HOODED DOORWAYS 



333 



feature of the work of the end of the seventeenth century and 

 twenty years later. An example from Castle Combe, in Wilt- 

 shire, is shown in Fig. 252. The centre from which the flutings 

 radiate is here occupied by a small shield of arms. There is a 

 rather plainer rendering of the same idea at Oundle, in North- 

 amptonshire (Fig. 253). Another rich form of hood, with 

 straight outlines, may still be found in out-of-the-way streets 

 and lanes in London, where the necessity for radical changes 

 has not yet arisen. A simple 

 form of this idea is shown in 

 Fig. 257, where one hood covers 

 two contiguous doorways. A 

 treatment very commonly 

 adopted was that shown in the 

 example from York (Fig. 255), 

 where the circular-headed door- 

 way is covered with a pediment 

 supported by pilasters ; the 

 semicircular space over the door 

 is filled with a fanlight divided 

 by thick bars. In this case the 

 bars are simple in form, but they 

 were often curved into curious 

 patterns, surprising in their 

 variety, and suggesting that the 

 designers of the time had no 

 lack of ingenuity had circum- 

 stances allowed them to display 

 it. The extinguisher to the left 

 of the doorway should be noted. It is a reminder of the times 

 when there was no public lighting of the streets, when indeed 

 the casual illumination from shops and from houses, private and 

 public, was of the feeblest, and citizens had to find their way 

 home through thoroughfares where no scavenger was employed, 

 by the light of torches, which they extinguished as they entered 

 their houses. 1 



Of the same type as the last is the doorway at No. 33 Mark 



FIG. 253. Doorway at Oundle, 

 Northamptonshire. 



1 London in the eighteenth century was even darker than it has been 

 since the lighting has been minimised as a protection against air-raids. 



