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 This form lingered on until it was superseded by the square head.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.

The use of the bay window was greatly developed in Elizabethan and Jacobean times. It was, as already stated, frequently utilised as one of the most important architectural features of a façade. This may be observed on some of Thorpe’s plans (Figs. 99, 100, 104), in Kip’s view of Longleat (Fig. 107), as well as in nearly all the illustrations given of the houses of this period (see Figs. 116, 119, 124, 125, 126). Besides the simple and dignified forms which were chiefly used, there were a few cases in which the plan was more complicated, and in which it took one shape on the ground floor and another on the floor above. Thorpe has several instances of this quaint treatment; an actual example exists at Thornbury Castle (Fig. 108) where the result is not very happy. A more successful attempt was made at Sir Paul Pindar’s house in Bishopsgate Street, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Fig. 109). Here the different planes of the straight lights combined with the circular projection in the middle, the busy pattern of the glazing, and the carved panels, produce an extremely rich effect.

Another characteristic of the Elizabethan house is the employment of the classic cornice. In Gothic buildings the horizontal “string-course,” or projecting moulding of stone, was very frequently used. It served to bind the design together and to give it unity and coherence. It was usually of small depth and slight projection. But with the invasion of Italian fashions, came the Italian profiles of stonework, and the string-courses of the old days were replaced by cornices, more elaborate in section, of greater depth and greater projection. The old thin string-courses were not entirely abandoned, but they received a slightly different section, more in harmony than the old forms with the new classic profiles. Pilasters were also introduced with the cornices, and some of the grander buildings were adorned with several of the “orders” placed one over the other. In time it became “correct” to use the Doric order on the first storey, the Ionic on the second, and the Corinthian on the third. These pilasters were generally of no practical use: they were merely ornamental features, and were sometimes carried up not with a view to supporting a crowning cornice, but to finish with a finial—a heraldic animal or what-not—altogether out of scale with what it stood on. Such pilasters and cornices were never employed previous to the reign of Henry VIII., and did not come into general use until the time of Elizabeth. The courtyard at Kirby Hall is furnished with them (Fig. 110); nevertheless, however wrong they may be judged from the academic stand-point, it cannot be denied that they materially help the composition, and combine with the many lights of the mullioned windows to produce a picturesque and romantic effect.

The chimneys of Elizabethan houses are far simpler than those of Tudor times. It was in the reign of Henry VIII. that chimneys assumed their most elaborate forms, whether in stone or brick. They were twisted, counter-twisted, minutely panelled, or surrounded by spiral bands of various profiles (Figs. 111, 112), with a profusion of complication that must have taxed the skill of the craftsman of the time, as it certainly does the skill of the draughtsman of to-day. But with the more “regular” feeling which came with Italian detail, this excessive play of fancy died out, and chimneys became simpler in their design, often consisting merely of straight shafts standing on a good base and covered with an ample cap (Fig. 106). Sometimes this plain form was Italianised into a complete column with its appropriate base and cap, and crowned with a short length of the corresponding classic entablature. But whatever form their detail may have taken, the designers of the time ordinarily used the mass of their chimneys as an important architectural feature. They grouped two or three fireplaces together, carried up a great stack of stone or brickwork, and placed their flues in single shafts upon it, thus combining solidity below with a pleasing lightness against the sky.

In the larger houses these various features—mullioned windows, cornices, pilasters, and chimneys—were used with a lavish hand. The mullioned windows of many lights were framed in pilasters furnished with their appropriate pedestals, bases, and caps; at every floor level a great entablature with architrave, ornamental frieze, and far projecting cornice made the circuit of the building: above all rose the gables, often straight of outline, but not infrequently fashioned into graceful curves; from gable to gable extended a balustraded parapet; at due intervals along the walls projected great chimney-stacks carrying slender shafts separated from each other by narrow spaces of daylight. The whole was a serious and determined effort at design, widely different from the simple and often fortuitous arrangement of a mediæval house, where the various parts, beautiful though they were in themselves, were not coordinated in the same resolute manner.

In the smaller houses effort was not so conspicuous. The designers drew upon the same sources for their effects—mullioned windows, classic string-courses, steep gables, and fine chimney-stacks—but they were more modest in their use of them, and refrained from employing pilasters, except perhaps to a doorway. Between the simplicity of the small manor house and the magnificence of the nobleman’s mansion lay every degree of elaboration, and a series of examples might be brought together forming a continuous crescendo from a squire’s home like Pilton Manor house in Northamptonshire (Fig. 113), through such houses as Sydenham in Devonshire (Fig. 114), or Moyns Park in Essex (Fig. 115), up to splendid mansions like the home of the younger branch of the Cecils at Hatfield (Fig. 116).

Moyns Park has a special interest, inasmuch as it is one of the fairly numerous cases in which a house of the first half of the sixteenth century was superseded by a finer one in the second half. Here the low, gabled, half-timber building is of the earlier date, and the lofty one, with its row of fine brick chimneys, is of the later. There could hardly have been forty years between the two buildings; the earlier has some excellent detail, especially on the long front not shown in the illustration: it was a fine house of its kind; and yet such was the passion for new houses that it was soon superseded by its loftier and more monumental neighbour.

The general appearance of houses of this time may be gathered from the illustrations, which comprise examples from various districts of England, and serve to show, among other things, that the same treatment was adopted over the whole country, varied according to local circumstances. Where stone was abundant, the houses were of stone, with more or less elaborate detail according to the hardness of the material. On the great beds of easily worked Oolite which stretch from Somerset and Wiltshire through Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Northamptonshire into Lincolnshire, the work is often both rich and delicate, and has acquired through time and weather a soft grey tint enlivened by the partial incrustation of many-hued lichens. In Derbyshire, Yorkshire, and Lancashire where the stone is much harder, the work is of a plainer and more severe type, such as may be seen at Derwent Hall (Fig. 117), and the colour is more sombre. In the eastern counties brick is frequently the chief material, with stone where wrought detail is required, such as quoins, cornices, parapets, and pilasters. Felbrigge Hall in Norfolk (Fig. 118), probably built by Thomas Windham, who died in 1653 at the age of eighty-two, is a good example. In some instances where stone was not easily to be had, the detail which would otherwise have been in that material, was worked in plaster to imitate it.

In the western counties timber and plaster were freely used; Cheshire, Lancashire, Worcestershire, and Herefordshire afford the finest and most ornamental examples of this method of construction, while Kent, Surrey, and Sussex in the south have a fair amount of plainer work of the same kind. In these houses the main walls are formed of stout timber framed together, with the interstices filled in with lath and plaster. The structural timbers are left visible; most of them are vertical, but they are braced together at intervals by horizontal timbers, and are occasionally further strengthened by sloping struts. This framework itself makes a pleasing pattern and satisfies the eye as to the strength and stability of the fabric. The timbers are always of large scantling, and are nearly equal in their total area to the spaces that are left between them. These characteristics are common to all the examples illustrated (Figs. 119–123). But whereas in the southern counties, and to a great extent in Worcestershire, the designers were satisfied to leave their work in this simple form, in Lancashire, and more particularly in Cheshire, they added interest and richness to the effect by placing curved braces within some of the panels, thus producing patterns of more or less intricacy. Variations in the shape of the curves resulted in variations of pattern, and the variety of effects thus obtained is quite remarkable. A simple example is Marton Hall, near Congleton, now destroyed (Fig. 119); a more elaborate one is the well-known Little Moreton Hall in the same district. But the finest specimen of a half-timber house is Bramhall Hall, near Stockport (Fig. 120), which is not only quaint and picturesque, but in places approaches as near to stateliness as such homely materials allow. Lancashire at one time fell little short of Cheshire in attractive examples, but before the constant spread of its manufacturing centres they are rapidly disappearing. Throughout large districts of Worcestershire such black-and-white houses as that at Shell Farm (Fig. 121) may be seen. They are quite simple, but they give a cheerful aspect to the countryside, especially when the spring time surrounds them with bright green foliage and the pink and white blossoms of the orchards. In Sussex and Kent the use of half-timber work was not so general, nor was there nearly as much play of fancy as in Cheshire, the design being seldom of more elaborate character than that at Sedlescombe (Fig. 122) and Brad Street (Fig. 123).

In Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, too, occurs in its perfection the quaint and picturesque custom of hanging external walls with tiles, the relative softness of which is favourable to the growth of lichens, and results in those brilliant bits of colour so dear to the water-colour sketcher. Every district has its own character, and the wise man will enjoy each in turn; no more expecting to find the brilliance of Surrey among the greys of Northamptonshire, than lamenting the absence of the soft tones of the Midlands among the wild moorlands of the North.

One great charm of the houses of this period is their marvellous variety of treatment, although nearly always subject to a symmetrical arrangement and a general similarity of plan. A central porch between projecting wings of greater or less length is almost universal, although there are not a few instances of square houses, such as Felbrigge (Fig. 118) or Heath Hall (Fig. 124). The windows, too, are practically always composed of numerous rectangular lights. But some houses had turrets; some had gables either straight or curved; some had flat lead-covered roofs as at Longleat, Quenby in Leicestershire (Fig. 125), or Temple Newsam in Yorkshire; and some combine both treatments, as at Gayhurst in Buckinghamshire (Fig. 126). This house is said to have been built by a Mulsho in 1597, and to have been much improved a few years afterwards by William Mulsho. This double period of building may, perhaps, account for the combination of the flat roofs and the gables. It subsequently passed by marriage to Everard Digby, and is one of the innumerable places where, tradition says, the Gunpowder Plot was hatched. There was a marked desire for a picturesque sky-line, which led, in some flat-roofed houses like Heath Hall, Barlborough in Derbyshire, and Hatfield House (Fig. 116), to the carrying up of bay windows to form turrets above the parapet. Chimneys were most frequently taken up in separate flues, but occasionally in solid stacks. Parapets were sometimes solid as at Gayhurst and Quenby; more frequently balustraded as at Longleat, and occasionally formed of stone letters making a sentence. Felbrigge Hall has a short one, “Gloria Deo in excelsis”; Temple Newsam in Yorkshire and Castle Ashby in Northamptonshire bear long sentences which make almost the complete circuit of the roofs.

Every house of any importance was surrounded with some kind of lay-out. The external courtyard, which originated from a desire for protection, was converted into a place of pleasure or state, yet still retaining the advantage of preventing unrestricted access. Small manor houses, such as that at Cold Ashton in Somerset, or Eyam Hall in Derbyshire, had at least a walled garden in front with a terrace approached up a flight of steps. Large houses had several courts in front, which had each to be traversed in turn before the front door was reached, as well as side courts and walled gardens. Many of them had a small entrance archway in the wall of the courtyard, generally of simple design, but imparting a touch of interest and romance to an otherwise unpretentious home, as is the case at West Burton in Sussex (Fig. 127). Nearly all these characteristic adjuncts have now been cleared away from our English houses, to their grievous detriment; and it has been remarked that had we but retained the shelter of our ancient garden walls, we should be under much less necessity to seek the warmth of the Riviera during the cold winds of spring. No better idea of the ancient aspect of Jacobean houses can be gained than from the views of Knyff and Kip; and although the accuracy of every detail cannot be guaranteed, there can be no doubt that the general disposition is fairly true to the facts. At Brome Hall in Suffolk (Fig. 128) the approach to the entrance front is across at least two courts, and if the outermost enclosure is anything more than the end of an avenue, there would be three. The other fronts are surrounded with walled gardens which extend a considerable distance on every side, and are backed up by plantations and a wide avenue. The house itself is plain in character, depending for its effect largely upon its symmetrical arrangement. There is a certain amount of richness about the porch and the tower over it; elsewhere the prominent chimney-stacks and the dormer windows are the dominating features. It will be observed that the sides of the first garden court (beyond the avenue) are formed of subsidiary buildings, the range on the left being one side of the stable court. It was quite customary to give architectural importance to the principal approach by means of inferior buildings, which in the present day are kept out of observation. At Longleat (Fig. 107) the lay-out is confined to three sides of the house; the approach lies along a raised paved walk. The “regular” and symmetrical fronts, which here also depend upon bay windows for their interest, enclose buildings which are less severely treated and which blossom out into many turrets. Much of this inside work is of somewhat earlier date, for Longleat was the result of several different building efforts which extended over a period of about thirty years, and concluded about 1580. In these descriptions it is Kip’s views which are referred to, not the present buildings, which have in most cases undergone alterations, especially in respect of their lay-outs.

The grand period of garden design was to come later, in the early years of the eighteenth century, at the time when Knyff and Kip published their book. But if proof were wanted that the later draughtsman did not invent the elaborate surroundings of his houses, it is to be found among the Smithson drawings which were made in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. There are several plans of lay-outs in the collection, the most notable being the survey of Wimbledon House, made in 1609 (Fig. 129). This was a Cecil house, having been built in the year 1588 by either Lord Burghley or his son, afterwards Earl of Exeter. It stood on the edge of a high hill with a splendid prospect towards the north. The steepness of the ground on this side led to the formation of two courts, approached by fine flights of steps, and leading to a terrace off which the front door opened. Behind the house, to the south, lay the great garden, and on the east was a small sunk garden, called in later years the Orange garden. Smithson’s notes indicate the principal features: a banqueting house, hedges of thorn and quick-set cut very finely, quarters set with knots of flowers, rows of cherry trees, rows of lime trees, “both for shade and sweetness,” and various orchards. Here again we have striking evidence of how far we have travelled from the enclosures which surrounded the castles of two centuries earlier, even the largest, such as Kenilworth.

Everything, indeed, points to the new delight which people were taking in their homes; how they loved not only fine houses but fine gardens, seizing upon every change of level to introduce a terrace, and charmed with any opportunity to form a handsome flight of steps, such as that at Heath Hall (Fig. 124), or Powis Castle in Wales (Fig. 130). It is quite clear that the days were past when men merely ornamented what was essential to safety: they now revelled in their freedom from restriction, and indulged themselves in attractive design for its own sake.