56 THE COLESHILL STAIRCASES 



houses as are those in- Kent's "Designs of Inigo Jones," a 

 collection which will be dealt with more particularly later on. 

 There is no great hall connecting the parlours with the kitchens,, 

 and serving itself as one of the chief living-rooms. The servants 

 are relegated to the basement, the whole of the ground floor is 

 given up to the family, the hall is more of a vestibule than a 

 living-room. In former times the staircase, although often 

 handsomely treated, consisted of a single series of flights 

 occupying a compact space. At Coleshill a vast hall is devoted 

 to the staircase, or rather to two staircases, each equally eligible, 

 starting from the same place and terminating at either end of 

 the same landing (Fig. 30). 



Although the servants were sent half underground, some of 

 the stateliness followed them, and the 



r _.___jBig "i approach to the back door is flanked 



"I*" 1 " I l"^ ^~ ^7 two massive pillars, each of which 

 "- -J II LI 1 contains a coved niche. 



The building is attributed to Inigo 

 Jones on the testimony of a tablet in 

 the house, and its date, according to 

 the same authority, is 1650. In the 

 absence of any other evidence this 



T-.- , , assertion, although not contempor- 



FlG. 32. Raynham Park, ' & 



Norfolk. Ground Plan. ' aneous with the building, may be 

 accepted ; * but it should be remem- 

 bered that Jones died in 1652, and that the last years of his 

 life, or almost the last, were spent in the turmoil of the Civil 

 War. So much did the unrest disturb his life that he appointed 

 John Webb to be his deputy in the office of surveyor of the 

 works. 2 In any case it must have been either Jones or Webb 

 who designed Coleshill, for there was nobody else who had at 

 that time received the training necessary to produce it. 



There are several fine ceilings (Fig. 31) wrought in Jones's 

 bold fashion, which was as different from that which produced 

 the busy and slender patterns of Elizabethan work, as was the 

 general treatment of plan and elevation from that of an 

 Elizabethan mansion. It is interesting to find one of the smaller 

 rooms panelled in an earlier style, Jacobean in character, with 

 panelling designed for its position, not imported from elsewhere ; 

 and as it is difficult to suppose that Jones would have departed 



1 See Appendix II. - See p. 69. 



