This substantial volume is not an account of house planning from 1100 to 1700 but an extended study assessing house development from its disordered medieval form to the asymmetrical four-square residence of the post-Restoration period. More specifically, the authors argue that there is a direct line of development from the tower-houses of the late fifteenth century to the compact double-pile houses of the late seventeenth century. This fundamental movement was the consequence of social stimulation, changing habits and structural fashion.
Book-ended by a brief introduction and a short conclusion, the text is divided into five chapters and five short essays or ‘intromissions’. The first chapter describes the large number of donjons and tower-houses across England (to 1480), Scotland (to 1620) and Ireland (to 1650). This theme of high tower-houses continues with the consideration of some modest Jacobean ‘high houses’, medieval gatehouses and lodging towers and a number of Spenserian castles. The second chapter discusses the changes in house design between 1580 and 1630, while the third analyses the subsequent design of the house and its key features of stair, great chamber, parlour, gallery, chapel, kitchen and services. The last two chapters set out the various plan types favoured during the seventeenth century – from the economically planned square block and those with a central passage and stair accessing all key rooms, to the compact double- and triple-pile houses and those with a central block of state rooms with pavilions.
This book has been in preparation for more than twenty-five years and holds a great deal of learning. It is handsomely designed, as befits Yale University Press. As we would expect from the late Andor Gomme and Alison Maguire, the text offers an impressive span and deep understanding of houses from medieval times to the days of Queen Anne. The text is well supported by the plates, which are helpfully sited close to the relevant text. The 230 architectural plans are an important element of the authors’ arguments. They have all been drawn to a uniform scale and to a form which the authors believe to have been the original layouts. This certainly helps with the text descriptions, but virtually all features are shown in solid black with no differentiation between primary and estimated evidence. There are few first-floor plans.
In considering the value of the authors’ thesis, the reader has to overcome several obstacles. The text is densely written and tends to lack narrative clarity, particularly in the first two chapters. The reader is left with the strong impression (supported by the extensive body of notes) that every property examined must be included in the text. This leads to some out-of-sequence descriptions (for example, pp 43–53) and to some uncomfortable insertions, such as the over-thorough assessment of Markenfield Hall of c 1300 in a chapter on tall Elizabethan and Jacobean houses.
Perhaps a more detailed example gives a flavour of this problem. In the section on room doubling between the late fifteenth and late seventeenth centuries (pp 96–110), the examples are historically disordered, making the argument difficult to follow. The account begins with the doubtful examples of room doubling at Bewley Court (here attributed to the 1390s, though the added frontages at Bradley Manor in Devon of c 1470–90 and at Purse Caundle Manor in Dorset of the mid-sixteenth century would have been more persuasive examples). It is followed by a description of Wanswell Court (early sixteenth century) and a less certain evaluation of Faulkbourne Hall (mid- to late fifteenth century), then brief references to Ham House (1675), Abington Manor (1670) and Wraxall Manor (1630), before considering a group of late Elizabethan and Jacobean houses extending from Yorkshire to Kent. Here, and throughout the volume, there is little discussion of the social differences between the owners of these properties except in the broadest terms. The authors only come into their own in the following chapter, when they discuss the planning of seventeenth-century accommodation into polite and service rooms. This and the remainder of the book are not only more clearly laid out, but the text has greater confidence and clarity.
The five ‘intromissions’ interrupt the flow of the text. That on symmetry and style could have been incorporated into the main text as some of it overlaps earlier material, including the deliberate repetition of the ground plan of Chevening Park (plans 36 and 143). The fourth intromission, comparing Condover Hall and Chevening Park (with the plan repeated yet again, followed by a fourth time as plan 208), might also have been better assimilated into the text, with the other three essays treated as appendices.
The houses are described and the plans are drawn with a certainty which admits of no doubt, though some of them can be questioned, such as the analysis of Bewley Court. Richmond Palace is identified as containing the first example of a great stair in an English house, ignoring those in the palace-fortresses at Windsor (c 1355, destroyed), Kenilworth (c 1375, badly ruined) and at Raglan (c 1465). The form of an upper and lower hall at Markenfield Hall is not without distinguished predecessors, including Aydon Hall and Edlington Castle and successors such as Harewood and Raby Castles. The plans have also been drawn by the authors in such a way that they do not allow ‘the light of available evidence and recent scholarship’ to be assessed.
In considering the value of this book as a whole, I am driven to the conclusion that it really consists of two books. The principal one discusses the fundamental development in house design from late medieval tower-houses to the compact block of the later seventeenth century. This forms the body of the volume and is fairly clearly laid out. It is prefaced, however, by the opening seventy-page chapter on four centuries of medieval house development. This reads like a stand-alone survey for a different publication. It includes sections on Scottish and Irish donjons and tower-houses, though these countries and their houses are barely mentioned again. Furthermore, the medieval precedents are summarized in the third chapter, making the first one almost unnecessary.
Courtyard houses were almost as important as tower-houses in medieval England and Wales and became dominant in the sixteenth century, causing a substantial gap in the authors’ argument between the late fifteenth and late sixteenth centuries. Courtyards are briefly mentioned (pp 53–4), but a more extended discussion would have pointed up the contrast with the compact ‘high houses’ that are central to the authors’ thesis. The subsequent discussion on late medieval gatehouses and lodging ranges is essentially illustrated with examples drawn from courtyard houses, weakening the point that Gomme and Maguire are seeking to make. In any case, this section fails to overcome the hundred-year gap in their argument between houses of about 1480 and those after 1580. Nor is it adequately filled by the consideration of hunting lodges, necessarily built high to fulfil their purpose, or the repositioning of the great chamber over the hall, which was common to E-shaped as well as courtyard and high houses.
This volume contains a great deal of valuable material. However, in the absence of any discussion of the development and apparent disappearance of courtyard houses, and the inadequate explanation for the gap in Tudor residences, I am not convinced the authors have proved their thesis. Had they recast their material, given consideration to alternative explanations, and used the early material in a totally separate but broader context, then a slimmer and possibly more persuasive volume would have emerged.
