176 STOKE BRUERN, NORTHANTS 



central block, two outlying wings, and connecting colonnades, is 

 associated with the name of Inigo Jones and the house of Stoke 

 Bruerne, in Northamptonshire. According to Bridges, the 

 county historian, " the house was built by Sir Francis Crane, 

 who brought the design from Italy, and in the execution of it 

 received the assistance of Inigo Jones. It consists of a body and 

 two wings, joined by corridores or galleries (see plan, Fig. 115). 

 The pillars which support the galleries leading to the wings, are 

 red and of a different colour from the house. . . . The house 

 was begun about the year 1630 and finished before 1636, during 

 which interval he gave an entertainment here to the King and 

 Queen." 1 Colin Campbell, however, says that the building was 

 begun by Inigo, who made the wings, colonnades, and all the 

 foundations, and that owing to the interruption caused by the 

 Civil War the front was designed by " another architect." He 

 puts the date at 1640. Bridges' account is circumstantial, and 

 he was a careful historian ; but Campbell's elevation shows the 

 body of the house treated in a different manner from the wings, 

 and so far supports his statement. Unfortunately this part of 

 the building was burnt down in 1886, and the opportunity of 

 comparing the differences in the work itself is lost. 



Both authorities concur in placing the date as early as some- 

 where between 1630 and 1640, which was quite half a century 

 before this type of plan became at all popular. Nevertheless 

 among Webb's drawings, which cover at least thirty years of the 

 half century, there are several instances in which it is employed ; 

 and even the practical and level-headed Wren has a plan of this 

 type among his drawings at All Souls College, Oxford (see Fig. 

 TOO). The genesis of this particular form is of interest inasmuch 

 as it was widely adopted in the eighteenth century ; so much so 

 that Isaac Ware in his " Complete Body of Architecture," pub- 

 lished in 1756, lays down various rules for its disposition and 

 proportions, and recommends its adoption as raising a house 

 out of the commonplace and making it handsome without being 

 necessarily pompous. 



Among the more notable examples of this type of plan may- 

 be mentioned Burleyon the Hill, in Rutland, where alow curved 

 colonnade is thrust out on each side to a great distance without 

 serving any particular object beyond that of obtaining an ap- 

 pearance of grandeur ; this was one of the earlier applications of 

 the idea, dating from late in the seventeenth century : Easton 



1 Bridges' " History of Northamptonshire," vol. i. p. 328. 



