APPEARANCE OF SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN 13 



have a certain amount of character about them. This par- 

 ticular example has two projecting wings, which may indicate 

 that the house followed the lines of an earlier one, or they may 

 merely be a survival of old ways ; in either case they are not 

 of the essence of the period. The date of the house is not 

 recorded, but it was probably built between 1670 and 1680, by 

 that Dame Alice Lisle who suffered death in 1685 at the hands 

 of Judge Jeffreys for sheltering a Nonconformist minister and a 

 fugitive from Sedgemoor. 



Of much the same character, but loftier and more dignified, 

 is Hanbury Hall, near Droitwich, built in 1701 for a certain 

 Thomas Yernon (Fig. 5). The facade is here emphasised by 

 a pediment, which professes to be partly carried on two columns. 

 Ornament goes but a little way towards producing the pleasing 

 effect, which, in fact, is obtained by the windows (including the 

 dormers), the quoins, and the bold eaves cornice. The cupola 

 adds a note of interest ; it is a feature which had been used by 

 Inigo Jones, and before him, although designed on other lines, 

 by Jacobean architects. 



But a greater figure than the men who designed Moyles 

 Court or Hanbury Hall occupied the stage at this time. This 

 was Sir Christopher Wren, the greatest architect that England 

 has produced. His work, however, lay for the most part outside 

 the scope of the present inquiry which is chiefly concerned with 

 domestic architecture. It was largely the city churches, and 

 especially the noble cathedral of St Paul, that occupied and de- 

 veloped Wren's uncommon powers. Of ordinary domestic work, 

 but little can be put to his credit with certainty. However, at 

 the palace of Hampton Court (Fig. 6), he showed the same 

 strong hand, the same virility of design which appear in his 

 churches. Wren had mastered the medium in which he worked, 

 and he used it with freedom, unfettered by slavish obedience to 

 the rules which kept his less gifted successors in leading strings, 

 and induced them to tread the paths of safety rather than those 

 of adventure. 



There was, perhaps, one exception to this slavery in the 

 person of Sir John Vanbrugh, who had a singular gift for 

 grandiose design. Kings Weston, near Bristol (Fig. 7), is 

 one of his simpler and more restrained efforts, but even here the 

 scale is large and the detail verging on coarseness. But it is 

 neither the personal note nor the minutiae of design which 



