[Illustration: FIG. 273.--Lead Rain-Water Head at the Aylesford Hotel, Warwick.] Ornamental leadwork was a characteristic feature of English houses as early as the time of Elizabeth, and many beautiful rain-water heads of that period still survive. They had worthy successors all through the seventeenth century and well into the eighteenth. Some of the rain-water heads at St John’s College, Oxford, of the time of Charles I., are splendid things of their kind. Many houses built during the next hundred years retain fine examples of similar features (Fig. 272), and indeed, as long as it was necessary to fashion such things by hand, the craftsman imparted character to his work even if it was of a simple and unobtrusive kind (Fig. 273); but with the advent of the speculative builder, the number of such things required, and the necessity of a rapid and cheap supply, led to more expeditious methods, and with the advent of cast-iron heads a general level of dullness and monotony was reached. The scope of lead ornament was necessarily restricted, it was only here and there that it was applicable; the other direction in which it was largely used was in cisterns or troughs of which examples occasionally occur, but lead being always a marketable commodity, most of these objects, when once out of use, were sold for melting and re-use. Some good examples dated 1728, 1714 and 1755 are shown in Figs. 267, 274. [Illustration: FIG. 274.--Two Examples of Lead Cisterns.] [Illustration: FIG. 275.--THE STAIRCASE, KING’S WESTON, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.] The English craftsman has always been able to do good work when he has had the opportunity. Even during the period when house design may be held to be void of interest, there are numberless examples of fittings, or furniture, or household articles which show his skill, and if a free and reasonable view of design is maintained, there is every prospect of his doing as good work in the future as he has done in the past. XI INTERNAL FEATURES (EIGHTEENTH CENTURY) The internal decoration of houses of the seventeenth century has already been described, and incidentally a considerable number of examples have been given of the treatment of later houses; but it is desirable to treat the subject a little more fully than has been possible in former chapters.