As in the chimney-pieces, so in the ceilings, a favourite method of ornamentation was to introduce the owner's arms and badges. Of the examples given here only two, as it happens, illustrate this custom—the ceilings at Haddon (Fig. 161) and Sizergh (Fig. 164). The square panel at Haddon encloses a shield surrounded by a delicate strap-work border, and bearing the arms of Manners impaling Vernon, the work having been done by the Sir John Manners who came into possession of Haddon through his marriage with Dorothy Vernon, one of the co-heiresses of her father, Sir George, called the King of the Peak. At Sizergh one of the panels encloses a shield of arms, and others a badge.

There is a very splendid ceiling in the gallery at Blickling, in Norfolk, wherein various badges are introduced, and another at Apethorpe, in Northamptonshire. Others might be named, but the custom was not so widespread in the case of ceilings as of chimney-pieces, perhaps owing to the plasterers having a number of stock designs from which they worked, and which, of course, would not include the arms of any special family. There seems no doubt that the plasterers did have such stock designs, but it is curious how seldom they are found repeated; hardly anywhere, indeed, can two designs be found which are exactly alike.

Besides heraldic ornament, there was a certain amount of modelled figure subjects of the usual kind—allegorical, mythological, and scriptural; but English plasterers were not very good at modelling the human figure, and it seems to have been generally recognized that a ceiling is not the most favourable position for a close study of detail, and the effect aimed at was one of general richness which did not demand minute investigation—such as, for instance, is necessary to appreciate one of Verrio's painted ceilings—and yet which repaid such scrutiny if subjected to it. Most of the ornament was of a kind which no one would examine unless specially interested—as a draughtsman, for instance, might be; but in some cases the beautiful modelling induces even the casual visitor to put his neck to inconvenience, as he gladly would do to see the Fish ceiling at Audley End, where the panels enclose a number of excellently modelled fishes and other denizens, real and imaginary, of the ocean, and where the pendants are of unusual beauty. Pendants of more or less projection were another means of adding variety and interest to the design (Fig. 167), and they varied in size from a mere excrescence to an elaborate shaft, supported by figures half human, half foliage, which served to hang the lamp from. This shaft would only occur in the centre of the design, but the lesser pendants were introduced at regular intervals and accentuated its salient points. Another kind of ceiling had no considerable ribs at all, but was covered with a flowing pattern in low relief, so arranged as to fall into a more or less symmetrical design. This is by no means a usual form, but there is an example at Burton Agnes, in Yorkshire, and another, which stands halfway between the two ideas, in the gallery at Chastleton, in Oxfordshire.

At the junction of the ceiling and the wall was a series of mouldings forming a cornice: these were sometimes in wood and formed the crowning member of the oak panelling, and sometimes they were in plaster. Beneath them on the surface of the wall there was frequently a plaster frieze of more or less depth. Occasionally it was only a few inches deep, as in the drawing-room at Haddon (Plate XLI.), but more usually it was from two to three feet, and in one room at Hardwick it was much deeper, as already mentioned (see Plate LII.). The narrower friezes were ornamented with some kind of running pattern, the wider ones were divided into panels in various ways, and often displayed the family arms. Examples of the narrower kind in plaster may be seen on Plates LIII. and LXXVI., while others forming part of the panelling are shown on Plates XLIII., XLVII., and XLIX. Sizergh Hall (Plate L.) has a frieze on the wood panelling and another in plaster above it. Examples of different kinds of friezes are given in Fig. 168, and one of considerable depth, and adorned with shields set in large panels, is shown from Montacute (Fig. 169). A fairly deep frieze is to be seen at Carbrook (Plate XLII.), of which a small part of the detail is shown in Fig. 170. An example of the way in which a pattern was fitted into an unusually-shaped space is shown in Fig. 171.