The Beauties of Tudor England page 2

Decorative schemes inspired by the Renaissance in the Low Countries were widely welcomed, but the classic orders - chiefly used upon porches and chimney-pieces - were crude, because the subtleties of their classic prototypes were not understood. Every Elizabethan house of importance had one or more chimney-pieces with columns of the various orders; those at Knole, Kent, are an exceptionally fine series which do not suffer from the coarseness and lack of proportion too often evident and betraying the heavy hand of the German. Strap ornament in great variety was employed in all materials and in numerous ways over screens and fireplaces as well as on ceilings and wherever an effect of richness was desired. The Elizabethan output was enormous, and apart from satisfying the demands of civic and home life has left its mark in countless church fittings.

As its mixed character suggests, however, it was the work of skilled masons and craftsmen imbued with a love of splendour, but ignorant of the principles of classic design and of the real significance of the new features they were incorporating. Under the conditions then prevailing no real progress was possible till the design of any building of distinction came to be entrusted to an architect, or "surveyor," as he was then called; a man who could give plans and sketches or "drafts" of houses symmetrically disposed and embodying ideas in accordance with the taste of a travelled and enlightened patron. The individual designer was needed to take the place of a group of craftsmen who had hitherto followed their traditional methods with unfailing success. Little, however, is known of Elizabethan architects before about the year 1570, after which date appear John Shute, John Thorpe, Robert and Huntingdon Smith-son and a succession of others whose activities extended well into Stuart times. Magnificent as many of the houses of this brilliant period undoubtedly are, they miss the naive simplicity and spontaneous beauty of those built earlier in the century; the striving after effects of internal and external splendour is just a little too obvious.

Thorpe was engaged at Kirby Hall, Northamptonshire (1570-75), one of the first large country houses to be built entirely in the " new manner," and in the same county Burghley House was built for William Cecil, Lord Burghley, the statesman who did so much to give lustre to the reign of Elizabeth. Wollaton Hall, near Nottingham, begun in 1580 and accredited to Robert Smithson: Hardwick Hall, 1576, and Balborough Hall, 1583, both in Derbyshire, all express the same craving for novelty of idea and ostentatious display. Exuberance in every part naturally characterises the interiors of such houses, and Bacon pictures the rooms in his princely palace as "delicate or rich cabinets, daintily paved, richly hanged, glazed with crystalline glass" and containing "all other elegancy that can be thought upon."

No lack of material, no lack of imagination curbed the efforts of the workers in all manner of crafts to proclaim the estate and wealth of the owner, reflecting the changes in the social life of the country.

Elizabethan architecture, with all its faults, is original and appropriate and, generally speaking, suited to the climate, while it certainly corresponded to the taste of the times which produced it. The old spirit was groping its way into new channels, and with the coming of Inigo Jones in the next reign was to express itself in a matured renaissance that could hold its own with the rest of Europe.