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. The accommodation for the family and guests was therefore as complete as could be desired—as complete, in fact, as at the present day, if we except the very important item of bath-rooms and other sanitary conveniences. The drawback is that the rooms, although far more skilfully planned than of old, were subject to an almost rigidly symmetrical outline, preventing that compactness which is now aimed at; and as the various wings of the house were as a rule only one room wide, it followed that some of the rooms had to be thoroughfare rooms. This arrangement cannot have been held to be vastly inconvenient in those days, nor for many days to come, for it continued until well into the eighteenth century.

The subdivision in the servants’ quarters was as ample as in those of the family. The “kitchen” was still, as it always had been, the principal room on this side. The “buttery” and the “pantry” were also of long standing. But the “pastry” had come in almost every instance to supplement the kitchen, being the place where the baking was done, and being furnished almost invariably with two ovens. The “dry larder” and “wet larder” were equally frequent, and so was the “survaying place,” or serving-room. There are also to be found in the larger houses a “scullery,” a “meal house,” “bolting-house,” “spicery,” “trencher,” “pewter,” and “brush.” The steward, his clerk, the butler, the pantler, and the waiters are all found to have their own separate rooms. How widely different is all this from the ancient custom of the whole household living by day and night in the great hall!

The need for the great hall, indeed, was passing away. Already in a few of Thorpe’s plans it is found to be arranged in a manner no longer suitable for its old purposes. In some it is placed out of its central position. By the end of the first quarter of the seventeenth century it had practically lost its ancient character of the chief living room, and had become little more than a fine vestibule leading to the actual living rooms and the rest of the house.

Reproductions of a few of Thorpe’s drawings will serve to illustrate the Elizabethan and Jacobean type of plan even better than plans of actual houses. They link themselves at one end to the mediæval type, and they lead at the other to that altered treatment of the hall which marks the definite break with mediævalism. It is unfortunate that there is no means of fixing their various dates; the sequence in which they are placed is therefore not necessarily chronological. They represent types of arrangement of which many other instances may be found in Thorpe’s collection. First, there is the courtyard plan (Fig. 99), the modernised version of the defensive court of earlier times. Here all thought of defence is abandoned, save that the main entrance is through an archway overlooked by the porter. Visitors are not repelled by frowning gateways, a grim portcullis, and blind walls pierced with nothing but hostile slits. On the contrary, access is made easy and inviting. A flight of steps leads on to a terrace, and thence direct to the main door; cheerful windows fill the walls, arranged not only to give light within and a view without, but also to enliven the structure itself with the ordered rhythm of their glittering panes. The courtyard is handsomely furnished with stately bays running the full height of the walls; a long range of arches faces the entrance, and forms a loggia beneath which is the door to the screens. The external façades are designed with equal care. At each corner there is a massive pavilion, and from one to the other stretch the main walls sparkling with windows, which are relieved from monotony by the introduction of further bays.

There is no haphazard planning about this house; everything is carefully thought out; the effect of every projection, every window, and every chimney is considered. Yet with all this symmetry and formality, the underlying arrangement follows the old lines. The hall is entered through the screens; it has its daïs, its bay, and its fireplace near to its upper end; from this end are approached the family rooms—the parlour, the chapel, and the principal stairs, leading to the great chamber, the withdrawing-room, and the long gallery. On the other side of the house, but downstairs, lie the kitchens in the basement.

The next plan (Fig. 100) is that of a house with a fore-court, only (as explained on the drawing itself) the court, with its diagonally placed entrance lodges, should have been drawn on the front of the house instead of being detached and at the back. But this correction made—and it will be easier done by looking at Kip’s view (Fig. 101)—it will be seen that a reminiscence of the old jealousy of approach is still found in the walled court and its entrance lodges; otherwise the house is obviously built without a thought of protection. It is contrived for display combined with convenience. Its terraces and long symmetrical fronts are the means towards the first, while the second is greatly helped by the passage, or “longe entry throughe all,” which runs the whole length of the house. This is a feature quite new in house planning, so far. Otherwise the ancient dispositions are adopted; the hall lies to the right of the screens, and beyond it the parlour and chapel; to the left the buttery, pantry, and (at some distance) the kitchen. Kip’s view shows the dignified but simple treatment of the exterior, and the surrounding courts and gardens. The plan is not named in Thorpe’s drawing, but it agrees so closely with Kip’s view as to leave little doubt that it is the same house—namely, Beaufort House in Chelsea, built by Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, during the closing years of the sixteenth century, by way either of enlarging or replacing an earlier house, which had been the home of Sir Thomas More.

The next plan is of the big h type, which was widely employed at this period (Fig. 102). Without entering into minute detail it will suffice to draw attention to the maintenance of the time-honoured position of the hall between the family rooms and the servants’ quarters; to the provision of a winter parlour near the kitchen; to the strict symmetry of the general plan, and to the many windows, arranged not only to give light to the rooms, but also by their ordered disposition to impart a distinctive character to the appearance of the building. To such an extent is this symmetrical treatment carried, that in the “lodging” near the winter parlour, two of the window’s are crippled by the fireplace, with the result that they become in part shams. This is a striking testimony to the change which was coming over house design. Hitherto windows had been provided for the sake of light within; now they are regarded as means of obtaining effect without. The other characteristic features to be observed are the balustraded terraces on the front and back; the arcades on either side of the porch; and the court at the back with a fountain placed on each side of the central paved walk. There is no elevation corresponding to this plan, but the general effect of the front may be gathered from a view of old Somerset House in the Strand, although this is on a rather more important scale (Fig. 103). Here also is a central porch flanked by arcades which stop against square projecting windows in the corner of the courtyard.

The last of the series (Fig. 104) shows the beginning of a change in the hall. The screen is no longer a continuous partition cutting off a passage. It has shrunk to something that is a mere projection from the side walls, affording no shelter from the cross-traffic of the front door. Indeed the front door, which formerly had been the common entrance for the whole household, was gradually being reserved for the family and the guests, the servants being provided with a separate entrance of their own. The elevation is an interesting specimen of Elizabethan design in half-timber.

The arrangement of the hall shown in this example greatly detracts from its comfort as a living room, in spite of the fact that the retention of the daïs (indicated by the hatched line across the hall) points to its use as such. It is a first step in the direction of using the hall as a vestibule and not as a room. A more striking instance of this change is to be found at Aston Hall near Birmingham (finished in 1635). Thorpe’s plan of it shows the great hall following the ancient lines with the entrance at one end into the screens. But when built the front door was placed centrally at once with the façade and the hall. This new position, delivering the traffic into its centre, wholly precluded the use of the hall as a living room; it became in fact a vestibule. With this change the link with mediævalism was severed. It marks in a striking manner the parting of the ways; the change from the old to the new; the closing of the long chapter of domestic planning which began in the early days of the twelfth century; the final abandonment of the principle which had dominated house planning for five hundred years.

Overlapping Thorpe in point of date, but out-living him by a good many years—so far as the uncertainty surrounding the lives of such simple persons enables us to judge—was the John Smithson whose drawings[4] have been preserved with as much care as those of Thorpe. He died in 1634, and was buried at Bolsover: he left a son, Huntingdon Smithson, who also was an architectural designer. The Smithson collection rivals the other in interest. It does not afford quite so vivid an insight into the methods of the house planner; but it contains a greater variety of subjects. It shows equally clearly the change which was taking place in the disposition of the chief rooms: how the hall was being deposed from its pre-eminence; and how corridors were becoming more frequent. The principal apartments include no new names: they consist still of the hall, the parlour, the great chamber, the withdrawing-room, the chapel, and the long gallery. The houses still have terraces and arcades, and are still flanked by courts. The courtyard type and the big h type are the most prevalent. The elevations are less full of fancy than those of Elizabeth’s time; the detail is more ponderous and may even be regarded as clumsy. There are many features—doors, windows, gateways—described as “Italyan,” showing how the demand was increasing for detail which was more strictly Italian in character than anything that had hitherto been produced. Thorpe, it must be remembered, was in the heyday of his career in Elizabeth’s time; Smithson in James I.’s. The earliest date connected with Thorpe is 1570, in which year he tells us he laid the first stone of Kirby in Northamptonshire. The latest date on the Smithson drawings is 1632. The two collections afford an admirable panorama of house-building during a period of sixty years—a period which saw architecture free itself from the slackening grasp of mediævalism; which witnessed the new birth of Science, and beheld Poetry gain the sublime heights to which Shakespeare led it, and whither it has never quite succeeded in ascending again.

During this remarkable period were built some of the largest houses which England ever possessed. Holdenby (1580), so far as the house itself went, was larger than the great palaces of Blenheim and Castle Howard. Its fronts were 360 ft. and 224 ft. long, as against 320 ft. and 220 ft. at Blenheim, and 324 ft. and 210 ft. at Castle Howard. But in both the later houses there were subsidiary courts attached which greatly lengthened the total extent. Audley End (1610) covered even more ground than Holdenby, its frontages extending to 470 ft. and 280 ft.; but more than half its area was occupied by a subsidiary court, whereas almost the whole of Holdenby consisted of important rooms. But rivalry in dimensions apart, it must be remembered that the designer of Holdenby had no precedent to look to, no great house to outvie. Hampton Court excepted, his was the first mansion, built for pleasure and for state, which had been conceived on so large a scale. There were also many other houses which, though smaller, were of the first importance. Such were Buckhurst House in Sussex; Burghley House and Kirby Hall both, like Holdenby, in Northamptonshire; Theobalds in Hertfordshire; Knole in Kent. The reason for erecting these large houses, or at any rate for making them so extensive, was stated by at least two of their builders. Lord Burghley and Sir Christopher Hatton both said that it was in order to accommodate the Queen that they were led to so much extravagance.

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.