The gradual change in character which has been traced in the external treatment of houses of the later part of the seventeenth century and of the eighteenth is also to be found in the internal decoration. The exuberant and vivacious detail of Elizabethan and Jacobean work gave way to the more sober and scholarly rendering of Inigo Jones, Webb, Wren, and their successors. The walls, the doors, the windows, the chimney-pieces, the ceilings, and the staircases were alike affected.

Throughout the seventeenth century and well into the eighteenth the ancient methods of covering the walls prevailed; either with hangings or with panelling. The panels, however, became much larger; instead of being 12 or 15 in. wide, they were 3 ft. or more, and high in proportion. Hitherto they had usually been made in one sheet from floor to cornice; sometimes, however, a dado had been introduced; that is a range of panels near the floor, surmounted by a horizontal moulding which made the circuit of the room at the height of about 3 ft. from the floor, thus dividing the panelling into two unequal ranges, a low one below, and a lofty one above. This arrangement, instead of being the exception, now became the rule. The pilasters and cornices were more carefully and correctly designed—both those of the walls and those which embellished the doorways. The broken pediment was introduced, and not infrequently the blank space left where the apex of the completed pediment would have been was filled with a cartouche of arms surrounded by foliage, and linked to the adjacent work by heavy swags of fruit and leaves (Fig. 195). All the detail was carefully designed, both as to its proportion, its purity of outline, and its suitable decoration with carving. Yet withal there was a freedom and variety of treatment, a charming absence of too formal restraint, which were a legacy from the lighthearted and irresponsible methods of earlier days. At Thorney Hall in Cambridgeshire there is some excellent panelling of this kind (Fig. 181). It has been attributed to Inigo Jones, but from its close resemblance to the work at Thorpe Hall (Fig. 194), it may be more safely assigned to his pupil and successor, John Webb.

The mouldings of the panels became bolder; instead of being narrow and kept within the face of the surrounding woodwork, they grew to 3 in. or more in width and projected considerably beyond the face; the panel itself, instead of being recessed from the framing, not infrequently stood out in front of it (Fig. 182). The carving followed the same tendency; instead of being flat in section, delicately modelled in conventional designs, and kept in subordination, adding an unobtrusive interest to the surrounding work, it asserted its independence, grew high in relief, assumed naturalistic forms, and challenged admiration on its own account. This is particularly noticeable in Grinling Gibbons’ carving, which excites admiration by its life-like modelling and wonderful execution, yet often induces the feeling that it has been too eager to throw off the wholesome restraints of architectural treatment.

The large panels, the dado, the bold bolection mouldings are everywhere in evidence at Boughton House, where suites of rooms, opening one from the other, afford long vistas through lofty doors (Fig. 183). There is an excellent example in a house (now rebuilt) in Buckingham Street, near the Strand (Fig. 184), built about 1675; a house which was the residence of Peter the Great while he was studying at Deptford. By the middle of the seventeenth century pilasters, as a means of dividing wall-panelling into bays, had gone out of fashion; their place was sometimes taken, as at Wilton, by carved drapery or flowers apparently hung on the wall (Fig. 185); but even this attempt at grouping the panels was subsequently relinquished, and the walls became covered with nothing but the large panels, crowned with a good cornice and relieved by the dado, the windows, the doors, and the chimney-piece. This simple but satisfactory treatment may be seen in numberless houses of the time of Queen Anne and the early Georges, where the panelling consists of nothing more than slightly raised panels, surrounded by the plainest of mouldings (Fig. 186). Later in the century the wood panelling disappeared, and its place was taken by panels sunk in the plaster of the walls, such as Abraham Swan shows in his “Designs of Architecture” (Fig. 187), or by the more elaborate plaster panels of the old War Office (Fig. 188) attributed to Brettingham; or yet again by wallpaper, such as is familiar to every one in the present day.

A considerable amount of attention was bestowed upon doors and doorways, both external and internal. In Jacobean times external doorways were tolerably simple in themselves, and they were generally set back inside a porch, which was entered through a semicircular archway flanked by pilasters or columns carrying a frieze and cornice. Typical examples may be seen at Felbrigge Hall (Fig. 118) and Gayhurst (Fig. 126). This method was carried on during the first quarter of the seventeenth century. A later treatment occurs at Cark Hall, Lancashire, where almost detached columns support a bold semicircular pediment which encloses a heavy wreath surrounding a coat of arms (Fig. 189).

In the eighteenth century a pediment over external doors became the established fashion, as a reference to the illustrations of the smaller houses (Figs. 171–173) will show. It rested either on a bold architrave, or on pilasters. If not a pediment, then there would be a bold hood generally fashioned internally in the similitude of a huge shell, such as may be seen at Burwash (Fig. 170), or, more at large, in a doorway which once stood in Sherborne Lane, London (Fig. 190). At first the pilasters and pediment were of stone, but later on they were made of wood protected from the weather by a covering of lead. Very charming features of this kind may be seen in almost any old country town; two illustrations, from Petworth and Godalming, are given in Fig. 191. It will be seen that each of them has an arrangement characteristic of the age in the shape of a fanlight over the door, a simple but really ingenious device for obtaining light where the entrance hall was not wide enough to allow of a window. The fanlight was always divided into comparatively small spaces by bars gracefully curved; and it is surprising to what a variety of pleasing designs this fashion led. Much fancy was displayed in the embellishment of doorways long after windows had become mere oblong apertures relieved only by stout cross-bars. Even when the bulk of the windows were thus plain, a central feature was sometimes contrived by adopting a special treatment of the window over the door, as in the case of the manor house at Rothwell (Fig. 192).

Internal doorways in Jacobean times had frequently been lavishly ornamented, and the desire to achieve a handsome result had occasionally led to an extraordinary elaboration. In this respect, as in others, the cultivated taste of trained architects, such as Inigo Jones and Webb, led to a more sober and carefully calculated result. This may be seen at Raynham Park (Fig. 193) by Jones, and at Thorpe Hall (Fig. 194) by Webb, where there is a delightful mixture of freedom and austerity. Then came Wren with his massive and masculine hand, of which the influence, although probably not immediate and direct, is visible in the doorways at Combe Abbey (Fig. 195) and Love Lane (Fig. 210).

A type of general treatment became firmly established. The very large panels of the end of the seventeenth century, such as those adopted at Love Lane, gave place to smaller. Instead of two, doors had six or even more panels. They were surrounded by a bold architrave, and surmounted by an overdoor consisting of frieze and cornice, as may be seen in the example from Hatton Garden (Fig. 186); from the book of Abraham Swan (Fig. 187); from the old War Office (Fig. 188); or from the later houses shown in Fig. 196. All the component parts of the design—the architrave, the frieze, the cornice—lent themselves to enrichment by carving. But this was generally applied with discretion, and with a well-regulated wish to heighten the effect without overdoing it. The carving changed in character with the lapse of years. In the early part of the century it retained the boldness imparted by Wren and Vanbrugh, but gradually its vigour gave way to the delicacy and refinement associated with the names of the brothers Adam, of which type an excellent example is shown from Sheen House (Fig. 196, b).

The same gradual changes which took place in the design of doorways also characterise the treatment of chimney-pieces. The small detail and elaborate ornament of the Jacobean style gave way to a simpler and larger handling. Already towards the close of the Jacobean period much of the exuberant carving and fretwork of earlier times had been dropped, and in its place simple columns and moulded panels had been adopted. The obvious division of a chimney-piece into two stages, one surrounding the fireplace, and the other filling the wall space above it—a division which is most easily described by the rather hackneyed terms mantel and overmantel—became more emphasised than it had been. Many of the chimney-pieces of the time of Elizabeth and James are so largely designed, both in size and scale, that they strike the beholder as one composition rather than as two halves. With the simplification of the detail, the two-fold character became more apparent. The space above the fireplace was often panelled after the same general fashion as the rest of the room, but with some special treatment to emphasise its important position. The chimney-piece consequently became a one-storey feature. This is the case in the room at Wilton (Fig. 185), and also in a minor degree at Raynham Hall (Fig. 197). But concurrently with this treatment went another, which, while adopting the division of mantel and overmantel, kept them both in complete harmony, and made one feature of them. Good examples of this were to be found in the house in Hatton Garden, now destroyed (Figs. 186, 198). The blank space in the overmantel in Fig. 186 was probably occupied by a picture, for it was a frequent custom to insert in the panel over the fireplace some agreeable but unexciting subject, such as a flowerpiece or a landscape diversified with architectural ruins; something which should inspire a mild interest by its harmonious colour and peaceful rendering. A typical chimney-piece of the early eighteenth century is reproduced from an original drawing by the architect James Gibbs in Fig. 199. This was clearly meant to be completed by a picture. Another example of a similar kind is that from a house in Whitehall Gardens (Fig. 200), which closely resembles one of Kent’s designs. Sometimes instead of a picture a mirror was introduced in this position; but as large sheets of glass were not yet procurable, the mirrors were made long and low, and not infrequently in three divisions of which the middle one was circular headed.

The treatment adopted about the middle of the century may be gathered from the illustration taken from Swan’s book (Fig. 187); while that of a few years later is shown in the specimen from Lansdowne House by the brothers Adam (Fig. 201). Here it will be seen that the chimney-piece is an isolated feature, not part of a general scheme of architectural decoration, for the walls are papered, and the only reminiscence of the more monumental treatment of past times is the dado-rail. It was before some such fireplace as this, but simpler and less ornate, that Cowper sat on a winter evening when he heard the post-boy’s horn sounding along the “wearisome but needful length” of the country bridge, and called upon his companion to

Except that the urn and the shutters have gone out of fashion, the picture might have been drawn in the present day, so far have we travelled from the central hearth of the Gothic hall. The stirring of the fire is a touch that reminds us of the disappearance of the open hearth, and the adoption of the fire-grate in its stead—a change which had occurred some sixty or seventy years before Cowper published his “Winter Evening” in 1785. No exact date can be assigned to the alteration, just as no exact date can be given to the practice of papering walls instead of panelling them or hanging them with tapestry. But in an inventory of two country houses belonging to a director of the South Sea Company, made in 1720, it is obvious that although grates were already in use the open hearth was still prevalent. Many of the rooms had fire-dogs, shovels, and tongs, but no poker; while others had a grate, shovel, tongs, and poker, but no fire-dogs. It is the dogs which were essential to the open hearth in order to keep the logs of wood in position, for wood was the fuel of the ancient fire; and it is the poker which was essential to the grate in order to break the coal, and coal was the fuel of the modern fire. The intermediate step was the dog-grate, which was in its essence a firebasket holding coal, and placed in the old, large, open recesses. This expedient, however, was not entirely successful. The huge flues of the old days did not draw away the smoke from the small coal fires adequately; coal smoke is far more pungent and disagreeable than wood smoke; and therefore the next step was to increase the draught by combining with the grate a shield which should close the large opening of the open hearth, or by building it up with brickwork. The result was the first ancestor of the modern grate.

Just as the small panels of Jacobean woodwork gave way to the large panels of Wilton House and Boughton, so were the busy ceilings of the early seventeenth century gradually superseded by a more massive treatment. The older treatment survived in remote places till half-way through the century, and a plaster frieze of 1649, from Coles Farm, near Box in Wiltshire (Figs. 202, 203), shows how the old forms lingered on, although losing some of their vitality. The pattern in these busy ceilings covered the whole area, and the ground of the area was unbroken except by the pattern; any constructional beams that were required were concealed. But in course of time the beams asserted themselves, and were so arranged, with the addition of heavy ribs forming circular, oval, or octagonal panels, as to divide the area into several large spaces, thus breaking it up into deeply recessed divisions. The ornament, instead of being spread over the whole ceiling equally, was concentrated on and near the beams and ribs. The whole character of the ceiling was altered: instead of being a large, evenly fretted surface, it was broken up into several massive bays, which gave it a heavier and more monumental appearance. As in the wood-carving so in the plasterwork, much greater relief was aimed at, and in some of the finest ceilings of the time of William and Mary much of the work is so detached as to require a framework of wire for its foundation. This large way of handling the ceiling prevailed throughout the latter half of the seventeenth century, and is exemplified by the work at Thorpe Hall (Fig. 204), designed by Webb, the house in Buckingham Street (Fig. 184), and a house in Warwick Square in the city, once the home of a wealthy merchant (Fig. 206). It survived in occasional examples till towards the close of the eighteenth century. Ware held it to be sufficiently in vogue to justify him in giving instructions as to the treatment of ceilings, and the design in Fig. 205 gives an excellent idea of the system and of the contrast it presents to Jacobean methods. An example of yet later date is in a room at the old War Office (Fig. 188), but here the main lines are unconstructional in their shape: the subsidiary ornament is of the delicate type associated with the last quarter of the eighteenth century.

Concurrently with the massive treatment just described, the eighteenth century saw a reversion to the old idea of treating the ceiling as one large flat surface and covering it with ornament in low relief. A specimen of this type is seen in the house in Whitehall Gardens (Fig. 207). The relief is very low, and the ornament is of the discursive rococo type, wanting in an easily intelligible motif. In equally low relief were the ceilings designed by the brothers Adam, but their forms were intelligible, and the modelling was full of delicacy and refinement. A characteristic example of their work is that from a house in Mansfield Street, London (Fig. 208). In a great number of houses, especially the ordinary unimportant house, the ceilings throughout the eighteenth century were quite plain. The rooms depended for their interest upon the panelling, the chimney-piece, and the well-moulded cornice, which not infrequently was carried along the ceiling beams, introduced in order to lessen the depth of the floor joists by shortening their bearings to 7 or 8 ft.

An entirely different kind of ceiling, which had a vogue of some fifty years, must not be overlooked. It belongs perhaps less to the domain of architecture than to that of painting, namely the painted ceilings associated with the names of Verrio and Laguerre. Verrio was brought over to England by Charles II., and he died in 1707. Laguerre, whom he employed, and who carried on the style after Verrio’s death, lived till 1721. With him the interest ceased, although Sir James Thornhill went on painting ceilings for another dozen years. It is only in great houses or public buildings that this phase of decoration is to be found. The ceiling was regarded as a vast canvas, and certainly no previous painter had enjoyed so wide a field for the display of his conceptions. As a rule both Verrio and Laguerre succeeded in avoiding the weighting of their ceilings with too ponderous matter. Their favourite subjects were gods and goddesses seated upon clouds, and some very clever drawing and painting they produced. Their work cannot well be compared with that of masters working under the ordinary conditions of a movable canvas, controllable light, and a vertical position for manual execution. Were their masterpieces more easily studied than by looking upwards at a ceiling, they would probably be held in higher esteem. Some idea of the effect of this method of decoration may be gathered from Fig. 209, which gives part of a ceiling in Boughton House, attributed to Verrio. The dark cornice on the left is actually the soffit of the modelled plasterwork; everything else, including the shallow balustrade, is painted on the flat ceiling.

Staircases seem to have been an exception to that general tendency to increase the scale of detail which is apparent in work of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. One of the characteristics of Jacobean staircases is the massiveness of their component parts, the newels, the balusters, the handrail, the string; even the steps themselves were sometimes made of solid blocks of wood. The newels were carried up well above the handrail, and fashioned into finials, sometimes heavily moulded, sometimes made into a pedestal for a figure—a heraldic animal, a boy playing an instrument, a warrior or what not. The “string” which supported the ends of the steps was always stout and solid. Much of this early treatment was carried on till the end of the seventeenth century, as may be seen by referring to the illustration from a house in Love Lane (Fig. 210) traditionally associated with Wren. Here all the parts are as massive as of old, although the turned portions of the balusters are inclined to be thin. The most significant change is to be found in the newels, which are not carried up into a finial, but are furnished with a cap by mitring the mouldings of the handrail round them. Once this fashion was established, it held the field until newels were dispensed with in the later part of the eighteenth century, and the handrail wound in one continuous length from the bottom to the top of the staircase.

A passing phase of treatment, associated with the later half of the seventeenth century, is the carved floriated balustrade, such as is to be seen at Sudbury House in Derbyshire (Fig. 211). This is generally combined with massive newels, handrail, and string; indeed, it could hardly be otherwise, for the carved foliage required a fair thickness of wood, and as the carving was almost necessarily made in straight lengths, there had to be newels to receive it. It is not a very common form of treatment, and is usually confined to large houses where expense was not a primary consideration. The same illustration affords good examples of plasterwork in the ceiling, and of woodwork in the doors. It will be seen how much larger in scale is this work than the work of the beginning of the seventeenth century.

With the eighteenth century the treatment of staircases grew more dainty. The handrail, newels, and balusters lessened in size; the outer string disappeared, and the balusters rested on the ends of the steps themselves. The whole effect became lighter. In Austin Friars, London, there was a house of the date of 1704 (now destroyed) which had a fine staircase, illustrated in Fig. 212, where these changes are apparent. It will be seen also that the handrail is ramped, that is, curved upwards at each turn in the staircase in order to attain the proper level for being mitred round the top of the newel. In earlier work, it would have been carried in a straight line till it stopped against the newel, but as the newels are here twisted, there is no plain surface to receive it, and accordingly ramping becomes a necessity. The twisting of the balusters was a common device, more common than that of twisting the newels.

Occasionally the treads and risers were themselves ornamented, the treads being inlaid with various patterns, and the risers being panelled. There is a fine example of this treatment at the Hall at Glastonbury in Somerset,[5] of the date of 1726 (Fig. 213). The inlay is of mahogany and a light wood let into the oak of the treads. The first quarter-landing contains a panel with a monogram and date. It is obvious that no carpets were contemplated for such staircases as these. The newels and balusters in this instance are slightly carved as well as turned; and the bracket at the end of each step is also carved, thus helping considerably towards the general richness of effect.

Later in the eighteenth century skill in the construction of staircases developed still further. It seems a comparatively simple matter to build one in short straight flights with a stout string to carry the steps at either end of them. It is rather less simple to cut away the outer string so as to let the ends of the steps project as in Figs. 212 and 213; the difficulty, however, is minimised by keeping the flights straight. But it required greater skill, both in setting out and in construction, to depart from straight flights altogether, and to contrive a staircase in one continuous elliptical sweep from floor to floor. One of the earliest examples of this method of design, of about 1700, is at Drayton House in Northamptonshire, but it became quite fashionable in the middle of the eighteenth century, and many specimens still survive in large houses in the Bloomsbury district of London, some in stone and some in wood.

The changes that took place in the length of the flights of staircases are not without interest. In mediæval times, when staircases were of the corkscrew type, landings were sparsely provided, and in the nature of things they were small at the best—anything large would not only have interrupted the continuous spiral of ascent, but would have interfered with the already scanty headroom. With the introduction of the wood staircases of the late sixteenth century, a complete change took place. They were made of ample width, and in straight, short flights, seldom of more than six or eight steps; then came a quarter-landing, then another flight at right angles. These short flights remained in fashion nearly down to the eighteenth century. Occasionally winders had been employed, but not in the finest examples. With the eighteenth century the flights increased in length, containing twelve, sixteen, or even more steps: winders were more frequently used. Finally came the elliptical staircase, sweeping from floor to floor in one flight without any landings, and consisting wholly of winders, although as the radius of the sweep was longer, they none of them were narrowed to an actual point. The general effect, which is not altogether happy, may be gathered from Fig. 214. The balustrade here is of iron, rather meagre in design, as such things had now become; the early years of the century had produced some excellent specimens of iron stair-balustrades; but they were not of frequent occurrence, the usual material being wood.

By the end of the eighteenth century the ordinary methods of house design had become almost devoid of interest; the story of the growth of the English house must therefore perforce end on a low note. The stream of development had been fairly continuous up to then, thenceforward it was to be diffused in various channels, all of which derived their character from the past. The Italian Renaissance had been the main source of inspiration, but soon the buildings of Greece were to furnish ideas. After them came the Gothic revival; the battle of the styles; the eclecticism of the nineteenth century; the negation of all style adopted by the speculative builder, only one degree better than his vulgarisation of all styles as he became aware of their existence. From this Slough of Despond we seem now to be happily emerging, and we shall do so the more certainly in proportion as we add to knowledge, thought, and common-sense.

From the foregoing pages it is hoped that some slight knowledge may be obtained; but the dry bones of the facts recorded must be clothed by the imagination of the reader with their covering of flesh. “The cloud-capp’d towers” of feudalism may, perhaps to his ear, resound with the clash of armour; “the gorgeous palaces” of the Renaissance may echo with the melodious notes of the Elizabethan singers or the stately cadence of a later age. Through the cross-bars of the portcullis his eye must detect the glint of steel and the glow of heraldry; across the latticed panes of the mullioned window he must watch for the passing of ruff, and cloak, and slashed hose; behind the glazed sashes he must picture the flowing wig, the patches, and the skirted coat. As the panorama of architecture unfolds itself before him he must people it with the forms of the savage Front-de-Bœuf, the valiant Hotspur, the courtly Sidney, glorious John, sententious Shandy, and the rest of the great band of immortals; and from the “worm-eaten holds of ragged stone,” upon which his eye has lingered, he must for himself construct the homes that once they were.