[Illustration: 209. Painted Ceiling from Boughton House, Northamptonshire (attributed to Verrio, _cir._ 1700).] Staircases seem to have been an exception to that general tendency to increase the scale of detail which is apparent in work of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. One of the characteristics of Jacobean staircases is the massiveness of their component parts, the newels, the balusters, the handrail, the string; even the steps themselves were sometimes made of solid blocks of wood. The newels were carried up well above the handrail, and fashioned into finials, sometimes heavily moulded, sometimes made into a pedestal for a figure--a heraldic animal, a boy playing an instrument, a warrior or what not. The “string” which supported the ends of the steps was always stout and solid. Much of this early treatment was carried on till the end of the seventeenth century, as may be seen by referring to the illustration from a house in Love Lane (Fig. 210) traditionally associated with Wren. Here all the parts are as massive as of old, although the turned portions of the balusters are inclined to be thin. The most significant change is to be found in the newels, which are not carried up into a finial, but are furnished with a cap by mitring the mouldings of the handrail round them. Once this fashion was established, it held the field until newels were dispensed with in the later part of the eighteenth century, and the handrail wound in one continuous length from the bottom to the top of the staircase. A passing phase of treatment, associated with the later half of the seventeenth century, is the carved floriated balustrade, such as is to be seen at Sudbury House in Derbyshire (Fig. 211). This is generally combined with massive newels, handrail, and string; indeed, it could hardly be otherwise, for the carved foliage required a fair thickness of wood, and as the carving was almost necessarily made in straight lengths, there had to be newels to receive it. It is not a very common form of treatment, and is usually confined to large houses where expense was not a primary consideration. The same illustration affords good examples of plasterwork in the ceiling, and of woodwork in the doors. It will be seen how much larger in scale is this work than the work of the beginning of the seventeenth century. [Illustration: 210. Staircase in a House in Love Lane, London (now destroyed). (Late 17th cent.)]