Part 6

None of the old English gardens were complete without a fountain, and no fountain was complete without a figure. Bacon says--“For fountains ... the ornaments of images, gilt or of marble, which are in use do well.”

Paul Hentzner writes of the sixteenth century garden of Theobalds, the seat of Lord Treasurer Burleigh--“There was a summer house, in the lower part of which, built semicircularly, are the twelve Roman emperors in white marble and a table of touchstone (alabaster) the upper part is set around with cisterns of lead into which the water is conveyed by pipes so that fish may be kept in them, and in summer time they are very convenient for bathing.”

At St. Fagan’s, near Cardiff, in front of the house is a remarkable lead tank; it is octagonal, ten feet across and nearly four feet high; it is ornamented round the sides with flowers, and shields in panels, and is dated 1620.

At Syon House there is a fountain in which a lead figure forms the jet d’eau.

At Wooton in Staffordshire there is a fountain basin with a lead duck so suspended as to float on the water spouting water from its bill. The Swan which seemed to float on the water described by Borrow in _Lavengro_ must have been of lead. At Sprotborough in Yorkshire are some lead toads about nine inches long, which also seem to have belonged to a fountain.

Some of the figures mentioned before stand in the centre of basins, and occasionally simple groups, as of Neptune in a two-horsed chariot, may be found, but we have nothing in England to compare to the great fountain compositions of the Versailles Gardens or to the fountain called _Le Buffet_ in the Trianon Park, designed by Mansard, and profusely decorated by the gilt lead sculptures of Van Clève and other artists.

In Germany some of the earlier town fountains are of lead.

§ XVI. OF VASES AND GATE PIERS.

The vases at Hampton Court mentioned above are particularly fine in design and well modelled; their height is about 2.3 and the little sitting figures, slight as they are, are charming in their pose; the folded arms and prettily arranged hair give us a suggestion of life which most of these things supposed to be in the classic taste lack. The inventory taken by the Commission at Hampton Court mentions “Fower large flower potts of lead.” Similar vases are in the gardens at Windsor, also larger and later examples with figure plaques in Flaxman’s manner. At Castle Hill, North Devon, there are ten vases, some with mouldings and gadroons formed in repoussé, others cast.

At Melbourne in Derbyshire there is an enormous vase some seven or eight feet high in a very rococo style.[29] There is one at Penshurst, which comes from Old Leicester House in London; and at Sprotborough are others of similar design. These vases will not bear comparison with the beautiful lead Gothic fonts before given.

[29] _The Formal Garden_, Blomfield and Thomas.

There are several vases at Wimpole near Cambridge, at Wilton, and at Wrest. Little square flower boxes with cast or repoussé devices on the sides were also made; Charles Lamb describes some flower pots for us from the gardens of Blakesware in Herefordshire, a fine old house, destroyed even when he wrote--“The owner of it had lately pulled it down; still I had a vague notion that it could not all have perished. _How shall they build it up again?_” There was a beautiful fruit garden and “ampler pleasure garden rising backwards from the house in triple terraces, with flower pots now of palest lead save that a spot here and there saved from the elements bespake their pristine state to have been gilt and glittering.”

At Knole are a pair of circular pots figured on page 120. Circular baskets of open interlacing work and other forms were also made.

Garden seats were also made entirely of lead. There are six lead seats at Castle Hill, North Devon; they are large square boxes with heavy “classic” forms, the top and ends imitating the folds of drapery. At Chiswick similar seats in every way were sculptured in stone. These show how lead should not be used.

At Castle Hill are also several greyhounds; they are particularly lively and well modelled and suitable for their purpose as guards to the gates. Gate piers are most inviting pedestals for leaden imagery. At Albert Gate, Hyde Park, there are two beautiful lead stags--another pair of them are at Loughton in Essex; no more appropriate English park gate could well be thought of. At Carshalton, Surrey, where a park was enclosed by Thomas Scawen, the great gate pillars of the entrance have large boldly modelled statues of Diana and Actæon, the date 1726. The little Cupids that stand out of the ivy that covers the piers at Temple Dinsley are sketched in Fig. 53.

Perhaps the finest gate pier groups are those to the Flower Pot Gate at Hampton Court, where Cupids uphold a basket of flowers. These able pieces of work are not generally known for lead, because, like so many figures and vases, they have been painted and sanded to imitate stone.

In 1744 the then member for Southampton presented two lions for the Bar Gate in that town. These not very beautiful creatures still remain.

Syon House, on the Thames, has besides the great lion, a lesser lion set over Adam’s “lace gateway,” weighing a ton and half, it is unfortunately newly _painted and sanded_ to look like stone, and as the tail sticks out in a way utterly impossible for anything but metal it makes it entirely absurd. There is a plague of paint over old leadwork, which should be gilt or let alone.

On the park wall facing the road there are fine sphinxes, about five feet long, in every way different to the lion, well designed exercises in the “classic taste.” Well modelled, with impressive heads, in the dark and dinted metal, they are pleasant both in colour and texture. They are quite “Adam’s” in character but not at all petty like some of his work and very different to a pair of sphinxes also of lead, on the gates of Chiswick House.

§ XVII. OF FINIALS AND CRESTINGS.

The lead finial is typically a French feature; there cannot be said to be a single instance of a large ornamental finial of lead remaining in England of the kind once so universal in France and of which so many still remain there. These French finials from the 12th to the 18th centuries have been sufficiently described, especially by M. De la Queriere, who devotes a volume to them and the cresting of ridges; by Viollet-le-Duc; and in De Caumont’s _Abcdaire_.

Many of these early French Gothic finials of the 12th and 13th centuries were lead statues formed out of repoussé sheet metal and they surmounted the culminating point of the church, at the apex of the chevet; here was often placed an immense angel with great wings turning as vanes in the wind. At Rouen it is the Virgin with the infant Christ which stands over the Lady Chapel; there was formerly on the main apse a giant St. George horsed and spearing the dragon, melted at the Revolution “they say” into bullets. At Clermont Ferrand is the most remarkable composition, a tall pillar on which stands a colossal Virgin facing the sunrise; round the stem spring out great branches of foliage on which sit four figures--King David with the harp and three others with musical instruments--the ridge is ornamented with open work, and a length of similar foliage reaches down the slope of the roof for some feet on either side of the finial where are two other figures, these are full life size, and the whole must be 20 or more feet high.

At Evreux the apse had a St. Michael treading down Satan. The immense St. Michael that surmounted the central tower at Mont St. Michel, which could be seen many leagues out at sea, was also probably of lead.

We had in England in the twelfth century a large figure serving as a finial to the central tower at Canterbury. This tower was built by Lanfranc, and Gervase tells us it was surmounted by a gilt angel, this is shown in the contemporary drawing of Canterbury; and the tower, Professor Willis says, ever retained the name of the Angel Tower. Stow also told us of a lead spire close by St. Paul’s with an image of St. Paul on the top.

The early French examples of finials without a figure were formed of foliage in repoussé on a stem or pillar with swelling bands or bowl-like forms at the point of growth: these and the foliage were beaten out of thick sheet lead, the larger forms in two halves and soldered together. The central stem was an iron rod covered with lead tube slipped over it in short pieces, with hooks to hang the branching leaves to; sometimes slender rods rise out of the foliage and droop with lilies at their extremities.

Later, cast ornaments became general; on the Hôtel Dieu at Beaune is a wonderful series of these finials made up of portions partly repoussé partly cast, these have coronets of delicate open work which were cast in strips and bent round. Where the finial joins the roof a rayed sun of cast metal is placed. Mr. Clutton gives drawings of these.

In the Museum at Lille there are two fine finials, one of these is carefully analysed to a large scale by Burges in his book of drawings and the other, wholly made up of castings, is given here from a photograph. In the Museum in the splendid old hall of the Hôtel Dieu at Angers are two, sketches of which are given in Figs. 57 and 58. The leaves and scrolls are cast with ribs to make them stiffer.

The later Gothic and Renaissance finials are often charmingly suggestive in the _subject_ of their design--some have figures, a huntsman at Bourges, a Cupid shooting arrows or a man-at-arms; some are made up with suns or sun and moon, or moon and stars, as at Troyes; at Beaune, cup-like forms are made of openwork for birds’ nests. Again we find a vase of lilies or branch of drooping thistles, a pigeon, a coronet, or personal devices and badges. Mr. Burges noted how the early poets spoke of the _music_ of the vanes, and there can be little doubt that some of them were intended to resound to the wind: in the _Hypnerotomachia_ (1499) a finial is shown with little bells hanging to chains which swang against a metal bowl; Viollet-le-Duc also tells us that in certain crestings he found a singular musical conceit in contrivances for producing “sifflements” under the action of the wind--Æolian flutes.

At Bourges on the Hôtels Jacques Cœur and Cujas are some finials consisting of little more than a lead-covered stick bearing a rod and girouettes. Flags were properly only set up in the due heraldic precedence of the proprietor, a Knight might fly a pennon and so on; they were centred at times on a piece of agate to reduce the friction of revolution. We have only to look at the views of old towns given in manuscripts to see how the mediæval mind delighted in these flag finials; but there are probably not half a dozen old ones now left in England. When there are many revolving flags to the finials on one building and these are bright with new gold, they have the delightful property of flashing the light to a great distance. The gilt flags on the pinnacles of the west front of Wells Cathedral twinkle simultaneously against the setting sun.

Crestings, sometimes large and most ornamental, were formed along the ridges of French buildings, especially in the early Renaissance.[30] These ornamental ridges, especially in this exaggerated form, are not English.

[30] _See_ De la Queriere or Viollet-le-Duc (_Art._ “Crête”).

A row of fleurs-de-lis exists at Exeter, a portion of which is in the Architectural Museum, Westminster: and probably many other roofs had similar crestings.

§ XVIII. OF CISTERNS, ETC.

The use of lead pipes for conducting water was introduced into England by the Romans, the ordinary draw-off tap is another gift of theirs. The twelfth century plan of Canterbury cathedral shows a remarkable system of water pipes for collecting the water from the roofs and distributing it to the several buildings and fountains. Mr. Micklethwaite has described in _Archæologia_ a lead filtering cistern with draw-off tap found at Westminster Abbey; and in the British Museum (Gothic Room) there is a small circular lead cistern with delicate fifteenth century ornament.

Some old country houses preserve the original scheme for conducting the rain water from the roofs into a lead cistern which, adorned by devices and gilding, stood close to the front door. Poundisford Park, near Taunton, is one of these. Lead spouting, delicately ornamented, crosses the front and brings the water to the head of the vertical pipe, which has turrets and loopholes--a toy castle. This and its pipe stand over a circular fronted cistern panelled and modelled with a crest, pots of flowers, and the date 1671. There are some of these cisterns at Exeter; one of them, here given, is much like that at Taunton, and is dated 1696; the ribs and devices are gilt. At Bovey Tracy, in Devonshire, there is another, as also at Sackville College, East Grinstead.

In the London houses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ornamented lead cisterns seem to have been generally placed in the courtyards and areas. The earliest known was illustrated and described in the _Builder_ for August 23rd, 1862. The centre was a coat of arms quartering the lions of England and the lilies of France, right and left two quatrefoil panels contained the letters E.R., and below in a long panel was the date 15--. Two upright strips formed the margins, which, with the ends, were covered with Gothic diaper. It was drawn while in the possession of a dealer, who obtained it in Crutched Friars.

There was quite a crusade preached against these cisterns, as the occasion of lead poisoning, in the first half of this century, and hundreds were destroyed, but a large number still remain; about Bloomsbury quite a dozen may be seen down front areas. For the most part they were decorated with panelling of ribs formed of squares and semicircles with strips and spots of cast ornament, flowers, fruit baskets, stags, dolphins, cherubs’ heads, and even the gods Bacchus and Ceres; others have nothing but the fretted panel with initials and date like Fig. 63.

The ribs, with the stock enrichments in new combinations, the date and initials, were attached to a wood panel the size of the cistern front; this was moulded in the sand and the casting made of good substance; stout strips were soldered across the inside as ties. One of the finest known of these is that at South Kensington Museum, of which one half of the front is here illustrated, the other half repeats exactly, even to the initials on the shield; the date is 1732. This is in every way well designed and beautifully modelled. A part of one in the Guildhall Museum is an early example of the ordinary pattern, dated 1674.

The ribs for the pattern were formed in lead--a plumber disdaining the assistance of wood if he could avoid it--by beating strips of lead into an iron swage block, that was cut as a matrix about four inches long; these strips could be easily bent to the curved lines. Plain panelled cisterns like this were made as late as 1840.

Old lead pumps are now very seldom to be found. One remains at Wick, Christchurch, which is 6 inches in diameter, and is decorated by a crest--a boar’s head in a wreath--and the initials “G. B.” as well as the signature “J. JENKINS, Plummer, 1797.”

§ XIX. OF GUTTERS.

In England the gutters of important churches were generally formed behind the stone parapet, but at Lincoln the whole is formed of lead above a carved stone cornice. It is about two feet high and the outside is decorated with foiled circles closer or farther apart with due disregard for precision. In France gutters were often like this made on the top of the stone cornice; irons turned up carry a continuous rod, over which the lead was dressed, and as the outlets were frequent little fall was required.[31]

[31] _See_ Viollet-le-Duc.

To some bay windows of a fine old timber house at Derby there are little parapets formed out of lead, the front edge being cut into notches like a tiny battlement, and short lengths of pipe form spouts for the water. At Taunton there is a bay window with a similar battlement of lead; this is cast with a running pattern and wavy upper edge, to this below is soldered a similar strip reversed making a fringe; the same pattern forms the isolated gutters at Poundisford House above mentioned. At Montacute the spouting has a series of little upright panels, the top moulding breaking up higher over every alternate pair in crenelations, leaving a space filled with a boss. At Bramhall there is a cottage to which both the spouting and the down pipe have a running scroll of flowery ornament. Sometimes the end of a roof gutter between two gables is stopped by an apron of lead with pattern on it, such as a knot of cord and initials.

§ XX. OF PIPES AND PIPE HEADS.

The water was discharged from the gutters into the heads of down pipes, or sometimes from jutting lengths of spout supported by iron props, the nozzles cut into a form often simulating an animal’s jaws.

The down pipes are particularly English, nowhere else can the ornate constructions of lead forming the pipe heads of Haddon and other great houses of the sixteenth century be matched. According to Viollet-le-Duc, here in England this arrangement was already in use in the fourteenth century, when nowhere except in England were these lead pipes from the roof down to the base of the wall known. He also remarks on the advantage of these being square as they can expand if required when the water freezes, while a circular pipe can only burst.[32] Fragments of pierced work in Gothic patterns which formed parts of pipe heads have been found at Fountains Abbey.

[32] Art. “Conduite,” Fig. 6.

At Haddon there are a great number of these pipe heads of several dates, and every one is different from the rest; some are plain and small, others great spreading things elaborately decorated. The general form of these is constructed like a box from cast sheet lead, the cornices are beaten to their shape over a pattern; and the top edge is cut into a little fringe of crenellations. Cast discs of ornament, badges, pendant knobs, and initials are arranged on their fronts, on the funnel-shaped portion leading to the pipe, and on the ears of the pipe and the side flaps of the head itself. The more elaborate heads have an outer casing of lead with panels pierced through it of delicate tracery work of Gothic tradition which shows bright against the shadow.

At Windsor Castle some pipe heads bear the date 1589, the Tudor rose, and the letters E. R.

At Knole there are also many heads having pierced work of this kind in panels, and projecting turrets; some of these also have a decoration of bright solder applied to the lead in patterns--these were made about 1600. At the Bodleian and St. John’s College, Oxford, there is a fine series of pipe heads with painted patterns. At Norham Castle some pipe heads are dated 1605. Abbot’s Hospital at Guildford has a large series of heads later in character than those at Haddon. Here pierced work is used as a brattishing to the top edge of the fronts; they are signed G. A. and dated 1627. At Canons Ashby there is a pair of most rococo pipe heads, with applied pierced castings, masks and acanthus leaves.[33] These heads are fixed on iron cramps, or brackets; at Haddon lead cylinders with pierced ends project and carry the heads.

[33] Figured in the _Spring Gardens Sketch Book_, vol. v., 58.

Sometimes the heads are very long, extending five or six feet like a length of gutter; it was a favourite method to decorate them with salient projections at intervals, like the cut-waters of a bridge, the top edge of these is cut into little battlements which were curled over in loops. The projections make convenient birds’ nests. The pipe is sometimes central to these long heads but often at the end.

Entirely the reverse of these, other heads are tall in proportion, like the examples at Shrewsbury and Ludlow or the little fiddle pattern design given here from the Grammar School at Sherborne (Fig. 73). The two examples 74 and 75 are from Liverpool and Ashbourn.

There are three or four original pipe heads which are well designed in the Architectural Museum.

The later ones, as in London, are often tall square funnels moulded and bent into vase-like forms, the projection was small compared to the width, only three or four inches sometimes. A piece of projecting pipe is at times inserted in the front of the head to serve as an overflow. The late pipes were circular and the heads very often followed this form.

The material has an appropriateness for this purpose that cast iron cannot pretend to; a simple square box of lead and round pipe is much to be preferred to fussy things in cast iron, they will not require painting, nor do they fill the drains with rust; and although it has been necessary to draw the elaborate and eccentric forms, the simpler ones form better models for our purpose.

The earlier pipes were almost always a flat square, sometimes ornamented up its whole length, but usually only at the collars, where the bands of lead for attachment to the wall were placed, here and on the flaps of the collars are often crests, flowers, or letters. The lead band was cut long enough, so that after the nails had been driven through it into the wall the ends were folded back over their heads. Those at Canons Ashby, Northants, have the ends curled and cut like the scroll of a mediæval text.