The Growth of the English House: A short history of its architectural development from 1100 to 1800Gotch, J. Alfred (John Alfred)
History
The Growth of the English House: A short history of its architectural development from 1100 to 1800
Gotch, J. Alfred (John Alfred)
Architecture -- England; Architecture, Domestic
Raynham Park (Fig. 148) is a link between the two styles; its
projecting wings, finished with gables, are reminiscent of the past;
its sash windows and its bold, carefully profiled cornice are a
foretaste of the future. Coleshill (Fig. 150) has left Elizabethan
times far behind, and retains nothing of their peculiarities either in
plan or appearance. There are no gables, the roof is hipped at each
corner and starts from a widely projecting cornice. The chimneys are
gathered into large stacks, symmetrically placed; not into groups of
single, slender shafts. The dormers have no stonework about them; they
belong to the roof, not to the walls. The designer, having eschewed
picturesque details, had to rely for his effect upon proportion and
the careful spacing of his windows. Coleshill may be regarded as
typical of the style adopted for large country houses down to the end
of the seventeenth century. Up Park, Squerries, Melton Constable, and
many others built towards the close of this century or in the first
years of the next, are of the same type, although somewhat varied in
treatment. There were many intermediate steps between Jacobean houses
and houses like Coleshill. Some of these steps have been attributed to
Inigo Jones himself--taken by him, the chroniclers assert, before his
visit to Italy. Such are St John’s College, Oxford, and the house at
Houghton Conquest, in Bedfordshire, built for the Countess of Pembroke,
“Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother.” But expert opinion is now
inclined to doubt the correctness of such attribution. If Inigo Jones
made no use of a transitional style, others did so.
Swakeleys in Middlesex (Fig. 152) is a case in point. Here mullioned
windows are still retained, but the cornices, breaking out into
pediments, and the gables crowned also with pediments, indicate the
impending change.
[Illustration: 152. Swakeleys, Middlesex (_cir._ 1630).]
[Illustration: 153. Houses in Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields
(1640).
(From a Drawing by J. Nash, about 1840.)]
[Illustration: 154. Sparrow’s House, Ipswich.]
[Illustration: 155. Cold Overton Hall, Leicestershire.
(Late in first half of 17th cent.)]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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