The Book Of

HOUSES
Geoffrey Hindis

A pictorial
exploration of
how we make
and use
the homes in
which we live
A machine for living in - this challeng-
ing description of a house is said to have
been coined by the great 20th-century
architect Le Corbusier- but as author
Geoffrey Hindley writes, 'people are
untidy and passionate, their homes are
homes of love and anger, worry and
achievement and of unpredictable people
both young and old. No machine has yet
been devised that will really serve for
living in.'

In more than 200 fascinating pictures

this book explores homes as they really
are. from all periods, m all parts of the
world.
The Book of

HOUSES
The publishers gratefully acknowledge the following who have supplied the illustrations
for thisbook:
J. Allan Cash. London 14/. 16/. 24*. 26/. 364. 37/. 39*. 39/. 52. 54/. 56/. 58/. 58c 65/. 68,
69/. 69*. 12b. 80/. 81/. 100*. 101 ; .American Museum in Bath 135A: Ashmolean
Museum. Oxford 8/. 9/. *. 10/. b. 44/; Barnabvs Picture Library. London 131. 138/;
Bavaria -\>rlag 28W, 29*/: 29*r. 40. 102. 114*, 1 19//. 128*: Stefan Bu/as.
12. 28//.
London 30*. 95; Cement and Concrete Association. London 130/r: Cooper Bridgeman
Library, London 66: Trewin Copplestone. London 142A; Country Life, London 74,
79//, tr\ Courtauld Institute of .\rt. London 38/. 38*r. 60: Dutch Society of Sciences.
Haarlem 34r: John R. Freeman. London 129/r: Photographic Giraudon. Paris 18. 19;
Glasgow University Art Collection 48/; Susan Griggs. London 142/; Hamlyn Group.
London 6/. 17/. 20f. 32, 36/. 77/. 82/r. 83/r. 84. 90/. 122. 126/. 130*. 141/. 143/;
Hampshire County Museum Ser\ice 49/; Robert Harding .Associates. London 143*:
Lucien Her\e, Paris It. b. 1. 43/. b. 119/r, 119*. 131*: India Office Library and
Records. London 129*r. 130/: Philip Johnson. New York 144/. *: Keele L"ni\ersitv
Library 49*; A. F. Kersting. London 1. 17*. 20*. 23*. 42. 53. 56*. 62. 63*. 64/. 65*. 75.
76. 80*. 83//. 87. 112; Paolo Koch. Zollikon 120. 121/r. 121*r. 123/, 124/. *. 125/, *. 126*:
Eric Lyons. Cunningham and Partners, London 166; Musee National du Chateau de
Malmaison 88: Mansell Collection. London 8. 30/. 44*. 18b: Mitchell Beazley Ltd.,
1

London 55/; National Gallery, London 11. 38/: National Gallery. Washington DC.
Gift of Edgar and Bernice Garbisch 14*: National Monuments Record. London 15.
48*. 55*; National Trust. London 13, 59*. 81*. 82//. 85; Picturepoint. London 26. 67/.
*, 78. 79. 103. 139; RIBA. London 82*. 138*. 141*: Scala. Florence 22/. 98/. 99/;
Science Museum. London 58*; Spectrum Colour Library. London 25/. 27/. *. 28*. 31*,
33/, *. 34/. 37*. 51. 70. 98*. 134. 135/: Dr. Franz Stoedtner. Dusseldorf 1 18/: Thames
and Hudson. Ltd.. London 97*: .Agence TOP. Paris 106. 107. 108*. 10. Ill: \ictoria 1

and -Albert Museum, London 23/r; Wallace Collection. London 23//; Wayland Ltd,
London 18*, 21. 22*. 24/, 31/, 46/, 46A, 47/, 47*. 50/. *; Weidenfeld a-d Nicolson Ltd,
London 3, 35. 59/, 61, 64*. 70/. 71. 72/, 73, 77*. 86/. 86*. 90*. 91. 92/. 93. 94. 96/, 96*,
97/, 99*, 100/. 102/, 104, 105, 108/, 113/, 113r. 113*. 114/, 115/, 115*. 116. 117/. 117*/.
117*r, 127, 128/, 132, 136/, 136A, 137*, 139/: Woburn .Abbey Park 57/.

ISBN 85674 025 \

Published by
Triune Books. London, England
© Trewin Copplestone Publishing Ltd 1973
Printed in Spain by
Printer Industria Grafica SA, Tuset 19. Bariclona
San X'icente dels Horls
Dep<')si to legal B 18974 1973
Mohn Gordon Ltd. London

All rights rescr\ed. No part of this publication Page 7 The remarkable rococo chinoiserie

may be reproduced, recorded or transmitted decorations around the door in the Chinese
in any form or by an\ means, whether Room, Claydon, which were executed by the
electronic or mechanical, including pholocopv. local craftsman, Luke Lightfoot.
microfilm, recording or any information
storage and retriex al system, without Page 3 The rustic kitchen complete with pine
permission in writing from [rewin Coppleslime furniture and open fireplace at Monticello, near
Publishing Ltd, London Charlottesville, Va., the home of Thomas Jefferson.
Contents

Machines for Living In 6

Homes in a Landscape 21

Towns, Cities and Space 34

At the Big House 44

Homes fit for Gentlemen 56

The Residence of Princes 88

Ritual and Refinement 120

Homes in the New World 133

Machines for Living In

'A machine for living in': it is certainly a chal-

lenging definition of a house. The quotation is

generally attributed to the Swiss-horn architect.

Le Corbusier, though he has disclaimed author-
ship. E\en so, it is ohxiously an architect's phrase
intended to shock people into a complete rethink
of what they expect of a house. Is it merely a form
of convenient accommodation or is it .something
more? So we start this book with an investigation
of some of the functions of the house throughout
history and some of the qualities of domestic life
in the past.
The house has ne\er l)ecn merely a shelter. The
cave paintings of pre-historic man show us that
when men settle in even the most primitive form
of shelter, it becomes something more than that.
.\ house is a permanent dwelling, often inhabited

by the same family and its descendants over a long

period of lime. We shall be seeing a number of
'machines for li\ing in" in this book; they range
from the grandiose to the humble, but they have
this in common that lhe\ all ha\ c to accommodate
that variable and awkward commodity, human
nature.
Shortly after the Second World War, Le
Corbusier received a commission from the French
Ministry of Reconstruction to build a block of
flats in Marseilles in southern France, intended to

house 1500 people. The result was a building

which some feci revolutionized the direction of
modem architecture. This is partly because of the
exciting way which the architect handled the
in
technical problems posed by post-war shortages
both in materials and skilled labour. The genius
of Le Corbusier was able to create architectural
poelr\- in the textured surfaces he got from rough Le C^orbusier was also determined to give the
and often clumsily cast concrete. low income families lor whom the place was
For us the social concept of the Unite d'Habita- designed, the sense of spacious living and grandeur
lion ('Dwelling Unit"), is even more interesting. i()und in the lofty rooms of a mansion. Each flat
The whole building rests on massive pillars. Le has a two-storeyed living room with a gallery
Corbusier,in the 1940s far ahead of the current round it at first floor level for the bed. Stretching
environmental fashion, regarded land as a scarce back from it through the width ot tlic building
resource, so at Marseilles children play in the were long narrow second i)edroom. kiu lien and
open air and drivers park their (ars under a bathroom. These dwellings, shaped like an L' on
vertical township. For, besides the residential its back overlapped one another so that two Hals

flats, stacked 'like bottles in a rack", there is also a took up three storeys. Ihe idea was brilliant and
huge shopping precinct halfway up the building enlightened, but for a large family, where those
and even a hotel. ( )n the roof there is a gymnasium sleeping in the living room gallery are bound to be
and swimming pool as the architect aimed to disturbed if others want to sit uj) late, there arc-

provide all the services of a town in his Unite. obvious practical disadvantages. The same sort
The Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier built his The roof, with its sensational view of the
'pilotis'.
Unite d'Habitation at Marseilles, France, to neighbouring mountains, was used to the full,
provide low cost housing for about 1500 with play areas for children and sports facilities.
people. Because he regarded land as a scarce Below right The interior of a flat by Le Corbusier.
resource he raised the building on pillars, called

many other flats.

of thing has been found in
'Housing' and 'accommodation' arc the words
we tend to use today instead of 'house". People
have to be put somewhere and the answer is often
these high rise flats to make the maximum use of
land and materials. But li\ing at great heights can
be psychologically disturbing while the fact that
children may have to go the whole height of the
building to reach their playgrounds and that the
entrances to the dwelling units are on long and
usually dark corridors, breaks up the sense of
community that be found in a conventional
is to
city street of family houses. P'or many people a
house of their own is the ideal. A house is not just a
form of accommodation, it is something more.
 In every- civilisation it is the great houses that
have set the fashions which others have followed
where they can. In the West, the Roman villa
was for centuries the ideal of the house for the
rich and powerful. 'My dear Gallus.
you may
wonder why my Laurentine place is such a jo\
to me. but once you the attractions of the
reali.se
hou.se itself, the amenities of its situation,
and its
extensive seafront, you will have your answer.'
The writer is Pliny the Younger and in the letter
that follows he sets out the beauties of the
ideal
country place near Rome in about the year
.\D 100. Itwas the city man's dream, only se\en-
tcen miles from the capital so it was possible
to do
a full day's work and ride back
time for dinner.
in
The main dining room was,
Pliny's \icw.
in
"realK- rather fine." It ran out towards the sea so
that when the wind was in the right direction
lightplumes of spray came into the terrace; when
the weather was colder or rougher one simpK
had to close the folding glass doors so as to enjoy
the luxury of a modern waterside restaurant.
Leading off from the dining room was a suite of
bedrooms and a library set so that the ra\s oftlie
morning and evening sun streamed in on them;
behind them were the rooms of the slaxes and
freedmen. .Along the sea-front from the dining
room was the ball court and the iieatcd swimming
"much admired and Irom which the
pool,
swimmers can see the sea." On the land side was a
small dining room overlooking a quiet garden
and a pergola for vines where the soil was soft and
gentle e\en to bare feet; in the corner between
this and the dining room was the well stocked
kitchen garden. The far side of the vine garden
was bounded by an arcade witli windows looking
out onto the sea, which led out to tlie suite of
rooms that Pliny built onto the house as his
personal retreat. Here was a sun room facing the
terrace on one side and the sea on the other with
next to it a beautiful alcove divided from the sun
room by glass partitions and curtains which could
be drawn to make a single charming room. l"he
letter is that a modern scholar has
so detailed
been able build a scale model of Plinv's place
to
in the country.
The description also contains a numl)cr of
themes that will recur in this book. The wealthy
Roman certainly did not look on his hou.se a.s a
machine for living in. Pliny was a bus\- imperial
administrator and Laurcnlia pro\idcd lor him a
peaceful retreat from the cares of the ( iu. I h,
city dweller's
yearning for the comiti Aside is as
old as Excavation has re\ealed
civilisation.
handsome country villas on the fringes of ancient

8
The reconstructed model of Pliny's villa, was through a pergola like the one from the house at

built up from a description in one of his letters. Pompeii {bottom left). Bottom right A ground
Guests play in the ball court and bathe in the plan of the model in the Ashmolean Museum,
sea. In the foreground is the private retreat Oxford.
Pliny built for himself. It was approached

7 Entrance
2 Atrium
3 Cloister Court
4 Inner Court
5 Dining Room
6 Room 32 Herb Garden
'A^Wl -"-
^ [ T^*>VU-^ 7 Room 33 Bed Room
8 Retiring Room 34 Bed Room
9 Library 35 Dining Room
27
22
Terrace (with Violets)
Crypto Porticus i 10 Gymnasium Terrace
n Boudoir
36 Garden with Vine Pergola
37 Stores
23 Sun Room 12 Private Dining Room 38 Stores
24 Reception Room 13 Ante Room 39 Stores
25 Siesta A/cove J, Mo 14 Cool Room 40 Stores
26 Pliny's Bedroom 15 Cold Plunge Room 41 Kitchen
rv.1 ,o
27 Room
Rest
.
f
16 Hot Room 42 Slaves' Room 42a
28 Ante Room 17 Massage Room 43 Slaves' Room 43a
29 Garden Room 18 Rest Room 44 Slaves' Room 44a
30 Bed Room ^ 19 Swimming Bath 45 Slaves' Room
31 Bed Room Jfediterranean i3ea 20 Games Court 46 Yard
Egyptian such as Ihcljicv and the learned
cities
mandarin ran the Chinese empire also
class that
longed for rustic retirement. In the second place. Above The entrance courtyard to Pliny's villa On
Pliny provided himself with a pri\ate stud\. a one side of the porch there is a store room.
retreat within the retreat so to speak, to cut him Below The terrace skirts the main dining room
and the semi-circular apsed library Along from
offfrom the world as far as possible. Thirdly, the
the library run the slaves' quarters.
place was a large establishment; Pliny stood at
the head of a sizeable community which in
addition to his family included guests, servants
and slaves.
"w .-%

^.i:.* ^M«««»

was the first political theorist lo use

.\ristolle medieval Europe, the gap between rich and poor
the household as a model for the structure of the was far greater than it is today and the furnishings
slate. The simile held good for two thousand years. of their houses naturally reflected the fad. But the
Like Pliny, the Victorian fxiler Jamilias governed actual type of facilities axailable for both of them
his household with an almost autocratic authority were much the same. For i)oth, domestic heating
and in most cultures the house has been the home depended on the open [\w in the grate and layers
ol a large and real community, governed like a of hea\ y clothing. Ihe Limbourg brotheiN give a
mini-stale. The fourth point we should notice charming insight into the life of peasant and
about Pliny's account is the obvious lu.xury of the noi)leman in the magnificent illuminations they
villa. Il represents a pattern of urbane living that painted for the Duke oi Berris devotional Book
was nol lo be achicvt-d in Kurope for more than a of Hours. The peasant and his wife, after a hard
thousand years after ihe fall of the Roman empire. day in the fields, have little compunction ai)()ui
To lake an example, central healing, which the dr()|)|)ing their sodden breeches to dry oil: the
Romans had developed to a moderalely sophisti- aristocrat enjoys ilie luxury of an adjustai)le
cated degree, was for centuries a lost arl. In wicker-work fire screen U) protect his face and

10
 '

eyes Iroin stinging smoke and Hying sparks. In ellitient healing in their homes. The Duke ol

spite oi sudi elegant refinements it is quite possible Ksle asked the great artist Ra])hael to design a
thai the room ol" the peasant was the wairmcr, if smokeless fireplace, and a whole chapter in one
only because it was the smaller. '. sixteenth century book on architecture deals with
The Duke's dining table is set so that the great fires and chimneys. Houses were sometimes
men ran sit on the long bench with their backs to abandoned because fireplaces and Hues just did
the liic. The bench is covered with draperies. It not work at all, but things had to be jiretty bad,
is probable that its back is a single rail which and people would put up with astonishing con-
would support but would not block oirthc heat ol ditions. The grandiose palace of Versailles was
the lire; it could pn)i)ably be swung from b<uk bitterly crili( ised by courtiers. The royal mistress,
to front depending on whether the sitter wanted to .\hidamede Maintenon, caustically obser\ ed that
la(c the fire or awa\ from it. .\lthough the Duke in winter the royal bedroom was swept by draughts

is lull in ol" the lire, he is still heav ily robed

front iike .\merican hurricanes'.. E\entually she had a
and is ex en
wearing a fur hat. .\ tourist \isiling s|:)ecial inner room built which would hold an

the great houses and palaces of Europe sooner or armchair and a bed. The king's tloctor may ha\e
later finds himself asking just how their owners gi\en her the idea. Apparently determined to
kept these vast places warm. The simple answer is preserve at least his own health in the royal ice-
that by and large they did not. These houses were box of a palace, he complacently sat in a sedan
built primarily for display, and comfort simply chair before thefires of its marbled halls. However

did not have the o\erriding priority that we gi\e splendid the luxuries of Europe's great palaces
it in our homes today. .ind houses, warmth does not seem to lia\c been
Of course, gentlemen did tluir ix-st to prox idc one of the important factors.

lypm^^l
^Kiv

B« i^^Hi^^l r'w^
i-
. 1
V*f I-
M
V ^ s.

9
T , ?

mu, ^^^B ^H
Pv^^ir - J B* '^
t
*
*:

''.^fS'.- ,„,„• B ^
1

^HPi
• »!
HWni m- )

tj^i^gm^ m^ ft
'
9

^H^2j m! )

A detail from a fifteenth

century Flemish painting.
We look out onto the town
mik square. Two rich merchants
* j'j^ are in town on business and
a workman is repairing a
L ^iifl roof. In the foreground is
the arm of a bench; the
channel allows the back

5S rail to be moved from front

to back to let people face

the fire or have their backs
to it, without having to
move the heavy bench.

11
 During the eighteenth century, matters im- become a synonym for a formal reception.
pn)\ed somewhat with the development of an Household sanitation was if anything worse
improved enclosed Fine porcelain-tiled
stove. than healing. Various types of water closets, using
room heaters from this period are still to be seen running streams or artificial means, ha\e been
in many of Europe's baroque palaces, while in discovered in ancient Crete and Rome, while
America Benjamin Franklin, that man of many white-washed rooms for bath and sand-box earth
parts, devised an effective slow-burning domestic closet ha\e been excaxated in comparatively
grate that was to be perfected and remodelled modest Egyptian houses. E\ en in the European
in the nineteenth century. English ingenuity middle ages, public i)alhs were common enough
seems have been devoted to protection from
to and paintings from the sixteenth century and
draughts. 'Wing' chairs with side pieces and then before show us men and women bathing in deep
canopies virtually enveloped the sitter, while iron tubs lined with silks and linen. But around 1700,
or brass foot warmers filled with glowing coals conditions in even the finest houses were primitive.
were provided. Chamber were emptied into an open canal
pots
Often bed was the warmest place. The elaboraie in the street or the night soilwas removed by
four-posters so admired t()da\. with heavy cin- wagons. Nor was there privacy e\ en in the pri\y.
tains and canopies, cut out much of the draught. One courtier had the job of holding the French
In addition they offered some privacy in a period king's sword while he discussed afFairs of state
when rooms did not ha\e the specialist functions with ministers as lie sat on the 'close stool". Xot
we expect today. When one member of ihc surprisingly, the royal toilet seat l)ecame an
household had retired to bed, others might use ihe important piece of furniture. Flie l()urtcenth
room for other purposes and it was common for centin") I*'rench King John II had one coxcred in
lordsand ladiis to begin the day's business with a painted \el\et while Marie .\ntoinetle u.is
reception held iinin their beds in a room thronging charged !5()()() livres by a cabinet maker lor a
with servants and petitioners. The French word commode decorated with l)r()n/(' mounts and
levee, which iitcrall\ means 'getting up', has painted with birds.

12
 'I'hosc who coulcl allord i( m'lu'ially did Uy lo v\'erenot thought sullicient and many a great
find a healthy .situation lor their house. In aiicienl house had a screen just behind the main gate
Athens, revered to day as the hirthplaee of to block the way to evil spirits. Among the
ucsleni intellectual traditions, the citiiens look Yoruba people of West Central Nigeria, the
littU- interest in the relinenients of doniestie choice of site poses human as well as spiritual
eonilurt. One visitor commented on the po\ert\ ]M()blems. Many generations of the same latTiily

of the houses there as compared with other Greek li\e in one house and strong loyalties develop.
cities, while another, the threat Aristotle v\'ho Eventually, of course, someone must mo\ c, but
settled there as a teacher, tuined his attention to wherever he goes he is liable to ollend either his
household management as to most other things. own family or that of his bride. By a wise tradition,
On choosing a situation he had this to say: 'for the diviner must be called in when a new house
well-being and health, the house should be well is planned. The decision is referred to the heavenly
\ entilated in summer and catch the sun in winter powers and thus the new family finds its house
and it should be protected from northerly winds." sitewithout anyone being ofTended. We can find
Pliny prided himself on his beautiful and healthy lingering memories of such traditions even in
coastal site and good air and fine views would Modern Europe. In Germany, once the main
seem be the most important factors goNcrning
to beam of the roof is in position, a bush is tied to it
the choice of a site. and a party is held to inaugurate the main stage
But in other civilisations and at other times the of the building.
choice has involved very different considerations.
In China, it was believed that a house could
exert influence for good and evil and to ensure
the goodwill of the spirits, diviners and geo-
mancers were called on to advise on the orienta- Opposite Thie mud built compound houses of the
tion, ground plan and the day on which to begin Nigerian town of Kano. Below A handsome
the building. Sometimes e\en these precautions four-poster bed in Knole House, Kent.

13
 Today the ideal is the separate house for the
small family unit of mother, father and children,
but in earlier days and in other parts of the world,
such a reduced household would have seemed a
poorly restricted community. Grand-parents and
s;rand-children lived with parents under the same
roof and, except in the very poorest homes, there
would be ser\ants too, living in or coming in
e\ery day. The result was not only a large house-
hold but one in which people of all ages had a
place. The old were looked to for ad\ice and the
young for entertainment and help with the
household chores.
Ours is in fact obsessi\ely 'private" age, a:id
the history ot the western house seems to reflect
that search for privacy. Early in the middle ages,
the great hall provided eating and sleeping and
living accommodation for all but the family of
the lord himself. Even their small retiring room
adjoining the hall was only used at night.
Gradually more and more private rooms were
added. A solar for the ladies to retire to, a bower
lor the other members of the family, and so on.
By the nineteenth century, a great mansion had
separate rooms for almost e\ery concei\able
actixity: breakfast room, dining room, morning
room, li\ ing room, billiard room, smoking room,
private boudoirs and, of course, special wings
for guest rooms and servants' quarters. .Although
the house sheltered so many people, their privacy
was so well guarded that if they should so wish
thev need hardK e\er meet at all.

In the past, religion held a central place in

people's lives and came naturally into their homes.
The shrines of the household gods canstill be seen

in houses at Pompeii, and in ancient China and

Japan the altar of the ancestors or the gods held
an honoured place. In Russia, icons provided
a focus of worship and, even today, in devout
Catholic homes the world over, a candle can be
seen burning before a holy picture with the
figure of a patron saint nearby. Orthodox Jews
may still follow the biblical injunction to place
certain sacred texts on the doorpost of the house.
For centuries, Protestant families began the day
with prayers presided over by the head of ihc
household and the family bible was one of liie
most treasured possessions. Today, religion has Top A gods in a house
shrine to the household
little obvious place in the home, apart from a of ancient Herculaneum. Above This early
vaguely religious picture in a bedroom, perhaps. nineteenth-century painting, The Cotter's
Saturday Night, shows a humble family preparing
It can be seen as the last vestige of the idea of
for Sunday. The family bible took the place of
veneration and awe that once was a central part the shrine of the household gods in many
of the hutnan experience and as such loutui Protestant families from the Reformation to the
cxpressicjn in the homes of meti and women. nineteenth century.

14
The magnificent billiard room of Halton House
Buckinghamshire, England.

15
 The isolation of people from one another in
self-contained dwellings is comparatively recent,
even Europe. In other cultures, the layout of
in
the proclaims a sense of community.
houses
They are often grouped in compounds; cooking,
washing, eating and conversation are public
acti\ities and the families only retire to their
separate houses for sleep. The same kind of
communal arrangements were also to be
living
found in China, where a number of houses might
be grouped round a series of interconnecting
courtyards. It is now returning to the West as
architects react against the semi-detached world
of garden cities and housingHousing estates.
by
estates like the ones at Blackheath, designed
Eric Lyons, aim to bring back something of the Even the squalid rows of back-to-backs of
atmosphere of a village community. Instead of Victorian industrial city streets had a strong sense
individual gardens, the houses share a handsome of community. The people who mo\ed into them
landscaped park which spreads around them, from the villages had been used to village life.
while the placing of the units encourages families People went freely in and out of one another's
to share and mix. Designing like this for 'to- back doors and the chat over the garden fence
getherness" is increasingly common on both sides was a real social activity. Despite the cruel
of the Atlantic, as if modern man, aware of his hardships of industrial life, people met and gave
isolation from his neighbours, is looking to re- one another strength to build something in the
establish communitv links. midst of the machine-dominated slum.

16
 Unlike machines people are not well-ordered.
They are untidy and passionate, their homes are
homes of love and anger, worry and achievement
and of unpredictable people both young and old.
No machine has yet been devised that will really
serve for livingin. It can provide the facilities of

hygiene and the comforts of warmth and con-

venience, but once life starts inside it, things are
liable to be rearranged in ways that the designer
may not have bargained for.
Even so, architects have generally tried to
impo.se unity, as far as possible, on house interiors.
Fontaine and Pcrcier, Napoleon's architects, had
this to say: 'Furniture is too closely connected
with the decoration of the interior for the architect
not to be involved in it. If the spirit of the house's
decoration is divided from the building it will . . .

make the essential forms disappear.' The interiors

of Josef Hoffman's magnificent Palais Stoclet in
Bru.ssels certainly give the formal elegance of the
exterior a new and opulent dimension. Less Despite the contrast between the cramped
terraces of nineteenth century industrial towns
magnificent, but no less imaginative, was the
{opposite top) and the comfortable landscape
house that the English architect, Charles Annesley setting of Eric Lyons houses at Blackheath,
Voysey, built for himself at Chorley Wood in London, {opposite bottom) both encouraged a
1900. Everything, even the keyholes and door friendly and communal life style. Top The Palais
Stoclet, Brussels, designed in 1905 by Josef
hinges, is designed by him. The result of such
Hoffman is one of the last great European town
schemes is indeed a magnificently consistent unity, mansions. Above The house that the architect
but they are in danger of giving a static, museum- C. A.Voysey built for himself at Chorley Wood,
like quality to the li\ing environment. England in 1900.

17
Two superb miniature paintings done in the Berri, for whom the book was done, sits before
early fifteenth century by the Flemish Limbourg the fire on a bench covered in drapery. On the
Brothers, as illustrations for a Book of Hours-a wall hangs a superb tapestry of a battle scene.
devotional handbook for the religious year. The Above February, a peasant family dries out after
prayers for each month begin with a picture and the day's work. Left below An illustration from
calendar for the month. Here we see [left) another Calendar shows wine being drawn from
January and the day of gift giving. The Duke of kegs in a cellar.

19
 -

J \/
il
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1 p "^ J
1 11 .a

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In times of change people have often looked to

their houses as symbols of security. From the late
years of the eighteenth century, as the industrial
revolution gathered momentum, designers began
to revive styles of the past, as if to hold the rnachine
age at bay. Later, architects like Norman Shaw
and Philip Webb, were drawing on the past
still

to exolve a comfortable and relaxed pattern of

living, consciously at odds with the mass-
production technology of the nineteenth century.
In the 1870s, William Morris and his friends
founded 'The Firm'. It was to make by hand the
furniture and furnishings for the 'Red House',
designed for Morris by Philip Webb. Il was a
revolt against the machine age, but it was not very
successful. By 1900, other skilled designers were
working in the mass-produced market and house
building has now come to rely heavily on factory
made materials and fabrics undreamed of b\
Morris. Yet the popularity of artificial stone
and other substitutes for natural materials,
unpleasant as they are, shows how reluctant
people arc to make the final break with the habits
of the pre-industrial centuries.
'Everyman's house should not only be to him a
castle for security but a field for the display oi
individual taste and through it of individual
character.' So wrote the craftsman William Walt, Top French art nouveau style room setting, 1902.
a contemporary of Morris's. The character of Centre The 'Red House', Bexleyheath, Kent.
modern man, despite the relentless encouragement Above Kelmscott Manor, Oxfordshire, England
the historic house that William Morris, pioneer of
of avantgarde engineers and architects, is deeply
new relaxed styles of domestic designs, made
(onservativf . His houses express the fact, as his home. Opposite Throughout history,
though he was determined they shall l)c homes management of the landed estates has been
and not machines for living in. important economically to great house owners

20
Homes in a Landscape
III this chapter wc look away from the house to its bourne, England, archaeologists have even been
environment. For most of history, this has able to uncover the bedding trenches,filled with
provided the house-builder with his materials green loamy soil and marled with lime, which
and has set him problems of climate, often were prepared by a Roman gardener close on
severe ones. Yet, from a very early stage, man has two thousand years ago. As in the paintings at
not been content merely to cower away from the Pompeii, they flank wide paths, forming alcoves
natural world in the best shelter his ingenuity for statuary, fountains and singleornamental
could devise. Like the beaver, damming rivers trees. The ceramic pipes, that once supplied the
and demolishing young woodland to build its water for the fountains, still lie in their trenches
lodges, humankind has modified that environ- just under the topsoil.
ment-and on a massive scale. Its settlements have Before work could be begun on the large site
been surrounded by farms and its houses were at Fishbourne, it had to be levelled; the top soil
set in gardens. was stripped and stored in piles and hundreds of
The earliest civilisations began to develop after tons of gravel were laid. After this preparation,
the invention of agriculture in neolithic times and the buildings of the villa began to rise round a
soon men were modifying the environment for large courtyard in which the formal garden was
pleasure as well as necessity. The Hanging laid out. The main range of buildings was.

Gardens of Babylon were one of the wonders of approached along the wide path flanked with
the ancient world and Roman villas were fountains and statuary and its structure was
surrounded by gardens. Those at Laurentia were camouflaged so as to give the impression of
Pliny's pride and joy and wall paintings at another garden beyond. The foundation wall was
Pompeii give us an idea of what a Roman garden painted green, and white lattice fences, carefully
looked like. Clipped hedges line sandy or gravelled trained flowering trees and a row of fountains
walks, fountains play and behind them birds fly completed the eflfect. On another side of the
among the branches of ornamental trees and court, a dazzling white colonnade was partly
shrubberies. At exciting excavations in Fish- masked bv scores of rose trees.

21
Throughout the ages
gardens and plants have
been a natural part of
houses whether in town or
country. Above a
courtyard in the House of
the Vetii at Pompeii where
a cloistered walk round the
garden provides welcome
shade from the hot
Mediterranean sun. Right A
merchant from some
Netherlands town during
the middle ages, walks in
his garden and has a word
with the chief gardener.

22
One of the piquant parallels
which suddenly highlight
the basic similarities
between people no matter
how different their cultures.
Above left is 'The Swing' by
the eighteenth century
French painter Fragonard
{above right) a miniature
from the Kangra school of
Indian painting about 1800.
Left Part of the beautiful
gardens at Hidcote Manor,
Gloucestershire.

23
 Formal gardens like these ha\e always been
part of the European tradition. There were
gardens for relaxation as well as for elegant
display, even at Versailles the most formal
of all
Europe's palaces. In the grounds, remote from
the palace with its geometric paths,
flower-beds
and hidden groves and glades where the
pools, are
casual young courtiers of an earlier age walked,
made love and played garden games. The
paintings of French artists like VVatteau and
Fragonard have caught the memory- of this
idyllic life for us. One of the most famous
of all
these .scenes is Fragonard 's The Swing. Pushed
by
the hand of an amorous gallant, the
carefree
young lady is thrilled and frightened at the same
time like any girl on a fair-ground swing today-
or even like her sister from an aristocratic family
in India, who was painted at about the
same
time.
The two pictures make a delightful parallel to
remind us that people the world over tend to
enjoy themselves in much the same way, even
though the assumptions and values of their
cultures may be widely different. Such diflTerence
is found in the attitudes of
East and West to the
garden itself In imperial China, the garden was
a place of mystery and meditation on the
place
of man in nature. It was often designed to the
personal specifications of the cultured house-
holder. Doorways and windows were seen as
frames unexpected, dramatic or beautiful
for
vistas. The garden was meant to be an
extension
of the house. It was a private landscape, but it
embodied the eternal principles found in nature
of which man was but a part.
In the West, where men see themselves as
observers of nature rather than part of it, interest
m landscape for its own sake came comparatively
late. The medieval walled garden, with
its formal
flower beds and central fountain, was a secret
place but, far from being a model of natural
landscape, it was a retreat from the unruly and
disordered reality of nature. The imagery was
of an otherworldly paradise, an idyllic
glimpse
of heaven in the midst of a fallen world, .\fter
all,
inthe Biblical story, life began in the Garden of
Eden where all was peace and fruitfulness.
With the Renaissance, Italy emerged as the
natural leader in garden design. The theme was
still formal but the inspiration was now from
( lassical Rome. Statues of antiquity were set in
the grounds and the geometrical approach
we
first saw at Fishbourne wa.s reinterpreted. .As the
art moved north to France, it became still more
abstract and rigid in its disciplining of nature.

24
 riic eighteenth eeiitury witnessed a revohition
which started in Enghmd and hxl to the destruc-
tion of many formal gardens and their conversion
into naturalistic landscapes. Men like 'Capability'
Brown and William Kent made the garden into
a park of wide views and rolling lawns. The gravel
paths of the flower gardens round the hcjuse gave
|jlace to grass planted with a cloud of tumbling
luxuriant blooms and clumps of shrubs.
It is interesting that one of the most dramatic

of English gardens was planted by an American.

In 1907, Hidcote Manor in Gloucestershire was
bought by Lawrencejohnston. There was a stream
in the valley and the trees included a fine clump
of beech and a cedar of Lebanon, .\part from
this the site, a windswept hillside of limestone
soil, seemed unpromising. F^irst the slope was
terraced and then planted with hedges to act as
windbreaks. They also linked a series of alcoves
and these were planted with flowers from all over
the world, set in carefully prepared bedding
trenches. The little stream was lined with fine
trees and shrubs. The simple acres had become a
dream garden of exotic colours and scents -nature
had been made to yield new delights.
In most civilisations, the rich have usually
been able to make this kind of transformation
scene. Often the very materials of the house were
brought from far-flung districts. But, until quite
iccently. the builder of the average house was
lorced b\ transport costs and sheer technical
problems to use the materials of the immediate
c(juntryside. As we shall see, traditional western
building styles flourished in this context. The
environment not only determined the materials
used, often enough it also shaped the appearance
of the building. In some parts of India, roofs are
fitted with angled vanes which help to keep the
interior cool by creating currents of air. The
traditional shape of the Swiss chalet, wide and
low, with gently sloping eaves, is ideally suited to
a land of heavy winds and snowfall.

Different cultures have expected different things

from their gardens. In medieval Europe the
wailed garden was a secret paradise of gentle
dalliance; in the foreground, the lady with the
key to the garden of pleasures leads a reluctant
gallant.
The traditional wood-built chalet of Switzerland
is a fine example of the adaptation of house
building styles to their landscape.

25
 Modem working in extreme climatic
architects
conditions make and technical study of
a close
them before beginning to design. In hot lands,
trees and vegetation have more than a purelv
decorative function. Placed close to the house,
they cool down the hot ground breezes and cut
out the reflected heat that bounces off unshaded
earth. To do this effectively, they must be planted
close to the building, which gives the architect
scope for imaginative effects. But the classical
instance of a building adapted to environment
has nothing to do with skills learned at architectural
schools and colleges.

26
 Opposite top Mud houses of Nigeria,
painted and decorated with elaborate
traditional designs. It seems that the type
of tent used by the Nomads of Morocco
(below), provided the model for the
bamboo frame house being covered
with Its roofing of skins {left). The house
is being built near Timbuctu in modern

Mali and it is interesting to note that

Timbuctu was the capital of a high
Islamic culture in the middle ages,
founded by Arabic nomads from the
Sahara.

'^'riir>m7^mr''^''^j^.

27
 The Eskimo snow house, w hich makes sur\ i\ al In tropical zones like Xew Guinea, banana
possible in the most extreme climate on earth, is leaves or other natural fibrous substances are used
a dome of snow blocks about fifteen feet in diameter for roof and walls over a frame of young saplings.
and nine or ten feet high. It is approached through The pyramids remind us of the greatness of
a long snow tunnel cut about a foot lower than ancient Egypt, but there is no trace of the houses
the floor level and with a right angle turn, while of the people. Built of sun-hardened Nile mud,
the sleeping quarters arc on a raised snow platform these ha\e long since dissoK ed back into the soil.
round a central aisle all precautions against But mud is still used for house building in parts
draughts. Heat and light are supplied by a small of .Vfrica and dramatic designs can be achieved
blubber-burning lamp, which, with the body with it. In well forested regions, such as northern
heat of the people, melts the snow so as to seal Europe, wood was the natural choice, while in
over the joints in the walls and roof with a thin of easily-quarried stone, that was used
districts
film of ice. Skins are then slung across the 'ceiling' for all but the poorest dwellings.
and a hole pierced in the roof to keep the ice from
melting from the heat of the blubber lamp and
form an insulating wall of air. Larger houses are
equipped with a look-out window made of a pane
of freshwater ice, more translucent than the
salt-water \ariety and carefully transported from
the summer campsite.
Few human structuresso brilliantly exploit the
available materials while simultaneously solving
the problems of the environment as the igloo. It

involves real constructional skill. The ideal

material is firm snow from a drift lornud by a
single fall and thus free of the faults separating
diflerent strata of freezing. It is cut freehand into
blocks with an ixory or bone knife. Next, the
Top left The spiral construction of the Eskimo
blocks are buill up in a wide spiral leaning slighth
snow house and the fresh water ice window can
inwards. The central block is placed in posiiion be clearly seen. Above Blocks are cut in a
from the inside. The process takes one hour. matter of minutes, freehand.

28
 'From log cabin to White House' could indeed
be a convenient short hand for a chapter in the
history of house building. The typical home of
the American pioneer, the log house, was a simple
and sturdy shelter, demanding only a few tools
and little expertise. After the trees had been
felled and trimmed with an axe, an adze might
be used to rough shape them and an auger was
needed for drilling holes: doors and shutters were
hung on wooden pegs or, in some cases, leather
hinges. The walls were of logs, laid one above the
other between retaining posts and the roof was
of heavy planking. Daubed with mud, the house
was moderately well weather-proofed, but the
window openings, although sometimes covered
with translucent waxed paper, inevitably made
for draughts. The floor was usually of rammed
earth, though 'puncheons', split logs with the flat
side face up, might be used. Building a house was a
communal effort and a good deal of fun must have
been had by all since at a 'house raising" the
future owner threw a party for his friends in
return for their work.

Top left A riverside dwelling in Thailand.

Left The mud houses of the Dogon tribe in Mali
are windowless to keep out the sun. Above In
the Trobriand islands yams mean wealth and
prestige and are stored in special houses.

29
 ]^'^t .,,*.7T???fff tV\,>.

Two aspects of
town houses in
Italy. Right The
stately fourteenth
century Venetian
palace of the Ca
d'Oro. Below A
back street slum
in Naples.
Left Medieval
town housing. In
the right
foreground a
woman is at work
on a loom in the
ground floor room
of the house.
Below An old
apartmenthouse in
Kowloon, Hong
Kong. In towns
the world over,
land was expensive
and at a premium,
housing necessarily
tended to be
somewhat
cramped.
 As the frontier of \\'hite America was gradually that almost have the qualities of modern abstract
forced westward into the great plains, the log paintings. Hundreds of fine examples of
kind this
cabin gave place to the 'sod house'. This was of house can be seen and many districts,
still

built of three-foot sods of turf laid in courses like such as the West Midlands of England and the
bricks. The walls were then smoothed with a Welsh Marches, derive their characteristic houses
spade and might be plastered with clay and ashes. from the handsome black and white timber-frame"
The roof was thatched or covered with more sods. buildings.
Even by the standards of the log cabin, the result The result of traditional building methods was
was a dirty and insalubrious abode. The windows to make the house seem to belong to its landscape.
were necessarily small and after any hea\y rains Even a great house like Haddon Hall in Derby-
loose earth and mud seeped into the house and shire, England, nestling in its wooded hollow,
the roof had often to be replaced. does not seem out of place. Modern materials
The had probably been introduced
log house and good transport, however, have meant that
to America by settlers from Scandinavia and it is usually cheaper to use artificial materials
central Europe. In England, the basic type of and so modern housing rarely gives that sense of
wood construction was a frame structure, in its belonging. If the owner can afford it, the good
most primitive form the 'cruck' house. The roof architect will choose materials that
try to
tree was supported at either end by two inverted harmonise and some outstanding results can be
V's of timber, the 'crucks' and the walls were achieved, like the house at Ca\e Creek in the
made on upright timber frames. The technique .Arizona Desert, designed by Soleri and Mills. It
is ancient. Describing German houses, the Roman is part excavated out of the hillside and part
historian tells us that first the builders erected two enclosed in masonry walls that harmonise per-
forks and then wo\e bushes and branches fectly. The roof is an incredible glass dome with
between them, finishing the walls off with a sliding panels that open and shut automatically
covering of mud. in response to temperature changes. Natural and
In the middle ages, the wood frame house was artificial materials, sensitivity and technology
common in France, Germany and England in have been combined to make a brilliant twentieth-
both town and country. After the frame had been century home.
put up the walls were clad with brush wood
the 'wattle' -and then covered with mud and This sixteenth century house at Clifford
plaster- the 'daub". When brick became fashion- Chambers, Warwickshire, is a fine example of the

half-timbered building style. The central block

able, it was used in the same way within the frame.
and the two gables remind us that in the middle
but it was basically ill-adapted to this kind of ages the great hall with kitchens at one end and
fill-in work. Even so, the result could be extremely private rooms at the other was the basic big
dcc()rali\e and geometric effects could be achieved house design.

32
Below The square of Schwabisch Hall in West
Germany is dominated by a magnificent timber
frame buildmg. The central house has a wall
painting of the kind which often decorated
house fronts in the later middle ages. Bottom The
magnificent stone pile of Haddon Hall,
Derbyshire, England, has become almost part
of

its landscape.

33
Towns, Cities and Space

its thickets, groves, and fields.

As towns grew inand the countryside
size
became a more remote, so the townsman
little

took greater delight in his garden. Diaries and

day-books lovingly record the purchase of plants
for it, and dwell on the pleasure which the hard-
headed merchant derived from a walk in his
walled .sanctuary where the cares of the world
could for a time be forgotten. When Sir Thomas
More wrote his Utopia in the early sixteenth
century, he dreamed of a perfect city where every
dwelling had a large garden 'inclosed round wyth

mm^ the backc part of the streetes.' London was still

small, but as the warren of streets grew the
countryside retreated and the future pattern of
Human dwellings have very rarely stood alone in urban life, cut off from the natural environment,
the natural en\ironment. Men and women are was beginning to loom.
sociable beings and they have always tended to .\ new style of house would fje needed. Medieval
live in groups. At first they seem to have been town houses opened straight onto the street and
largely nomadic, but with the evolution of the often stood in rows one hou.se adjoining the other,
arts of cultivation about 0,000 bc, societies began
1 but they were often wide farmhouses spreading
to live in more permanent settlements. The pattern easily along the street with room to spare. The
of society inevitably began to change but the true town house, which began to emerge in the
settlements also presented .some practical problems fifteenth century, was built high rather than broad.
of which the chief was probably that of sanitation.
When nomad leaves an encampment he also
the
leaves behind his sewage and litter and the
attendant dangers to health that beset the village
or town dweller. As towns grew, these problems
naturally mounted. The town house has to fulfil
different functions from the country hou.se and
in this and the next chapter we shall look at .some
of these different functions. The first thing to
notice about the town house is that its environ-
ment, the town, has been different at different
times and in different places.
In modern terms the medieval town would
seem little more than a glorified village. It was an
environment in which urban and rural inter-
penetrated and it continued like this for hundreds
of years. Even in the main cities, a man could Houses like the magnificent eighteenth-century
easily walk out into the surrounding fields. Names group on the Heerengracht at .Amsterdam, have
like Smithfield, half a mile from St Pauls the main rooms on the first floor with steps
Cathedral, hold a memory of the lime when leading up to the front door. The ground ffoor is
Londoners played football and other sports in the given o\er to kitchen, store rooms and some
countryside only minutes from their homes. ()\er servant quarters. In France and Germany, the
to the west stands the Church of St Martin-in-lhe- main entrance was usually at ground level with a
Ficlds, overlooking modern Trafalgar Square, passage leading through to the staircase up to the
while nearby Soho i.ikcs its name from the cries main first ffoor. The kitchens and store rooms
of the hunting field which once resounded over were on either side of the passage.

34
THe Heerengracht in Amsterdam is one of
Europe's finest streets and riumber 475, sfic^wf^ .;^

fiere, is one of that\tre,et's f4Viest triansions- vi-.^iT

Opposite top An eighteenth ^&mufy view
Amsterdam and^p^|/le bmofn} the int
of a town hQuse^ixwe.$«l^np^Haarle
Netherlands'..^^

35
 In less ambitious premises, a hall, leading to the
kitchen and stable yard at the back, ran down the
side of the house with doors leading off into the
living room and back parlour. This form of the
town house found its classic expression in the
terraces, streets and squares of Georgian London
and Bath. Brilliant architects devised a style of
fa(^ade which made it possible to group a series of
sizeable mansions into a handsome and well-
proportioned unit. These stately residences were
often owned by country families who lived in the
capital only during the months of the social
season. Reception rooms were on the ground floor
and the main li\ing rooms on the first floor.
Servants' quarters were tucked away at the top of
the house and the kitchens and services in the
basement. Europe's elegant city facades often
concealed sad and unhealthy living conditions for
the domestics, yet many girls were delighted to
move to the city lights 'in service' and
both pay and conditions were usually
better than those on the farm.
Dolls' houses, when they leave the nursery and
go into the museum, are a useful record of
earlier living styles. This is a magnificeat
seventeenth century example from Germany'
(opposite). Either side of the street entrance are
the storage, stables and kitchens and above
them, on a mezzanine floor, the servants
quarters. Right Even on this reduced scale the
splendour and elegance of Cumberland
Terrace, Regent's Park, is obvious. Bottom left In
the eighteenth century the terrace became the
classic style for the town house. The Royal
Crescent, Bath, shows it at its glorious best; the
cramped and proportioned nineteenth century
ill

'housing' {bottom right) at its worst.

n#;:
 A new kind of townscape had been born. With
narrow gardens and uniform frontages, it was
uncomprisingly urban. Service roads at the back
provided access to the mews where carriages and
horses were housed. It is an ironic reflection on
our age of progress that the coach-houses now
sheher automobiles, for whose sake we are
destroying so much of the elegance of the past,
while the cramped quarters above them, once
occupied by stable hands, are now smart apart-
ments for the wealthy. The actual houses them-
selves are, of course, too expensive for any single
family to live in. Some are divided into flats, most
into offices or consulting rooms, others are hotels.
Inevitably their magnificently proportioned in-
teriors have been drained of the original atmo-
sphere and sense of style.

Above The cool refinement of the Etruscan

Room in Home House, seems to sum up our
The magnificent staircase of Home House, notions of the aristocratic life-style of eighteenth
Portland Square, London, is one
of the finest century Europe Top Hogarth, however, painted
glories of Europe's town architecture of the what he saw as the extravagance and
eighteenth century. debauchery behind London's elegant fa9ades.

38
Left Another part of the Regent's
Park Estate designed by John
Nash in the early nineteenth
century. The small window panes
were a vital element in the
proportions of this type of
facade; comparison with Bath's
Royal Crescent (page 36) as it is
today shows how the modern
passion for large windows can
destroy the architect's intentions.
Below Apsley House, Hyde Park,
London, was a fittingly grand
mansion for national hero. It was
the home of the Duke of
Wellington during the first half of
the nineteenth century.

39
 Great cities have of course generally been
congested places. They grew up around trading
posts, or a castle, a palace or perhaps
a famous
temple. The houses clustered round the focus
of
activity, whatever it may have been. There was
little room for the spacious villa in a Roman city.
In place of low buildings round courtyards,
all
houses, except the palaces of the great, ro.se above
a ground floor given over to shops, offices
or
public baths. Residential apartments were in the
storeys above. A similar type of residential
pattern
developed in the towns of medieval Italy. There
noblemen were involved in commerce from early
times and had their main residences in the crowded
towns. In contrast, the aristocracy north of the
Alps lived apart, in their castles. .An Italian
nobleman who wanted that kind of security had
to build high-rise in the
urban manner and such
lofty towers
can still be seen at San Gimignano.
More often however, the well-born merchant
family simply lived on the first and second floors
of a large house, renting out the ground floor to
shopkeepers and craftsmen and the upper floors
to poor students or professional men, like
lawyers
and doctors, who were very much social inferiors
of the landlord.
Of course there was real opulence on the 'grand
floor' or the piano nobile, where the
aristocratic
owner lived and, to keep the floors separate as
far as po,ssible, these great houses often had
an
outside staircase. This was as much for .security as
for reasons of snobbery. European cities of
today
are much safer places than they were even a
century ago. Ground floor windows often had
iron grilles, cemented permanently into
either
the stonework or secured by locks and chains over
shop windows at night, when murderers and
thieves prowled the ill-lit streets. On one notable
occasion, King George II of England was even
robiicd in the garden of his palace at Kensington.
'Not far from Charing Cross dwelleth an honest
young man, who being not long married and
having more rooms in his house than himsell
occupieth ... to make a reasonable commodit\
[profit] and to case the house rent, uhic h as the
world goeth is none of the cheapest, leltelh forih
a chamijcr or two .'
So begins a short story b\
. .

Shakespeare's contemporary Robert Greene. It

was the same the world over. Congestion mav
have made city life hazard(jus, but land \alues
forced many people to lei rooms, e\en when, as
our 'honest young man' found out, to open Nour
house to the public also might mean opening it
lo lhie\'es.

A street in San Gimignano, Italy dominated by

40 the towers of medieval aristocratic town houses.
 Facii in the status conscious society (A Louis
XIV's France, prosperous gentlemen rented out
Ilie ground floor oi their town residences to traders

and their famihes to help pay the building costs.

in addition, of course, they might own other
properties simply as investments. The architect
J. Blondcl advised that to distinguish it from
F.
these mere apartment houses the family residence
should have a fine portico entrance. In fact,
finding accommodation in seventeenth-century
Paris could be arduous. A young travelling crafts-
man from Bavaria tells how he saw furnished
ROOMS TO LET in large red letters on several doors.
At the first he had a narrow escape from an
insolent' young landlady with a houseful of 'bold-
mannered girls'; in another house he overturned
a trash can in the dark hallway leading to the
room, which turned out to house a crowd of
chimney sweeps each sleeping on a pile of filthy
straw. He did eventually find a top floor room in
an agreeable hc;use.
He was lucky; many a stranger in town found
himself paying extortionate rent for poor rooms.
Slum landlords are as old as towns. There was
little control of rents in ancient Rome. But the

city fathers did impose a height limit of seventy

feet on apartment blocks in an attempt to stop
unscrupulous owners who often built too high for
safety or even added makeshift penthouses to the
roofs of already overpopulated blocks. Jerry-built
housing was as common in the city that produced
the Colosseum as it is today, and as well as the
lofty blocks, the balconies of ordinary houses,
where families could be seen of an evening taking
the air or eating supper above the street, were an
additional hazard.
For the flat dweller, deprived of a garden, the
balcony has always been a kind of outpost in the
natural environment. It is at least as old as ancient
Assyria and even then was causing problems for
the authorities, though not necessarily of public
safety. On the completion of a superb ceremonial
way through the midst of his capital of Nineveh,
King Sanherib (about 700 bc) was determined
that it should not be encroached on by balconies
frotTi private houses. In an edict on the matter, he

invoked sanctions of a kind not generally available

to our modern planning authorities: quite simply,
anyone building such a balcony could expect to
be impaled on the finials of his own roof!
This was perhaps a little extreme, but regula-
tions have always been necessary in cities. Land
was so valuable in medieval cities that the upper
storeys of the houses were built out cner the street
until thev almost touched. Bvc-laws in seven-

41
teenth-century Holland tried to control the degree street with the rooms grouped round an inner
of overhang and to establish a minimum height courtyard. The atrium or courtyard was the centre
from the street. Contravention could result in the of the classic Roman suburban villa. In Kyoto,
destruction of the house. Most houses were built the earlier capital of Japan, the tourist can still

of wood and the danger of fire always loomed. The see whole districts of old houses planned each
great fire of London in 1666 which destroyed around its courtyard garden. It is therefore very'
most of that great city was only the best remem- interesting to discover that this historic pattern
bered of many such conflagrations. The wooden of the inward-looking house has been revived by
houses were ready fuel but still worse was the fact some modern European architects. This is

that it took only a few sparks to set their thatched reflected in a block of eight courtyard houses,
roofs alight. Without efficient pumps or fire sited on a bu,sy thoroughfare in the heart of
engines the best way of fighting a fire was to starve Chicago and designed by Y. C. Wong. A pupil of
it of fuel by pulling down the houses in its path. Mies van der Rohe, Wong had studied the master's
One can easily imagine the bitterness of people designs for courtyard houses drawn up in the
watching their homes being destroyed to save 1930s and it is because he decided to implement
those of their neighbours. The houses of the new this age-old concept that his eight houses are in
London were built with tiled roofs and some other some ways more interesting than even the work of
towns, warned by London's example, made the Rietveld and Le Corbusier. Surrounded by
use of mandatory.
tiles towering apartment houses and city streets, the
Since the middle ages, the traditional design of houses present a bland exterior with a simple
the European house has been outward-looking. brick wall, pierced at rare intervals with doors.
Shop fronts giving directly on to the street, or the But within, each of the eight families enjoy a quiet
curtained windows of the main reception room retreat from the city. The rooms of the house look
also directly on the street have given the house in into one another through plate glass across the
the town a public involvement. Even when the courtyard so that the community of each family
main apartments are lifted to first floor level they need not be broken up. But each separate family
still look outward. But in many other cultures, is still rigorously divided from the others. In this

the town house has presented blank walls to the way an ancient idea has been adapted to modern
man s urge for privacy.
Gerrit Rietveld's Schroder House at Utrecht
or Le Corbusier's renowned Savoye near
\'illa

Paris arc landmarks in twentieth-century domestic

architecture. They are also, as would be expected
from such masters, superbly planned for actual
living. The Rietveld house is particularly in-
teresting since in its provision for rooms to serve
a variety of functions it anticipates a common
modern interior design. After centuries
feature of
of accommodating each aspect of fixing with e\cr
more specialist rooms, western man is being
forced by the pressure of space in his cities to
return to more 'open plan" living. Of course it is

still from the all-purpose hall with which

a far cry
the history of the European house properly began,
but an architect's plan designating a single room
for 'kitchcn-dining-living' in the house of 'a
gentleman", would have been uniliiiikahlc in tlie
nineteenth centurw

LeftNorman Shaw's Old Swan House in Chelsea,

London, shows that the eclectic mixture of styles
thatbecame so popular in the nineteenth
century could produce truly beautiful houses.

42
 .

Top Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, at Poissy,

France, is a landmark in the history of modern landscape. Above The Villa was built in 1 931
house architecture. He said that the living area Part of its revolutionary design was the
and its hanging garden should give views right to fact that it had no facade, it was meant to open
the horizon. The house was at home in its out on its environment in all four directions.

43
 At the Big House

The household which PHny described for us was

a sizeable establishment. To him and his family it
was a modest country place, with an estate big
enough to provide a steady income but not
cripplingly expensive to run. Buying a new estate
was a matter for thought. Pliny, faced with the
opportunity of acquiring the lands adjoining his
own villa weighed things up carefully. One ob\ious
advantage was that the two properties could be
run by the same steward and share other staff and
facilities, such as equipment. Secondly, the land
was fertile and the additional vineyards and
woods would increa.se the family income. But the
times were bad, tenants were leaving the land for
work elsewhere and the previous owner had
managed the estate badly .so that it would take
some time to recover its natural fertility. More-
over, half the enjoyment of having a number of
estates was to have them in different localities.
A change of air was always pleasant and often
good for the health, while just travelling from one
of one's possessions to another was a pleasure.
There were villas like Pliny's, intended pri-
marily for pleasure, throughout the empire, but
there were many others, immensely bigger.
intensively cultivated as capitalist agricultural
investments. In fact, as the cities of the Roman
empire began to decay, these estates became the
centres of economic life. The French word for
town, ville, isderi\ed from the Latin word villa.
In this chapter we take a look at the way in
which the great country houses of Europe, from
the time of the Romans onwards, were a major
factor in the economy and social lile ol the locaiil\
.

44
 These vast run by slave
estates were, of course, But there were slaves who might enjoy some
labour. The was an indispensable part of
slave prestige. Private tutors were often slaves in the
ancient civilisation. If he worked in the-inines, in technical sense, but they held complete control
construction work or in the notorious gdlleys, he over the well-born children under their charge
could expect a life of merciless exploitation. He and their learning was often respected by their

had no personal status at law. Even as late as in owners. course there were humane slave-
Of
fifteenth-century Florence a bill of sale gave the owners like Pliny. He held the unconventional
purchaser total rights over a slave and 'none view that the household 'provides the slave with
might gain say him.' The domestic slaves were a country and a sort of citizenship'. He even
not always much better off. Pliny, describing a allowed his slaves, who legally had no property,
new estate he thinks of buying, observes that the to make wills and bequeath their few personal
tenants will ha\e to be given a fresh chance with effects other members of the hou.sehold. He
to

new ecjuipnient and a better type of slave for, he also saw that they had good medical care. As a
says, T do not employ chained slaves.' But many result he suffered from the 'servant problem',
landowners did. Such workers were kept in apparently the bane of householders since the
shackles when they were not actually workitig and beginning of history. Where other masters simply
were worked until they died. Buying new slaves flogged, killed or sold off their slaves, Pliny wryly
was usually cheaper than the 'running costs' of accepted the fact that people can be uncoopera-
keeping old ones alive. Employment in the house tive. In one letter, we find him urging a friend to

itself was no guarantee of humane treatment. accept an invitation to stay at the villa, not only
because he would enjoy himself but also because
his arrival would wake up the staff: 'slaves lose
all fear of a considerate masteronce they are used
to him, but they bestir themselves at the sight of
new faces.'
Centuries later, Petrarch described the slaves
of his native Florence as the 'domestic enemy'.
They too had no legal standing, but in the con-
gested conditions of a medieval town house it was
maintain a distance between master or
difficult to
mistress and slave. In fact, many mistresses were
frankly frightened of the Central Asian slave girls
brought back by the merchants from the markets
of the Black Sea ports. They were tough and
independent and soon learnt how to exploit a
mistress with too much conscience to be ruthless
and too little personal authority to command
respect. Worse still, the girls were often unreason-
ably pretty, many a dusky beauty in the crowd
scenes of the Italian painters of the period testify
to that.The city law imposed a fine of a thousand
fiorins on a man who seduced another's slave,
but there was no law against what he might do
with his own.

Top left Pliny's handsome villa was the centre of

a large estate which provided the owner with a
solid income. For his guests the delights of the
seaside house counted more than the profitable
acreage. Left The covered hall or atrium was
the central part of a large Roman villa. Here we
see one in a house of ancient Herculaneum,
"sg^-^t^^gs^- southern Italy.

45
Below A banquet in a medieval castle. King
John of Portugal entertains the English duke,
John of Gaunt. Bottom Food being taken from
the kitchen to a great man's table.

Right up to llic iiinclt'cnlh cenlury, tlie great

houses of Europe were home for an army of
servants and household officers. They were also a
source of employment for scores of local people.
In the middle ages, even a minor baron kept as
many as thirty full-time men on the staff a large
household needed many more. The organisation
was headed by the lord and his council of knights
and the day-to-day management of affairs was
in the hands of a household steward and an estate
steward. 'Day-to-day' it certainly was, for the
household steward was expected 'to account e\ery
night . with the buyer, marshal, cook and other
. .

officials. It is his duly also to lake a tally of th(

meat and fish which shall be cut up into portions
in his presence and counted as they are delivered
to the cook. It is his business to know preciscK
how many farthing loaves can be made from a
quarter of wheal.' He was assisted by the 'ward-
rober' or accountant. Under them came: tlu
(haplain who also headed the clerical staff;
|)antrymen in charge of the bread; butlers for
(he wine; a baker; a brewer; a marshal who was
in charge of the horses; a blacksmith and others.

46
 The household steward was usually a man of
humble birlh for whom the job itself was the
fulfilment of an ambition. He might have begun
with a short period of formal training.
his career
Since the thirteenth century, there had been
teachers living at Oxford who offered courses in
estate and household management. The senior of
the two stewards, the estate steward, was usually
a young nobleman who tended to look on his job
as the beginning of a career aimed eventually at
royal service. His job was to ensure the profitable
running of far-flung lands. It could involve a good
deal of travel round the country and carried heavy
responsibilities. Since tenants usually paid their
rents in kind rather than money, a great lord
reckoned to move from one manor at regular
intervals, as much to consume his rents as to
supervise his property. Such moves involved
additional work for the household, which might
even include a full-time staff of carters, though
more usually these were hired as required. Some-
Top An estate steward supervising workmen in a
times the baggage might include glass windows
great garden. Above A red-nosed household
which were still a luxury and were taken by their steward enthusiastically tests' the wine while his
proud owners from one house to another. masters carouse upstairs.

47
 Since great houses are the homes of rich men
it is not surprising that they have always been

filled with luxuries and signs of wealth. In ancient

Rome, Cicero declaimed against the newly-
imported carpets from Persia which, he claimed,
were making people soft and undermining the
austere virtues of the Republic. The high living
that marked the Rome of the Caesars which
followed is perhaps best symbolised by the
notorious banquets that sometimes lasted for davs
on end. Feasting was a big feature of medieval
life too. Not only did it show a man's wealth, it

also showed his generosity, thought to be an

essential quality of the great man. When the
fifteenth-century Earl of Warwick sat down to
dine, his and the beggars round the
servants
palace were permitted as much of the roast meat
as they could carry away on their daggers or
knives. The art of feasting did not die out in the
Renaissance but new ways of disposing of excess
wealth were found. Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria
listed 1407 items in his collections of works of
art and curiosities and the collecting craze has
been growing ever since. Before the development
of the modern money market, jewellery and works
of art were a favourite means of inxestment and
for the aristocrat his mansion was not only his
home but also his treasure house.
The rich man in his castle. • 1

The poor man at the gate,

God made them high and lowly
And ordered their estate.
This famous verse from the \'ictorian children's
[JP..;;:
hymn, 'All things Bright and Beautiful', summed
up an attitude that had governed human society
for thousands of years. Contrasts of wealth and
i^iif^i";
poverty were accepted, notably by the rich, as
part of the eternal scheme and even the poor, for
whom life could be hard and cruel, found some
comfort in the thought they, too, had a place in
the hierarchy of society presided over by God. At
its best, the attitude of rich to poor was one of

paternalistic concern; that of the poor tenantry 1 ^^H

to 'the folk up at the big house', was one of
deference. When and his family treated
the lord
their people with humanity and understanding WKR^rlr^i ^MEhk^
this deference might be founded on respect, even
Top leftCleaning the copper was one of the
affection. But the cottager always knew that he worst chores in a great kitchen yet the
could easily be evicted from his house, so that the charming Scullery Maid painted by J. B. Chardin
most basic considerations forced him to accept seems resigned to her lot Above The Kitchen of
his lot.
Queen Victoria's Swiss Chalet, built for the royal
children. Top right A house party playing
Iacm among llic un{l('rj)ri\ ilcged, social status
croquet at Alton, Hampshire, 1865. Right The
was something to l)e prized. Ihe gentry treated kitchen staff of Keele Hall pose for their
iheir servants with a patronizing interest. The photographs in the 1890s.

48
49
 servants, for their part, felt distinctly
superior to
the craftsmen and labourers 'at the
gate.' Their
pay was generally better and their position much
more secure. In years of bad harvest the ordinary
people had to tighten their belts, a craftsman
might even have to sell his tools his only capital
investment -to live, but the rich were the last
to
suffer and their servants shared to a lesser extent
in their privilege.
The structure of class consciousness held good
even in the servants' hall. The butler of a
nine-
teenth-century estabHshment had his own suite
of rooms and even his own
servants; the lower
orders had to show him A scullery maid
respect.
who presumed to speak to the head housekeeper
without permission could expect to be punished
or even sacked.
The modern \isitor to the great houses of the
past can easily forget the considerable
economic
mvestmenl they represented. It has been estimated
that even in the middle ages, when
money was
less important in the economy than it is today, a
third of the cost of building went in wages and
surviving accounts show clearly that the Overall
cost of a great mansion might run into millions
of
our present currency. In those days,, the most
important buildings were castles and cathedrals } ^tv..
-

•«*m«'

50
The owner of Ballingdon Hall, Sudbury, Suffolk,
decided to move house' when new buildings
threatened to spoil his view. In the good old
days the lord of a great house destroyed whole
villages if they spoiled the vista.

and theirdesigners were important men who on the other hand, was recruited locally and so,
could from the humblest beginnings to high
rise from the moment it began to rise, the 'big house'
positions in church or state. In the towns, weahhy brought money to its neighbourhood. As more
merchants were building handsome halls for their and more families could afford to build great
guilds and fine mansions for their private use. houses, the skills of the architect and stone-mason
The building techniques used remained much came into ever greater demand and increasingly
the same up to quite recent times. Technical masons found that they could get enough work in
resources were limited, the pulley and winch were one area to make it worth settling down and
about the only types of machinery used, and developing a local practice.
horses and men provided the motive power.
Rickety wooden scaffolding was sometimes used,
or the working platforms were supported on poles Opposite Building a castle. Opposite right A
left
let into holes in the completed sections of the medieval impression of the building of the
artist's

wall. Much of the skilled work was done by Tower of Babel. Both pictures give a
travelling groups of stone-masons who developed
comprehensive survey of medieval building
methods. Apart from the winch they were
a close brotherhood, like the guilds of merchants
probably not very different from those used in
in the cities, on which the modern society of the ancient world when the tower of Babel was
Freemasonrv was modelled. The unskilled labour. in fact built.

51
 The kiiid of profitable turmoil that the building away at Versailles to provide the site for yet
of a great house could bring to its district is to be another mansion for the apparently insatiable
found in the case of Blenheim palace, at Woodstock Louis XIV. But there were similar cases all over
in Oxfordshire, England. More than twenty Europe.
quarries were used to supply the stone to the .\t Claydon in Buckinghamshire, England, the
masons at work on the site. Cut from the living graveyard of the village church was moved to
rock and then rough-shaped at the quarry, it had make room for the new grounds planned by the
to be hauled several miles along simple earth second earl Verney. The villagers protested
tracks, which turned into quagmires after heavy against the desecration and forecast disaster for
rain. Sir John V'anbrugh, the architect, had the family. In fact, the earl bankrupted himself
specified an especially rare type of stone for the in the extensions to the house and had to flee
main steps and for years the palace was without a England toavoid his creditors. According to one
fitting entrance because of the cost and technical tradition, he was found years later wandering
problems involved. At another stage, the building around the deserted rooms, a broken old man, and
operations were held up because the wagoners was given shelter by one of his former servants.
demanded extra pay. Even in the early eighteenth Many an old villager must have nodded in grim
century, money could speak still more powerfully satisfactionat the fulfilment of the prophecy.
than nobility. \Vhen Sarah, Duchess of Marl- The Dukes of Devonshire seem to have been
borough, (the client] refused to concede the pay spared such retribution, yet twice they adjusted
rise, the carters simply quitted the job. Huge the landscape round their place at Chatsworth in
blocks of moss-covered stones can still be seen in Derbyshire. During the eighteenth century, the
the woods around the palace where they were farm buildings visible from the house were
left by a disgruntled labour force. But the job had destroyed to improve its vistas and in the nine-
already paid them well enough. teenth century the village of Edensor was
.\ big house might bring prosperity to an area, demolished and rebuilt out of sight of the mansion.
but it could also bring disaster. Its spreading
parklands and elaborate, decorative gardens,
demanded hundreds of acres and on many
occasions the nobleman's pleasure grounds were
provided at the expense of other people's homes Below Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, England,
home of the dukes of Devonshire. Right The
and land. Probably the best-known example of painted hall at Chatsworth. It is not surprising
the destruction of a community in the interests that the doings at such palatial mansions
of a luxury palace is the village of Trianon, swept were the continual talk of their neighbourhoods.

52
 the essential equipment of a house of any size.
The finestwere made by craftsmen who brought
a life of artistic sensitivity and skill to their work.
The names of the most famous are now revived in
auctioneers' catalogues to the delight of collectors
and the inflation of prices, but thousands of
magnificent pieces come from long-forgotten
masters. Local craftsmen in town and country
provided a fund of expertise for the rich con-
noisseur even in the provinces.
The work was often in precious materials and
the labour and skill of men were highly prized, so
that although the modern flight from money has
given the furniture and fittings of the past an
inflated value, these things were nexer cheap.
When a house was demolished, its fine fireplaces
Once completed, such mighty palaces naturally and panelling might be carefully removed either
became the focus of local society. Contemporary for sale or tobe built into the new mansion, while
pictures show and gardens swarm-
the forecourts the furniture and other equipment was carefully
ing with elegantly dressed figures, some doubtless preserved and handed down from one generation
house guests but many of them curious tourists. to another. Especially prized pieces were be-
A great house was always thronging with peti- queathed by men in their wills and Shakespeare's
tioners seeking favours from the great man or bequest: 'to my wife, my second best bed',
with retinues of visiting gentlemen, but members although apparently something of a wry joke,
of the lesser gentry in the surrounding district was not unusual in any other respect.
took every opportunity to visit the place and be We pride ourselves, perhaps, on the rapidity
seen there. Onecan sense from the novels of Jane of change in our society and this change is often
Austen, the fascination that surrounded every- reflected by the speed with which we change our
thing to do with the big hou.se and the central homes and the objects in them, but in earlier
place it occupied in its locality. An invitation to days things were built to last. To be surrounded
visit was .something to be treasured and proudly with objects that had served one's family for
displayed to one's friends and one's rivals. A ball generations as many people did, gave life a quality
for the 'coming out' of the daughter or the of security and continuity that today seems to have
coming-of-age of the son involved weeks of been lost for good.
preparation for all those fortunate enough to be
invited. Tailors and dress makers enjoyed a
sudden upsurge in business while the preparations
for the banquet might put good trade the way ol
the local provision merchants.
The owners of these big houses had no doubts
about their own importance. The walls of their
galleries were lined with family portraits coats
of arms were carved over doors and armorial
beasts in stone were proudly mounted on the Left The home of the Bronte family, at Haworth,
roofs -the house was approached through mas- Yorkshire, was typical of many an English
sive wrought-iron gates, guarded by lodges which vicarage. Right the cottage at Blaise,
Gloucestershire, was to the romantic ideal of the
were often sizeable houses in their own right, and
nineteenth century, a perfect model of solid
from them up impressive tree-lined avenues. The homeliness and rustic simplicity. Top right This
art galleries of the world display paintings from nineteenth-century painting is called Too Early.
the last five centuries of Kuropean houses and the A smart musical evening has been planned, but
scenes of luxury which were commonplace in some of the guests have broken social
convention by arriving too early. The lady of the
their heyday, while the modern antique business
house is giving the musicians their last
builds its multi-million turnover on the super!) instructions and two of the maids peep round the
hand-made furniture, porcelain ware and orna- door to the servants' quarters before getting
ments, gold and silver plate and cutlery that w( re ready to serve the guests.

54
55
 Homes fit for Gentlemen

In the first four chapters of" this book

the aim has
been to discover something of the nature
of the
house and the place that houses, both large
and
small, have played in human history.
At this point
the perspecti\c changes slightly to
give the oppor-
tunity for more detailed descriptions of selected
great houses in the Old World. We begin with
some of the 'stately homes' of England.
During the middle ages, the English gentry
tended to build their homes for strength
and
security. As late a.s 1540, Sir Richard
Edgecumbe
provided his new hou.se at Cotchele, in
remote
Cornwall, with a sturdy gatehouse. By this
time,
the gatehouse was more generally
an opportunity
for display and ostentation, but
Sir Richard had
already been driven from his Cotchele estate
once
by the armed retainers of a neighbour
and he did
not intend that it should happen again.
The great
hall, with roof open to the
rafters, is another
reminder of the medieval past which gave Coir-
hele a somewhat old-fashioned air.

'r>6
 The main facade of Longleat, Wiltshire, the Duke of Bedford. Bottom The sturdy
Left
of the Marquis of Bath. Below The West gatehouse of Cotehele House, Cornwall, clearly
home
Front of Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire, home of built to repel attackers.

The Tudor age was a great period of house-

building. Henry VII had battled his way to the
throne in 1485. His court was full of" new families
looking, like the new king, to establish their
fortune. Then, in the ISSOs, Henry VIII dis-

solved the monasteries. The vast wealth plundered

from the Church, when it did not go to feed the
extravagant policies of the king, poured into the
pockets of new aristocracy. As its members
competed in the building of magnificent houses,
lal)ourers found work in plenty and an army of
skilled stone-masons was released. As a result
the new houses often showed similarities of style
to church buildings. At Leez Priory and Woburn
Abbey, for example, the great house closely
followed the ground plan of the monastery which
it replaced, while at Longleat, the geometric
tracery in tiie windows and the vast areas of
glass are natural continuations in the late
medieval Perpendicular style in PLnglish church
building.

57
 Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire went to Sir William
Sharington. Like his friend Sir John Thynne of
Longleat, he was one of the pioneers of the
Italianate Renaissance style in England. He
retained the medieval cloister, but remodelled it
to achieve a surprisingly classical air, which is
not obscured by later additions like the battle-
mented oriel windows which reflect the eight-
eenth-century taste for Gothic decoration. The
house went by marriage to the Talbot family and
it was here, in the nineteenth century, that
\Villiam Henry Fox Talbot made his revolutionary
invention of the positive-negative process which
made popular photography possible.
Knole House in Kent passed into aristocratic
ownership under Henry X'HI. Externally it still
looks much as it did when it was built in the 1450s
for Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury,
but in the early seventeenth century the interior
was transformed for Thomas Sackville, first earl
of Dorset, who had received the house from Qjueen
Elizabeth. The rooms and galleries are still com-
paratively small, betraying their medieval origins,
but the work for Sackville, in the reign of James I.

together with an art collection amassed over

generations, make Knole one of the most stagger-
ing show pieces among the stately homes of
England.

Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire, was remodelled by its

Tudor owner to give a fine blend of Gothic
traditionalism and fashionable Renaissance
Italian styles. Lacock was the home of Henry
Fox Talbot who invented the photographic
negative. This picture shows two of his friends
taking tea outside the cloisters there.

58
Below The superb but rambling medieval pile of known as the 'King's Bedroom' at Knole with
Knole House, Kent, like many a medieval great seventeenth century tapestries and furnishings.
house, looks almost like a township. The room

59
 ,

The Russels were another family to rise to the Over on the other side of England from \Voburn,
nobiHty in the early Tudor age. The great house the Marquess of Bath, with the sales slogan of
at ^Voburn stands on the site of yet another abbey iions at Longleat', contests the honours for
given by the crown to a faithful supporter. In the England's top game park. Yet Longleat, too, was
early seventeenth century, the old Abbey buildings once the site of a religious house, though St Rade-
began to be replaced. The grotto room, no doubt gund's Priory has -long since disappeared. The
inspired by Italian models, dates from this period. great house was designed by Sir John Thynne,
In the middle of the eighteenth century, the family, whose friends numbered Sir William Sharington
now dukes of Bedford, launched a rebuilding of Lacock and Lord Burghley, Queen Elizabeth's
programme under the architects John Sanderson, great minister. It is likely that the architect
Henry f litcrofl and Henry Holland. This period Robert Smythson advised on the design and the
also left a fashionable fancy in the shape of the
delightful Chinese dairy.
The magnificence of the Georgian exterior,
set in the stately park-land designed by Humphrey
Repton, is overmatched by the countless art
treasures but a modern ducal public
within,
relations exercise has firmly established Woburn
in the public mind as the home of one of England's
largest wild game parks.
Europe's aristocratic families were, bv and
large, founded by engaging gentry with
not
chi\alr()us ideals, but by men with a shrewd eve
for the main chance and a strong interest in money.
When stupidity or extravagance made the going
harder funds could easily be consolidated by
marrying the daughter of a successful merchant;
in whose veins the blood of competitive self-
interest still flowed strong. Today, when taxation work, begun in 1540, took some forty ycai-s to
and death duties are seen as the enemies, the complete. The first of the great Elizabethan
English aristocracy has shown itself worthy of its houses, Longleat is also the most classical and it
ancestors and has found ways of maing.its country has features that were to be taken up and devel-
estates at least pay for themselves. oped at Hardwick Hall, Burghley House and
For a family like the Russells, who can name elsewhere. Its great height, the vast expanse of
a prime minister and the world-famous philoso- glassand the three-storeyed bays, thirteen in all,
pher Bcrtrand Russell among its illustrious which jut out from the three fac^ades, are all
members, the intellectual problems of business examples.
management need present few problems. More- 'God send us both long to enjoN her, for whom
over, at a time when tourism is a growth industry, we have both exceeded our purses in these.' So
the owner of an historic pleasure palace has much wrote William Cecil, Lord Burghley, to Sir
in his favour. In its age-long history the house has Christopher Halton, another of Qiieen Elizabeth's
been many things. A shelter, a setting for displa\ ministers. He was speaking of the Q_ueen and the
a focus for family life and ancestral
piety, or even houses that they, like many other courtiers, had
a 'machine for living Today, the stately home
in'. built in her honour. Ennobled by a grateful
at least, has revealed another function the house sovereign in 1570. he had been in slate service
can be a profitable business enterprise. since the reign of Edward VI and was appointed
Competition at the top of the stately home chief minister to Elizabeth at her accession. He
'league' is brisk. One great Cieorgian house in the died in 1598 at the age of seventy-eight, still at
centre of England can be hired for business the head of affairs. One of the greatest figures in
conferences, a little further north an enterprising English history, his steady and cautious wisdom
owner even plays the organ to entertain his guests, was the ideal foil to the secretive, changeable,
while at least one palace runs a profitable garden brilliant and autocratic queen. Together they
centre in its grounds. Hut the glamour of a wild kept i^ngland safe and prosperous dining the
s^amc park cainiol easily be outdone and now one hall century when Europe was rcnl i)y religious
(an hire professional game park consultants. and dvnastic wars.

60
Opposite A painting of Longleat House in the days of its glory. Above The great saloon at Longleat.
The great
Burghley House,
court,

Northamptonshire
i The most completely authentic of all the
Elizabethan mansions, perfectly preserved in
structure, gardens and interiors, is Hardwick
Hall in Derbyshire. Tn this glorious house,' the
art historian Olive Cook has written, 'all the high
aesthetic and intellectual excitement, the fresh-
ness, the intensity of expression, the swagger and
vitality of the age find expression.' Its fine state of
preservation is due Cavendish
to the fact that the
family, who inherited it, preferred their mansion
at Chatsworth, so that Hardwick was spared the
improvements of later generations. Even the
gardens are virtually unaltered so that the Hall is
approached along an undulating tree-lined road
which holds back the glittering facade of glass and
reflected sunlight till the last dazzling moment.
The house faces south and sun
so catches all the
there is. 'Hardwick Hall more than wall,"
glass
ran the old saying. The building is the culmination
of the Perpendicular tradition in domestic archi-
tecture. As at Longleat, Robert Smythson worked
Burghley was also of the gentleman-
one on the design, but the owner controlled it. Her
architects so common time -men who were
at that coroneted initials, E.S., for Elizabeth (Countess
^xious that their grand new homes should of Shrewsbury, look down from the dancing scrolls
present to the world the appearance they thought on the parapet. The job must surely ha\c been
accorded best with their own greatness. His the most harassing that Smythson ever accepted,
interest in architecture is indicated in his letters, for Bess of Hardwick, the richest woman in the
and French and Flemish influences can both be land affer the queen, was perhaps the most
seen at Burghley House. \\ ork began on the site, startling lady ever to have crossed the stage of
a manor house he had inherited from his father English history.
as early as 1553, but the place was not completed The daughter of a humble squire at Hardwick,
until For twelve years, in fact, he was
1587. Derbyshire, she died with a personal income
absorbed with the building of his other great estimated in modern terms at six million pounds
house at Theobalds in Hertfordshire. per annum before tax three centuries before tax,
The east range of Burghley containing the to be precise. It came from four husbands, each
Great Hall with its superb double hammer beam of whom were persuaded, bewitched said some,
roof, was the first to be completed. At the end of to leave Bess their entire fortune. The first died,
the seventeenth century, extensive redccorations conveniently enough,
only a year after his
were commissioned by the fifth earl of Exeter on marriage to the fourteen-year-old Bess. The
his return from a lour of Italy. The Italian artist second, whom she wed 'at two of the clock after
X'errio lived at the house for ten years and his midnight', she seems to have loved. Certainly she
Heaven Room' is a masterpiece of illusionistic only had children by him. But he had to sell up
painting. The earl's vast plans were not com- his estates in southern England and buy lands in
pleted for a century, but during the eighteenth Derbyshire from some of Bess's own relations so
century the gardens were re-designed by Capal)ii- that his wife could remain close to her family.
ity Brown in the naturalistic style he had made Her influence over her third husband brought
fashionable. .\s a result, Burghley House is a place furious complaints from his family, .\fter his
of dramatic contrasts. Surrounded by its land- death and well-drafted will, Bess, now fifty, was
scaped park from the age of elegance stands an still beautiful enough to seduce the earl of Shrews-

uncompromising Kli/.abethan mansion, but with- bury, one of England's most eligible bachelors
in the scene changes again to surround the visitor into marriage, but only alter he had made large
with paintings ol baroque flamboyance. The advance settlements on herself and her family.
largest example of Tudor domestic arcliitec lure The marriage gradually broke up and in 1587
it is a monumenl lo the varied talents of its Hess left her husband to begin an ambitious
statesman-arc hilec I. rebuilding of her family manor at Hardwick.

62
Below The grand facade of Hardwick Hall
surmounted by the builder's monogram, E.S.
Bottom The Great Hall
at Hardwick.

63
Three years later her husband died and he, loo,
lefteverything to her. Now, at the age of seventy-
two, Bess embarked on her greatest work. She
had already built four other mansions, among
them the first house at Chatsworth. but Hardu irk
outshone them all.

Through the middle of the house rises a great

stone staircase without balustrade or adornment.
It gives an air of mystery to the place, slowly

opening up unexpected vistas. Like every Kli/.a-

Ijethan house, Hardwick has its Long Gallery.

but none is so heavy with the atmosphere of a

bygone age. The portraits that stare down on the

modern tourist are presided over by pictures of
Queen Elizabeth and Bess herself With a
characteristic overplus of luxury, these fine
paintings hang against and partly obscure a sci oi

magnificent Brussels tapestries. These were

bought by Bess from Sir CMiristopher Hatlon. She
had the arms of the Hatton family covered by her
Top The staircase at Hardwick winding up
own and the does, the Hatlon badge, have been through the middle of the house, is one of the
embellished with aiilh is and so com ci ted into the great features of the place Above The Great
stags of the Shrewsburys. House from the south.

64
 An unfriendly observer described Bess as a
'builder, a buyer and seller of estates, a mone\
lender, a farmer, a merchant of lead, coals and
timber." She would have been un.scathed. Cen-
turies before the advent of women's lib she left a
mark on the Engli.sh scene that few men ha\e
equalled. Up to her death at the incredible age of
ninety, she held her entourage in awe. It is said
that she built so much and so consistently because
of a prophecy that she would not die while she
was building. .She did die on February 13th, 'in a
hard frost while her builders could not work.'
In 1550 Bess and her second husband William
Cavendish began the building of a high, c]uad-
rangular, turretted house at Chatsworth. Mary
Queen of Scots was held here for a time with the
Earl of Shrewsbury, much to Bess's annoyance,
her gaoler. Mary's room is still preserved at
Chatsworth but the present house dates from Top Built during Elizabeth's reign, Chatsworth
much later. Reconstructions begun on the south was extensively altered during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. The west front was
front by William Talman in 1687 were completed
built under the direction of the first Duke of
from 1800 to 1839 by Jeffrey Wyatt. The hand- Devonshire himself about 1705. Above Another
some west front was apparently erected under the view of the west front.

65
66
The heavy and
opulent furnishings
of the Victorian age
are handsomely
represented by the
pictures on this page.
LeftThe library
atOxburgh Hall.
Below The
reconstruction of a
Victorian parlour in
the York Museum.
The piano was
indispensable for a
family with any social
standing; the parlour
was the chief room
in the house holding
the family treasures.

Opposite page
William Morris
believed that the
middle ages was a
period when art was
a living part of
society and the
craftsman had a life
much more
worthwhile than the
nineteenth century
industrial worker.
This painting of La
Belle Iseult by him
is a reconstruction

of a medieval interior
and shows the kind
of fabricdesigns that
he reproduced on his
wallpapers and
curtains.

67
directions of the first duke of Dexonshire. In the Anne Hathaway's Cottage with the interior of the
grounds, redesigned by Capability Brown, stands kitchen and the staircase.
the Cascade House, from which a thrilHng
waterfall flows down a long stairway into the
garden.
The palatial state rooms, as at Hardwick on the
top floor, present a rich display of English
domestic decoration. The wood carving, which
would not have disgraced the renowned Grinling
Gibbons, is in fact by Samuel Watson, an un-
deservedly neglected local genius. There are
ceilings painted by Sir James Thornhill. the
Italian painter Verrio and the Frenchman La-
guerre, and also fine tapestries and furnishings
from the early eighteenth century.
In the nineteenth century, the popular reputa-
tion of Chatsworth was based on the immense
duke by his gardener
glass houses built for the sixth
Joseph Paxton. Using similar principles of con-
struction, Paxton was the designer of the \ast
Crystal Palace which housed the Great Exhibition
of 851 The notion of the iron and glass construc-
1 .

tion, a remarkable anticipation of twentieth-

century building methods, caught the imagination
of the technology-minded Victorians so that every
suburban \illa with pretensions soon boasted a Great Hall, great bed chamber and two adjoining
conservatory. rooms of the original house. In 1914, to celebrate
The Tudor boom in house building threw up a hundred years of peace between England and
houses of all kinds among them serviceable the United States, the house was bought by public
cottages for the growing class of yeoman farmers. subscription in England for presentation to the
The house of John Hathaway, at Shottery just peoples of the two countries. .\ subsequent .\nglo-
outside Stratford-upon-.\von, is a handsome ex- .\merican subscription made possible the res-
ample. half-timbered structure, dating from
Its and furnishing of the house and a hand-
toration
the fifteenth century, is in a style known through- some endowment by the National Society of the
out Europe. Because Anne Hathaway was John's Colonial Dames of .\merica has made it possible
daughter and becau.se the young William Shakes- for the Sulgrave Manor Board to maintain the
peare must many a time have walked her back structure and keep it open to the public in
there after a tumble in the hay, it has become one perpetuity.
of the most famous houses in the world. In the right hand corner of the arch over the
Between the cottage and the mansion came the south porch there is a carving of the Washington
manor house, such as the one begun by Lawrence family coat of arms. It is a silver shield crossed by
Washington in the 154()s. The ancestry of George two red bars below three red stars and it is
Washington can be traced back to County plausible that this had some pari in the origin of
Durham in the late twelfth century. In the 1530s, the 'Stars and Stripes". .Artistically the most
Lawrence Washington moved south to North- important piece of furniture is the Hepplewhite
ampton, becoming mayor of the town and buying chair now in the Chintz Bedroom which came
the mancjr at nearby Sulgrave. His house there from the Washington family home of Mount
remained in the family for a century after its Vernon and once belonged to him. Ihere are
completion, until 1659. Three years earlier, John other outstanding pieces of English furniture from
Washington had emigrated to .America. George the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
was his great-grandson. turies, acquired at various times, but the great
For two and a half centuries Sulgrave had the kitchen, probably the most popular room in the
history of a typical English inanor house. Succes- house, is uni(]ue since it was bought complete
sive owners changed the place, demolishing here and represents an eighteenth-cenlury kitchen with
and adding there but we can still see the porch. all its contemporary (i.Mures and equipment.

68
z.^*.^

69
 Sulgrave Manor, one of the \ery few homes in
England that flies the flag of the United States, is
a place of pilgrimage for many Americans. It is
also a fine museum of life in a typical English
house during America's colonial period, the kind
of homestead that many of the original settlers
remembered and tried to recreate in their new
life across the ocean.

Below Sir Richard Edgecumbe's fine and sturdy

house at Cotehele in Cornwall, a reminder that
houses were still built as a means of protection
owners. Right and far right Sulgrave
for their
Manor, Northants., with the American flag flying
outside to commemorate the fact that this was
the home of the Washington family for many
years.

70
71
Above The hall in the Washington family home
at Sulgrave Manor.

We find an American connection of a difTerent

kind at Hever Castle in Kent. The medieval
moated castle, the girlho(jd home of Queen .\nne
Bolcyn, was bought in 1903 by William Waldorf
Astor.The American financier, who settled in
England in the 1890s, had for a time served as
American minister in Italy and had there amassed
a fine collection of classical sculptures. He made
Hever a .splendid retreat, restoring it to its Tudor
glory and creating an exquisite Italianate garden
to set oflThis collection. He was rewarded for his
brilliant success in English society and his lavish
ccjntribulions to causes with an English baronetcy.

72
Above Hever Castle, Kent, which became the home of William Waldorf Astor in 1903.
Left Part of the Italian garden that Astor designed for his collection of Italian sculpture.
The Heaven Room at Burghley House. Little of Tlic Heaven Room is the masterpiece of the
the original Elizabethan interior of the house Italian painter Antonio Verrio who spent ten
survives. The mam rooms were entirely years at Burghley working on this and other
redecorated during the late seventeenth century rooms.

74
The Marble Hall, Holkham Hall, Norfolk. It was
designed by William Kent and is a development
on a grander scale of the sculpture gallery in
Chiswick House.

75
The central part of the south
front at Hatfield House,
shows how influential
were in late
Italian styles
Renaissance England.

Even after the death of the queen in 1603, the Perhaps discontented with the bargain that the
Elizabethan age continued to cast a glow over king had forced on him, Robert Cecil built a new
the new reign of James, sixth of Scotland and first house at Hatfield. He turned to a professional
of England. But the panache and ebullience of architect,Robert Lyminge. Work began in 1607
the high Elizabethan era was gone. The brash and within five years the great house was complete.
and beautiful grandiloquence of a Hardwick Hall The pinnacles on the wing towers and the gate
would never be repeated but the new age was not house towers of the central block echo Tudor
lacking in spacious and splendid houses. The motifs, but the colonnade brings classical styles
prime example of the Jacobean house was built by to mind. Within we find a Great Hall with screen
Robert Cecil, first earl of Salisbury and son and and musicians" gallery as might be expected in a
successor in office of William Lord Burghley. Tudor house. Hatfield is on a palatial scale yet
King James owed much to Cecil for his smooth the mood, established by the mellow brick and
accession to the English crown, but he did not stone of the exterior, is domestic. The interior
hesitate to force his minister to hand over the makes provision comforts to a quite un-
for
great house at Theobalds in Hertfordshire in Elizabethan degree: the Great Hall is there for
exchange for ihe nearby Hatfield, iornicriy ceremonial occasions but adjacent to it is a
belonging to the bishops of Ely, it had come to |)ri\ate dining room Ibr more regular use. With
the crown during the Reformation and had ser\ed Hatlield House, we might say. the English 'stately
lor a lime as the prison of the young Elizabeth home" makes its first appearance.

during the reign of her sister (^ueen Mary I. It .\t about the same time as Hatlield was going
was in the grounds of Hatfield Old Place that up. a prosperous clothier of Witney in the county
Elizabeth heard ot licr own accession as queen. ol Oxfordshire, Walter Jones by name, was taking

76
 Left The great hall at
Hatfield, superb as it is, was
somewhat old fashioned
when the house was built in
the early 1600s. Below The
staircase at Hatfield.

possession of a new estate in the northern part of

that county. He had bought it the previous year
from Robert Catesby who, two years later, was
one of the conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot
against King James and Parliament. The new
house that Jones built at Chastleton is one of the
least changed of Jacobean manor houses, and
even the gardens retain their original formal
layout. The rooms, grouped round a small court,
have their fine plasterwork ceilings, fireplaces
still

and carved wooden wainscotting, and the Great

Hall also has its screen complete. The barrel-
vaulted Long Gallery, patterned with roses and
skirted by the original silver oak pannelling,
shows how the fashions of the houses of the great
were eagerly copied by the gentry. During the
Civil War, the Jones family were staunch royalists
and after the Battle of Worcester Robert Jones,
fleeing from the royalist rout, was hidden from
pursuing parliamentary troops in a secret room,
while his wife and family lulled the troopers'
suspicions.

77
 Another modest country house which was buih
about the same time as Chastleton, was Ham
House in Surrey, now in the suburbs of greater
London. In the 1630s it was redecorated and
enriched by Wilhain Murray, first earl ofDysart.
His only child was a daughter but she was allowed
to retain the title and Elizabeth, Countess of
Dysarl, with her second husband the Duke ol
Lauderdale, enlarged and extended the house. Above A beautiful and evocative picture of
Much of the original late seventeenth-century Knole House, Kent, during winter. Above right
furniture remains as it was when Elizabeth and The exterior and saloon of Ham House,
Richmond, Surrey, the home of the Lauderdales.
her husband brought it to Ham. With this and
Right The Great Hall of Littlecote House,
the hne plaslcrwork of Joseph Kinsman the house Buckinghamshire. The fine collection of armour
is a sumptuous example of decor in the style ol the and buff coats on the walls comes from the
Restoration period. Parliamentary forces during the Civil War.

78
79
 The long tradition of English gentleman-
architects which began with Sir John Thynne and
ran through to the nineteenth century, reached
its high point with Richard Boyle, third earl of

Burlington. His title came from the Yorkshire

town of Burlington, now called Bridlington, and
William Kent, his architect and designer, was also
a nati\e of the town. In 1725 Burlington began to
build a grand new villa in the grounds of his estate
at Chiswick. At first it was intended not so much
to be lived in as to house the collection of sculpture
and painting he had amassed in his traxels to
Italy. This house was to be a museum. It was
inspired by the Italian Renaissance architect
Palladio (1518 1580) and especially by his Villa
Rotunda. The
C^apra, near Vicenza, called the
most important room at Chiswick is the central
domed and the other rooms are grouped
hall,
round it. The somewhat
austere design was by
Burlington, but some of the interior work was by
Kent, and the summer parlour, which adjoins
the main house, was built somewhat earlier by the
Scottish architect Colen Campbell, who had given
Burlington his first training in architecture.

Top Chiswick House, designed by Lord

Burlington in imitation of Andrea Pailadio's
Rotunda at Vicenza, Italy. Left Sculpture
Galley, Chiswick House, designed by William
Kent, an idea which he developed on a grander
scale at Holkham' (see page 62).

80
 At Clhiswick, the three men, BurHngton, new iashi(jn, but few can match the simple and
Clampbcll and Kent launched a new movement elegant statement achieved by Robert Adam at
in Enghsh architecture based on devotion to the Ostcrley Park. The had
original house on the site
work of Palladio. The hght classical elegance of been built for the Elizabethan founder of the Royal
his style seems to have provided the ideal settings Exchange in London, Sir Thomas Gresham. In
for the literature and philosophy of the eighteenth- 1711 it was bought by a rich banker, Sir Francis
century Age of Reason. Burlington's house at Child, and it was for his descendants that Adam
Chiswick became the shrine of Palladianism and converted the Tudor mansion into a 'palace of
a gathering place of writers and artists under his palaces.' The first plan was to rebuild entirely,
patronage. but instead the old place was given a face lift. The
By the end of the 1730s, the Palladian style was principal rooms were shifted up to the first floor
the only fashionable one for a new house and its and the entrance was redesigned in a spectacular
first important successor was Holkham Hall in classical colonnaded portico with a lordly flight
Norfolk. The site, owned by a young man called of marble stairs.
Thomas Coke, was for the most part sand dunes
and salty marshes. When he was only fifteen,
Coke had set out on the Grand Tour of Europe,
an indispensable part of the education of any
English gentleman at that time. He spent much
ol his time in Italy, where he met Burlington and

Kent. He returned to England at the age of

twenty-one, fired by the dream of a villa in the
Roman style at Holkham. But it was only in 734, 1

when he was thirty-seven, that work was begun.

Kent was the architect and at Holkham he
developed some of the features of Chiswick on a
larger scale; the most striking instance is the
sculpture hall.
Top Holkham home of the Earl of
Hall, Norfolk,
Leicester. Above
Osterley Park, Middlesex, as it
Houses all over England were soon being built was redesigned by Robert Adam in the early
in the classical idiom or remodelled to suit the eighteenth century.

81
 * it!- ^

Osterley was Adam's masterpiece as an archi-

tect and much of the furniture was also designed
by him. The resuh is an exquisite monument to
the Age of Reason. In the next century the Enghsh
tradition of taking continental or exotic styles and
adapting them to local conditions took a new
direction. The search for inspiration now reached
back into time. The taste for medievalism had
never really died. Even in the middle of the
eighteenth century, Horace VValpole, writer and
statesman, had converted his residence at Straw-
berry Hill, Richmond, with a riot of mcdievalising
fantasy,and towards the end of the century the
taste things 'Gothick' became a craze. It
for
continued into the nineteenth century, in com-
petition with the still strong impulse towards
classicism, and both trends, although so different
in efiect, expressed a perennial European ten-
dency to dress the buildings of the present in the
.styles of the past.

Top left The Estruscan' style was fashionable

during the eighteenth century; this beautiful
room is at Osterley. Top right The Long Gallery,
Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, where Horace
Walpole indulged his fancy for the Gothick'.

82
Left Chartwell, the home of Sir Winston Churchill.
Bottom William Beckford's 'Gothick'
left
extravaganza Fonthill Abbey, in Wiltshire.
Below Belvoir Castle, Leicestershire, home of
theDuke of Rutland, was rebuilt in splendidly
medieval style in the early nineteenth century.

Early Victorian Gothic revivalism was heralded

by the fantastic Abbey at Fonthill, built for the
eccentric Samuel Beckett. The architect, James
Wyatt, worked closely to the requirements of his
rich employer and the outcome was one of the
strangest houses ever seen in England. Its slender
and lofty spire was the subject of astonishment and
a good deal of ridicule. Its collapse within ten
years of its completion caused a good deal of
satisfaction to the critics. Beckett's only reaction
was bitter disappointment that he had not been
at Fonthill to see the disaster.
The romantic nostalgia for the middle ages
which made the historical novels of Sir Walter
Scott best sellers, achieved one of its finest moments
at Belvoir the home of the dukes of
Castle,
Rutland. was the third castle on the site,
It

originally occupied in the eleventh century. The

architect was James Wyatt. A fire ravaged the
new buildings in 1816 but building continued,
thanks to the determination of Elizabeth, the
fifth duchess. The Elizabeth Saloon, called after
her, decorated thi-oughout in the rococo taste
is

of the court of Louis XV

of France. It set a fashion.
Belvoir broke new ground in another direction.
The quest for variety in historical styles reached

83
such a pitch that diflcrenl rooms were decorated
in din'crent styles: the grand dining room was
Above The Elizabeth Room at Belvoir Castle As
Norman baronial, another suite was hung with the nineteenth century progressed great houses
Chinese wall papers, and so on. In 1813 the Prince had various rooms redesigned in different
Regent visilcd the castle and the Regent Suite historic styles. This room at Belvoir, designed for

was specially prepared and decorated for the Elizabeth the fifth duchess in the style of
Louis XV in France, was one of the first.
occasion. As the industrial revolution remorse-
Opposite Disraeli's library in his home at
lessly upturned ihe life-patterns of generations, Hughenden Manor, near High Wycombe,
men looked for security in reconstructing the past. Buckinghamshire

84
 At Hughcnden Manor, the home of Benjamin him for near thirty years, and I will not do so base
Disraeli, the great prime minister, the research a thing as to forsake him, l)ut choose rather to
into history came full circle. The house was a lose my life (which I am sure I shall do) to pre-
Georgian one built in the 1780s but Disraeli, serve and defend those things which are against
fascinated by everything Tudor, had it redesigned my conscience to preserve and defend.' He died
in the style of the first great age of English house at Edgehill and after the battle his severed hand
building. was found grasping the royal standard.
One of the most remarkable residences in Claydon today is a diminished monument to
England istucked away in the Buckinghamshire the imagination and ambitions of Ralph, second
countryside, not far from Hughenden. lV)day, earl of Verney, who died in 1791. He was a
Claydon House is only of middling size, while the cjuixotic figure, his coach and six always escorted
fine west fac^ade is of a restrained classicism. But by outriders, a 'brace of tall negroes, with silver
inside the house is a riot of fancy. French horns perpetually making a noise,' but
. . .

The Verney family took over the lease on the he was also devoted to the arts and culpably
house from one of their tenants in 1620. The late generous to his friends. Worst of all, his neighbour
medieval building remained unchanged during was a wealthy political rival and he felt bound to
most of the seventeenth century for the Verncys, outdo him in his architectural schemes. He
divided by the Civil War between king and bankrupted himself in the process. Verney in-
parliament, had a checkered career. The father, herited the handsome but unremarkable Tudor
Sir Edmund, was one of the most romantic and manor house. In 1754 he added the large stable
remarkable figures in that heroic period of English court. Next he extended the south front of the
history. Althcnigh he had been in the royal house and then turned his attention to the west.
service throughout his life, when the Civil War The new front when complete stretched more
broke out his political and religious sympathies than 250 feet, but within years of Earl Ralph's
were entirely parliamentarian. Nevertheless his death much of it was demolished, so that the
fierce personal sense of honour held him loyal to handsome fac^ade that today looks out over the
the king. 'I have eaten his bread,' he wrote, 'served lakes is onlv half the size it once was.

85
 For architects, Verney had Sir Thomas Robin-
son, an eccentric Yorkshire country gentleman
and amateur architect, and a local craftsman and
master-builder named Luke Lightfoot. The work
on the house was a history of conflict, ill-feeling
and recrimination. The focus was first Lightfoot's
fantastic chinoiseric designs for the interior.
Robinson won the round, displacing the local
first

genius with his own nominee, the renowned

plaster stuccoist, Joseph Rose, who had worked
with Robert Adam on Osterley House. Lightfoot's
dismissal was not only a matter of taste. Lord
Verney also took him to law for embezzling .some
_^20,000 and objected equally to his cavalier
attitude to social rank. On one occasion he
received his patron 'with his hat on his head . . .

and did not ask me to sit down.' Like Verney

himself and Robinson, Lightfoot was certainly an
eccentric. He was also immensely talented and
produced an astounding series of rococo decora-
tions, which reach iliiir climax in the (ihincse
Room.

86
 Not the least remarkable feature of the work is For all the richness of its decorations, Claydon
the fact that it is in wood. Such intricate effects is very much a house for living in. The room of
were usually achieved with moulded stucco, Florence Nightingale, who stayed there on many
much easier to work. The designs themselves are occasions, epitomises the air of domesticity that
mainly taken from the architects' and designers' still clings to the place, while the setting of the

pattern books published in London, but Light- house in its rolling landscaped grounds gives an
foot's virtuosity in producing them at all is air of informal identity with the countryside
phenomenal. More breathtaking even than this which was the characteristic aim of the English
exquisite fantasy is the staircase in the centre of style of garden. From the greatest to the least, the
the house. The work on the walls and
plaster houses we have looked at in this chapter were the
ceiling is by Joseph Rose. It is superbly done but homes of private gentlemen. A simple house, like
it is quite eclipsed by the stairs and the balustrade. the one in which the poet Keats lived in Hamp-
The two flights of stairs are completely encased stead, had this in common even with a great
in minutely worked wood inlay. The geometric palace like Blenheim, that they were both owned
designs on the treads and risers are echoed by by subjects of the same monarch, both English-
similar work on the underside of the case. The men and both subject to the same law.
visitor today must make his way up the building
on a specially built second staircase so that the Top left The west front of Claydon House,
Buckinghamshire, a truly prime example of the
masterpiece in the main hall may be preserved.
classic style of the Englisfi country house.
For it is not only the inlay work that is so precious. Bottom left The inlaid staircase at Claydon.
The balustrade is a miracle of wrought iron in Above The alcove in the remarkable Chinese
which leaves and ears of corn sway and rustle. room at Claydon.

87
 The Residence
of Princes

From the early sixteenth century onwards, the

wealth of Europe increased dramatically
as its
commerce stretched e\er further into the outside
world.The voyages around Africa in the previous
century and above all the discover)- of the
riches
of southern and central America
brought a
fabulous influx of wealth in luxury articles
and
specie. Much of this new-found
wealth went
naturally to finance war- the ambitions of
the
Spanish Habsburgs and the conflicts between
Catholic and Protestant that rumbled across
the
continent for more than a hundred years
but
much
of it found its way into the cofTers of princes,
and the hands of new families rising in the world
through trade, and to the papal treasury. In an
age when ostentation and display were
an
important measure of power and prestige, and
the canons of taste were secure in
a common
respect for learning and beauty, building
and the
decorative arts flourished on an unprecedented
scale and in a quality that has become
a part of
the western heritage.
The vast majority of the houses in this chapter
were between 1500 and 1800, between the
built
age of humanism and the age of elegance.
Fashions changed but throughout this long period
the basic inspiration of European architecture
came from the rediscovery of classical models
during the Renaissance, and the decorative arts
were devoted to essentially naturalistic concepts.
The result, to the modern eye, is one of surprising
homogeneity. The style of the beautiful little
mansion at Malmaison, renovated for Napoleon
and Josephine in the early 1800s, is yet another
reinterprctation of the classical idiom first pro-
claimed in the villasand palazzi of Italian princes
and prelates three hundred years earlier.
The Roman villa, to the ancient Italians a
charming residence, had been an important fiictor
in civilising the peoples that they
conquered to
the nf)rth. In the unsettled times that
followed
the collapse of the Empire, some villas became
centres for new towns, some became fortified
residences but most fell into decay. During the

middle ages the characteristic residence of the

great man wa.s a castle rather iliaii a house, but
in Italy signs of a
new, more domestic kind of
accommodation, began lo emerge as earl\ as 1200.

88
 K\ en so it was the medieval castle that often
pic)\'idcd the model for the ground plan for the
earliest villas of the Renaissance. Many villas of
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had strong
walls, small windows and sometimes battlements
and towers.
In the cramped space within the city walls there
was little room for great mansions, but in the
contado, the countrysidesurrounding a town, fine
houses with gardens were built and began to
acquire a distinctive architectural style. In the
sixteenth century, the villas built by the princes
of the Church around Rome had gardens that
were integrated with the house and not only in
a-sthetic terms; porches, colonnades and stairways
broke the garden landscape and offered tempting
walks.
rhese new Roman villas, like the Villa cfEste
or the Villa Farnese, were builton hill sites
commanding fine views of the surrounding
countryside and their fa(;ades are often rich in the
contrasts of light and shade produced by the
colonnades and recesses of windows and porches.
A characteristic of the new Italian houses was
the placing of the main rooms on the first floor
called the piano nobile or the 'grand level'. In this
type of house, ground floor was used for
the
and perhaps servants' quarters,
storage, kitchens
where the windows were often fewer and smaller
than in the upper storeys.
A fine example of a great house built with
protection as well as comfort in mind is the Villa
Farnese. It stands on the summit of a hill, a site
once occupied by a castle, outside the village of
Caprarola, in the well-wooded range of moun-
tains called the Monti Cimini. Some thirty-five
miles to the south-east is Rome. Designed by the
architect Vignola, the palace was begun in 1550
lor Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. The grandson
of Pope Paul III, the Cardinal belonged to a
family that the new pope, Julius III, was deter-
mined to humiliate. Caprarola lay in the Farnese
family estates and the bleak landscape and strong
site made for an easily defensible position.

The architecture of the massive fortress-like

building is austere in the extreme and its semi-

military air is emphasised by the five bastions,

one at each corner, which support the platform
on which the palace stands. The pentagonal
^round plan is the more unusual because within
is a great circular courtyard. The place is ap-
proached by a series of .staircases sweeping across
the front of the fa(;ade and taking in a large
esplanade, where the Cardinal's private troop of
horse exercised. Undoubtedlv the Villa Farnese

The bedroom of the Empress Josephine at Malmaison. 89

had a serious military purpose but behind its

gaunt walls it is truly palatial both in extent and

decorations.
The kitchens and store rooms, were
services,
housed basement storey excavated from the
in a
rock, but above this are the great rooms and halls
of the state apartments. One of the grandest is
the Hall of Annals, a rectangular room lavishly
decorated by the Zuccaro brothers with scenes
from the history of the Farnese family. Perhaps
the most startling feature of the place is a magni-
ficent spiral staircase which ri.ses three storeys and
is a monumental conception. The stairs are
carried on pairs of Ionic columns and the whole is
decorated with frescoes and cartouches and
allegorical subjects.
Even in and elaborate gardens,
the spacious
the military theme an echo, for the lower
finds
garden is di\ided from the house by a draw-
bridge. Behind the garden rises a wooded slope
which brings the visitor to one of the most admired
parts of the whole palace. This is the casino buili
for one of the Cardinal's successors. Today it is
an official residence for the President of Italy and
its setting certainly makes it an imposing home for

a head of state. It is fronted by a colonnaded

Top The main fagade of the Villa Farnese. Above
loggia and below this, from a grotto guarded by
The casino at Caprarola seen from the gardens.
two huge river g<jds, a cascade of water flows Right A corner of the formal garden, or parterre,
down between rusticated arches to a fountain. that lies below the casino.

90
91
 During the second half of the sixteenth century,
the hills about Rome were alive
with building
activity. The great princes of the Church began
to vie with one another in the
splendour of their
villas. The private charms of
the
out-of-town
N'illa Lante are delightful, especially because they

are unusual. It is a place of enchantment which

seems bewitch everyone who sees it. For one
to
little house sums up everything
that
writer this
the western tradition of domestic
best in
is
in the '^,
architecture. It lies secretly on a hillside
of the Monti Cimini, near the town of
range
N'iterbo. has none of the grandiose manners of
It

so manv
other Italian villas, but combines rich
a truly
domestic comforts with a love of gardens in
unique blend.

h\
Thanks to the devoted and line restoration
modern owner, N'illa Lante looks today
much
its

did in the late sixteenth century

when thr
as it

designs of founder, Cardinal Gianfrancesco

its

Gambara. were completed, .\ppointed as the

\'iterbo in lo66.
chief ecclesiastical dignitary of
began work on a villa outside the village
he at once
architect of this gem
of Bagnaia. Strangely, the
among Renaissance houses is not known for
sure,
for its unique
but it seems likely that the idea
originated with the cardinal himself It
design
most cherished possession.
was'certainlv his
It is approached from a
small piazza at the top

end of the village of Bagnaia through an un-

lower garden
pretentious arch. This leads into the
Quadrato. The centre of interest
of the villa, the
is not the house but a beautiful
and elaborate
youths holding
fountain consisting of four classical
aloft a device surmounted by
a star, from which

shoots the jets of the fountain.

Through the
centuries the salts in the water
have blackened
statues so that the fountain has long l)een
the
of the Moors. It is sur-
known as the Fountain
beds in
rounded bv water gardens and formal
hedges are laid out in geometrual
which box'
|iatterns.

of the eighteenth century

engraving
Comparison
of the Villa Lante with the
modern photograph
shows how completely the house is
(opposite)
preserved.

92
93
The Fountain of the Moors, Villa Lante. Both Caprarola and \'ilerbo are comparalivelv
remote from Rome. Nearer to hand, only about
twenty miles to the north east, is the hillside town
of Tivoli. Once again the visitor finds himself in
a piazza of the town with a doorway that invites
investigation. On 'the other side of
he is in the' it

grounds of another of the myriad pleasure \illas

of Renaissance Italy.
Tivoli, on the hills that skirt the plain in which
Rome stands, had been a favoured site during
classical times. Theruinsof the Emperor Hadrian's
\illa can still be seen. But when the architect
Pirro Ligorio began work in 1550 on the new
house commissioned by Cardinal Ippolito d'Este,
the new fashion for the place had barely begun.
Like Gambara, he was in the papal administration,
governor of the town of Tivoli like Farnese, he
;

too traced his descent from a previous pope.

L'nlike them, he had had serious hopes of the
papal throne itself, stemming as he did on his
father's side from one of the oldest princely
houses in Italy. His new villa provided a retreat
from the world of politics where his ambitions
had in fact been thwarted.
The villa was also a place on which the cardinal
could show his patronage of the arts. It took ten
years to build, but the paintings and other
decorations took twice that time to complete. The
architecture of the facade is plain but the
This and the other fountains and waterworks treasures within are matched by the gardens,
in the gardens are fed by a stream which flows which are the most renowned of Renaissance
from high up the mountainside into the garden Italy. From the house one looks down over the
at its upper end. This is quite densely wooded so plain towards Rome, across the trees and terraces
that the little stream enters the boundaries of the of the garden. Water is everywhere. The Way of
garden in a contrived 'natural' environment. As the Hundred Fountains stretches across the full
the water makes its way down the hill, towards width of the garden. It is skirted by a wide terrace
the Quadrate), the layout of the gardens becomes and from the centre of this the central axis of the
more and more formal as if to stress, in conformity garden sweeps down the hill side round the
with Renaissance theories, that the natural Fountain of the Dragons. This is said to have
meanders of the stream are being disciplined to been built in a single night to honour the sudden
serve the designs of the gardener. The splash of arrival of a pope whose arms included the dragon.
the water is heard everywhere and the glint of From these villas of great princes oi the Church
the fountains and pools create the magic of the we turn to a palace built for a great secular
place. But the most remarkable fact about the aristocrat. The ducal palace of l^rbino. a hill

Villa Lante is that it is not one but two houses. town in Umbria, northern ll.ily. is l.irgcly the
Between the Upper Garden and the Quadrato conception of Federigo da Monlcfcltro. He
stand two identical pavilions. The one on the reigned as Duke of Urbino from 1444 to 1482, a
right as we look up the garden, was built by popular and munificent ruler. 'Fhough he kept
Gambara at the same lime as he completed the one ol the most renowned and i\ ili/.ed courts in
(

Qiiadralo and the Upper Garden. Work was Italy, the little slate's income depended not on
then suspended. But we know that the idea of the trade l)ui on warfare. In the unending and
two pavilions was his from a fresco in the Gambara complicated struggles of nfteenth-century Italy,
pavilion, showing the villa as it was intended. the |)rofessi()n ol' .soldier was both profitable and
The second pa\ilion was built by his successor, necessary. Fhe merchants who ruled most of the
Gardinal Peretli di Monlalalo. great cities did not ha\e the love of war that drove

94
Even the ruins of the Emperor Hadrian's villa at thousand years to become yet again a

Tivoli are a place of enchantment. After the fashionable retreat outside Rome.
decline of the empire, Tivoli had to wait^a
v

95
 the aristocrat out to battle. Iiisiead ihe\ hired
private mercenary armies, commanded by a
hardy breed of adventurers called cundotliere. The
more successful could rise from humble beginnings
to the nobility itself Others, like Duke Federigo,
were born aristocrats who made warfare their
livelihood.
Urbino had been in his family for ,300 years and
Its hill site was an ideal ba.sc for a military
commander. Until his time, the ducal residence
had been a fortress. He had it re-designed as a
l^alace. He commissioned his architect, Laurana,
to build a "fair residence befitting our rank
and
reputation and that of our predeces.sors.' It was
also, in conformity v\itli Renaissance ideals of
the
great dwelling, to be a 'city within a city." In
buildings like ihe house reached the last
ihis.
Ironiier of its eio|jnuni. Built lo the recjucst
(l(\
of one man to house himself and his laniii\, ii
had also, as befitted his rank" lo pro\ idc accom-
modation for a household of 350 people and more
than 300 horses.

Above and right The ducal palace at Urbino and

the duke's bedroom

96
 Al ihc licait of llu" palatial apartments is the Below The duke's private salon-originally the
most beautiful room of all. This is the private cold walls would have been covered with
tapestries. Bottom Duke Federigo's study at
study of the duke, decorated throughout yvith
Urbino, despite appearances the walls are entirely
the most exquisite inlay in many-colourea- woods,
flat but covered with exquisite marquetry.
to designs by the great artist Botticelli. With
cunning effects of illusionist perspective, the flat
walls seem to be lined with deep cupboards and
shelves, crowded with books and scientific and
musical instruments. One of the most fascinating
and gifted nun ol Renaissance Italy, Duke
Federigo was a true scholar and his library,
housed in two rooms in a place of honour either
side of the entrance courtyard, was claimed to
jL\A4
have been finer than the one in Florence. The
palace became a home of humanist studies and
of art, poetry and mathematics. The shimmering Ki 'I
towers and turrets of the huge palace dominate
the town and remind the modern visitor of its
PLvJBi9Bi
military past. Within, the light, airy and graceful
halls and rooms are the perfect setting for a great
Renaissance court.

97
98
Wall paintings were a common form of
decoration from the middle ages through to the
eighteenth century. The magnificent Heaven
Room at Burghley House, England (page 63) is
a fine example of the later stage of the art.
Opposite top An early example of wall painting
from the medieval Palazzo Davanzati, Florence.
Opposite bottom The gardens of the Villa d'Este,
the most magnificent, perhaps, among the many
magnificent gardens in Italy. Above The superb
Hall of the Annals at the Villa Farnese by the
Zuccaro brothers. From floor to ceiling the
room islined with the story of the family of the
builder of the villa. Left A glimpse of the
cascade in the gardens of the Villa Farnese,
Caprarola.

99
 Below Formal gardens above the landing stage Alps can be seen in the
foothills of the
at thepalace island of Isola Bella. Bottom The background. Opposite The great fountain in the
palace seen from Stresa across Lake Maggiore; grounds at Isola Bella.

The last of the Italian hou.ses to be surveyed,

Isola Bella, look three hundred years to build,
being begun in the seventeenth century and
completed only in our own. It is situated on one
of the islands in Lake Maggiore, owned by the
princely Borromeo family. Like most other great
houses these days, Isola Bella has been thrown
open to the public, but there is a dificrcnce. The
revenue was originally intended simply to meet
the running costs of the place yet, in a very short
time, enough was raised to finish the building as
it had been planned generations earlier. The
house is surrounded by other whose
islands
inhabitants are all tenants of the great famih
and feel an almost proprietorial pride in the great
establishmenl in Today, this dream
their midst.
island palace, which entranced Alexandre Dumas
and Richard Wagner, stands complete like a
romance from another age to beuiit om more li

prosaic generation.

100
 fl^'^^i^^B! K^
^^b'W '^^^68 B^

&i •*
1
Vv^ r^PT^

mm
i^^JW

[%J

«''«WP

101
Right Behind the cascade is the casino of the

Villa Farnese, Caprarola. Below The Palazzo

Contarini del Bovolo in Venice. The magnificent
staircase served a very practical purpose being
the only connecting link between the different
floors. Since the ground floor was usually
occupied by tradesmen and the top floors by
poor lodgers, the family on the middle floor had
to protect its privacy as best it could. Opposite
The Amber Palace, India. The formal gardens of
this Moslem mansion have surprising similarities
of mood with the geometric designs of Italian
Renaissance gardens.

102
 The Italy of the Renaissance and for centuries ofiices of the royal court. Formal salaries were
to come, was divided between a number of not over large but the opportunities open to
principalities and powers. They range frym sjnall officers of state to line their own pockets out of
territories like that of the dukes of Urbinb to the the revenues of their departments were immense.
rich and dazzling might of Venice whose maritime In fact they constituted the chief attraction of the
empire stretched down the Adriatic to the Aegean royal service to most ambitious men. The houses
sea. It was in these flourishing and independent we turn to all belong to this century and were all
states that the merchant class of Europe first came built (Ml this kind of money. Today they appear
into its own. In the great northern kingdom of as part of a proud national heritage, but even
France, even in the seventeenth century, the high when they were built they were seen by some as
road to riches and prestige still lay through the the fruits ol' corruption.

103
 In 1642, Michel Particelli d'Emery, the In-
tendant of the Royal Finances, bought a great
castle from the Coligny d'Andelot family. They
descended from Gaspard de Goligny, Admiral of
France, who was one of the first Protestants to
be' assassinated in the massacre of the Huguenots
on St Bartholomew's Eve. The room where he
and his ardent Protestant brothers used to meet
can still be seen. The four-square fortress with its
round corner towers, which provided the basis of
d'Emery's new mansion, was transformed by the
genius of his architect into the beautiful Chateau
de Tanlay that we see today. The chateau is still
surrounded by a moat, sixty feet wide and filled
with clean water from a specially constructed
canal which the architect incorporated in the
design of the grounds. The approach to the great
court is over a fine stone bridge and through a
gatehouse.
The Chateau de Tanlay was completed in 1648,
the very year in which Cardinal Mazarin, regent
for the child king, Louis XIV, dismissed d'Emery.
He had show considerable ingenuity in creating
new debts to liquidate the old, inventing new
and reviving ancient taxes. One of
offices to sell
these was derived from an edict dating from the
Hundred Years War against England which had
forbidden the building of houses in the zone
surrounding the walls of Paris, on military
grounds. It had been long forgotten and fiourish-
ingsuburbs had sprung up. D'Emery's department

proposed a levy on all these 'illegal' houses, though

many had stood for generations. It was this kind
of thing, as much from the
as his 'borrowings'
royal revenue, that caused his dismissal. He was
sacked as a political precaution because of
popular pressure against his tricks of revenue
raising. He had kept his corruption within the
bounds thought reascmabic during the Regenc \
and he was left to enjoy his fortune in the relirc-
mcnt and p<'ace of his new chateau. His sislci
married into the de Tanlay family, who slill own
the great house.

104
Opposite The moat and entrance facade to the Chateau de Tanlay. Above Tanlay from the gardens.
The Chateau de Valencay, France, where the
great nineteenth century statesman Talleyrand
lived.
An interior in the Hotel Lambert, Paris. For been carefully restored and the solid
generations the great house was derelict or being mid-seventeenth century French furniture
used for storage and similar purposes. It has restores the air of opulent and solid grandeur.

107
 '

The glorious achievements of Italian architec-

ture had a deep working effect throughout Europe
and their influence is apparent in Le V^au's work.
The pilasters and portico of the fa(;ade and the
balustrades in the garden are obvious examples
of this and there are many more, but the steeply
pitched roofs are in the traditional French style.
The formal gardens with their strictly geometrical
patterns, show how the logical French mind
reinterpreted the art of the Italian garden to
produce an entirely new concept.
Three whole villages had to be razed to the
ground to clear the way for the vast grounds at
\ aux-le-\ icomle. Ihe pavements in the grounds
and the panelling of the apartments were comple-
ted in little more than a year and within five years.
as we have seen, the palace was complete. During
the eighteenth century, Vaux went through the
hands of a succession of owners and had a
chequered career, but in the 1870s it was restored
to its original glories and today, still in private
hands, it is one of the most magnificent great
houses in the whole of France.
Nicolas Fouqucl, Supcrintendant of the Ro\ al
Finances in the 1650s, was not to have the good
fortune of d'Emery. In 1661 he received the
23-year-old Louis Xl\' at his palace of \'aux-
le-V'icomte. It was an occasion of the most
dazzling festivities and these may well have been
a major mistake. Fouquet's ostentatious wealth
had alreadx earned him many enemies and the
young Louis was bitter at the comparative
poverty of his own court when set against the
state maintained by his great minister. Within
two weeks of the king's departure, Fouquet was
arrested and imprisoned. He remained in captivity
for the rest of his life and his splendid mansion,
though eventually returned to his wife, was
maliciously plundered by the king. Trees were
uprooted and transported to V'ersailles and the
brilliant group of artists and designers were taken
into the royal ser\ ice to work on the great palace
which was intended to overshadow \'aux-le-
V'icomte completely.
The men that Louis took over from his hated
minister were mostly in their late thirties and
early forties and had successful careers behind
them. Andre Le Notre was probably the greatest
of all French garden designers, Charles Le Bruii
was a gifted arlisi and a master of organising large
scale decorative schemes and the architect was
Louis Le \'au who. besides \ iiu.\-le-\'icomte had
already designed the magnificent Hotel Lamlxrt
iti Paris. F.\(ii tiic great Nicolas Poussin, the grand

old man of 1 rciu h painting, had worked at \'au.\.

108
 The Lambert, wliich had brought Louis
Holi'l by kitchens, stables and storehouses. Inside, a
Le Vau fame as an architect, stands on the He magnificent staircase takes the visitor up to an

St Louis in the centre of Paris. At the Sme of its oval vestibule ofT which open the grand state
building, the ishmd was barely inhabifed. The apartments. The influence of Italian models
transformation owed much to Jean-Baptiste, is apparent but the dignified restraint of the age

Lambert, secretary to the young Louis XIV. He of Louis XIV give the the hou.se its style. After
died in the 1640s and his brother, Nicolas, Nicolas Lambert in 1692, the palace passed to a
inherited the palace. His wealth was so great that succession of owners. In the late eighteenth
when he was later fined a million livres by the century the collection of art treasures was sold
king for hisinvolvement in the corruption off. During the early 1800s it was for a time a

surrounding the Fouquet affair, he not only paid girls' boarding school and even a military
up but continued to enjoy his nick-name of storehouse. During the twentieth century, how-
Lambert the Rich. Ten years later he was ever, the grand apartments have been restored
president oi the Royal Chamber of Accounts. and we can once again feel something of their
It was at the Hotel Lambert that Charles Lc original opulence.
Brun, like Le Vau, achieved his first great During the seventeenth century, France be-
commission and indeed perhaps his best. The came the major power in Europe. She was ruled
Gallery of the Apotheosis of Hercules shows a by an autocratic .sovereign who established his
fluency and lightness of touch that was to become ascendancy over the proudest and most unruly
stilted in formality when he came to work for aristocracy, and built his power on the talents of
the King at Versailles. The entrance to the palace a body of new men who earned their wealth in
itself is up a staircase flanked by classical columns. the service of the king and built their great houses
At ground le\el the main courtyard is surrounded on the proceeds of this service. They were not
independent princes but they lived in houses that
had the scale of palaces. Across the Rhine, this
grandeur was being imitated by men of like
wealth and ambitions who, however, ruled their
own territories.
From the middle ages to the nineteenth century,
the German-speaking lands of central and north-
ern Europe were divided among scores of small
states and cities. To the south lay the extensive
Habsburg domains and in the north-east was the
electorate of Brandenburg, later to grow into
the kingdom of Pru.ssia, and become the dominant
power. In the 1720s, the prince-bishops of
Wiirzburg were among the numerous noble
families ruling autonomous territories that yielded
a sizeable revenue. Like others, they used their
money in lavish building projects.
It was year 1720 that a new chief palace
in the
for the prince-bishopric was begun by Count
Johann-Philipp-Franz von Schonborn, who had
been appointed bishop the year before. The work
was to last another twenty years after the death
of Count Johann-Philipp in 1724. During those
years a galaxy of talented architects and artists
from Austria, Italy and Switzerland as well as
from Germany were at work. The masterplan was
drawn up by Balthasar Neumann, who from
humble beginnings rose, under the patronage
of the prince-bishop, to be the greatest figure in
the whole magnificent movement of eighteenth-
century German architecture. The great frontage
was to stretch 550 feet.
Top left The mansion Vaux-le-Vicomte from
of
the gardens to the south. Above The Oval Salon 109
at Vaux-le-Vicomte, designed by Louis Le Vau.
A beautiful view ot the gardens at
Vaux-le-Vicomte through the window of a
handsome painted wood panelled room.

10
The Library at Vaux-le-Vicomte now furnished
with the comfortable upholstery of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Ill
 ^^it^s;^.;:,^:

ijij!l®l^i

Wllira' !!!!!!!!!!!
In its vast size and breath-taking drama, the and alive with the lightness of Tiepolos style.

Residenz at Wiirzburg is one of the most glorious Ill the place of honour at the stairhead is a
palaces in Europe. It is certainly the masterpiece tableau representing Europe. On the cornice
of the German rococo style. The first staggering reclines the architect Balthasar Neumann him-
view of the facade prepares the visitor to expert self, with a faithful hunting dog, and abo\c his

splendour. The entrance hall, a forest of pillars head floats a medallion portrait of the prince-
supporting the staircase, holds back the visitors bishop. Karl Philipp von Greiffenclau who
expectancy in an air of mystery, but mounting commissioned Tiepolo. The artist's other master-
the staircase reveals one of the most astonishing piece ill the Residenz is the Kaisersaal ceiling. Here
achievements of eighteenth-century art. It is the the portraits include that of the medieval
ceiling of the staircase painted by the V'enelian emperor Frederick Barbarossa and over them all
artist Giambattista Tiepolo. He had won a the horse-drawn chariot of the sun god .Apollo
European reputation with his frescoes in Venice soars across the skv.
and in 1750 he was invited to Wiirzburg, there
he worked for three years. The ceiling, which
spans a vast area, symbolises on its four sides the
four continents of the then known world, Europe,
Asia, .Africa and Americ a and in the sky between
them float the personifications of the planets.
Ihc whole allegorical scheme is composed of Above The Tiepolo ceiling in the staircase hall at
hundreds of figures, organised with brilliant effect the Residenz, Wurzburg.

112
 Count von Schonborn's uncle, Lothar-Franz
von Schonborn, the bishop of neighbouring
Bamberg, was a still more prolific builder. Outside
the beautiful mid-German town stands his great
house of Pommersfeldcn, built in the 1710s. The
stables alone make a magnificent building that
is almost a palace in itself Within, the mansion
is a riot of rococo sculpture, columns and decora-

tions. As at Wiirzburg, the staircase is one of the

great features and the richly marbled and inlaid
floors and the lavishly decorated ceilings give the
place, still owned by the family of its founder, the
delightful atmosphere of a palace in the heyday
of the german principalities.

Top left The Chapel at WiJrzburg.

Top right The staircase hall at Pommersfelden,
one of the finest achievements of the German
baroque. Right The south entrance,
Pommersfelden.

113
 This epoch in German history, which saw the
building of a cluster of architectural masterpieces,
the blossoming of the German tradition of music
in Bach. Handel, Haydn and Mozart, was the
age of Goethe, Schiller and other great writers,
and drew to a close in the turmoil of the Napoleonic
wars. The campaigns of French and other foreign
armies forced the Germans to think in terms of
unity and during the nineteenth century the
movement gathered momentum. It came to
fruition in 1870 with the proclamation of the
Prussian king as emperor of Germany. Until
Napoleon, the greatest power in Germany had
been the empire of the Habsburgs, but .\ustria
never recovered its prestige after the defeats
fully
inflicted by the French, and gradually the lead
passed to Prussia. This young state first achieved
the stature of a European power during the
reign of Frederick H called 'the Great', remem-
bered by later generations as the 'founder of
Prussian militarism'. Undoubtedly an ('Hcclixe
military C(jmmander, he was also a man of
cosmopolitan culture, a musician and composer
of parts, a patron of Voltaire and a considerable
patron of architecture.

114
 [he architfit in charge was Gcorg VVenzclaus
von Knobc-lsdorfF, but a pencil sketch by the king
of the curving terraces of the garden-jfront as
they were to l)e buih shows that he himsMf had a
hand in the design. The main facjade is Hned with
suitably impressive colonnades of classical pillars,
but the rooms of the palace within reveal it for
what it was meant to be, an elegant and semi-
domestic retreat from the cares of state the very
name is the French for 'free from care'. The
scheme of decoration represents one of the most
successful achievements of the rococo style. The
sinuous line and the light and elegant motifs
contrast happily with the formalism of the
entrance, while the fantastic Chinese pavilion
in the grounds, ringed by sculpture of 'Clhinese'
style figures, is the culmination of the European
fashion for chinoiserie.
German rococo style grew from an original
Italian idea graftedon to the French metamor-
and the result was a new theme,
phosis of that idea,
specific to European art. If Germany was some-
what remote from direct Italian influence, and
German architecture during the eighteenth cen-
tury was less obviously derived from Italian
inspiration than was the French, still more remote
from the Italian experience was the architecture
of Spain.

Opposite page Frederick the Great had the name

of his palace of Sans Souci at Potsdam inscribed
over the windows of the central pavilion on the Top The dome room at Benrath which links the
south front. Left The dome of the Chinese two garden rooms. Above The palace of Benrath
tea house Sans Souci. from across the lake.

115
 The Casa de Pilatos stands in the centre of The main courtyard of the Casa de Pilatos is
Seville. Itwas built by Enriques de Ribera, the surrounded by a colonnaded cloister and the
first Marquis of Tarifa, after his return from a ancient Roman statuary that decorates it makes

visit to the Holy Land in the early sixteenth an unexpected contrast to the Moorish decoration
century. It was popularly believed that he had that covers the court as it does the rest of the house.
modelled it on the house of Pilate in Jerusalem. The most remarkable feature of the place is the
Built two and a half centuries after the Moors tiled staircase. Four wide flights take the visitor
had been expelled from Seville, the house is up to a gallery that runs round the courtyard at
nevertheless in Moorish style. It presents a Ijlank first floor level. The staircase is one of the most
and uninteresting faqade to the street and. set in outstanding examples of tiling anywhere in the
the midst of a maze of winding streets, it reveals world, and makes an overpoweringly la\ isli
nothing of its delights to the outside world, but effect. Typical of the Moorish style that it so
within it is a charming and private world of faithfully copies, the Casa de Pilatos offers the
courtyards and cool, shady rooms. The street xisitor unexpected \iews into courtyards and
entrance is unimposing and the true entrance, gardens.
across a small courtyard, is a fine rounded arch, The house is a ha\ en of shade under the burning
Romanesc|ue in shape but decorated with Moorish Spanish sun and, withdrawn from the bustle of
designs. The fashions Ibi this light and sojjhisticated the streets, it proxides cpiiet retreat from the city
decoration lingered long in southern Spain, as even though it stands at its hc.ut. During its
though in subconscious homage to the deeply heyday it was an important ((litre lor artists.
(i\ilising effect ol the Iwr Innidied years of .Many came from the surroimdiiig towns to copy
islamic culture-. the Roman statuarv.

10
 The courtyard house, turning in on itself from
the outside world so that windows are shaded by
courtyards and colonnades, has been a part of
the city scene ever since ancient times. *It is the
natural type for lands of hot climate, being
characteristic of the great Arab cities of the past
and there are many other examples in the towns of
southern S])ain, such as the house of El Greco at
Toledo.
The grand Palacio Liria, the town house of
the Dukes of Alba, only a short distance from the
Plaza dc Espana in the heart of Madrid, is from a
diflcrent world. Begun in 1770, it is a proud
example of late baroque. The rustication on the
ground floor is surmounted by a faqade articu-
columns and pilasters. Set back
lated by classical
from the pediment which stretches the length of
the building are the windows of the third flooi
rooms. In themiddle of the front and back
faqades rise stone pediments surmounted b\
classical urns at the back and at the front b\ tiic
arms of the Alba family. The palace houses one of
the world's most magnificent private collections of
paintings, among them Titian's portrait of the
great Duke of Alba who commanded the armies
of the Emperor Charles V during the sixteenth
century and also the portrait of the Duchess oi

Alba by Goya.

The Moorish courtyard of the Casa de Pilatos

{opposite page) is, a little unexpectedly, also
embellished with classical statues. Top right A
view into the courtyard, Casa de Pilatos. Above
Garden front, Palacio Liria, Madrid. Right
Goya's portrait of the Duchess of Alba, who
lived in the Palacio Liria.

117
 H

Most of the houses discussed in this chapter

have been grand palaces set in spacious grounds,
but there are many hundreds of fine houses in
the towns of Europe behind apparently modest
facades. In the commercial cities of the Low
Countries, where space was at a high premium,
the wealthy merchant classes built high-rise
mansions, often beautiful examples of the archi-
tect's art and luxuriously furnished within.
Interestingly, however, one of the last grand
European town palaces was built in the Belgian
capital of Brussels: the Palais Stoclet. For all its
modernistic idiom of design, it was in the great
European tradition. There have been com-
paratively few mansions of such confidence and
scale built in Europe during this century.
In house building as in every other department,
modern European architecture has been marked
by experiment and adventure. It has cut loose
from conventional ideas of 'the living space'
partitioned into separate rooms and designed
for a life style in which .social distinctions were
important and the home had to accommodate
various types of formal activity. The freer life

style ofour time, coupled with the invention of

new building materials and heating and lighting
systems has given the home designer the widest
possible scope for building spaces that are
practical, comfortable, versatile and relaxed.

lop The famous House of Shells in Salamanca,

Above El Greco's house at Toledo. Spain,is almost the symbol of the town.

11
Left The 'Glass House', Cologne, designed by
the German architect, Bruno Taut (1914).
Below and bottom The Villa Laroche in Paris,
designed by Le Corbusier for his brother Albert
Jeanneret and M. La Roche, was one of the
pioneer buildings of modern architecture. It
introduced the 'pilotis', columns that support the
house at first floor level and also the idea of a
two storey high room to give the sense of
spaciousness that Le Corbusier considered a vital
psychological element of freedom in housing of
alltypes. He was to use it as a standard feature
in the working families' flats in his great Unite
d'Habitation.

119
Ritual and Refinement

In the last two chapters we have explored some-

thing of the living styles of the aristocracies of
birth that ruled Europe for most of her history up
to modern times. Now we turn east, where a
totally different system of government pre\ ailed
and where, partly as a result, the style ol' living
and the style of houses was also different. Imperial
China, the longest-lived of all the world's great
empires, was administered by a class of mandarins
selected not by birth but on merit. And this was
no empty phrase. Only about ten per cent of the
candidates even pa.ssed the series of gruelling
examinations. The subjects were the Confucian
ethic of right behaviour in family and state and
the classical literature of China's past. It was
believed, no doubt rightly, that men who were
should be learned in the traditions
to rule others
and customs of their people, the wisdom of the
past and the correct way of behaving, so as to
ensure the eternal harmony of earth and heaven.
At its best, the Chinese mandarin class was a bodv
of highly cultured professional administrators and
itwas their tastes which set the fashions governing
Chinese art and architecture.
Social and official rank and the ctiquctle thai
went with it were of prime importance and the
grades in the imperial service had special honour.
There were strictly enforced regulations governing
the kind of house the various officials were per-
mitted to build. They prescribed the size of the
main reception room permitted to each grade,
the size of the whole building and the kind of
decoration. An ordinary gentleman was not
allowed a house with more than three bays.
Below the third imperial grade, the main house
was not to have more than five bays, while only
the very highest officials were permitted decora-
tions on the roof beams of their houses. In Ja|)an.
similar legislation even prohibited householdeis
below a certain rank from putting a hand tail
to the outer veranda of their main residence.
The house of a great Chinese gentleman was smaller rooms were used for stoi.igc. .\ thiid
grouped round a number of courtyards. The first courtyard with a well was ringi'ci 1)\ the kiii hens,
gave onto the main reception room, the master's quarters for the maidservants and stoic rooms.
library and his private drawing room. Behind In large establishments, guest rooms were pro-
this came the family court^aid, bordered i)y vided round a fourth court. Sevciai genci.ilions
galleries which led into the rooms of his wives and of a family lived in the same household, which
concubines, the (|uarters of his married sons and with servants constituted a si/eable community.
other close relaliouN .\ central room in the main The main building always faced south, though,
family building held the altar of the ancestors, as we saw in chapter one, the actual site was

120
 Left The garden of the seventeenth-century Cho
Cheng Yuan house in Soochow is covered with
water over more than half its area; notice also the
winding path and the circular opening in the
pavilion. Below The Moon Gate in the same
garden in an undulating wall which imitates the
waves of the sea. Bottom Vistas through
fretwork screens were a vital element in the
Chinese idea of the garden

usually dclcrmincd by the aid of diviners and main dwelling, called the shinden, faced south onto
astrologers. a three-sided courtyard. East and west it was
The Chinese model of iiumeious single-stoiey flanked by lesser dwellings or tainoya, linked to it

dwellings and apartments grouped round court- by wide covered corridors. The two other sides
yards, more like a Roman villa than the multi- of the court were formed by narrow corridors
storey buildings of Europe, was followed in Japan. ending in small pavilions. Great nobles often built
In the imperial capital, the greater nobles were additional quarters behind the main range of
given plots of land, varying in si/e according to shinden and tainoya, while men of lesser rank might
the noble's rank, around the ijalace area. The be prohibited by law from ha\ing all the units.

121
 ^^.
r t? ._^ '

Wood was the Iraditional building matciial in -Vnoiher main difference between a Japanese
Japan. was readily available, comparatively
Ii and a European house interior is that while the
easy to work and, in an earthquake zone, less space of the house can be divided into various
dangerous than stone. However, the main up- rooms, they have interchangeable functions.
rights were usually raised clear of the earth on Moveable partitions of wood and heavy glazed
stone bases to prevent rotting. Even so the timbers paper take the place of fixed walls so that it is
had to be replaced from time to time, so that the easy to throw a number of smaller rooms into one
historic buildings that survive today are often the or e\en, during the heat of the summer, to remove
result of several reconstructions through the sections of the outer walls so that the rooms give
centuries. directly onto the veranda or into the garden.
Inside, a Japanese house is sparse and formal. .Mtogether, the Japanese domestic interior oflers
Not only is it refreshingly free from the clutter of a remarkable combination of formality in design
bric-a-brac and objets d"art that the Westerner and \ersatility in use that has influenced modern
has always gathered around him. it is also very western ideas on decor and house planning.
lightly furnished. In common with many oriental The owners of such houses cultivated, some-
cultures, the Japanese treat the floor as a common times to an exaggerated degree, the fine arts of
surface for activities which in the west are catei ed civilised living. Medieval Japan was a turbulent
for by special pieces of furniture. Chairs are society, and reading the novels of the high medi-
virtually unknown and beds, where they occur, e\ al period gives one the feeling that the stifT
are of the simplest. Consequently, the floors of a formalit) of court and high life was de\ ised almost
Japanese house are warm, colourful and com- consciously to shackle unruly and destructive
fortable. They are covered with heavy mats called passions. Ladies were allowed to talk to their male
lalami. about six foot by three, often in a restlul \isitors. even their recognised fiance, only when
green-yellow colour. Shoes are left outside and dixided from him bv a light screen and in liie
special slippers worn so that the tatami are not company of a duenna.
soiled with mud. .\t night, bed rolls are spread on The calm faith of Buddhism, competing with
the floor while low tables and arm rests can also the native shinto cults and at odds with the fiery
be removed when not in use. The overall impres- temperament of the people, reached Japan ria
sion is of the simple geometry of the design of the C'hina in the sixth century. Still later, the esoteric
walls and ceiling. The room is designed to he Chinese cult of c/iari Bhuddism was transformed
viewed from the eye level of someone sitting on the on Japanese soil into <;?«. .\t fnst the preserve ol
floor. The dimensions of the lalami provide the the religious, it gradually imposed new refine-
basic unit for the proportions, the pillars art- ments on the attitudes expected oi anyone posing
spaced the length of a lalami apart. The linicK <)l as a gentleman, .\mong its most remarkable ofl-
the openings are si.\ fool ai)()\e floor level and this shools was the elaborate ritual that came to
line is continued by a moulding around the room, surround the taking of tea. The locus of social
so that whate\(i its si/.c il presents familiar and intercourse, this tea ceremony came to he (iciiiud
balanced lines. in learned, almost mxstical, treatises.

122
B -/5^-^L^ IIL \ ^M. i

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Opposite page A general view

of the north side of the
Shokintei, built in Kyoto,
Japan, in 1624. The
promontory of shingle in the
foreground and the rocks in
the garden are an important
aesthetic element and are
carefully laid out. Left
Hikone castle Japan. Despite
itspicturesque appearance it
was a strong position and the
heavy masonry base was a
strong defensive feature.
Above The Han Shan Ssu
Temple at Soochow.

123
 From the sixth century, a house with any
pretensions had a tea house [chashitsu) with a low
entrance which forced the visitor into a humble
kneeling posture as he came to take part in the
ceremony. Convention established that the cha-
shitsu should be set apart from the main dwelling
and approached over a path through a small
garden, called the Dewy Path, symbolising the
first break with the e\ eryday world. The
utensils
of this tea ceremony, like zen itself a Chinese
import, were handled with respect and devotion.
Many other features of Japanese house design
can be traced to the influence of zen ideas. The
tokonoma, a development from the altar in a
priest's house,today often the focus of the main
is

room, where a long low table stands beneath a

painting. The priest's shorn was a windowed study
alcove built out into the veranda and it, too, was
introduced into the main room of laymen's
houses as a suggestion of scholarly retreat.
Finally, the priest's storage cabinet for sacred
scrolls became an alcove called the tana. Even the
decorative use of flowers, found in many cultures,
had in Japan semi-religious overtones deriving
from zen. Today, the Japanese art of flower
arranging has become widely known and prac-
tised in the West. The Japanese house interior
was designed to provide the sympathetic atmo-
sphere for meditation and calm communion. The
same theme of meditation and calculated efiect
is found in the gardens of
Japan and China.
Many a Chinese court oflicial, enmeshed in the
routine of administration, dreamed of an ideal
life,spent communing with nature in a remote
cabin in the mountains. \ few revered scholar
hermits did retire from the world like this and
were treated with envious deference by more
practical men. 'The herb path covered with red
moss. The mountain window filled with pale blue
sky. My friend I envy you .", so wrote a
. .
nostalgic
city poet of the eighth century. But for him and
most like him such dreams were left for the years
of retirement. In the year 1.5.59, a mandarin of
the Onice of Cults in Peking was looking forward
to his retirement with enthusiasm:
To the west of my house there used
to be a
vegetable garden, fields and trees. being . . .

faced with a certain period of leisure, I gathered

a number o( rocks and asked some workmen to
arrange them lo my liking. I dug a pool, buill a
|)avilionand planted bamboos ... I was twenty
years in building this garden There is a door
. . .

in the west side which has carved over it,

'Beautv enters bv degrees.'

124
Opposite top The Moon Door
in the Cho Cheng Yuan
House, Soochow. Opposite
bottom A pond and pavillions
of the Li Yuan garden built in
the sixteenth century in
Soochow. Left The rustic
character of this garden
paviilion and the path that
runs along under the eaves,
was a carefully contrived
effect. Below a long view in
the garden at Soochow.

125
In oriental gardens the placing of stones was a To prepare for himself the inspiration of these
subtle and vital art. Bottom Exotically shaped must have taken Po Chii-i many
rustic reflections
rocks were mounted, as treasured objects of
long hours of careful thought and design. The
contemplation.
planting of such a bamboo grove was not a
haphazard affair. E\ery shoot had its selected
place, and often famous artists were called in to
advise on the layout.
The heart of a Chinese garden was water and
the site was often determined by its a\ailability.
The garden has to be a poem of light and shadow,
and the glint and reflections of rivulets, waterfalls
and lakes were the magical element that brought
it alive. Streams and ponds were designed in
sinuous curves so that from no one vantage point
could one see both their beginning and their end.
The pulsating light reflected from their surfaces
dissolved the forms of the garden and enveloped
them in an air of mystery.
Accustomed in his official life to etiquette and
bureaucratic formality, the Chinese mandarin
banished symmetry from his garden retreat.
Chinese town gardens were larger than those in
the west and were designed as an extension of the
house. Although surrounded by the bustle of the
The garden was a place to encounter nature in city, it was intended to seem like a secret glade in
an idealised form. The elements that went to make some vast dream landscape, where the stroller
it, rocks, flowers, trees and above all water, were could follow his every whim. \\'inding paths and
rich in symbolism. The skilled gardener, like the unexpected openings lead to a succession of
skilled landscape-painter, had to bring out this separate vistas and retreats: to summer houses,
symbolism of the natural world and make an little libraries, rooms for music, rooms for study

environment that encouraged study and reflec- and rooms for the cultivation of the tea ceremony.
tion. The human world and the natural world were
Rocks held a particularly honoured place. The felt to share a deep communion and it was the job

strangely shaped mountains of their landscape of the gardener, as of the landscape painter, to
impressed the Chinese as symbols of stability, and interpret this. Garden design also owed much to
rocks were seen as the microcosm of a mystic the retreats built for themselves by early taoist
world. Ones of specially refined or fantastic shapes monks. They, so to speak, were the professionals
fetched high prices at auction. They were set on of the contemplative way, and the mandarins of
pedestals or against curving while walls and were the city hoped by following their exainple to find
the subject of poems and scroll paintings. Every soinething of their secret of spiritual peace.
ornamental tree apricol, plum or peach also
had its meaning. The gnarled pine was the symbol
of long life and faithfulness, the tall bamboo with
its suppleness and strength, was a parable ol
wisdom, bowing to the storm but remaining true
to itself The mandarin Po Chii-i, describes a
bamboo gro\c in one of his poems:
Iam not suited for service in a country town:
Atmy closed door autumn grasses grow.
What could do to ease a rustic heart?
I

IplatUed bamboos, more than a hundred shoots.

When I see their beauty, as they grow by the
stream-side,
I feel again as llioiigh 1 lived in the hills.

126
In contrast to the eastern enthusiasm for natural magnificent example of sculpture in living rock
objects the West has until recently tended to see from Bomarzo, Italy.
shapes and stories in natural forms. Here is a

127
 During the late seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries,European fashions were heaxily col-
oured by the intellectual interest in things
Chinese. While the Electors of Saxony were
subsidising the breaking of the age-long secret of
porcelain manufacture in their factory at Meissen,
the French philosopher Voltaire was enviously
discovering that in the east the ideal of a state
ruled by philosophers had been realised. Chinese
ideas of hcnise and garden, often misunderstood,
changed the emphasis in European garden design.
We have seen how many eighteenth-century
European houses had "Chinese" pavilions in their
grounds and the great movement of English
landscape garden architecture traces some of its
inspiration to the east. The formal and geo-
metrical designs of the .seventeenth century gave
place to more naturalistic compositions. But while
the Chinese ideal had been to recreate an artificial
and idealised environment where one could
meditate on the mystical bonds that knit man into
Above Lady Hester Stanhope entertaining guests.
the natural world, the English gentleman sought
Below The garden of the Ryoanji temple in
to tame that world. Surveying his landscaped Kyoto, Japan, pictured from the viewing
park, with itsspreading vistas of spacious pros- platform.
perity, the western nobleman did not view himself
as part of the natural world. On the contrar> .

comfortably isolated from is blustery reality, he

prided himself on being its proprietor.
We find a very different interpretation of the
Chinese ideal in the gardens of Japan, there it
becomes still more abstract. Cone is the Chinese
love of water with its subtle and shimmering
effects. Instead we find the immobility of sand,
raked into wave patterns and stiffened into silent,
frozen waterfalls. The Daisenin Garden, in the
Daitokuji Temple at Kyoto, is considered by the
Japanese to be one of the greatest achievements
of the garden art. Laid out in the sixteenth
century, its ultimate inspiration comes from
Chinese landscape paintings of some three hun-
dred years earlier, reinterpreted by Japanese
artists. Rocks and sand are sensitively used to
create the impression of streams and cascades and
waterside scenes. A decade or so earlier, a still
more abstract effect had been achieved at the
garden of the Ryoanji zen temple, also in Kyoto.
In an oblong of coarse white sand are set a
mere fifteen rocks in groups of two, three and five.
The garden may only be viewed from a veranda-
like platform round part of two of its sides. It is
the purest expression of zen mysticism in the art
of the garden and has puzzled generations of
interpreters. Perhaps the most fascinating enigma
is the one stone that cannot be seen from an\
position on the viewing platform.

128
 'I'lu- west has \h-cu importing) luxuries horn the cross-legged on rich carjjets and enjoying a cool
orient at least sinee the time of Rome. When the smoke from a hookah as they watch entertain-
European went to li\e in alien civilisa.tions, he ments laid on in their honour by their Indian

generally tried to set up a rcpliea of his hwn way hosts. Others wore Indian dress even when they
of However, if only because the .style of hous-
life. entertained at home. Many of their European
ing evoKed in these ancient cultures was perfectly contemporaries no d()u])t classed such behaviour
adapted to the climate, he was bound to adopt as eccentric.
some of its conventions. The extended single- Even more eccentric was the behaviour of the
store\ dwelling of Bengal, has given a word to nineteenth-century Lady Hester Stanhope, a
the The bungalow, now so
English language. noble Englishwoman who settled in the Lebanon
familiar in Britishand .American suburbia takes and held court from her hou.se for many years.
its name from the Indian word Bangla, literally The wonder of Arab and European alike, she
'of BengaT. Originally a peasant dwelling, it was moved with the freedom of a man in an all-male
surrounded with wide verandas offering shade Arab society, wearing Arab costume, witiiout the
from the sun and protection against the rains in yashmak obligatory for Muslim women. Her
the monsoon season. It had few room.s, large house was furnished throughout in Arabian style
window and door openings to promote a maxi- and she entertained her guests sitting cross-legged
mum of cross draughts, and a high roof. on a low divan and smoking a hookah.
Man\ of the English in India, impressed by However, most Europeans kept to their own
the high ci\ilisalion that they found there, even traditions and their houses showed little influence
adopted customs of dress and social behaviour. It of Indian architecture. Country residences and
was not only diplomatic, it was also comfortable the homes of lesser European officials were some-
and a fascinating new kind of luxury. Contem- times in the style of the Indian house, notably the
porary paintings show Briti.sh officers sitting bungalow, but in large mansions the architecture

Above The presence of the Europeans in India

was proclaimed by their houses. Below Officers
of the British East India Company enjoyed the
luxurious life of the East.

"II '^Rk R%
Below A British officer enjoying a smoke from a
hookah and being entertained at the house of his
Indian host. Right The Chinubhai House in
Ahmedabad designed by B. V. Doshi.
Bottom These courtyard houses in the heart of
Chicago stem from an idea as old as the house
itself and part of the classic idiom of ancient
Chinese house building They are inspired by the
western architect Mies van der Rohe but are
by his pupil, the Chinese Y. C. Wong.

130
 followed current European fashions. These were
sometimes taken up by Indian builders and
designers and, with the twentieth century, the
two traditions grew closer. One of the most
influential European architects working in India
since independence in 1947 was Le Corbusier,
whose commision to design the new town of
Chandigarh in the Punjab gave him a command-
ing position. His Maison Shodhan at Ahmedabad,
with its broad concrete lattice shows an elegant
adaptation of the principles of European mcjdern-
ism to the Indian climate.
World architecture now ruled by an inter-
is

national style which shaped by the modern

is

western tradition. In Japan, an architect like

Kcnzo Tange embodies the trend. His work
employs principles of design derived from the
Japanese past but the materials and functions of
his buildings and the ideology behind them is
radically different. In this chapter we have .seen
how the civilisations of the orient evolved styles
of living to express an inner life completely out of
Top A modern Japanese interior in which the sympathy with the modern machine-run and
airlinebag seems quite at home with the tatami materialistic age. As they are transformed under
mats, the low table and the house slippers of the
the impact of western technology and their
Japanese house style. Above The
traditional
Maison Shodhan, Ahmedabad designed by architecture changes, we may regret the loss of a
Le Corbusier. rich contribution to the variety of human life.

131
 '^r-^rt »junii-k^j^-K C <<» .'IS- .-,^) "- ->' ."•
'
'• -^ a '

132
Homes in the New World
The house such was virtually unknown to the
as These houses were of the half-timbered type.
inhabitants northern America before the
of A wooden frame was filled in with t)rush-wood
coming of the white man. In chapter two we saw and branches and then scaled with mud. This
something of the remarkable snow houses designed type was long common in England, as we saw in
by the Eskimos of the frozen North. In the south- the ca.se of John Hathaway's house at Shottery.
west, the villages of the Pueblo Indians consisted In the Midlands the daub was left open to the
of solid and permanent earth-and-timber struc- weather, t)ut in the east where the bleak wind
tures, but the Great Central Plains and the
in sweeps acro.ss the flat Fen country, the walls were
eastern woodlands the standard dwellings were covered with clap-boarding, overlapping boards.
more tentlike. The wigwam of the Algonquin This style was also adopted in New England, no
peoples was a more or less permanent conical or doubt for added protection against the hard
domed structure covered with squares of bark, winters.
reed mats or thatch. The smaller wigwams At first, the average American's house was a
housed single families, but larger examples were one-room affair. Folding beds and collapsible
communal dwellings. A similar type is the wikiup tables made it possible to use the single hall for
of the peoples of Arizona, Utah, Idaho and all living functions, and the.se ingenious pieces of
California. It consists of a framework of arched furniture continued long in favour. Floors of wide
poles covered again with brushwood, bark rushes rough beams were uncovered, except, perhaps,
or mats. The tepee, or tipi, of the tribes of the for 'crumb cloths' under the table to make cleaning
Great Plains, such as the Sioux and the Blackfoot, up easier carpets were rarely seen and were
was different from the wigwam it was portable more often used as table co\erings or preserved as
as befitted the dwelling of a nomadic people. It valuable objets d'art. Early colonial America was
was made from a frame of poles covered with a poor if a hardy .society. Even bowls and platters
tightly stretched skins, usually buffalo hide, and were made of wood, and they remained so well
despite temporary nature offered good protec-
its int(j the eighteenth century in all but the richest

tion against the weather. It was .so adaptable to Iiouses, because porcelain had to l^e imported
the conditions of life on the prairie that it was used from across the Atlantic. Even when well-to-do
by General Henry Sibley as the model for the households could afford to commission pewter
design of the tents for his army in campaigns ware from local craftsmen this often had a short
against the Sioux themselves. life, being melted down for the metals it contained

The very first English settlers around James- if the family fell on hard times.

town, Virginia, in the early years of the seven- In the course of time, the settler's house de-
teenth century followed the example of the original veloped. An entrance porch was soon added while
inhabitants in home building. Their 'English a staircase led up beside the chimney to a sleeping
wigwams', consisted of tunnel-shaped frames of loft above the main room which was called the
wood over a trench of about a foot or two deep, 'keeping room'. Better-off families began building
covered with bark. Other equally primitive two-room dwellings, one room at ground level
dwellings were roofed with turf but very early the on either side of the chimney, which now had two
European introduced the fireplace to his home hack-lo-back fireplaces. The additional room,
and by the 1640s an observer noted joyfully: 'The called the parlour, tended to be kept for receiving
Lord has been pleased to transform all the tents, important visitors or for special occasions. Within
huts and ho\els which the English lived in when a generation, two rooms was the standard and the
they arrived into well-built houses, man\ of them larger houses came to boast added accommoda-
furnished also.' tif)n at the back of the house, usually under a

lean-to, extended from the roof rafters, consisting

ol small low-roofed rooms.
Even at this time, important people in a 'New
The magnificent Lee family mansion, Stratford
England' village community had sizeable two-
Hall, Va., built in the early years of the storey dwellings where the loll undei- the rcjof
eighteenth century. provided a sort of third stoiey for storage or

133
possibly servants* rooms. 1 lu- classic example of half-timbered houses in England and other parts
this type is the Parson Capen house, built at of Europe. Originally it may have been a builder's
Topsfield Mass., in 1683. It has spacious apart- device, taking ad\antage of the natural projection
ments, as befits a leading member of the com- of the floor beams to achieve a cantilexer
first

munity. It also had glass windows. This was a effect forsupporting the wall limbers of that floor.^
truly important distinction since glass, like por- Later, in the congesi<'d conditions of a medie\al
celain, liad to be imported and most houses had European town, this lecimical factor provided an
small windows, glazed witli horn, or wa.ved pajx-r. ideal opportunity for extending the floor area of
if at all. Any house that did have glass probaijly (he upper storeys while not encroaching on the
also had it divided into small diamond panes, actual street below. In the conditions of early
held together with leaded strips, like those in .\merica. where s|)a(c was one of the lew com-
Parson C^apen's hous(>. This important building modities nni ai .1 premium, the effect can only
shows how much building methods in early ha\e come liom following traditional building
.America derived from European models. The styles establislied generalions i)eforc in another
r)verhang ol ihe hrst storey is characterisii( of cr)ntext.

134
Opposite These log roofed barns are on
built turf
display in the Folk Museum But it is
at Oslo.
likely that this traditional building technique
provided the model for the American log cabin.
Above A timber lap and tiled house from
Vermont, known as the Hermits Retreat. Left The
Shaker Room from the American Museum in
Britain showing typical Shaker furniture made in
the early nineteenth century.

135
 Eighteenth-century America witnessed the
building of many splendid mansions as the
colonists increased in wealth and sophistication. ...v^"

Naturally, the architecture remained largely

mdebted to contemporar)- European stvles, but
for all that a place like Stratford Hall,' built
in
the late 1720s by Thomas Lee, shows immense
confidence of design. Lee descended from a
family that had been loyal to the Royalist cause
during the English Ci\il War. Coming to America,
the family had built its fortune on tobacco and
w-ere important figures in the commonwealth of
Virginia, but they did not lose sight at once of
their English connections and Stratford Hall,
with its 'H' plan and great hall, reflect the
impressions that Lee brought back with him from
a visit to the old country. However, in the way in
which he used the brick of which the house at
Stratford is built, the architect achieved a marked
originality of effect. The fact that the main rooms
are on the first floor, the;^/a«o nobile of the Italian
Renaissance \illa,makes one wonder whether Lee
had also visited Robert Adam's masterpiece for
Sir Francis Child at Osterley Park.
In 1730 the Lee family was important in
X'irginia. In the next generation it became
important throughout America. Thomas's son
was Richard Henry Lee, one of the leading
statesmen during the War of Independence, but
the most famous member of the line, also born at
Stratford Hall, was the great Confederate general.
Robert E. Lee. Since 1935, this home of a great
family of distinguished southerners has been
revered as a national shrine and today the estate
around the hou.se is run as a t\pc of museum
where the activities of a plantation of former
times, hand-weaving and spinning and liic curing
of hams, are still practised.
America's most famous mansion is, of course,
the White House, designed by the Irish-born
architect James Hoban. The site was chosen by
President Washington and he took the closest
interest in the progress of the building, described
on the plans But Washington never
as a 'palace".
lived there. was finished only in 1799, the year
It

f)f his death, and was inaugurated

as the presiden-
tial residence by President John Adams.

\Vashington's home, from the age of fifteen in

1747 until his death, was Mcjunt Vernon, over-
looking the Potomac River, near Alexandria, Va.
The house had Ix-en built in 1743 by his half-
brother Lawrence who had served under Admiral
Vernon in the British Navy and named the house
after him. After his brother's deaili in 1752,
young George inherited the house. Subsequently

136
lie comniissioiu-d iiltcrations that were not com-
pleted when he The mansion, buih ol
died.
timber, shows the characteristic Hnes ofa Georgian
house and is fnmted by a handsome columned
portico. It stands in fine gardens with spreading
lawns and has been restored, following detailed
notes left by Washington himself, under the
auspices of tlie Mount Vernon Ladies' Association
whicli purchased the property in 1860 and remains
its custodian. The most important national
shrine. Mount Vernon houses family relics and
much the original furniture. In fact, tlianks to
(jf

the careful reconstruction of duplicate pieces, the

interior of the house is much as it was in the life-
time of the great statesman. In the grounds stands
the tomb, built in the 1830s, with the sarcophagi
of George and Martha Washingtf)n and the
bodies of other members of the family.
Thomas Jefferson, United
third president of the
States and prime author of the Declaration of
Independence, stands high among the founding
fathers of modern America. He was a man of
varied talents, for he was the architect of the
mansion at Monticello near Charlottesville, which
was to be his home until his death. Work began in
1770. The style was in the tradition of the
Palladian revival, not long established in Europe
and then almost unknown in the US. The house
is brick built with a handsome stone porch and

white balustrades at roof level. It is cruciform with

semi-octagonal bays at the end of each wing. The
effectis of grace, strength and originality, i'lie

actual building was done by Jefferson's black

artisan slaves and the materials, from the timber
to the very nails, were prepared on his estate. After
his death, the estate passed to his daughter but
she,unable to maintain the place, sold it. The new
owner bequeathed it to the nation but the will
was contested successfully by his heirs and it was
not until 1923 that it returned to the national
heritage. Bought by the Thomas Jefferson Mem-
orial Foundation, it was extensively restored and
has been open to the public since 1954.

Top The handsome porch of Monticello, near

Charlottesville, Va., the home that Thomas
Jefferson designed for himself. Its originality,
confidence and stylishness, make it one of the
finest houses of the eighteenth century.
Bottom left A dining alcove at Monticello.
Bottom right Interior of the great house at
Mount Pleasant, Philadelphia.

37
 Left The house of
the San Francisco
Plantation, on the
Mississippi river.
New Orleans; the
style has been
dubbed steam-
boat Gothic' for
obvious reasons.
But the effect is
nevertheless wide,
high and
handsome. Below
The Kershner
Parlour from
Wernersville,
Penn., built in
1755.

138
 pAcn beyond the walls of the great mansions,
lifein the average American home showed signs
of increasing affluence as the eighteenth century
progressed. Where materials were too Wpensive
they might be imitated; pine panelling was
painted to simulate the grain of cedar, or the
veining of marble; instead of carpets the wooden
floors were stencilled with patterns. Ready-made
patterned wallpaper was a luxury found in few
houses, but many made use of the services of
aS^ SHBEBII^^^^^l^l^^^HHHHHl
travelling journeymen-artists. Their simple equip- Above Thomas Jefferson's mansion, Monticello
which was begun in 1770. Below The swimming
ment consisted of stencils, brushes and dried
pool at Randolph Hearst's sensational castle of
colours. Mixing their colours in skimmed milk,
San Simeon, California. Hearst's life and life style
they decorated the maize wall paper in exchange earned him a less than flattering fictional
for board and lodging and a small daily wage. biography in Orson Welles's film Citizen Kane.

139
 The new century, to be one of the most exciting Brought up on a farm, Wright had a deep
in the history of architecture, opened with a respect for the land and described his architecture
house that has been called the 'crowning achieve- as 'organic', to indicate that each house should as
ment of the Craftsman Movement'. That move- far as possible grow out of its site. In the middle of
ment, inspired by the work of William Morris in the machine age, he proclaimed a doctrine that
England, approached natural materials with the took man back to his beginnings when his home
kind of loving care of the medieval craftsman and was quite literally a part of the
landscape.
had little in common with the approach of Nowhere Wright's sense of landscape more
is

modern machine-age designers. The house, built dramatically expressed than in his famous house
in Pasadena, Calif in 1909, was designed by the for Edgar Kaufmann at Bear Run, Penn., built
architects Charles and Henry Greene for David in 1935-37. It stands among woods on a steep and
Gamble, a director of the Cincinatti-based firm rocky site and the end of the main room, with a
of Proctor & Gamble, as a winter house. The last terrace above, overhangs a waterfall. As the house
member of the original owners died in 1942 and climbs the hillside, one side has access points to
the house is now in the care of the University of the rising ground levels, while the other offers
Southern California. Yet distant cousins of the romantic views from its terraces. A suspended
family occasionally overnight here so that this stairway leads down from a hatch in the living
monument of one of the great moments in Ameri- room to the waterfall and the link between man,
still breathes the atmosphere of
can architecture his home and nature is complete. The daring
a familyhome. The house is constructed largely design would have been inconceivable without
of wood by a pair of designers backed up by modern techniques and materials, and could not
talented local craftsmen. have been realised without the backing of a
.\ do/,cn years later, the Austrian-born archi- wealthy client. But for all that Falling Water is
tect Rudolf Schindler built a house for himself and imbued with the simple love of nature that was the
his friend Clyde Chase on Sunset Boulevard which foundation of the architect's creed.
is now being hailed as one of the most original Edgar Kaufmann also had a second house built
in modern architecture. Making use of concrete for himself This was a winter house commissioned
at when it was hardly accepted as a housing
a time from the architect Riciiard Neutra. The site was
material in America, and in a way that was sensational and so were the solutions tliai the
matched only by Le Corbusier, Schindler de- architect found. The house was set on the
veloped a flexible environment fully integrated edge of the California Desert at Palm Springs
with its landscape in which glass-sided rooms and the strong horizontals of its roofs and patios
alternate with open roofed courtyards. contrast beautifully with the rugged landscape
From the very beginning of the century, of mountains behind. It was a place of luxury in
America had a world-leading architect in Frank an arid setting. Gla.ss was used freely for walls
Lloyd Wright. Of his more than one thousand which could even be slid bodily back to open the
buildings, most are suburban houses; few archi- interior to the courtyard spaces and the landscape.
tects have designed witii more success for tlu- Ihe climate is harsh, and unless the house were
conditions of twentieth-century living. kept in constant occupancy the desert sands drift
In the early 1900s, around Chicago, 111., he back, despite the s()|3histicated controls that
built a number of what he called 'Prairie' houses Neutra built into his design. Homes like this are
because they were long and low and hugged the the modern equivalent of the aristocratic palaces
land. They were not simply sesthetic masterpieces, of an earlier age.They are the homes of a modern
nor simpK among the most imporlanl buildings ruling class of wealth, and while the life-style they
oi the twentieth century, they were also magnifi- are designed for is entirely dillerenl. being relaxed
cent places for lixing in. The brilliant, intuitive and informal as well as elegant, they are clearly
arrangement of the rooms and the spaces within (he homes of privilege. Like any Renai.ssance
the house give full play to the conflicting desires \illa, the Kaufmann Desert House lias extensive

of modern man for intimacy, privac\ and freedom .servants' quarters. Earlier ihc wealthy had had
of movement. One of the most famous of these more traditional ideas oi what a great man's
houses is the Robic House in Chicago. Built as house should look like. The superb X'anderbilt
early as 1909, incorporated the garage as part
it estate at Asheville, NC^, is a fine example. The
of th<' overall plan and was one of the first to do so. extremes of grandiose display, however, must
li is now priscrved as an historic building, one that surely have been reached in the fantastic castle
heralded Wright's influence in Kurope after 1910. groaning with its still more lantaslic collection ol

140
 works of art that William Randolph Hearst built
for himself at San Simeon, Calif It inspired a film
set in Orson Welles's famous Citizen Kane and
in truth it seems more like a film set than a real
building.
American house design in the twentieth century
covers the whole exciting range of modern archi-
tecture. At the other extreme from the imitative
extravagances of San Simeon is the innovatory
Dymaxion House, designed by R. Buckminster
Fuller in the 1920s. The word 'dymaxion' is his
own coinage to sum up his principle of the maxi-
mum output for the minimum input of energy
and materials, and Fuller's life-long passion has
been to see the world's resources deployed to the
greatest possible advantage for the whole popula-
tion of the earth. The Dymaxion House was
designed as a single, cheap and self-contained
unit that could be delivered anywhere by air. It
Top The classic statement of the modern
domestic style which Frank Lloyd Wright provided all the necessary services and was
achieved in his Robie House, Chicago (1909) costed so that, given the right diversion of industry
was an important moment in modern and re.sources, the ta.sk of building adequate
architecture. Above The Lovell Beach House,
homes for all who wanted them could be realised.
built at Newport Beach in 1925-26 by Rudolph
It was a marvellous dream and one that could be
Schindler (d. 1953) who has been described as
'the least understood and least appreciated of the realised far more easily than sending men to the
pioneers of modern American architecture.' moon, but, of course, it remains a dream.

141
142
Opposite top Frank Lloyd Wright's famous house
Falling Water, Bear Run, Penn., built in 1935 for
Edgar Kaufmann. Opposite bottom An
architect's projection of one of the interiors of
the Schr.der House built in Utrecht the
Netherlands, 1924. The architect was Gerrit
Rietveld in consultation with Mrs Schr.der the
client. Colour was used to emphasise the
different areas of the living space. Left The
Dymaxion House designed by Buckminster
Fuller in the 1920s. Below Marina City, Chicago,
one of the smartest high rise living developments
of the 1 960s. Such is the pressure on city land
today that people are even persuaded that
life in this kind of soaring rabbit warren can be
elegant.

143
 Modernism of another kind was announced by looking to define a 'house". From the simple
House aI New Canaan,
Philip Johnson in his Glass cruck house to the snailshells of Bruce Goff seems
Conn., in 1S)49. Standing among trees and like a journey from one planet to another. Where
illuminated at night to give a dramatic and simple the peasant's hut stands foursquare against its

ab.stract design, the stark, delicate!) calculated environment to keep out the weather as best it
lines of this glass and box pro\ide a geo-
inetal can. the aim of many modern house architects is
metiy for living that is if also cold and
fascinating, to bring the landscape environment into the
exposed. The imagination of Bruce Goff has closest possible connection with the living area.
turned to richer fantasies. He produces houses Techniques, materials and the whole pattern of
that sometimes look like space domes designed for industrialised living have given us such masterv
moon dwellers or for elves or 'Middle Earth" o\ er nature that our problem is no longer how
rather than homes for ordinary earthmen. The much to keep her at bay, but rather how to bring
very names one is called 'Residence for a Lover ourselves back into harmony with her. Advanced
of Plants" indicate the searching and ingenious modern houses reflect this need in modern man.
imagination of this in\entive architect. Buildings as homes throughout the ages ha\e embodied the
like this show how difficult is the search if we are ideas and ideals of their builders.

Two views of the Glass House, New Canaan,

Conn., designed by Philip Johnson in 1949

144
 Other exciting books of
value with over 200
illustrations
us
The Beauty of Cats
\VS'
t^ The Beauty of Dogs
The Beauty of Horses

The Beauty of Big Cats

The Book of the Zodiac

The Book of Tarot

The Book of Palmistry

The Book of Drinking

Aircraft, the story of

powered flight

A Picture History of the

Automobile
The Story of Antiques

American Furniture
Indoor Plants
Cacti

Rocks and Minerals

Guide to Needlecraft
Guide to Crochet
Guide to Knitting
Guide to Embroidery

Photographic acknowledgments of jacket illustrations :

Front Neston House (Weidenfeld &

7"op/-/sr/if.Easton
Nicolson Ltd. London), rop /e^f.newhousesln England
(Spectrum Colour Library) lower left: Hotel Lambert.
:

Pans (AgenceTOP. Pans) ibofW/n. interior by Max

:

Glendenning (Michael Boys. London) Back Top

.

left: Madrid 'ghost town'. New Mexico (Picturepoint,

London) top right: \nXenoi by George Bowers
;

(Michael Boys. London) bottom: Katalnaya Gorka.

:

Lomonosov. formerly Oranienbaum (Victor Kennett.

London). Front flap Manna City. Chicago, III.
(Trewin Copplestone).

Triune Books, London, England

ISBN 85674 025 X
Printed in Spain
A fascinating pictorial exploration of people's homes designs for the perfect home for us - examples of
across the world - discovering what it means to live which are illustrated in this book.
in a nomad's tent, in a Roman villa, in a medieval Packed with stories of human oddities - and human
town-house, in a Cardinal's palazzo, in a Chinese endurance: owners who overreached themselves,
mandarin's — seeing how keeping com-
residence gardens constructed to bring an illusion of nature
fortably cool or warm, and the urge to display one's close to the home, and the squalor of poorer people's
power, wealth and importance, and the need to pro- conditions, before we learned to overcome them
tect one's family from enemies (or from bad ghosts!) with sanitation and modern building methods. And
created so many forms of house at different times indoors, a survey of the furnishings, pictures and
and in different climates.
Even today, architects, paraphernalia that were made to transform these
planners and engineers are still experimenting with houses into homes.