetrical disposition of the rooms favoured the placing of their doors in a straight line so that long vistas could be obtained, and although Gibbs prides himself on providing passages which rendered every room private, there were usually doors of intercommunication, and many of the rooms suffered from a multiplicity of entrances. The passages were evidently a concession to modern ideas, and were often ill-lighted from openings into the hall. The observance of strict symmetry sometimes led to the provision of two equally important staircases where one would have been enough for practical purposes. It also resulted in the stairs crossing windows, the outside harmony of which was held to be sacred; and a further consequence was the introduction of many sham windows for the sake of uniformity. In spite of such drawbacks, which sprang from the formality of the treatment, Gibbs’s plans are ingenious and well devised. He attaches great importance to privacy, and frequently introduces a number of “apartments,” as he calls them, each apartment comprising a bedroom and dressing-room, with occasionally a third or ante-room. The demands of those times were, of course, far simpler than our own, and Gibbs was as skilful as any of his contemporaries in satisfying them. He was able to do this within walls which were treated in a strictly classic manner, founded on instructions of the Italian masters. Whether he could have met the complex wants of the present day in so simple a fashion is open to question.