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Chapter 1
TUDOR AND JACOBEAN
1485-1625
The Tudor and Jacobean periods can be seen as a turning point in British domestic architecture. Fashionable building gradually moved away from the styles and tastes of medieval building toward more sophisticated structures with classicized decoration.
After the Wars of the Roses (1455-85), the accession of the Tudor dynasty ushered in an era of strong rule, political stability and prosperity, and a new age of building and rebuilding. It was not only the first two Tudor monarchs, Henry VII and Henry VIII, who were prolific builders, but also their subjects. The wealthy and the less wealthy rebuilt, re-modelled or extended their houses. Timber-framed buildings were reconstructed or rebuilt in stone or brick; there was a rise in both the quality and quantity of new dwellings.
The construction of more durable houses has led to a greater survival rate, and the large number of houses built has created a greater stock of examples from which to make generalizations. With the dawning of the 16th century it becomes possible for the first time to write the history of the English interior with any accuracy. This great advance is tempered by the fact that subsequently there have been four to five hundred years in which alterations can be and have been made. Important original elements such as floor and wall decorations were changed according to fashion. In an 18th or 19th century house original walls, ceilings and floors can often be found, whereas in 16th- and 17th-century houses they are far rarer. An additional complication is that some elements of the English interior scarcely change between the17th and the 19th centuries. It is often impossible, for example, to date ironwork accurately, as practical designs, once they had evolved, endured for hundreds of years.
Where original elements from the period survive unaltered, this is due either to their exceptional quality or to some freak of building history. Original floors are sometimes revealed in areas where new floorboards have been laid over old ones. Wall decoration can be found under later panelling, hangings or paint layers. Thus, our view of the early domestic interior is coloured by the patchy evidence which has been left to us.
Certain overall developments during the period help us to unravel the appearance of the Tudor and Jacobean interior. Houses became markedly more comfortable than their medieval forebears. The central hearth, which had been the sole means of heating a room in a medieval house, had been replaced by the wall fireplace in almost all sizes of dwelling by the end of the period. In terms of construction and interior decoration, this change was radical. The abandonment of the central hearth removed the need for single-story houses with holes in the roof; floors were introduced above the entrance level, and as ceilings were no longer obscured or damaged by smoke they could now be decorated. Perhaps more importantly, the wall fireplace became a focus for decorative treatment. From the Tudor period right through to the mid-20th century the fireplace was a dominant element in the style of a room.
Another development which was to have a major impact on the form of the interior was the increasing availability of glass. By the end of the period glass was not only typical in larger houses but had become common in smaller houses too. This affected the size, number and design of windows. Moreover, bigger windows and those without shutters admitted more light and provided the incentive for carved or painted decoration inside the room.
A more fundamental development was the increasing specialization of room functions within a house. In the Middle Ages even the King would live in one big room, where he would eat, sleep and conduct affairs of state. From the beginning of the 16th century, first the royal palaces, then courtier houses and finally gentry houses developed a series of specialized rooms. Separate withdrawing rooms, dining rooms, parlours, bedrooms, closets and even libraries and studies became commonplace. Each of these rooms had its own functional requirements and sometimes a code of decoration. Fabric hangings, for example, were considered inappropriate for rooms in which people ate, as they tended to retain the smell of food: plaster was thought to be more suitable.
A further factor which affected the style of the interior was regional variation. Building materials are on the whole heavy and bulky items which were expensive to transport in an era before the creation of an efficient road or rail network. Thus the style and form of houses varied widely accross the country. The three principal building materials were timber, brick and stone. All-timber buildings were found only in areas without supplies of local stone or brick-earth, such as the West Midlands. Stone was almost universal in the great limestone belt which stretches across England from Bath to Lincoln and it was the standard building material throughout Scotland and Wales. The Thames valley and East Anglia produced suitable brick-earth. Different building materials were reflected in different architectural effects. Although some forms, especially window and door styles, could be reproduced in brick, stone or timber, other elements of decoration were greatly affected by the material in which they were executed. Stone houses, for example, tended to have less decoration than timber ones, as stone was more difficult and expensive to carve. Areas of good building stone such as the Cotswolds or Northamptonshire tend to have houses with more sober decoration than, for example, the highly decorated timber-framed houses of Lancashire or Cheshire. Brick was increasingly used in areas without good stone. It varied as much as stone in quality and colour: much depended on the nature of the clay from which it was made and on the manufacturer. Brick had its own limitations and advantages: it could be carved (rubbed) but more often the individual bricks were laid in patterns, which took local forms.
Another variable in terms of style was the location of the building, whether in a town or in the countryside. Rapid increases in population made for a period of urban expansion -- so rapid that in 1580 a royal proclamation forbade new building within three miles of the gates of the city of London. The early Stuarts, James I and Charles I, placed further restrictions on building in London. This meant that houses built in the centre of the capital (and other towns followed suit) were generally tall and narrow and had external decoration, such as carved timbers and pargeting, concentrated on their cramped facades. In the countryside, where land was less expensive, buildings could sprawl outward and facade decoration could afford to be looser.
Through most of the period the principal foreign influences were from the Low Countries and Germany, but as the 16th century wore on the influence of Italy began to make itself felt, rarely directly from the Italian peninsula but more often through the medium of northern European countries. This process led to the gradual adoption of classical motifs and the classical Orders -- that is, the systems of ornament, derived from ancient Greece and Rome, based on the Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Tuscan and Composite styles of columns and entablatures. The desire of clients for these novelties was probably less strong than the enthusiasm of the craftsmen who sold the designs. From c.1560 a stream of books and engravings began to come to England from Antwerp, widening the craftsmen's decorative vocabulary. When the Duke of Alva began to persecute Protestants in the Netherlands in the late 1560s, the flow of printed matter was augmented by the craftsmen and artists themselves who fled to England to escape the dangers.
One of the most important decorative imports from Antwerp in this
