Apsley House

“ Neither arch has the urbanistic value of Benjamin Dean Wyatt’s Duke of York’s Column or of the Nelson Column, erected in 1839 in Trafalgar Square by William Railton (1803-77) , because of their very casual siting. Apsley House, as remodelled by B. D. Wyatt for the Duke of Wellington in 1828, rising too high beside the Burton screen, is not altogether an addition to the group at Hyde Park Corner. ”

“ Virgil Onderdonk, of converting the site of Apsley House to the uses of a super-dancing-saloon. Mr. Flather is a convinced opponent of the dancing mania and President of the Anti-Tarantulation League, while Mr. Onderdonk has always been a profound admirer of the great Duke of Wellington. Subject to the approval of the present Duke it is our intention to re-erect Apsley House on the Playing Fields at Eton, and utilise the site for the building of flats for the New Poor."
"The erection of a Neo-Georgian super-dancing-saloon on the Piccadilly frontage of Apsley House," said Mr. ”

“ Bleak House was the most successful book I ever took away sledging, though a volume of poetry was useful, because it gave one something to learn by heart and repeat during the blank hours of the daily march, when the idle mind is all too apt to think of food in times of hunger, or possibly of purely imaginary grievances, which may become distorted into real foundations of discord under the abnormal strain of living for months in the unrelieved company of three other men. ”

“ If you can picture our house nestling below this small hill on a long stretch of black sand, with many tons of provision cases ranged in neat blocks in front of it and the sea lapping the ice-foot below, you will have some idea of our immediate vicinity. As for our wider surroundings it would be difficult to describe their beauty in sufficiently glowing terms. Cape Evans is one of the many spurs of Erebus and the one that stands closest under the mountain, so that always towering above us we have the grand snowy peak with its smoking summit. ”

“ Ashfield Hall is a striking old house, with a gateway, mullion and latticed windows, and beyond extends the old street, known since the days of the pilgrims as Hospital Street.
Overhead stretched a laughing blue sky, and all round was what Bess was pleased to term the Snow Queen’s Kingdom. ”

“ Yet it gave all the year round,—a fact which weak critics often overlook when they talk about a useless room, and laugh in their dreaded but unproductive way,—gave all the year round a sense of ample accommodation and dignity to the mansion. From the kitchen a winding staircase ascended to the upper rooms. The small landing-place rested on the back wall of the house. Small garrets were over these rooms. The cellar was of the size of the dwelling, and [Pg 208] afforded no hiding-place, nor any means of access to the interior from without, which we could not easily secure. ”

“ Johnson is the great figure at Ashbourne. Here he for many years used to visit Dr. Taylor, at the great brick house, still standing, opposite the old Grammar School. It is named simply, and yet arrogantly, “The Mansion.” Tradition tells that the frontage was designed by an Italian architect: probably the dullest dog in his profession, if the solid, stolid, uninspired elevation is the measure of his capabilities. But how beautiful is the garden front, with its two gabled wings and the odd, but distinguished, pavilion between! ”

“ This fine old mansion has been since pulled down, and replaced by a modern structure, which, though handsome and [Pg 232] commodious, does not of course possess the historic interest of the earlier building. With its ornamented gables, projections, and large windows, Bentley House presented a very imposing front, but it was at the back that the party arrived, and as they rode into the court-yard, a faithful groom, who was waiting for his master's return, came forth from the stables with a lantern and took charge of the horses. ”

“ King Edward II. passed an ordinance directing each owner to keep his own part in due repair.
Riley quotes a case in which a widow claimed Free Bench in a tenement belonging to her late husband in the parish of St. Nicholas Flesh Shambles. The sheriffs gave her a wing (alam) or perhaps the principal room (aulam) with a chamber, a cellar, and the right of easement in the kitchen, stable, common drain, and courtyard; the rest of the house remained in possession of the heirs and next-of-kin of the deceased. ”

“ The view from the terrace is quite magnificent; the family have not inhabited the house for many years, and it is falling fast into decay.
APPLEBY CASTLE
Appleby is placed in a commanding situation above the town; a pretty torrent rushes beneath the walls. The old Keep or Citadel was, till within these few years, used as the prison. Ld. Thanet is Hereditary Sheriff of the County. The present mansion is built out of the old Castle, or rather made within its walls. This was done by the celebrated Ann Clifford, the heiress and representative of the Earls of Cumberland ”

“ Ebba at Epsom, though some are of opinion that its site is occupied by the farm now known as the Court, replacing the manor-house that is referred to in the Doomsday Survey as an appanage of Chertsey Abbey, which also owned in the same district the manor of Horton, the homestead of which is now represented by an eighteenth-century mansion called Horton Place, two churches and two mills, with many acres of land. ”

“ Other curious people journeyed up to Black Aspens for the pleasure of looking at the house where the mystery was staged. If allowed to enter they walked about, open-mouthed in admiration or wonder.
“Stunning hall!” exclaimed one young man, a budding architect, who examined the old house with interest. “Look at those bronze columns! I never saw such a pair.”
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“I’ve heard the first Montgomery brought those from Italy or somewhere, and put up a house behind ’em,” volunteered another sightseer. “Ain’t it queer, the way they’re half in and half out of the front wall? Land! ”

“ There is a restlessness about our fashionable imitations of the older kinds of English domestic architecture. Our picturesque gables, dormer windows and rooms with all sorts of odd angles, our finicky windows stuck high up in unexpected parts of walls, our absurd leaded diamond panes and crooked metal fastenings, all make for fussiness of soul. Nor can I believe that people who live under ceilings which they can almost touch ever attain a great and calm outlook upon life.
There was nothing “artistic” about Ascher’s house. ”

“ Lord Auchinleck, who is one of the Judges of Scotland, and therefore not wholly at leisure for domestick business or pleasure, has yet found time to make improvements in his patrimony. He has built a house of hewn stone, very stately, and durable, and has advanced the value of his lands with great tenderness to his tenants.
I was, however, less delighted with the elegance of the modern mansion, than with the sullen dignity of the old castle. I clambered with Mr. Boswell among the ruins, which afford striking images of ancient life. ”

“ The Aspinall home at Fallowfield was an ancient, many-gabled grange, with mullioned windows, recessed window-seats, expansive two-leaved entrance arched above; noble hall, with trophies from the hunting-field; grand staircase, with massive carved oak balusters, flights of broad low steps, and wide square landings; long corridors, three or four rooms of magnificent proportions, and clusters of little ones grouped around unsuspected passages and stairs; open fire-places recently enclosed, and double doors to the chief chambers. ”

“ Milton Abbas is, indeed, the precursor of many recent “model” villages, and typical of the highhanded ways of the eighteenth-century landed gentry, who could not endure the sight of a cottage from the windows of their mansions; and so forthwith, in the manner of Eastern potentates, whisked whole villages and populations away from between the wind and their gentility. Each cottage is built four-square, with thatched roof and equidistant doors and windows, all in the Doll’s House or Noah’s Ark order of architecture, and there is scarce a pin to choose between any of them. ”

“ Opposite the famous Chew house on Germantown Avenue, amid a luxurious setting of splendid trees, clinging ivy and box-bordered gardens, stands Upsala, one of the finest examples of the Colonial architecture of Philadelphia. A great, square two and a half story house with a gable roof, three handsome dormers in front, a goodly sized chimney toward either end, and an L in the rear, it speaks eloquently of substantial comfort. ”

“ Even at a cursory view it was evident that Partinborough Grange was of considerable antiquity. It was a house of no great size, but it had many gables and was pleasantly irregular in proportion. It was ivy-covered, too, almost to the roof, and the windows were framed with rose creepers. The porch before which the carriage drew up was a veritable mass of white and red blooms.
Mostyn's heart leapt delightedly within him. He had often pictured to himself a house like this, and now his dreams were realised. ”

“ A third house, which was destroyed by fire, was built by Captain Jim, the youngest son of old Mark Anthony deWolf, who built the first house for his family in Bristol. The builder was a most successful merchant, his estate at one time comprising nearly the whole eastern part of the town. The mansion was built at about the same time as "Hey Bonnie Hall." It is of plain exterior with simple lines and shows fine proportions.
Inside are twenty-eight rooms that were fitted up with the choicest pieces of Chippendale, Hepplewhite, and Sheraton. ”

“ At Astley Hall, also in Lancashire (Plate XXXIII.) , the two bays are the dominating feature of the front; indeed, the whole architectural interest of this side of the [112] house lies in the management of the windows, for the doorway, flanked by double columns which lend their united strength to supporting a peaceable lion, is hardly worth attention. ”

“ Barradine's mansion, and he used to arrive there just before eight o'clock. With the thought came the luminous pictures, and he saw again, as clearly as fifteen years ago, the splendor of the Abbey House—that is, all one can see of it as one approaches its vast servants' offices. Here, solidly real, were the archway, the first and the second courtyard, grouped gables and irregular roof ridges, the belfry tower and its gilded vane; men washing a carriage, a horse drinking at the fountain trough, a dog lying on a sunlit patch of cobble-stones and lazily snapping at flies ”

“ If it were not for the marble halls, and the decorations, and the foolishly expensive finish, the houses could be built round a court, and the flats could be shaped something like a Pompeiian house, with small sleeping-closets--only lit from the outside--and the rest of the floor thrown into two or three large cheerful halls, where all the family life could go on, and society could be transacted unpretentiously. Why, those tenements are better and humaner than those flats! There the whole family lives in the kitchen, and has its consciousness of being ”

“ Bessie protested, "if there is any created thing that I despise it is a 'modern' house, made up of bay windows and crooked turrets, and shingled balconies, and peaked roofs, and grotesque little fandangoes of wood and copper and terra cotta, that have no more dignity or repose, or beauty or homelike appearance, than a crazy quilt or a Chinese puzzle. They are simply outrageous, abominable. ”

“ After nearly a week of solitude with only Alice’s parish talk and mild speculations as to our future at Eastminster to break the intolerable monotony of it, I could bear it no longer. I put on my hat one wet and windy afternoon and went down to the Yellow House. Adelaide Fortress was alone, writing at her desk, and when I entered we looked at one another for a moment without any greeting. It seemed to me that a few more grey hairs had mingled with the black—a little more wanness had crept into the delicate, intellectual face. ”

“ If a house at Chailey or near by could be found or built where this wasted material might be nourished into happy efficiency, how splendid! Such was the desire of the founder, and it is now within sight of fruition; for, through the generosity of a friend of the Heritage, the house has been acquired and is ready for occupation.
Strange are the vicissitudes of fortune; stranger the links in the chain of life. CLAUDE and ALICE ASKEW, who wrote popular serial novels in the daily papers, lived in a rambling old home at Wivelsfield Green, in Sussex, known as "Botches." ”

“ I think as I walked down the little main street of Eastminster that sunny morning I knew that the crisis in these strange events was fast drawing near. The calm of the last few days had been too complete. Almost I could have persuaded myself that the events of the last month or two had been a dream. No one could possibly have imagined that the thunderclouds of tragedy were hovering over that old-fashioned, almost cloistral, dwelling house lying in the very shadows of the cathedral. ”

“ Over the doorway as we enter we notice the old black letter inscription which Thomas Legh placed when, as he tells us, he “made this buyldinge in the year of or lorde god 1581.”
The “hall” itself is an admirable and almost perfect specimen of the period when that apartment constituted the chief feature of every mansion, serving not only as an audience chamber on [353] occasions of state and ceremony, but as the place where the owner and his family, with his guests and dependents, assembled daily at the dinner hour, and where, in fact, the public life of the household was carried on. ”