Part 5

The Norman conquerors of England brought with them their own architecture, and must necessarily, at any rate at first, have introduced their own masons and craftsmen to carry it out. The wealth of the great Saxon abbeys was largely put to this use by their new owners, for the Norman prelates, accustomed to the glories of Jumièges and Caen, would not tolerate the insignificant proportions of Saxon building, and the result was perhaps one of the greatest eras of local building activity the world has seen. The great Benedictine houses, whose numbers so largely increased in the first few decades succeeding the Conquest, built not only large churches but also conventual buildings on a corresponding scale. The conventual establishment consisted of the claustral block, occupied by the monks themselves and grouped round a central cloister, and a number of subsidiary and outlying blocks of which the infirmary and guest-house were the chief, quite detached from the main building. All except the very richest monasteries found it impossible to reconstruct at once the whole of these buildings in stone, and consequently we find in many instances the claustral block only was erected in this material, while the infirmary and guest-house, as a temporary expedient, were constructed of timber. The truth of this is evidenced by the discovery in several instances (_e.g._ Kirkstall and Waverley) of the original posts of the early infirmary hall encased in later masonry.

Now, the domestic portions of a monastery fulfilled most if not all of the functions of a mediæval house, or rather cluster of houses, as in each case the claustral block, the infirmary, and guest-house possessed its great hall, its separate kitchen, and the usual adjuncts. At a somewhat later date in the abbot’s or prior’s lodging yet another complete dwelling was added to the list. With regard to the guest-house particularly, it was in intention and fact an ordinary dwelling-house on a large scale. The inviolability of monastic property even in the dark period of the Great Anarchy has preserved more trace of the early arrangement of these buildings than is to be found in most of the purely secular houses of the same early date. The superior wealth and greater culture of the Church tended to make it the leader in domestic architecture no less than in ecclesiastical. All through the Middle Ages the purely secular-house plan showed a tendency to a closer approximation to the monastic type, until the quadrangular dwelling of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries becomes almost its exact counterpart even to the cloister alleys on each side, the place of the great church being taken by the gatehouse. It is consequently amongst the monastic remains of the country, and not amongst the Norman keeps, that we are most likely to recover the early type of the domestic hall.

The conventual plan affords examples of two very different types of hall. The first is that almost always adopted for the great frater or dining hall in the claustral block, and is a plain rectangular apartment solidly built of stone; the second type is found only in the infirmary or guest-houses, and is in the form of a nave with one or two aisles.

We have shown that the frater was part of the block first rebuilt by the Norman abbots and priors. It was consequently built in stone after the Norman fashion by Norman masons. The infirmary and guest-halls on the contrary were commonly first constructed of wood, and consequently present all the features of native planning in that material. In most cases this latter class of building was subsequently reconstructed in the more durable material, but even then in many instances the original form was preserved, and stone columns and arcades like the aisles of a church took the place of the original barn-like structure of the Saxon type.

Turning now to the contemporary castle-building, we find precisely the same varying plans in common use. The three halls mentioned above, at Richmond, Christchurch, and Wolvesley, follow the model of the monastic frater, while the halls at Oakham, Warnford (Hants), and probably Westminster are examples of the aisle type, which survived in isolated instances right through the Middle Ages, one of the latest examples, the Guildhall of York, being an interesting return to the timber originals of this class of structure.

The aisled hall is so uncommon a feature in purely domestic architecture that a brief reference to the most important examples will be of value in this connection. Four examples at least remain intact, the well-known structure at Oakham (65 ft. by 43½ ft.) being the earliest. The great hall of Winchester Castle is a thirteenth-century building, five bays long (111 ft. by 56 ft.), and another example of similar date is to be found at Bishop Auckland, where, with the addition of a clerestory, it now does duty as a chapel. The Guildhall at York dates from the fifteenth century, and its long ranges of oak columns and handsome roof are exceedingly effective. (See p. 68.) The ruined examples include the halls of Ashby-de-la-Zouche (56½ ft. by 38 ft.) and Warkworth (58 ft. long, with one aisle only), the latter a thirteenth-century structure with a later porch and traces of a central hearth. Lastly the timber hall of Hertford Castle, which has entirely disappeared, bore a close resemblance on plan to the stone structure at Ashby Castle. The hall of Nurstead Court, Kent, has been destroyed, and that at Leicester Castle and at the “Savoy,” Denham, Bucks, have been cut up into rooms and much altered.

These halls are, however, chiefly of interest as examples of an ancient and discarded method of construction, and it is to the other type that we must turn for the true origins of the domestic hall.

The finest remaining example of an early monastic frater is to be found at St. Martin’s Priory, Dover. It forms a hall 101 ft. long by 27 ft. wide, and is lit by a range of eight windows on each side. Though St. Martin’s was never more than a cell of Christchurch, Canterbury, these dimensions compare favourably with those of the secular buildings of the same class. The hall of Christchurch Castle, Twynham, was 70 ft. by 25 ft., and Scolland Hall, Richmond, 79 ft. by 26 ft. Wolvesley Castle Hall was, however, larger, being 135 ft. by 29 ft. In the internal economy of the monastic frater no less than in its plan we may recognise the prototype of the domestic hall. At the east end was the dais for the abbot’s table, at the west the screens masking the entrance from the kitchen and cloister. It has been asserted that the Norman builders placed the windows of their halls high in the walls for fear of draughts, but in the monastic frater we find them in the same position, for the adjoining pent-house roof of the cloister prevented any other arrangement, and here again it seems likely that the secular but copied the monastic fashion.

A characteristic feature of the later monastic frater-house is the reader’s pulpit from which one of the brethren during meal time read edifying extracts from the lives of the saints and similar works. In the Norman fraters, however, this feature seldom appears in structural form. There is no trace of it at Dover, and none likewise in the plans of Lewes and Castle Acre. In the late twelfth century, however, it became universal, and is generally enclosed in a square projection near the dais end of the frater, approached by a flight of stairs in the thickness of the wall.

In position and outward form it approximates closely to the domestic oriel, and one is tempted to suggest it as the true original of this much-discussed feature of the secular plan which, it may be noted (like the pulpit itself), never appears in early work. In any case the beautiful oriel formerly existing in the infirmary at Easby Abbey is one of the earliest known examples of the feature, and implies its monastic origin.

One other point may be noted in conclusion. According to monastic rules, the frater was never supposed to be artificially heated, and consequently it was left to the unaided secular mind to invent something new, or to adhere to the ancient form of the central hearth. The secular mind chose the easier course, and only in occasional instances like that at Christchurch do we find a proper fireplace and chimney in the great hall.

Even the final destruction of the monasteries, under Henry VIII., did not entirely terminate their influence on English domestic work. Numerous abbeys and priories, of which Ford and Laycock are familiar examples, were transformed into dwelling-houses by their first lay proprietors. After the destruction of the conventual church, the claustral block, with one or more of the cloister alleys retained, and the chapter-house used as a private chapel, became the prototype of a numerous class of houses which remained in general favour throughout Elizabethan and Jacobean times; and even in the throes of dissolution monasticism left a deep and lasting mark on the architecture of the country.

—A. W. C.

SIR THOMAS MORE’S HOUSE AT CHELSEA

VI.

SIR THOMAS MORE’S HOUSE AT CHELSEA.

Sir Thomas More’s house at Chelsea, where he received the intimate but fatal companionship of King Henry VIII., and held more congenial intercourse with Erasmus, Holbein, and other of his friends, enshrines perhaps one of the most familiar domestic scenes in English history. Yet we have hitherto known little about the house itself beyond the mere fact of its position, and the names of its more or less famous owners until its destruction by Sir Hans Sloane in 1739. Led, however, by a hint of Mr. Randal Davies, I have lately been carefully through the MS. drawings in the possession of the Marquis of Salisbury, and have been rewarded by finding a set of six plans (_circa_ 1595) which undoubtedly relate to this house. Two of them are evidently surveys of its earlier condition, and probably represent its arrangement during the life of Sir Thomas More. The remainder embody some of Sir Robert Cecil’s intentions regarding the refashioning of the house when it came into his possession, intentions which were only partially carried out, and were relinquished by him in favour of his more ambitious project at Hatfield. The plans are beautifully drawn in ink, and throw a most interesting light on the methods of drafting a building scheme, the skill of which seems no whit behind the work of the modern architect.

The information available regarding the riverside estate of Sir Thomas More is by no means slight, although it is lacking in many of the details necessary for the completion of its history, and we have, moreover, no remains of the house with which to compare the early plans, beyond the long garden walls of Tudor brickwork which still divide the rows of modern houses erected upon the site. The whole property has a singularly interesting architectural history, for three other houses were subsequently built upon parts of the estate, and all have a different claim upon our attention. To the west of The Great House, nearer the river, was the original “Farm House” which More had bought and which was rebuilt by Sir Theodore Mayerne, physician to James I., and afterwards altered by the Earl of Lindsey (_circa_ 1674). This house remains, much mutilated and changed, divided into several dwellings, but still retaining the name of Lindsey House and preserving much of the appearance it had in the days of its occupation by Count Zinzendorf and his Moravian followers (1751–1770). To the north of Lindsey House was Gorges House, built probably in the last years of the sixteenth century by the Earl of Lincoln for his son-in-law Sir Arthur Gorges. Surrounding three sides of a courtyard open to the west, and surmounted by a succession of Dutch gables, it eventually came into the possession of the Milman family, and was pulled down about 1726 to make way for Milman’s Row. The third house was to the east of The Great House and its gardens, and was built in 1622–3 by Sir John Danvers, who bought the land from the third Earl of Lincoln. Danvers House was remarkable as being one of the earliest houses to take on the Later Renaissance manner, and its planning and that of its gardens delighted the heart of Aubrey and of Pepys, a detailed description by the former being preserved at the Bodleian. John Thorpe has left us plans of the house, and Aubrey a sketch of the garden. It was pulled down about 1720, and Danvers Street now passes over its site, the present position of the rebuilt Crosby Hall marking roughly its distance from the river.

Before examining in detail the various features of these houses, it may be useful to set out a table of the drawings which are so far available:—

IN THE HATFIELD PAPERS (1595–6).

(1) and (2) Survey of The Great House: ground plan and first floor, by J. Symonds.

(3) and (4) Proposed rebuilding: ground plan and first floor by Spicer.

(5) First-floor plan of alternative scheme, also by Spicer.

(6) Estate plan showing house and gardens.

IN THE THORPE COLLECTION, Soane Museum.

(Early 17th century).

(7) Plan of The Great House and lodges.

(8) (9) and (10) Sir John Danvers’ house: ground plan, first floor, and sketch elevation.

IN THE SMITHSON COLLECTION (Colonel Coke).

(11) Summer-house, Chelsea (shown also in Kip’s view).

There are also—

(12) Kip’s bird’s-eye view of The Great House, showing also Lindsey House, Gorges House, and the garden of Danvers House, dated 1699, drawn by Knyff.

(13) Danvers House: plan of garden, drawn by Aubrey (Bodleian).

(14) and (15) Lindsey House: drawings in the Moravian Archives at Hernhutt; and engraving in Malcolm’s “Londinium Redivivum.”

From this list it will be seen that if there is not enough material to satisfy the topographer and to enable him to plot the exact position of these houses on the banks of the broad highway of the Thames, yet there is more than enough to interest the student of architecture. Let us first consider the earlier plans of The Great House, which I have the kind permission of Lord Salisbury to reproduce.

It was on the death, in 1595, of Anne, Lady Dacre—well known as the foundress of the beautiful Emmanuel Hospital which used to stand in Westminster—that The Great House at Chelsea came to the Cecil family, Lord Burleigh, who is thought to have stayed here, giving it up to his son Sir Robert in 1597. The house, as we have seen, had already had historic associations, from its first builder, Sir Thomas More, who lived here for about fourteen years until his attainder in 1535. It had then passed successively to Sir William Paulet (first Marquis of Winchester), his son the second Marquis, and in 1575 to Lady Dacre, who was a daughter of the Marchioness of Winchester by her former husband, Sir Robert Sackville. The possession of what must have been a fine old house of the early sixteenth century, amidst the charming Thames scenery just west of the picturesque village of Chelsea, fired the future builder of Hatfield with a desire to remodel the building and bring it up to date as his country seat. With this in view, immediately upon possession Cecil had the house measured up, and commissioned one or more of his “surveyors” to plan the additions and alterations. In a letter dated September 3rd, 1595, from H. Maynard to Sir Robert Cecil, mention is made of “the plattes of Chelsey house made by Torrington, with the Controller of the Works’ additions.” This seems to imply that Torrington had plotted the place as it stood, and that the additions had been made by the Controller of the Works whose identity is not disclosed. The drawings here reproduced do not seem, however, to be the ones referred to in the letter, and it is difficult to say how far any of them represent the form of the original house as acquired by Cecil. To the historian this is unfortunate, but to the student of architecture it will be a matter of congratulation that the “sketch-plans” survived instead.

The two plans which seem most likely to represent the already existing buildings have not the name of Chelsea attached to them, but they are clearly of this house. They are each inscribed: “This Plat is after 10 foot in An ynch. p. J. Symands.” More roughly drawn than the others, they represent less coherent planning, and show an earlier type of house. Most significant of all, the figured dimensions are given in fractions of feet or with inches, and the heights of the stories are shown on the ground and first floors. This John Symonds was the author of the remarkable plans of Aldgate Priory (also in the Hatfield Collection), which Professor Lethaby published in the _Home Counties Magazine_ (vol. ii, pp. 45–53). Professor Lethaby has established that Symonds was employed by Lord Burghley on the harbour works at Dover, and that he died probably in 1597. It is interesting to find another set of plans which associates him again with the neighbourhood of London. The early features of his plan will be seen to consist in the numerous staircase and other projections upon both the north and south fronts, the square porch with shafted angles (as in the western room), and the oriel over the front door. The house had doubtless been altered since Sir Thomas More’s time. Its front elevation is symmetrical between the two slightly projecting wings, the porch being in the centre; but towards the west a further wing had been built with a width and projection similar to the others. This western wing is shown on all the plans of the house, and it was evidently the intention of Sir Robert Cecil to remove the projections between it and the eastern wing, making a symmetrical elevation between them, broken only by the porch. We see, therefore, in all the other plans that the porch has been shifted westwards, and with it the Great Hall, and the planning of the north side has been altered to correspond. This part of the scheme was actually carried out by Cecil, as we can see by referring to John Thorpe’s plan, and to Kip’s view of the house a century later. The Great Hall in Symonds’s plan is of one story, and, beside the usual screen, has posts to support the passage above, a feature which suggests that this was once an open gallery. The hall is shown with a dais, which communicated with a long wing leading northwards, in which were the grand staircase, the chapel, and a cloister. This wing, with its Long Gallery on the first floor, looks at first sight to be of quite Elizabethan character, and may well have been an addition by Lady Dacre. But the chapel, cramped though it is, with its window to the east, is not unlikely to have been the private chapel of Sir Thomas More, and the “Parte of ye Tarras” shows the commencement of his favourite terrace, which appears in Cecil’s estate plan and in Kip’s view, and is described with its “banqueting house” in the conveyance to Sir Hans Sloane (1737). On the first floor may be seen the little balustrade which surrounds the opening into the chapel below, and on the two floors there are no fewer than four rooms having those internal porches which are so characteristic of Elizabethan houses, and which came in those days under the comprehensive term of “oriel.”

The closer one examines these two plans of Symonds the more evident it becomes that they represent an early Tudor house which had been enlarged in the latter part of the sixteenth century—if the north-east wing were really in existence when the house was measured up, and was not the draughtsman’s suggestions for an extension. If our deduction is correct, we have here the substantial arrangement of Sir Thomas More’s house, and one of the rooms, possibly the chapel, formed the background for Holbein’s famous sketch of the family group.

Let us now consider the four other Hatfield plans, two of which are marked “Chelsey,” while the remaining two—undoubtedly of the same place—bear the name of the draughtsman, “Mr. Spicer,”[18] in Cecil’s own handwriting. I do not think that any of these plans represent accurately the actual changes which were made, although to the title of one, “Mr. Spicer’s platt without a gallery,” Cecil has added the word “allowed.”

[18] Of Spicer I have not been able to find any other mention than the following reference in the Hatfield MSS. In a letter dated 9 December, 1598, written in Italian by Federigo Genibelli to Sir Robert Cecil, the writer, in speaking of the wages due to himself and other workmen in building fortifications in the Isle of Wight, refers to “Mr. Speicer” as also employed. It is quite possible that he was the Surveyor of Works at Chelsea.

The plans are drawn with scrupulous care, and, like a fair proof that they were not carried out. The dimensions are marked in whole figures without fractions, and no heights of rooms are given. They exhibit most complete and ideal plans of the period. The scheme for which the ground and first-floor plans are drawn shows the south front reduced to perfect symmetry, the western room already referred to being brought out in a bold wing, and a corresponding projection being placed to the east. This latter contains an imposing chapel with screen, and two shaped balconies to the gallery over. Each wing is flanked by an octagonal stair-turret. The hall (50 ft. by 21 ft.) which replaces the larger Gothic hall (59 ft. by 31 ft. 6 in.) has been moved westward, to allow of a central porch and the addition of an extra retiring-room of important dimensions to the private apartments eastward. The hall retains a screen, but loses its dais and oriel window. The porch is treated with columns in the approved Renaissance manner, which are repeated in the upper storey and take the place of the little oriel that is shown over the earlier doorway. The old north-western wing is modified a little, but to the east a repeat is shown, and in the former, false windows are indicated against the oven walls to balance the bay on the other side! Over the east wing is a long gallery (99 ft. by 19 ft.) overlooking the garden, with three bay windows. The old octagonal projections on the north side are retained, and the plan is noteworthy in having seven newel stairs, beside the principal staircase and one other straight flight.

An even more elaborate scheme is shown on the third plan, of which we have the first floor, or “seconde storie,” only. Here the hall, which is the same length as the old hall, _i.e._, 59 ft., goes up two storeys, and a gallery is shown over the screen. The apartment to the east of the hall is occupied by the grand staircase, and a fine well-stair flanks each of the front wings, being brought out as square towers behind the octagonal turrets. The chapel shows further elaboration with three balconies, evidently forming private pews, not unlike Queen Elizabeth’s pew in the chapel of the Croydon Archiepiscopal Palace. The kitchen shares with the hall the dignity of embracing two storeys, but the main feature of the plan is the range of building which unites the two northern wings, and forms a magnificent gallery 123 ft. long by 19 ft. wide.