A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



material has been re-used in repairs, making it a matter 

 of extreme difficulty to distinguish between old and 

 new. In 1846 the cloister was glazed, and from 

 1868 to 1869 considerable interior alterations were 

 made in the third stage. The forecourt on the north 

 front was enlarged in the latter year, and the modern 

 walls which surround it are pierced in imitation of the 

 parapet of the house. The present gardens are 

 apparently modern. The great hall was redecorated, 

 and its ceiling painted, in 1878. 



Though the design as it now stands is sufficiently 

 imposing, it is not so magnificent as it was originally 

 intended to be. A much more ambitious scheme 

 was originally projected, and the State Papers Domestic 

 of James I contain many detailed references to the 

 saving of expense by the curtailing of ornament. The 

 Earl of Salisbury does not appear to have employed 

 an architect, and probably the design was largely his 

 own. Thomas Wilson, his servant, seems to have 

 made the plans ; this Wilson was afterwards knighted 

 and made Keeper of the State Papers. He had the 

 assistance at Hatfield of William Basil], Surveyor of 

 the King's Works. A very large part of the respon- 

 sibility appears, from the correspondence in the State 

 Papers Domestic, to have fallen on the shoulders of 

 Robert Lemming, who was clerk of the works and 

 who was entrusted with the actual designing of much 

 of the detail. The joiners' work and wainscoting 

 and the designing of the chimney-pieces were in the 

 hands of one Jenever, a Dutchman living in London. 

 Hoocker of St. Martin's Lane, who made the turners* 

 work, would seem from his name to have been of the 

 same nationality. A French engineer devised an 

 elaborate system of water supply, and French gardeners 

 laid out and maintained the gardens. 



The house consists of a north main wing with east 

 and west wings projecting southwards and inclosing a 

 courtyard, and may be described as E shaped, the 

 serif of the E being represented only by the very 

 slight projection of the central south entrance. Its 

 principal interior features are the great hall, in the 

 north wing, with its screen and gallery, the grand 

 staircase immediately to the east of the hall, and the 

 long gallery on the first floor of the north wing and 

 running the whole length of its south side. Below 

 it the cloisters now form a second inclosed gallery on 

 the ground floor. 



The north wing is exactly regular, having a 

 central entrance porch of three stages, of slight pro- 

 jection on the north or exterior face, which opens to 

 the screens. The doorway is of stone, much restored, 

 and has a semicircular head ; it is flanked by pairs of 

 stone columns with a complete Doric order, and 

 above it a curvilinear pierced cresting of stone. The 

 screens continue through the building to the cloisters, 

 into which they open exactly opposite the central 

 entrance on the courtyard side. On either side of 

 the north entrance are three windows of three lights, 

 those to the east being the windows of the hall. 

 Flanking them to east and west are two bay windows, 

 the eastern being the last window of the hall and the 

 western that of the steward's room. The east and 

 west extremities of the north face are the plain butts 



•"'These were originally projected to 

 hive had columns in front of them (S. 

 P. Dom. Jas. I, xlv, 69). 'If front 

 of gallery be built with pilaster! as it is 

 begun, and leave out the columns, he 





of the cast and west wings, each with » central pro- 

 jecting bay with lights of four stories, containing 

 stairs, and a six-light window carried up to the full 

 height next the central portion of the north lide. 

 The east and west wings are irregular in plan on 

 both their sides, but almost exactly correspond to one 

 another. On the east face the summer drawing room 

 occupying the north-east angle, has two bay windowi, 

 one of three and the other of five sides, this latter 

 being answered by a flat six-light window in the 

 west wing and constituting almost the only externa) 

 difference between the two wings. The yew room 

 with a single oriel, balances the northern of the two 

 drawing room windows. The face of the wing it 

 then set back somewhat, and in the recess rises the 

 oriel of the morning room. The study, with an 

 external door in its out-set north wall, has a square 

 projecting window in the east face, and at the corner 

 of the room beyond it to the south stands a turret 

 rising above the parapet — one of four finishing the 

 southern extremities of the east and west wingi. In 

 the west wing the upper part of the kitchen answers 

 the drawing room of the east wing, the :naple room 

 corresponds to the yew room and the chapel to the 

 morning room. On each inner face of these wings is 

 a centra] doorway from the courtyard, with flat 

 pilasters supporting a complete Doric order over 

 an archway, flanked on either side by a bay window 

 rising to the full height of the first two stages. Above 

 this the third stage is set back behind a flat cornice 

 and is crested with a pierced parapet concealing the 

 roof and stopped at the ends by the third stage of the 

 north-east and north-west blocks and by the angle 

 turrets at the south. 



The most ornate portion of the exterior is the 

 south face of the centre wing. It is of two principal 

 stages of stone with an open parapet, and behind it a 

 third stage, set back with four stepped and curved 

 gables, masking the stacks of the north side of the 

 wing and connected by a second pierced parapet. 

 These gables are set in pairs on either side of the third 

 stage of the central compartment containing the prin- 

 cipal south entrance-porch. This third stage is blind 

 and forms a screen for the display of the full achieve- 

 ment of the Earl of Salisbury. Behind this screen 

 rises a wooden clock-tower of three stages, the first 

 two with pairs of columns at the angles on each face 

 supporting an entablature ; the lowest order is 

 Doric, with arches between. In the second stage 

 is the clock face, between Ionic columns, and above 

 the second entablature the third stage rises, from a 

 square balustrade with figures at the angles, in the 

 form of an octagonal rusticated arcade surmounted by 

 a cornice and cupola with a vane. 



The ground stage of the south front is occupied 

 wholly by the arcade of the cloister and the central 

 porch, the whole consisting of nine bays. The 

 arcade has semicircular arches, four on each side of 

 the porch, forming part of a Doric arcade, with flat 

 pilasters enriched with arabesques and fluted, 60 * 

 between the responds, and elaborate carving in the 

 spandrels. The metopes of the frieze are set with 

 ox-skulls alternating with carbuncles. Above the 



Many other modili- bv W. Page in the Tram, St. Albtni end 



rial design are to be Htrt,. Arch. Sac. 1901-1, 1 (+} (new 



place, and in ibid. ier.), 334, in which the correspondence 



es of reduction of er- regarding (he building of the house ii 



96 



