100 DISAPPEARANCE OF GABLES AND MULLIONS 



way of closing the end of a roof, and as roofs were nearly always 

 of a steep pitch, so, too, were the gables. But there was no 

 place in classic architecture for steep gables, nor indeed for 

 gables of any kind ; the nearest approach to them was the 

 pediment. It was only by a determined effort that the English 

 architect could get rid of gables, and this effort was too much 

 for any but the most resolute to make. Gables survived even 

 longer than mullioned windows, and as our climate, with its rain 

 and snow, is better encountered by steep roofs than by flat, the 

 roofs continued to be steep. 



An interesting example of the mixture of mullioned windows, 

 gables, and classic details is to be found in the Pepysian Library 

 at Magdalene College, Cambridge (Fig. 56). The precise date 

 of this building is not known. In many of the colleges accounts 

 have survived from which may be gathered the date, the cost, 

 and even the names of the designers of the various buildings 

 which make both Cambridge and Oxford so extremely interest- 

 ing to architects. But unluckily in this instance there are no 

 accounts left, and it is only inferentially and vaguely that a 

 date can be suggested. Subscriptions for a new building were 

 being asked for in I64O, 1 and again in 1679, and the building was 

 apparently finished, or nearly so, in 1703 when Pepys made his 

 will, by which he left his library (after his nephew's death) either 

 to Trinity College or Magdalene, but preferably to the latter, in 

 which case it was to be in the " New Building," where, in fact, 

 it was eventually placed. 



It would appear from the plan, and also from the external 

 treatment, that the design was made when the project first 

 started in 1640; but if Professor Willis's suggestion be accepted 

 that the Civil War interrupted the scheme and that, in view 

 of the change in taste, a fresh design was adopted on the 

 resumption of effort in Charles II.'s time, the survival of the 

 old methods^becomes still more striking. But a close examina- 

 tion of the work strengthens the supposition that the front was 

 designed as a whole when the project was started in 1640; 

 and that the pediments and cornices over the windows, to- 

 gether with the carving, were inserted at the close of the 

 century. The later mouldings are larger and bolder in scale 

 than the earlier. 



1 Willis and Clarke's "Architectural History of the University of 

 Cambridge," ii. 366. 



