During Spenser’s life, however, a very great advance was being made in domestic architecture, and in particular the planning of houses was receiving especial attention, and was being undertaken by trained experts. Doubtless the growth of Italian ideas had something to do with this. Symmetry of disposition, instead of being occasionally adopted, had become universal, and it required more than the skill of a home-bred mason, such as hitherto had devised houses, to arrange the increased accommodation now necessary, within the requisite symmetrical outline, and at the same time to ensure a workable relation of rooms one to the other. In addition to this a considerable acquaintance with the new fashion in detail was required of designers, and accordingly not a few of them made tours abroad to France and even as far as Italy in order to familiarise themselves with foreign methods and to bring to their work the most novel ideas of the time. CHAPTER VIII. LATE SIXTEENTH CENTURY--SYMMETRY IN PLANNING. The best known of the designers of this period is John Thorpe, who lived in the reigns of Elizabeth and James; and his collection of drawings, preserved in the Soane Museum, is of great value from the light it throws on the house design of the time. Houses themselves have generally undergone many alterations, from which it is difficult to disentangle their history, or to tell with certainty what their original plan may have been. But Thorpe’s drawings show what the designer actually had in his mind as he worked. From them we learn that in most cases the hall was still the chief apartment, and that it still occupied its ancient situation between the family rooms on one side and the servants’ rooms on the other. In the great majority of examples the daïs is also shown, indicating that the ancient usage was maintained of the family occupying the head of the hall at meals, while the servants were ranged at tables in the body. But we know from other sources that some families had already taken to dining in a separate room, and that guests had complained of being set to dine with the steward in the hall instead of with the family in the parlour. On some of Thorpe’s plans a “dining parlour” is provided; on many of them there is a “winter parlour,” placed within easy distance of the kitchen. There is also an instance of a “servants’ dining-room,” and of a “hall for hynds.” These all tend to show that the hall was losing its old importance as the centre of life in the house. Such a fate was only natural considering by how many other rooms it was now supplemented. There were the “great chamber,” the “withdrawing-room,” and the “long gallery” among the larger rooms; the “parlour,” the “breakfast-room,” and the “study” among the smaller. In addition to these, which were day rooms, were many “bed-chambers” and “lodgings,” which were in fact bedrooms.