THE TRANSITION IN MINOR BUILDINGS 

 AND INTERIORS 



THERE are numberless buildings in all parts of the country 

 which show in their external treatment how gradual was the 

 supersession of the old style by the new and more correct 

 treatment, and how limited in range was the influence of even 

 so eminent an architect as Inigo Jones. Indeed, throughout the 

 seventeenth century it would appear that architectural design 

 followed two paths ; one was that trodden by trained architects 

 who aimed at correctitude ; the other was that taken by less 

 learned designers, whether architects or (as of old) masons and 

 artificers, who had not mastered the niceties of classic design, 

 and therefore mixed ancient methods with such of the new as 

 they could compass. The mullioned window was one of the old 

 features to which they long held fast. The new idea of large 

 window openings such as prevailed in the Banqueting House 

 they seem to have disliked. Their reluctance had, no doubt, a 

 constructional basis, for the narrow lights of a mullioned window 

 are easily bridged, whereas a wide opening requires either a 

 deeper head to carry the weight above it, or else an arch. The 

 introduction of an arch or a deep head involved a more serious 

 departure from ancient ways, and a more complete committal 

 to new design than the ordinary man could face. He did not 

 mind pilasters, and he did not mind a heavy cornice, and con- 

 sequently there are plenty of instances in which the old mullioned 

 windows are accompanied by the more stiff and straight arrange- 

 ment which a heavy cornice involves. Such an instance is to 

 be seen in the free school at Warminster, founded as late as 

 1707 (Fig. 57). 



Another feature to which designers clung was the gable. 

 This, of course, had been from time immemorial a dominant 

 feature of English houses ; it was the simplest and most natural 



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