Image unavailable: DURHAM, FROM AN OLD HOMESTEAD ON THE WEAR.DURHAM, FROM AN OLD HOMESTEAD ON THE WEAR.
Durham. The saint, who during many years retained his flesh and natural appearance, pointed out this spot, and the corpse seemed very angry when they attempted to pass it in quest of any other. This, of course, decided the question finally, and so Durham was originally founded. It would be impossible to find a more magnificent site for a building in England than that which Durham Cathedral occupies. The Wear sweeps round a bluff that is covered with noble trees, and above this rise the three vast towers of the cathedral, all of which are reflected in the still broad water below.
From the churchyard, also, of St. Oswald’s, the view, though striking, is very different. Here the great central tower is the prominent object, supported by the western ones rising in the rear; while another grand view of the building presents itself from Palace Green, a large open space on the north side of the cathedral.
Notwithstanding the enormous advantages that such a building must afford to the landscape of a city, the streets are not very picturesque, and there is an unpleasantly squalid look about nearly all parts of it. From the railway station or the banks of the Wear the views are incomparably grand; but, like Constantinople seen from the Bosphorus, the charm ofthe city melts away on entering: and for so important a city the hotel accommodation is very inadequate.
Elver Bridge, when Britton published hisPicturesque Antiquities of English Cities, must have been one of the most picturesque objects in the kingdom. It was formed of pointed arches finely ribbed underneath, and it supported a pile of gabled houses with tall chimneys and ancient balconies of unsurpassed beauty, and variety of form. The windows were deeply recessed and mullioned, and there were stacks of tall chimneys, square, octagonal, and divided into stages; indeed, if these buildings had been simply taken as examples of mediæval architecture, they would have been extremely valuable, but spreading over a fine roomy old bridge and reflected in the waters below, they formed a picture that was a loss to the nation when it was destroyed.
The view of Durham Castle here given, as the city is entered over the bridge, is very striking. It seems as if it must have been secure from the attacks of any enemy, with such contrivances of offence as were then known, and well suited for the residence of a line of bishops whose weapons of warfare were but too often carnal.
Kepier Hospital stands on the banks of the Wear, and is a delightful resort for the inhabitants ofDurham. The gateway here given is easily fixed as to date, from the arms on the keystones of the groining; they are those of two masters of the hospital from the years 1341 to 1345, and this date exactly corresponds with the style of architecture. The remains of the hospital itself are inside the gateway and of much later date. It is occupied as a country inn, and some of the rooms are filled with magnificent oak carvings.
Image unavailable: DURHAM, FROM WEAR BRIDGE.DURHAM, FROM WEAR BRIDGE.
Kepier Hospital was endowed with the large sumof £186 per annum, which the bishops of Durham had given it out of the plenitude of their riches, and a list of the offices of the thirteen brethren will throw some light upon the singular requirements of the age. Six of these were to be chaplains; the seventh brother was to be dispenser and larderer; the eighth was keeper of the tannery; ninth the baker; tenth the miller; eleventh the gauger; twelfth the keeper of stock; and the thirteenth general proctor for all business of the hospital.
Image unavailable: KEPIER HOSPITAL GATEWAY, DURHAM.KEPIER HOSPITAL GATEWAY, DURHAM.
We notice in Carlisle, as in all these northern cities, the same indications of an age of turmoil. What few houses are left appear to have been built
Image unavailable: ROAD THROUGH CATHEDRAL CLOSE, CARLISLE.ROAD THROUGH CATHEDRAL CLOSE, CARLISLE.
Image unavailable: BUTTRESS, CARLISLE.BUTTRESS, CARLISLE.
to resist some sudden violence, and tell the bygone tale of insecurity. For nearly two centuries Carlisle lay in ruins from the ravages of the Danes, and it was only restored in the time of William Rufus. He planted a colony of Flemings there—their type of feature is still to be noticed among the inhabitants—and he encouraged an immigration of husbandmen from the south. The singular way in which a type of feature is preserved from generation to generation is certainly exhibited in Chester, in the Roman character of many of the features of the country people near the city. This has never been noticed, as far as I know, and it was only in looking over a collection of Roman coins that it occurred to me. These characteristics are especially to be noticed in the coins of Hadrian, or Claudius, or Agricola—a full neck, a Roman nose, and strongly marked features; indeed, nobody can go through the Chester market on a Saturday, and observe the various types of feature, without beingstruck with these peculiarities in the Cheshire women.
The old houses at Hexham which are engraved at the end of the chapter, are extremely characteristic of the older northern towns, where cut stone is more in vogue than “post and petrel.”
Image unavailable: OLD HOUSES, HEXHAM.OLD HOUSES, HEXHAM.
MOORE RENTAL—ISLE OF MAN—BERESFORD HOPE’S REMARKS—EXPRESSION IN ARCHITECTURE—REMARKS BY GODWIN—CONTRACT FOR BUILDING ST. MARY’S CHURCH, CHESTER—GENERAL PRINCIPLES—GREEK ARCHITECTURE—CONCLUSION.
MOORE RENTAL—ISLE OF MAN—BERESFORD HOPE’S REMARKS—EXPRESSION IN ARCHITECTURE—REMARKS BY GODWIN—CONTRACT FOR BUILDING ST. MARY’S CHURCH, CHESTER—GENERAL PRINCIPLES—GREEK ARCHITECTURE—CONCLUSION.
THEREare some curious memoranda in a work called the “Moore Rental,” that will throw much light upon the way in which streets were built, and the license allowed to tenants. Sir Edward Moore owned a large property on the north side of Liverpool,and this was sold to the Earl of Derby for the small sum of £12,000. The annual rental is many times that sum in the present day. The date of the “Rental” is 1667, and it is marked by singular candour and simplicity. Extracts only can be given. It is addressed to his son:
“Old Hall Street.—Make your leases according to my new leases in Moore Street, without boons, otherwise they will not build. Be careful of the clause to grind at your mill, it is a great thing to your estate, and see your tenants observe it well.
“Take this notice from me, what you expect your tenants to do let them be well bound in their leases, otherwise riches and pride is so predominant over them in this town, together with a perfect antipathy they have against all gentlemen—much more your family, in regard you know your interest is always to curb them. I know this by experience, that they are the most perfidious knaves to their landlords in all England, therefore I charge you never to trust them.
“Water Street.—Anne Young. She is dead, and her grandchild enjoys the house, whose father, by name Baly March, is a notorious knave, and her husband, one Rob Prenton, as bad, etc.
“Mrs. Baly Owen. She hath besides this housetwo houses more, one in Chapel Street and the other in Moore Street. You must never expect anything to the value of a farthing from her, but what is for her own ends.
“Castle Street.—Mr. William Bushell. Remember the west end of the back side belonging to this house in the Castle Street reaches to the Fenwick Street near the bridge, upon which Mr. Bushell is to build a good house of stone, answering to the length for height and other things, as doors, boarded floors, windows, and slates, sample to his own house near the post and chains, wherein now Captain Nixon doth dwell.
“Pool Lane.—Buy if possible Baly Blundell’s, and the field betwixt it and the More Street. If you have it you might pull down your house Mr. Allcocke built me on the Castle Hill, and there have a brave coming of the street end out toward the castle, and you might pull down the west end of Thomas Norbury’s in the More Street, and so make a most convenient passage to More Street. This field is most convenient to you of any man in England, in regard of your land lying about as it doth.”
He further advises his son and heir to keep “Castle Street field” locked up, as it is only “a passage on sufferance;” and he says he was “at thegreat charge of setting posts and ribbing them all over with iron, and fixing these two great iron chains, the which I usually on all occasions keep locked,” etc. The cause of this, he says, was that Captain Fazakerly of the Castle had many hundred loads of coals brought that way, and he was resolved to prevent his making it a highway; and he very candidly adds—“Have in mind likewise that these chains and posts usually upon Sundays and holidays, and rain weather;keeping them lockedreserves the right in those streets solely and entire to you and your heirs, so that a hundred years hence, if you please, you may make gates, or what other use you please, as usually you do your own enclosed land, and to hinder all but whom you please from going thereaways. The reason I am so strict is two, the first that carts may not always break the streets to the great charge of my tenants, but those that carts, make them pay yearly towards paving them, as many places in England doth, nay this very town of Leverpole, by a late order, makes all country carts pay twopence a load towards paving the streets, and if they can make such an order of the king’s highway, I hope I may either make such carts who come thereaway pay, or make them go some other way.” Sir Edward then tells his heir that he must be very particularin dealing with his streets in all transactions with the town of Liverpool. The thoroughfares are his, he says, yet he sadly remarks that all the streets but his are “paved out of the town’s box.” Perhaps Sir Edward was not quite so affable as he might have been, and hardly of such a conciliatory nature as even his own interests would have suggested. Little love seems to have been lost between him and the townspeople, and there is at least no uncertainty in the way he apprises his son of this circumstance. “I find, in whatsoever lies within the town’s liberty, they are a thousand times more strict than any gentleman; and forthwith a jury of hot fellows fines you daily and hourly, either for some encroachment, the streets being dirty or not paved, and a hundred odd simple things more than I can relate here. But keeping your own interest as before expressed, you need not fear their fines or amercements. There is no favour or civility to be had from a multitude. Let my sad experience forewarn you never to trust them, for if you do, I dare pawn my life they deceive you. Read Alderman Andow’s character, and some others I have set down, and then seriously consider it.”
The tenures on which property was built and held are curiously set forth in these strange directions. The term “setting” a house, which continuallyoccurs in the Moore rental, is quite in common use in the northern parts of England, where indeed it is more frequent than “letting” a house.
Much discussion must often have followed the amount of fine which a tenant had to pay when the three lives and twenty-one years his property was held on had expired, and on this point Sir Edward Moore is always lucid. Even where, as in few cases, he had a good word for the tenant, he never forgets the fine, as:—“William Gardiner, bailiff, a very honest man. He paid no rent, only built the house; it is a very good house. Let the old rent be raised to 40 shillings per annum, and the fine to £60.”
Again: “Thomas Wainwright, a very honest man. He paid no fine, only built his house. Let the old rent be raised to two pounds and fifty pounds fine at the least.”
In the case of John Pemberton, which is interesting as showing the terms on which property was often built along a street, Sir Edward is hardly in reason. It seems one John Pemberton had commenced the building of one side of a street, with a common but tacit understanding that all houses were to be carried up to the same height as his own, and as his house was at the upper end of More Street, the sagacious landlord saw at once that the houseson the lower part of the street would be six storeys high, and when these fell out of lease, the amount of fine for renewal might fairly be left to him. Two storeys was all that Pemberton required, and he refused to build higher. But Sir Edward tells his own tale best. “John Pemberton, the apothecary, a base ill-contrived fellow. This man wronged this street five hundred pounds, for he being the first house on this side going up, all the rest of the street engaged to build uniform with him, so that had he built four stories, all the street had been so, and the houses toward the lower end of the street had been six stories high to have made them level with his of four stories, in regard of the fall of the ground. I used all the civil means possible to get him to build higher, and when I saw he would not, I sent Alderman Andow and the town-clerk, Mr. John Winstanley, to let him know that as we had always been friends, I desired the same continuance, and if he would not build it two stories higher, I would, all of my own cost and charge.” He seems, however, to have had at times some kind of slight fellow-feeling. Thus, in speaking of Mr. John Owen, bailiff, he says among other directions, that he is under rented, and he tells his son to see to it, that there must be a fine of £30. His consideration forthe family of Robert Johnson is something touching. As far as Mr. Johnson is concerned, he dismisses him with a character readily, and says he is “an arrant knave, one that grinds from my mill very often; trust him not, make him pay one pound a year rent, and ten pounds fine, for he is but a poor knave, and mercy must be had on his children; only, for being such a knave make him to slate his house, as all the street is besides himself.”
Sir Edward takes great pride in his well that he has dug in More Street, which he gravely tells his son brews as much ale out of four measures of malt as any other out of five measures, and there is no well like it for boiling pease and bearing soap.
“Mrs. Rose, now married to one Diggler, a glazier,” seems with her husband to have been very much in Sir Edward’s black books. They were “extreme unthankful to me, and abused me much behind my back, therefore never let him glaze for you, and if ever he have occasion to use you, deal with him accordingly.... I got him much custom, and she out of my own good will I paid six pounds for a gable end, when she had neither money nor credit to have built it, and ill words is all I got for my pains. But God reward them. Make them pay thirty shillings rent, and thirty pounds fine at least.Hens, two.” And so he runs through the roll of his tenantry, till one is startled to find one Thomas Narbury, “a very honest man, and built a good house; and is so well pleased with his landlord that he intends to lay out £250 more under me in building.” Richard Bushell also, and his wife, are “very honest people; use them well. Make the old rent 40s. a year, and whereas it deserves a hundred pounds fine, bate them fifty pounds for their honesty to their landlord.” Of Robert Woodside also he says, “he is a good honest man, of a Scot;” but relapses at once into more accustomed phraseology when speaking of his wife, who is, he says, “as ungratefull a beast as is in England.” It would be interesting to hear the accounts the tenantry gave of their landlord, but such have not been preserved.
Image unavailable: LORD WINMALEIGH’S HOUSE IN WARRINGTON.LORD WINMALEIGH’S HOUSE IN WARRINGTON.
Bank Hall at Warrington, was built shortly after this summary was sent to Sir Edward’s heir. It is a fine example of the best Queen Anne’s style, and
Image unavailable: OLD ROW IN MANCHESTER.OLD ROW IN MANCHESTER.
is now turned into public offices. The gardens and grounds are still intact, but smoky tall chimneys envelope them on every side, and it is probably in the transition state. Indeed, before very long a street will pass its noble entrance, and people will remember that “it once stood in its own grounds, and the street you are walking in was a geranium bed thirty years ago.” Murray in his guide-book speaks of Lancashire as a county abounding in ancient black-and-white houses, and places it at the head of all others. Cheshire, however, must have many more, and of course, as far as the towns are concerned, there can be no comparison in antique relics. There are in Lancashire now twelve boroughs, with mayors and corporations, and though Lancaster is rather picturesque, it may be fairly said that the character of these corporate towns is dreariness. We look in vain for some pleasant
Image unavailable: OLD MARKET, WARRINGTON.OLD MARKET, WARRINGTON.
street scene. Chimneys and smoke are the characteristics of all. Round Manchester there used to be, and perhaps are yet, some few homesteads of interest, but the majority of them are swept away. Speke Hall, near Liverpool, is quite an exceptionally fine building, but though it was for long a farm-house, and cattle were in rooms that adorn Nash’sMansions, it is now again made into a residence. There is an old black-and-white house at Kenyon, formerly the residence of the Lord Chief-Justice Kenyon, but now empty; and perhaps, excepting another at NewtonJunction, that must be familiar to all travellers between Manchester and Liverpool, there is nothing that can be regarded as very interesting.
The Isle of Man stands so near Lancashire that it is often called a part of it, though indeed it is under a rule different from the rest of England, and does not return a member to Parliament, which of course, gives it the privilege of ruling its own finances. It has a Parliament of its own, and on the 5th of July, the acts they have passed are publicly read out on Tynwald Hill, about three miles to the east of Peel.
Castleton is the seat of the governor of this singular island, and derives its name from an old fortress called Castle Rushen, which stands in the middle of the town, and is said, though with uncertain accuracy, to have been built by a Danish chief in the tenth century. Peel is a small seaport, and formerly was of much more importance than it now is. On a sort of small rocky island here is situated the celebrated Peel Castle that Scott has alluded to in his novel of “Peveril of the Peak,” a novel which has been of some little service in the present work, from the exceeding care and accuracy of its topographical detail.
In concluding the present series of sketches of our ancient cities and homesteads, one is met by the question—Is it not possible in future buildings toadopt more of the old spirit, and relieve our streets from monotony? In reply to which it may readily be answered, that it is not only possible, but it would add greatly to the convenience and mercantile value of a street if such a course were adopted.
The dreary rows of square-headed windows at even distances in long brick walls govern the rooms inside, and imperatively domineer over the convenience of the arrangement. A French writer, speaking of the palace of Versailles, at the time it was built, and regretting that a style had been adopted which demanded this precisely even fenestration, said that it caused a footman’s pantry to be lit by a huge window which had perforce to correspond with a row in a drawing-room on the same front, and perhaps had to be cut in two by a partition, to let the other half do duty for another minor apartment.
On the ground of economy and fitness alone our humbler streets call aloud for improvement; and if it is said that England is now a nation of shopkeepers, it must be remembered that Venice was too, and that in the days of its greatest architectural grandeur.
Indeed, when she began to decay, her arts declined too. Mr. Beresford Hope, in some admirable remarks delivered at the Town Hall, Hanley,said “he wished to show them that the world’s debt to art was one in which they all had a share. It was a joint-stock company, in which every man, woman, and child, had a share, which he or she might pay up with a perfect certainty of ample return. By art he meant the science of beauty in material things,—that art which was something for the artist and something for the people themselves—which stood in no need of being separated from the everyday wear and bustle of common life—which had to do with buying and selling, with marrying and giving in marriage, with lying down and getting up, with buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market, with all the wear and tear of everyday life,—instead of being something separate from this. Art is beauty, but it is also economy and appropriateness. Art is the faculty of being able with the greatest economy of material, of colour, and invention, to be able to produce the brightest effects.”
“In Kent,” he further on says, “there is a traditionary way of building chimneys, by a simple variation in the management of common bricks, but the effects produced are most picturesque; any common labourer could do it, but it is true art.” Mr. Hope then takes a row of houses in Birmingham, or Manchester, or Bradford. They were somany houses put up—no outline or skyline,—“The same dread, dreary, uniform, colourless square block, the same square doors, brass knockers and door plates, the same sash windows, the same stone slab under the windows, the same chimneys, and when they went inside, the same rhubarb-coloured oilcloth on the passage, the same rooms with the same paper on the walls, and the same chimney-piece.” This is truly and well said. It is almost impossible to feel otherwise than weary and dull on the brightest summer’s day in Liverpool. Architectural dreariness is carried to the highest pitch of which it is capable in this town, though some parts of Birkenhead rival it. Now, as has been already remarked, Chester is not only a delightful city to walk in, a city which it is a pleasure to have any business to transact in, but its arrangement and the unstudied variety of its houses make it serviceable and economical. The shifting, broken skyline, and the gables of the houses projecting as it were in amicable rivalry into the street, are always pleasant and cheerful to behold. If it is asked whether such a style of building would seriously be recommended in a practical point of view, I would say again and again it should. The Chester architects have quite adopted the indigenous style, and, to do them justice,
Image unavailable: HIGHAM FERRARS, NORTHANTS.HIGHAM FERRARS, NORTHANTS.
they have adapted it too. There is no lack of convenience in their recent erections. The buildings which have an exterior made to fit them are quite as likely to be convenient and serviceable as those which are made to fit a dreary square exterior; and as for utility and popular appreciation, a test is ready. Build one street in the square style Mr. Hope has so graphically described, and another in picturesque outline, and see which brings in the best return for the money, supposing of course all other things are equal, such as site and accommodation; thepleasant architectural appearance and expression of the one street will always leave the other in the distance.
And this word “expression” is a very significant one, and a useful one too. The parts of a building may not be individually beautiful, and yet there may be a good “expression” in it. The details of Charles I.’s style are often grotesquely bad when viewed in piecemeal, and yet we recognise a good expression in the building of that period as we enter some old town. Early English foliage is extremely stiff, and taken by itself ludicrous, as far as any imitation of nature, which it is supposed to be intended to represent, is concerned; and yet who can be insensible to the general result? The capitals throw a fine shade on the turrets in the sunshine when there are angular shafts, and the tall slender columns (clustered perhaps), though they may have no feature that can be singled out as excellent, are very fine in general effect. Expression may therefore exist independently of detail, as beautiful detail may be lavished over a façade, and lost. To bring the comparison, as has been done, to the human countenance, a building may be
“Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,Dead perfection, no more;”
“Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,Dead perfection, no more;”
“Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,Dead perfection, no more;”
and yet another may be pleasant, and bright without such advantages as these. We have often seen, to continue the simile of a human countenance, a face that has nothing regular or perfect about it, yet the features seemed in harmony, and there was a pleasant expression. Of course nothing here can apply to the grotesque designs in bosses and gurgoyles that so often appear in our buildings after the thirteenth century; they are inexpressibly tedious and useless, and never under any circumstances have they the slightest relevance or interest. They may be sometimes of trifling local curiosity, as illustrating some scandal or abuse that was in vogue at the time of their cutting, but even at that they are very dreary and out of place. Of course any one who tries to imitate them now in an ecclesiastical building is quite out of court, and the only excuse he can plead is that he has not skill to design anything better.
Expression in buildings cannot always be carried out to the extent of showing from their external appearance what they are, though some indication is possible under any circumstances. A general fitness may be shown, and that is enough. There is a costly bank in Montreal, where in a moment of inspiration the architect has conceived the idea ofoverturning cornucopias and allowing sovereigns of stone to appear as though they were falling into the street. If this is at all typical of the mode in which the business is conducted, a change of managers would be a rather palpable advantage to the shareholders. There is a bank at Altringham, built for Messrs. Cunliffe, Brooks, and Co., in the “post and petrel style” so common in Cheshire, and although there is no such demonstrative ornament about it as this, it is clearly a public building of some importance, and is certainly one of the best specimens of revival that have ever been produced in England.
Vitruvius specifies seven qualities on which the Greeks insisted—solidity, convenience, order, disposition, proportion, decorum, economy; but Barry is able to reduce these to three—permanence, convenience, and beauty, as he stated in a very interesting lecture to the Royal Academy; and it is not too much to say that the requirements of Vitruvius will be found to arrange themselves under these three heads.
Now, the typical architecture of the day, for example the Crystal Palace, can scarcely be called permanent. It may and probably will last for generations with very ordinary care, but “its root is ever in its grave.” Of course permanence is onlya part of architecture. Dock gates or granite entrances to warehouses may easily possess all that, and show it too, but yet be sadly deficient in other qualities necessary for successful architecture. In engineering buildings there must be a nice calculation of strength. The materials, such as iron rods, and nuts, and screws, are costly, and if increased beyond necessity do not add to the strength of the fabric. A light iron truss spanning fifty feet might be able to bear enormous weights, while an iron scantling containing four times the amount of metal would break from its own weight; but in stone buildings there is no such reserve. The engineer who constructs a roof or shed too strongly, or he whose building is wanting in strength, are both deficient in skill. Stone, however, needs no such caution. It may be used so as to possess, and appear to possess, a surplussage of strength, and yet not seem excessive, and the same may fairly be claimed for brick and oak. The ends of beams that show their massive proportions to the street, and support an overhanging storey of some black-and-white building, proclaim their strength and sufficiency, and cannot appear excessive or overdone, from the nature of their material, which is so plentiful. Convenience more particularly applies to the interior of a building, andrefers to the arrangement and size of the rooms. A properly proportioned room should neither be too low nor too high, though sometimes the latter is overlooked; especially in modern terrace houses, where a well-like appearance is given to a room of ordinary dimensions by too great height. Singularly enough, however, it is a fact that a well-contrived house may always be said to afford greater facilities for a good exterior than an ill-contrived one; the fitness inside shows itself in the exterior. And as to beauty, it is hard indeed if, when the building is successful in these two other requirements, the third does not follow. The same exterior may of course be ornamented in many ways, and may have either a Gothic or classic coat, or be left alone; but when once the necessary outline is secured decoration is simple. One great charm of old houses is that they do not conceal either their roofs or chimneys. Modern ones are apt to be shy of letting them appear, and contrive by parapets and other devices to hide them.
A staircase at the end of this chapter illustrates the comfortable easy landings and flights that characterise old house architecture, even when on an unpretending scale. The date is about 1600, and the comfort of ascent is far beyond any staircasesthat we should expect to find in a moderately-sized house in the present day.
An architect of some eminence, in reading a paper on Gloucester Cathedral, said (a few years ago), “I raise my voice against what I consider cankers in modern architecture, where art is so far forgotten in the desire of the architect to obtain for his works a so-called individuality. This individuality is enticing to very young men, who are attracted by the eccentricities of old buildings, or the architect who imports them, for nearly all modern individuality arises from too strongly emphasising and repeatingad nauseamsome odd bit picked up in foreign travel. It so happens that many architects have no faith in good sound building, they have no trust in the grandeur of stability, they have no love for simplicity, no appreciation for breadth of treatment: they go in for quaintness.” So far as this is intelligible, it means to say that a broad row of houses without individuality is preferable to one where the individual tastes and requirements of the owner are conspicuous. The same writer proceeds to object to the early capitals that distinguish the Gothic of the twelfth century when clustered round a column, and, as he says, “wrap it round a shaft nearly as big as an Irish round tower.” He objectsalso to the “dog-tooth” and the undercut capitals that often appear in such profusion in France, and which he compares to “exaggerated sticks of rhubarb,” and warns his junior hearers against ornamenting spires with crockets like Salisbury, which he says in that building can only be called a “positive mania” on the part of the architect, and he proclaims loudly against the enrichments in Hereford and Gloucester. Regarding the latter, he says that a contemporaneous monk grumbled at the expense, and recorded his objections in some record that remains. Whether the monk who regretted the waste was the one that carried the bag or not seems not to be very clear; but in a word, the criticisms are quite unjust. And as for Salisbury, though some may consider that the spire is too thin, there can be no exception taken to its beautiful enrichments. The monk who is quoted with approval seems to have said that as much was spent in ornamenting the church as would have built another. Quite so; indeed the cost of any cathedral would build not one more but many, quite a colony of meeting-houses with 9-inch brick walls. “The basest beggars,” says Lear, “are in the poorest thing superfluous.” This paper is by a well-known architect, and was published some few years agoin theBuilding News, or else it would not be noticed.
The question continually must recur, what means the designers of old used to secure such almost universally satisfactory effects. It is clear that in many instances they worked from drawings. These are in some cases extant, but they must also have had many opportunities of testing the effect of their work from various points of view, and altering and amending as they proceeded. Many a carefully studied design that looks perfect on paper is a sad disappointment when executed. The chimney that stood so boldly forward is choked in the perspective as we look up. Perhaps, indeed, it disappears entirely from the view, and the gables have a more apoplectic appearance than we had fondly hoped, and little by little the day-dreams of the architect vanish.
The designers of old seemed to be free from such vexations, for though it would be saying too much to pretend that they never made mistakes, or that all they did is excellent, we must freely admit that our productions are less satisfactory than theirs.
It is by no means, however, a very easy task to point out wherein the secret of the difference lies, nor to say why old builders almost universally were guided to forms of beauty. Long and energeticallythe question was debated of whether some ancient code of rules that once regulated their operations has been lost,—recipes, as it were, to trust themselves to when they went to their work,—and indeed, some twenty years ago, a chapter in theArchæological Journalgave precise directions for the proportions of a pinnacle, found, as it was said, in some old monastic archives; but both sides were agreed that when worked out it was exceedingly shapeless and ugly. Every probability points in the other direction. The versatility of design, the adaptation to site, and the way in which a necessity of construction is often converted into a beauty, indicate individual taste and ingenuity. Again, there was no distinction between the office of architect and builder, as the following extract from an old agreement for building a chapel to St. Mary’s Church, Chester, illustrates:—“This indenture, made by twene William Troutbeck Esquire, on that p’tie, and Thomas Betes, mason, on that other p’tie, bares witnesse that the aforesaid Thomas has made covenant and granted to the said William that he shall make a chapell in the chirche yarde of Ste. Marie on the Hill, on the south side of the Chancell of the said Chirche there, that is to wete, the est ende, the south side,and the west ende, contayning the lengthe of the chauncell there, and xviii. fete wide withinne the walls, and as high as hit nedes resonably to be: with v. faire and clenely wroght windows full of light, that is to say, one gable window at the est ende with iiij. lights, iij. windowes on the south side, ich one of iij. lights, and on the west ende in the best way to be deviset; and iiij. botras on the south side, with a grete arche in the west ende; and the chapelle to be battlet above like to the little closet withinne the Castell of Chester, with a corbyl table longyng thereto; and at ayther end iij. honest fynials. And the said William shall pay the said Thomas xxli. like as the worke goes forwarde, and also give him a gowne. And also the said William shall find fre-stone, lyme, sond, watr, windelasse, and stuff for to scaffold with, and such manere necessaries as the foresaid Thomas nedes; and the foresaid Thomas shall, by ov’sight of Maester John Asser, make the chapell and all things that longen thereto (masoncraft) honestly.”[10]
There is almost a touching simplicity and confidence about this contract. All about the walls, with reference to the height they were to be carried,is that they must be as high as it “nedes resonably to be;” and the windows are not apparently to be encumbered with more tracery than the mason cares to give,—the “v.” of them were to be “faire and clenely wroght.” What a hopeless task an architect, or clerk of the works, as “Maester John Asser” seems to have been, would now have with such a specification in settling up a builder’s “extra account”! Yet it nowhere appears that the work was slighted. On the contrary, though this chapel is no more, there is abundant evidence that it was a noble piece of work. The contract is introduced here to show how completely the present state of things differs from that of the fifteenth century, when the chapel in question was built. Not that it would be possible or desirable in the nineteenth century to bring back such agreements; but it is evident from the specification that the artificers were a very superior set of men to those who now erect our buildings. The beautiful crockets and bosses that ornament ancient cathedrals were cut as the work proceeded by the mason whose place on the building they happened to fall to, and though they are now models of excellence, the great probability is they were cut without drawings to guide the workmen. One inestimable advantagein the kind of contract quoted is that, when such men as it may be supposed Betes and Asser were, were concerned, the “resonableness” of the height of the chancel or the “fairness” of the tracery could be judged of as the building proceeded. The picturesqueness of the sky-line, or the relative proportions of any part to the surroundings could be determined while the building progressed. Nor does this require a great amount of natural talent. If beauty in architecture had been encouraged during the last two centuries, instead of being frowned down, we should still have the class of men who were competent. Of course, as before remarked, it would be impossible, in the present nature of things, to re-introduce such a style of contract as that quoted; but one thing we can do,—we can try to arrive at some of the principles of design that influenced the old workmen. There is no code of rules, and to try to design with their pencils will be to many architects of the present day as hopeless a task as to write with Shakespeare’s pen; but if, beyond all other considerations, whether for town or country, the grand principle of picturesqueness is kept in view, the end will be surely gained. By picturesqueness is meant the contrasting of various simpleforms in such a way as to be pleasing to the eye. It runs through all our intellectual life in every thing we do. A barrister may be ever so learned and industrious, and even in earnest, but if he lacks an appreciation of the picturesque he will fight at great odds with another who, with less application and perhaps a worse case, can arrange his facts—sometimes, alas! even his theories—in a pleasing form. This is well understood and successfully cultivated at the Bar, but in the Church it is sadly wanting, and so the most learned addresses from the pulpit are too often bald.
In another essay read by the architect whose paper was quoted from, an essay also which appeared in theBuilding Newsof the same year, that gentleman describes the picturesque as “anything which may be likened to a ‘pig with one ear’—an ancient similitude much admired by the scientific, and often used by them with great force and brilliancy. It is unfortunate, but none the less true, that a very large majority of those who follow after Gothic art, both as students and admirers, have somehow or other been led into the belief that the first principle, the essence of the soul of Gothic, is irregularity. These are the men who stick chimneys in odd corners where they are sure to smoke,put dormers on roofs where they are not wanted, throw out large oriels to small bath-rooms, and corbel out balconies to housemaids’ closets.” This is a heavy calendar indeed against the “very large majority” of the profession, but I rejoice to think it is not just. Nearly every one now understands that picturesqueness has nothing to do with irregularity,i.e.irregularity for itself; and as for an architect who could throw out a large oriel to a small bath-room, unless the proprietor spent a long time there, and especially ordered it, his occupation would soon go. So far from having an impression that picturesqueness and irregularity are synonymous, most architects admit the necessity of repose in their works. Take the nave of a Gothic church, with its row of windows; nobody now would say that it gained by having each window different. In the best examples regularity of form is observed; it is in such feeble late works as Merton College Chapel that the reverse prevails. In great Gothic buildings, especially on the Continent, the whole mass seems one mountain of confusion, and it is only when we examine it minutely, and carry down each feature to its starting-point, that we find the order which prevails. Just as in a peal of bells from a church-tower, the first impression they are apt to convey isthat each ringer is pulling away promiscuously, the only condition being that they shall manage to pull only a single bell at a time; but they are, on the contrary, following a perfectly regular scale, contrived with profound order and symmetry.
Of course, unless an architect is also partly an artist he cannot be successful; no amount of learning can compensate for this. The two best expositors we ever had of Gothic architecture, Rickman and Britton, were indifferent architects. Perhaps they may be said to have known more than all who went before them or followed after; and both of them were endowed with a thorough love for their profession. There may be something to urge that they were not brought up to it, one being in a mercantile office in Liverpool, and the other a wine-bottler in London. Rickman had a number of opportunities of testing his architectural skill, but they are all dreary, and showed that his hand could not put into practice the principles of the architecture he understood and loved so well. Britton had fewer chances, and was even less successful with his few.
Perhaps it might be well to try to answer the question, “What would be the best way to improve the architecture of the most dreary of all classes ofbuildings, the humbler houses of the middle classes, the houses that are let for about £40 or £50 per annum?” and the best way to answer it is to suppose a case in which the conditions would be the most favourable. Suppose, for example, there were to be a number of gentlemen who were each prepared to spend £800 in a row of houses for their own residences. Well, let them all agree upon an artistic architect, and let them each arrange their own plans to suit their own convenience. This would give the architect not only data, but ideas to work upon. Well, let him then take all these plans, and fit to them an elevation which shall be as broad and uniform as the convenience admits. There will still be plenty of variety, the various requirements of the builders will secure that, or enable the architect to employ it. The Vicar’s Close at Wells, or the collegiate buildings in Oxford or Ely, would afford any number of examples of what he required. In one of the excellent Manuals published for the use of amateur artists by Winsor and Newton, the author has divided his subject into Atmosphere, Keeping, Contrast, and Variety, which, if rightly understood, is only another way of expressing the requirements of Barry in the former part of this chapter. A quotation from this Manual, though itrelates to sketching in colour, may be as useful to an architect as to an artist. “First learn how to produce certain effects, and you will not then find it difficult to store them in your memory for use as you require them; you are learning nothing new in the art of painting—thousands have gone through this process before you; you are only seeking to chronicle your own experience. The scenes you commit to paper have, and will have, a peculiar charm for you, and perhaps to your friends if you represent them faithfully. They may be new scenes, but they are not seen under neweffects. These have been already witnessed again and again; you yourself have seen the same effect produced in former pictures; but the charm lies in producing them yourself from nature. Aim then at facility in producing these effects in general, and you will easily apply and vary that knowledge as you require it. Aim at acquiring a kind ofgrammar of effect, just as in reading music, the habitué recognises a certain set of notes from their frequent recurrence, and which is even called by musical people aphrase, alluding to the similar recurrence of words in the composition of a sentence. It is knowledge that leads to decision, which is the secret of rapidity.”[11]
Of course, with an architect rapidity is not necessary, it only pertains to a sketcher in water-colours, whose materials dry up rapidly. A hundred lessons in architecture may be gained every time that we walk along a pleasant lane, and the village with a cheerful row of cottages grown over with creepers, and showing tall chimneys, is full of suggestions in light and shade and composition. In all importations of foreign architecture—and it is not pretended that there should be none—the first thing to consider is its fitness for the climate and surroundings. Dol, Morlaix, and other towns in the north of France, contain many suggestions for city architecture. Our own cathedrals and great churches were meant to stand alone, and can only be seen at some distance; the churches on the Continent were often designed for the effect they would have in a crowded town; but here again, the old chronic error has to be met, that Gothic buildings suit country scenes the best, and Classic a town, whereas the only place where a classic building can be employed, except by a man of absolute genius, is in the country among heavy foliage.
There is nothing so bald or unsatisfactory as a Grecian building, such as has been erected in England since the so-called “revival” of Classicarchitecture. The cold Doric façades, or Ionic as the case may be, give one a sensation of intense dreariness. The stuccoed front of a conventicle strictly copied from the Parthenon, or more probably from the Gate of the Agora, is a thing to wonder at; and too often we form our ideas of Grecian art from modern revivals. Surely we might have expected that the principal seat of classic learning in England might boast of a proper Greek building, if the Professor of Architecture to the Royal Academy, who had made Greek design the study of his life, were employed; but no one can contemplate the Taylor and Randolph Institution at Oxford without feeling humiliated at the idea that it was erected under such circumstances. The Acropolis at Athens is an abrupt hill with a flat surface of perhaps ten acres on the top. The Eastern aspect rises in a kind of bluff, and is crowned by the Parthenon and the Propylæa. The Parthenon was an oblong temple surrounded by forty-six vast marble columns. These seen from below give at once the idea of lightness and strength, and it exhibits in the most perfect form the “entasis” or swelling that a cylinder requires; this alone would show the true eye for form of the ancient Greek architect. The Erechtheum is a vast building on thenorthern side of the Acropolis; and, according to Pausanias, the table-land of the Acropolis was absolutely crowded with works of art; indeed at the present time there are remains at every stride. Lamartine, in hisVoyage en Orient, gives a vivid description of the impression the ruins of Athens made upon him, and concludes his rhapsody with reflections, of which the following is a translation:—“When again shall we find such a people and such an epoch? Nothing announces their coming. The Propylæa and the Temple of Erechtheus, or of the Caryatides, stand at the side of the Parthenon—masterpieces in themselves, but lost in the proximity of a grander masterpiece. The soul, overpowered by the sight of the latter, has no longer any power to admire the others—one must gaze and then depart!—lamenting not so much the devastation of this glorious handiwork of man, as the impossibility that man should ever equal its sublimity and harmony.” Chateaubriand eulogises Athens in a similar strain, and neither of them say one word too much perhaps; but let us fairly ask ourselves what we admire so in the classic architecture of Greece. I would say without hesitation that we fail to see the real excellence but too often. A Greek temple transported into England, yes the Parthenon itself, isbarbarous and hideous. We pass it by as we would Demosthenes on a doorstep inveighing against Philip, relieved to be out of the way. There is no mysterious beauty in a column six or eight diameters high—a ruler is often of the same proportions, and we do not become enthusiastic over it; yet, so much are we influenced by prejudice, that the rude colouring of the Greek temples which the Turks plastered over the buildings they occupied during the seventeenth century, is supposed to be correct taste. Even yet it is commonly, very commonly, believed, that the colouring belongs to the Greek period, and the plaints of even so great an authority as Stuart are touching. I was astonished to find in his preface to the careful volume on Athens, the following:—“Yet there is one circumstance of comparatively recent discovery, and still more recently ascertained to its full extent, which gives a strange contradiction to our cherished notions concerning the purity of Grecian taste, and its antipathy to all coarseness and exaggeration. It should seem that the Greeks painted their temples, not merely in chiaroscuro, or in subdued tints, for the purpose of giving relief to projections or expressiveness to ornamental details, but with glaring colours,—reds, blues, and yellows, with violent contrasts; thecolumns one hue, and the entablature another. Nay,” he says, “there is shrewd suspicion that the sculptures were painted like the figure-head of a man-of-war, and that the pillars were striped, and unluckily the evidences of these incredibilities is most exasperatingly clear; the statements of the German architects employed by King Otho leave no doubt whatever,” etc. etc.; and I once saw a devout student of Greek art poring over one of those revived temples—the columns and entablature a bright coffee colour, and the triglyphs blue—trying to admire it; he humbly thought he must be wrong, and the Greeks must be right.’ Why, the Turks did all this during their possession. The colours here indicated would be about the Turkman’s idea of correct taste, savouring of the bazaar and booth. They trailed their cannon up the Propylæa, and broke down the carved work thereof with axes and hammers, and soon they set up their banners for tokens. Mnesthenes never coloured the Erechtheum, or Pausanias would have said so in the account of his ramble over it; and Phidias and Praxiteles may fairly be left alone—theynever daubed the Parthenon with ochre. The architecture of the Acropolis, great as it is in its own merits, requires a Greek eye and Greek modes of thought to understand thoroughly and toappreciate. Its great and grand idea is calm and dignified repose. It is the repose of the Sphynx or an Egyptian pyramid refined into beauty; and among the rocks of Attica, which are rugged and rough, a Gothic building, such as Strasbourg or Cologne, would be out of place; the crockets and pinnacles would be dwarfed by the igneous rocks that are about, and the Greek well knew how a calm flat surface would harmonise and contrast with the country round.
Modern discoveries by Michaelis regarding the statue of Minerva would show that it was of stupendous dimensions, and covered with ivory and gold; the light coming from above, and relieving it from the dark shades of the portico behind.
We have nothing now to compare this with, or anything indeed to enable us to form a comparison by. The effect must not only have been striking, but in the refraction of light in the latitude of Athens, conditions would exist that differ essentially from any we could reproduce here.
The architecture of England is essentially its own, it is capable of adaptation to every known requirement, and many more.
Leaving fortifications and cathedrals on one side as exceptional, there is often a great wealth ofbeauty in the most unpretending domestic buildings, that would lighten up a street or landscape, and if imitated would prove attractive to a tenant.