By VINCENT J. ROBINSON, C.I.E. 



(The substance of an Address given at Parnham on the occasion of the 

 visit of the Club, July ISth, 1899.) 



[O many fine places of about the same date as Parnham 

 have disappeared during the last hundred and 

 fifty years in England that admirers of their 

 beauty are haunted with the fear of the time 

 coming when nothing will remain to testify to 

 their former existence save the bare descrip- 

 tions of the historian. The epoch in England, 

 as in Italy, France, Germany, and Spain, 

 during which the finest of these historic 

 dwellings have been built, ranges from the 

 end of the i6th to the end of the i8th centuries. The 

 Renaissance style which gave rise to them commenced in Italy, 

 travelled into France, and thence finally into England. Great 

 Italian palaces of this period the production of the country 

 whence the ideas of the Renaissance started are often so large 

 that in many now standing abroad several families reside or 

 carry on the business of life, the descendants of the original 

 owners for whom they were built having decayed beyond the 

 power of keeping them up. For instance, the Via Nuova at 

 Genoa contains about ten houses, forming the larger part of the 



