The Rhode Island American, And General Advertiser

No chapter in the history of national manners would illustrate so well, if duly executed, the progress of social life, as that dedicated to domestick architecture. The fashions of dress and of amusements are generally capricious and irreducible to rule; but every change in the dwellings of mankind, from the rudest wooden cabin to the stately mansion, has been dictated by some principle of convenience, neatness, comfort or magnificence.

Yet this most interesting field of research has been less beaten by our antiquaries than others comparatively barren.

The most ancient buildings which we can trace in this island, after the departure of the Romans, were circular towers of no great size, whereof many remain in Scotland; erected either on a natural eminence, or an artificial mound of earth. Such are Conisborough Castle in Yorkshire, and Castleton in Derbyshire, built perhaps before the conquest.

To the lower chambers of those gloomy keeps there was no admission of light or air, except through long narrow loop-holes, and an aperture in the roof. Regular windows were made in the upper apartments. Were it not for the vast thickness of the walls, and some marks of attention both to convenience and decoration in these structures, we might be induced to consider them as rather intended for security during the transient inroad of an enemy, than for a chieftain's usual residence. They bear a close resemblance, except by their circular form, and more insulated situation, to the peels, or square towers of three or four stories which are still found contiguous to ancient mansion-houses, themselves far more ancient, in the northern counties, and seem to have been designed for places of refuge.

In course of time, the Barons, who owned these castles, began to covet a more comfortable dwelling. The keep was either much enlarged, or altogether relinquished as a place of residence, except in time of siege; while more convenient apartments were sometimes erected in the tower of entrance, over the great gate-way, which led to the inner ballium or court-yard. Thus at Tambridge Castle, this part of which is referred by Mr. King to the beginning of the thirteenth century, there was a room, twenty-eight feet by sixteen, on each side of the gate-way; another above, of the same dimensions, with an intermediate room over the entrance; and one large apartment on a second floor occupying the whole space, and intended for state. The windows in this class of castles were still little better than loop-holes on the basement story, but in the upper rooms often large and beautifully ornamented, though always looking towards to the court. Edward I. introduced a more splendid and convenient style of castles, containing many habitable towers, with communicating apartments. Conway and Carnarvon will be familiar examples. The next innovation was the castle-palace; of which Windsor, if not quite the earliest, is the most magnificent instance. Alnwick, Naworth, Harewood, Spofforth, Kenilworth, and Warwick, were all built upon this scheme during the fourteenth century, but subsequent enlargements have rendered caution necessary to distinguish their original remains. "The old mixture," says Mr. King, "of convenience and magnificence with call to his designs for protection and defence, and with the inconveniences of the former confined plan of a close fortress, is very striking."—

The provisions for defence became now, however, little more than a grim story; large arched windows, like those of cathedrals, were introduced into halls, and this change in architecture manifestly bears witness to the cessation of baronial wars, and the increasing love of splendour in the reign of Edward III.

To these succeeded the castellated houses of the fifteenth century; such as Herstmonceux in Sussex; Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, and the older part of Knowle in Kent. They resembled fortified castles in their strong gate-ways, their turrets and battlements, to erect which a Royal license was necessary, but their defensive strength could only have availed against a sudden affray or attempt at forcible dispossession. They were always built round one or two court-yards, the circumference of the first, when there were two, being occupied by the offices and servants' rooms, that of the second by the state-apartments. Regular quadrangular houses not castellated, were sometimes built during the same age, and under Henry VII. became universal in the superior style of domestick architecture. The quadrangular form, as well from security and convenience as from imitation of conventual houses, which were always constructed upon that model, was generally preferred; even where the dwelling-house, as indeed was usual, only took up one side of the inclosure, and the remaining three contained the offices, stables, and farm-buildings with walls of communication. Several very old parsonages appear to have been built in this manner. It is, however, very difficult to discover any fragments of houses inhabited by the gentry, before the reign, at soonest, of Edward III. or even to trace them by engravings in the older topographical works: not only from the dilapidations of time, but because very few considerable mansions had been erected by that class.

A great part of England affords no stone fit for building; and the vast, though unfortunately not inexhaustible, resources of her oak forests were easily applied to less durable and magnificent structures. A frame of massive timber, independent of walls, and resembling the inverted hull of a large ship, formed the skeleton, as it were of an ancient hall; the principal beams springing from the ground naturally curved, and forming a Gothick arch overhead. The intervals of these were filled up with horizontal planks; but in the earlier buildings, at least in some districts, no part of the walls was of stone.

Stone houses however are mentioned as belonging to citizens of London, even in the reign of Henry II.; and, though not often perhaps regularly hewn stones, yet those scattered over the soil, or dug from flint quarries, bound together with a very strong and durable cement, were employed in the construction of manerial houses, especially in the western counties, and other parts where that material is easily procured. Gradually, even in timber buildings, the intervals of the main beams, which now became perpendicular, not throwing off their curved springers till they reached a considerable height, were occupied by stone walls, or where stone was expensive, by mortar or plaster, intersected by horizontal or diagonal beams, grooved into the principal piers. This mode of building continued for a long time, and is still familiar to our eyes in the older streets of the metropolis and other towns, and in many parts of the country. Early in the fourteenth century, the art of building with brick, which had been lost since the Roman dominion, was introduced probably from Flanders. Though several edifices of that age are constructed with this material, it did not come into general use till the reign of Henry VI. Many considerable houses

* Harrison says, that few of the houses of the commonality, except here and there in the west-country towns, were made of stone. p. 314. This was about 1570.

The ancient manors and houses of our gentlemen, says Harrison, are yet and for the most part of strong timber, in framing whereof our carpenters have been and are worthily preferred before those of like science among all other nations. Howbeit such sumptuously builded are either of brick or hard stone, or both. p. 316.
As well as public buildings were erected with bricks during his reign and that of Ed. ward IV. chiefly in the eastern counties, where the deficiency of stone was most experienced. Few, if any brick mansion houses of the fifteenth century exist, except in ruins; but Queen's College and Clare Hall at Cambridge, and part of Emanuel College, are subsisting witnesses to the durability of this material as it was then employed.

It is an error to suppose, that the English gentry were lodged in stately, or even well-sized houses. Generally speaking, their dwellings were almost as inferior to those of their descendants in capacity, as they were in convenience. The usual arrangement consisted of an entrance passage running through the house, with a hall on one side, a parlour beyond, and one or two chambers above, and on the opposite side, a kitchen, pantry, and other offices. Such was the ordinary manor house of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as appears not only from documents and engravings, but, as to the latter period, from the buildings themselves, sometimes, though not very frequently, occupied by families of consideration, more often converted into farm-houses, or distinct tenements. Larger structures were erected by men of great estates during the reigns of Henry V. and Edward IV.; but very few can be traced much higher: and such has been the effect of time, still more through the advance or decline of families, and the progress of architectural improvement, than the natural decay of these buildings, that I should conceive it difficult to name a house in England, still inhabited by a gentleman, and not belonging to the order of castles, the principal apartments of which are older than the reign of Henry VII. The instances at least must be extremely few.* Single rooms, windows, doorways, &c. of an earlier date may perhaps not unfrequently be found; but such instances are always to be verified by their intrinsic evidence, not by the tradition of the place. The most remarkable fragment of early building which I have anywhere found mentioned, is at a house in Berkshire, called Appleton, where there exists a sort of prodigy, an entrance passage with circular arches in the Saxon style, which must probably be as old as the reign of Henry I. No other private house in England, or perhaps in Europe, can boast of such a monument of antiquity.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]