But the building fever seems to have been in the air. Almost every nobleman and squire in the country either rebuilt, enlarged, or altered his house. Sheldons manor house in Wiltshire is a charming example of alteration (see Frontispiece). The original house, of which the porch is a part, was built by the Gascelyns in the fourteenth century. The sixteenth-century addition with its rectangular, mullioned windows, was built over earlier walls by the Hungerfords, and to their successors may be attributed the eighteenth-century gate piers. Like many old manor houses, Sheldons has ceased to be the home of the squire, and has become a farmhouse. In half the villages of England there is either a house of the Elizabethan period or the memory of one. Not only did the landed gentry build, but also rich merchants in London and many of the provincial towns. A vast number of these houses have been swept away, but happily a great many still remain of all degrees of importance, from great seats like Montacute in Somerset (Fig. 105), or Burton Agnes in Yorkshire, down to the unpretending manor houses to be found among the steep declivities of the Cotswolds or the gentler undulations of Northamptonshire (Fig. 106). A proof (were it wanted) of the disappearance of many fine houses of this time is to be found in the Thorpe and Smithson drawings, for it is but a small proportion of the houses there shown that is known to be still in existence. CHAPTER IX. ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN HOUSES--EXTERIORS. The characteristic feature of Elizabethan and Jacobean houses is the square-headed mullioned windows (see Fig. 110). Previous to the time of Elizabeth, the plain square head hardly ever occurs; it is always pointed. Down to the end of the fifteenth century it was usually cusped (see Fig. 66). In the early part of the sixteenth century, that is, in Tudor houses, it became flat pointed and the cuspings disappeared. This form lingered on until it was superseded by the square head. It may, however, be found in a few instances as late as the second decade in the seventeenth century, but the cases are not many.