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The designing of five East Anglian country houses, 1505–1637

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Malcolm Airs
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Extract

It is clear that any explanation of the course taken by English country house design at the time of its first vigorous growth in the sixteenth century cannot be founded on a simple iconographical basis. A detailed knowledge of the processes by which the houses were constructed is essential to an understanding of their finished appearance and, as in any other age, due regard must be had to the characters of the individual personalities involved. In recent years, such an approach has considerably advanced our comprehension of the country houses, principally in the north Midlands, associated with Robert Smythson. Although at present the evidence is wanting for a biographical study of similar importance for any other part of the country, an examination of the documentary sources for a particular region could well prove fruitful in establishing a comprehensible picture of aesthetic control and design which may have a more general application.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 21 , 1978 , pp. 58 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1978

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References

Notes

1 Girouard, M., Robert Smythson and the Architecture of the Elizabethan Era (London, 1966)Google Scholar.

2 The building accounts are in the British Library, Add. MS 7097, ff. 174-200. Apart from its representation on a map of 1638, no illustrations are known to have survived of the house.

3 Cambridge University Library, Hengrave Hall Deposit 80 contains the unfoliated building accounts; idem, Hengrave Hall Deposit 81 contains, inter alia, a mason’s contract, a joiner’s contract and some minutes by the steward relating to the building.

4 The building accounts are in the University of Chicago Library (Bacon Collection MS 990, Redgrave Building Account). They are discussed at length in Sandeen, E. R., ‘The Building Activities of Sir Nicholas Bacon’ (Chicago University Ph.D. thesis 1959)Google Scholar, and this source has been used in the preparation of this paper.

5 The principal source for the building history of the house is correspondence amongst the Townshend MSS in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C., transcribed by Sandeen as in note 4 above. Some fragments of accounts are included in Brooks, F. R. (ed.), ‘Supplementary Stiff key Papers (1578-1620)’, Camden Miscellany, XVI (Camden Society, 3rd. ser., LII, 1936), 1–55 Google Scholar. The eastern half of the building had already been demolished by 1779, when Humphry Repton sketched it (BL, Add. MS 23, 044, f. 177). A reconstruction, based on a measured survey of 1944, is included in Sandeen, pp. 164-72.

6 Lengthy extracts from the building accounts are published as Appendix I of Bradfer-Lawrence, H. L., ‘The Building of Raynham Hall’, Norfolk Archaeology, XXIII (1927-29), 93–146 Google Scholar. Appendix II contains ‘A Booke of Remembrance Concerninge the Buildinges’ compiled by Townshend in 1622.

7 BL, Add. MS 7097, f. 175.

8 Ibid., f. 200.

9 Ibid., f. 175.

10 Ibid., ff. 184v, 185.

11 Ibid., f. 192v.

12 Ibid., f. 186.

13 Ibid., ff. 175v, 178. Donne’s house was a building of some renown, being described by Stow as a ‘fayre house’ over eighty years later. The practice of copying individual features and even complete buildings was not new. For medieval examples see Salzman, L. F., Building in England Down to 1540 (Oxford, 1952), pp. 22–24, 447-575Google Scholar; for other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century examples see Airs, M., The Making of the English Country House, 1500-1640 (London, 1976), pp. 39–42 Google Scholar.

14 Cambridge University Library, Hengrave Hall Deposit 81. Contract of 1538 with a joiner.

15 Ibid.

16 Idem., Hengrave Hall Deposit 80; PRO, E36/252.

17 BL, loc. cit.; Willis, R. and Clark, J. W., The Architectural History of the University of Cambridge and of the Colleges of Cambridge and Eton (Cambridge, 1886), 11, 347-48Google Scholar.

18 PRO, ut supra.

19 Sandeen, op. cit., p. 49.

20 Sandeen, E. R., ‘The Building of Redgrave Hall, 1545-54’, Proc. Suffolk Inst. of Arch., XXIX, part 1 (1961), 23 Google Scholar.

21 Sandeen, op. cit., p. 57.

22 Ibid., pp. 175-78.

23 I am indebted to Mr A. P. Baggs for drawing my attention to this aspect of the Stiffkey plan and for his subsequent correspondence on the subject. I am grateful also to R. S. Mant for drawing PL. 11a, which is based on the plan in Norf. Arch., VIII (1879), with measurements corrected from Sandeen, op. cit., p. 166. Other examples of contemporary conceits are discussed by Airs, op. cit., pp. 3-8.

24 Herts. CRO. IX, D. 60b.

25 Sandeen, op. cit., pp. 178-79.

26 Ibid., p. 181.

27 Ibid., p. 189.

28 Gunther, R. T. (ed.), The Architecture of Sir Roger Pratt (Oxford, 1928), p. 133 Google Scholar.

29 Bradfer-Lawrence, op. cit., p. 102.

30 Ibid., p. 118.

31 Ibid., p. 125. For a discussion of the foreign travels of Edge and Townshend see Hussey, C., ‘Raynham Hall, Norfolk’, Country Life, 14 November 1925, LVIII, 742-50Google Scholar.

32 Bradfer-Lawrence, op. cit., p. 132.

33 Ibid., p. 135.

34 PRO, SP 14/108/55; Airs, op. cit., p. 75 reviews the evidence for other contemporary models.

35 Harris, J., ‘Raynham Hall, Norfolk’, Arch. Jour., CXVIII (1963), 180-87Google Scholar.

36 Colvin, H. M., Biographical Dictionary of English Architects, 1660-1840 (London, 1954), p. 171 Google Scholar.

37 MS notebooks of Sir Roger Pratt at Ryston Hall, Norfolk, L, f. 3. I am grateful to Mr Michael Pratt for his kindness in making the notebooks available on the occasion of the Society’s visit in September 1977. The spelling of the manuscript differs considerably from the transcript in Gunther, op. cit., p. 60.