Elizabethan architecture

“ When the need for feudal strongholds had passed, and the conditions of life in the open country had become peaceful, a type of domestic architecture arose in England which assumed its most characteristic form in the early Elizabethan Age. The best features of this architecture were of native growth out of the humbler forms of mediæval domestic building, the feudal castle, and the latest phase of Perpendicular Gothic. ”

“ And now that we have pointed out the kind of approach most peculiarly English, that approach will guide us to the only style of villa architecture which can be called English,—the Elizabethan, and its varieties; a style fantastic in its details, and capable of being subjected to no rule, but, as we think, well adapted for the scenery in which it arose. We allude not only to the pure Elizabethan, but even to the strange mixtures of classical ornaments with Gothic forms, which we find prevailing in the sixteenth century. ”

“ I have selected a Tudor castle because the field is practically untouched in American Renaissance and modern architecture generally. If there be fashion in adaptation, the fashion has been for Elizabethan and Jacobean adaptations rather than Tudor; but the real reason why we have no creditable offspring of that delightful old rambler—Haddon Hall (see Plate LXXII) , in America is to be found in the fact that no American architect capable of exploiting the thing has thought about it or else he has lacked the opportunity, more probably the latter. ”

“ And while this remark may seem to ignore architecture as such, i.e. the fine art of beautiful building, it expresses a fundamental principle; for to build a house to live in, shaped for the needs of civilized human life, is to secure the primary condition of good architectural effect. And no domestic architecture in Europe has had more genuine charm for the eye than that of England of the Elizabethan time in its integrity, as it may be seen, for instance, in the greater parts of Haddon Hall; St. Johns, Warwick; Hambleton Old Hall, Rutland; North Mymms, Hertfordshire, and others. [2] ”

“ Those unsubstantial structures, with all their dazzling incrustations, are passed or passing from the earth: nothing is lasting but hard massive stone, impenetrable cement, and scientific combinations.” [147] It ought to be said, [218] however, that whatever flimsiness of material entered into the composition of these buildings was confined to ornamental details, and chiefly to the interiors. The main body of the Elizabethan structure was of solid and well-executed masonry. ”

“ We find that the effect, although often elaborate and striking, is produced by very simple means. The picturesque appearance of Haddon and Compton Winyates is chiefly due to the irregularity of the plan, which in the case of the former was largely the result of a gradual growth, extending over some centuries. The stately effect of the Elizabethan house is the result of regularity and symmetry in the plan, and its picturesqueness springs from its windows, gables and chimneys. ”

“ STYLE in architecture is a term the significance of which develops long after the time to which it applies. What we now recognise as the characteristic style of building introduced by the Elizabethans was, of course, looked upon by the people themselves as an innovation, a novelty, and not in the least typical of the time. ”

“ They are often of three storeys in height, the roofs are frequently of flat pitch, and in that case are hidden behind a parapet which is sometimes of fantastic design. Where the roofs are steeper and not concealed the gables are frequently of broken outline. Windows are usually very large, and with mullions and transoms, and it is to these large openings that Elizabethan interiors owe their bright and picturesque effects. Entrances are generally adorned with some classic or semi-classic features, often, however, much altered from their original model ”

“ The stiff and formal Georgian houses, the painful Victorian villas, and some of the earlier attempts at architectural improvement have been swept away to make room for modern replicas of still older styles which have been revived or incorporated in the nouvre art, which touches the home in its architecture and internal decoration, as well as in its furnishings. In modern dwellings the Elizabethan style has often been followed, although modern conveniences have been incorporated. ”

“ Each is a type of different architecture, and no matter how grand and imposing, each is called a "cottage." The greatest rivalry has been shown in construction, and the styles cover all known methods of building—Gothic, Elizabethan, Tudor, Swiss, Flemish, French, with every sort of ancient house in Britain or Continental Europe, imitated and improved upon, and in some cases widely varying systems being condensed together. ”

“ The names of kings or queens are justly given to denote styles, whether of architecture, dress, or personal ornaments, and utensils of the household. Society in most countries adopts those habits that are first taken up by the sovereign. In England, the reign of Elizabeth was pre-eminently a period during which the tastes, even the fancies, of the queen were followed enthusiastically by her people. Elizabethan is the name of the style of architecture gradually developed during her reign. Italian taste, though not perhaps so pure as it had been a few years earlier, had become far more general ”

“ Whatever else we may or may not have, we have here the Elizabethan and Jacobean ideas of what houses were or ought to be, what accommodation they should contain, and how it should be disposed. In this respect the collection is particularly valuable, because we get everything at first hand; we see some designs in course of development, and others as they were finished, and entirely free from the manifold alterations which houses themselves have necessarily undergone in the course of three centuries. ”

“ Is it proposed to build a church, a public institution, or a dwelling-house? If you have the money you shall have one as well built as human hands can accomplish. But you must name your style—Greek, Palladian, Norman, Early English, Tudor, Jacobean, or Georgian—your architect will carry out a masterpiece in any one of them; but if you say Victorian, or the style of the day, he will give you François Ier to-day, Queen Anne to-morrow, and Pericles the day after. Buildings grow apace, and they are soundly and tastefully constructed, but British architecture is dead. ”

“ In establishing that outpost in the New World, which was to become the first permanent English settlement on this side of the Atlantic, as well as the beginning of the British Empire—now the Commonwealth,—they brought with them a knowledge of, and skill in, English architecture. At that time, the beginning of the seventeenth century, architecture in Britain had reached a very high level of culture—witness the great minsters, like Lincoln and York, or the great castles, like Windsor and Hampton Court. ”

“ So in England, Henry VIII and Edward VI might de{141}stroy the then vital art, and Elizabeth might expunge its very memory, building ridiculous semi-German conceits to the grief of the judicious; nevertheless the deep-lying tradition prevailed outside court circles and those of the Erastianised Church, and the sixteenth-century domestic architecture of the Cotswolds, of Surrey, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Essex—indeed of almost every county in England—was, in its way, just as good architecture as that which universally prevailed before the “Great Pillage.” ”

“ The latter carried the day, and, after an heroic struggle and many failures, England awoke from her long lethargy, to find herself the possessor of a noble architecture, a true exponent of ecclesiastical art and tradition, although confessedly far from perfect when applied to domestic buildings. For these latter edifices the old manor-houses, with their many mullioned windows and Tudor arcuation, formed the basis for design, and machicoli, turrets, and open timber roofs became the fashion for country-houses ”

“ In our towns almost every tower and spire which we see is a modern building, though the styles may vary from Norman to Perpendicular and seventeenth century. Modern buildings, churches, halls, public offices, and private houses are mostly imitations of the work of past ages. There is no nineteenth-century style of English architecture. Some day, perhaps, England may develop a new style of architecture, such as the world has never yet seen, but at the present time we seem to be only able to copy and adapt the work of those who have gone before us. ”

“ It can hardly, however, be called an architectural style; it would have no right to figure in any work illustrating the great architectural styles of the world. It was, in fact, the last dying phase of the English Renaissance; the architecture of the classic order reduced to a threadbare condition, treated very simply and in plain materials, in many cases shorn of its columnar features, and reflecting faithfully enough the prim rationalistic taste in literature and art of the England of the 18th century. ”

“ The doorways are rich in marginal ornament—ornament within ornament, as it often is; for the dainty weeds and wild flowers overlace the antique tracery with their bright arabesques and deepen the grey of the stonework as it brightens their bloom. The thousand flowers which grow among English ruins deserve a chapter to themselves. I owe them, as an observer, a heavy debt of satisfaction, but I am too little of a botanist to pay them in their own coin. It has often seemed to me in England that the purest enjoyment of architecture was to be had among the 117 ruins of great buildings. ”

“ In fact, looking at our great public buildings of the day, will not a future age keep its judgment equally balanced on the question, whether we had decided between the classical style of the Treasury, or the mediaeval of the national palace, as best recording our tastes and feeling?
If this be so, must we not say, that looking at the past which has given us rules, and at the present which gives us data, our conclusion for the future of Architecture is not favourable, so far as public building is concerned? ”

“ I know this, for I got it from the guide-book.
There is nothing in England, in the way of architecture, more striking or grand. The beautiful is not always the grand, or the grand the beautiful. Westminster Abbey is both. The old architects might not have been able to have built the Capitol at Washington, and they certainly could not have built the Court House in New York, and made it cost more than the Houses of Parliament, for they were not that kind of architects ”

“ Paul's or Westminster Abbey must ever command the primal reverence of every Englishman worthy the name, no less will such landmarks as the Albert Hall, the Albert Memorial, the Natural History Museum, or the Imperial Institute, speak to the ages of the famous "sixty years of ever widening Empire." For, surely, the greatest power of architecture is that it leaves the memorial, in turn, of every age. ”

“ In one respect the reign of Queen Victoria offers a strange and rather melancholy contrast to all that have preceded it, inasmuch as it is the first during which the architects of this country have been totally destitute of any peculiar style of building. |Victorian Architecture.| Never were builders more ingenious or more skilful, never was there such vast expenditure in the erection of private or public buildings, but never before were architects so completely reliant on the past for design. ”

“ Although in the general design the florid Gothic order of the time of Edward the Third has been followed, the architect has, in parts, not only availed himself of the low Tudor arch, but has adopted the peculiar style of any period suitable to his purpose, and has made subservient to modern domestic convenience the rich and varied forms in which our ancient ecclesiastical architecture abounds. The walls, battlements, and pinnacles of the building are constructed of stone of a light and beautiful colour, brought from Delamere Forest ”

“ There are two views as to English architecture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On the one hand, it is held that in the days of Elizabeth architectural design shows a freshness, vivacity, and originality which express the genius of the time, and result in a truly national style, albeit one which never quite fulfilled its promise; and that in later periods designers became more and more imitative, and thereby lost from their [vi] work, however correct and refined, those qualities which make for supreme achievement. ”

“ In general, the foreign influence governs the construction, while the Anglo-Norman influence appears in the decorative details. Structurally, there is no other building in England that exhibits so much of Gothic character except Westminster Abbey, which is rather a French than an English design. ”

“ But a national style of architecture was never reproduced by such means. It must grow up like the oak, unforced and in its native soil; and, when thus originating, its living forms become the embodiment of the polity, social history, and religious faith of the nation. Yet architecture is on this very account essentially a practical art, and even in the most gorgeous medieval cathedral a sense of fitness, and ideas of direct utility, may be traced as controlling powers influencing the whole design. ”

“ Not a wall, however solidly built, has been left standing. And along that line of colossal monuments which is threaded by the Nile, temples, pyramids, and Memnoniums, with their carvings, and even their paintings, fresh without and within them, is there one single private building, from a cottage to a princely mansion, remaining; though, no doubt, hundreds and thousands of dwellings must have been built and rebuilt, to furnish workmen for these sumptuous edifices and princes to command their erection? ”