HERTFORD HUNDRED 



Mlh five 



uid her childre 



[ e was one of the farmers of the customs " in 1 640- 

 xi M.P. for Lancaster." Charles I knighted hi 

 ! 1640 in reward for advanc- 

 ,g £50,000 on the security 

 f the subsidies ; but it was 

 -ith difficulty that he over- 

 ime the scruples of the Long 

 arliament regarding the pay- 

 ient of interest." He sup- 

 orted the Royalist cause until 

 LUgust 164.5, when he tried 

 3 surrender to Parliament." 

 lis estates had been seques- 

 rated, Balls Park was in the 

 ands of a certain Mr. Rolles, 

 rho left it empty, making 

 :arcely any use of the orchard 

 ad gardens, and Lady Harri 

 'ere homeless. w Harrison fled to France and only 

 covered his estates in 1648 by paying a fine of 

 'i,ooo. s ° After his death in 1669 Lady Mary re- 

 lined Balls Park for life. She died in 1705." The 

 itate was inherited by her son Richard, 31 and ulti- 

 mately passed to his third son Edward Harrison, who 

 ad served the East India Company as Governor of 

 ort St. George in 1711 and was appointed post- 

 laster-general in 1726. " His daughter and heir 

 udrey wife of Charles third Viscount Townshend 

 as the brilliant and witty friend of Horace Walpole 34 

 id the mother of Charles Townshend, chancellor of 

 ie Exchequer," who doubtless inherited from her his 

 oquence and facility of re- 

 irtee. Her uncle George 

 [arrison lived at Balls until 

 is death in 1759.™ She died 

 March 1788, having be- 

 jeathed the estate to her 

 ■andson Lord John Towns- 

 ;nd." It descended to his 

 n John, who became Mar- 

 icss Townshend in 1855 

 Jon the death of his cousin 

 eorge, the third marquess. 35 , F * UDEL - pH 



.1 T. , 1 r. , baronet. Fat 



alls Park was one of the agi eaurl „ j 



■incipal seats of his son, the -with a iqvhrcl 



'th marquess. 39 The present *»■ 



vner is Sir George Faudel 



mdel- Phil lips, bart., who purchased the 



i'here he had already resided for some ti: 



)OI. 



The house is an early and interesting example of 

 e purer type of design which the influence of the 

 ark of Inigo Jones was beginning to make fashion- 

 ie towards the end of the first half of the 17th 

 ntury. Built, so far as can be ascertained, soon 

 :er the year 1640 (see above), the elevations have 

 completely lost the characteristics of the preceding 

 cobean style as to appear at a little distance con- 

 mporary with the large sash-windows by which the 

 iginal casement frames were replaced early in the 



t t * 



V* 1 



.e) 



ALL SAINTS AND SI', 

 JOHN'S, HERTFORD 



1 8th century, when the house was enlarged by the 

 addition of a kitchen wing on the west. The original 

 house, which is square on plan with a central court, 

 perhaps originally open, but now covered in, is of 

 two stories elevated on a basement, with an attic floor 

 in the roof, and is built of narrow red bricks, the 

 courses varying in depth from z\ in. to %\ in., with 

 occasional dressings of stone. All four elevations are 

 of equal length and height, and are crowned by 

 uniform slated roofs, hipped .it the angles, and having 

 projecting eaves supported by large and widely- spaced 

 console brackets of wood. An elaborate string-course 

 of moulded brick, which marks the level of the first 

 floor, runs round the whole building, and the archi- 

 traves of the windows are also of moulded brick, 

 while the angles are emphasized by rusticated quoins 

 of the same material. The walls set back from the 

 face of the basement with a bold inverted cyma. The 

 entrance doorway in the centre of the principal or 

 north front has elaborate dressings of stone, from 

 which the paint has recently been removed. It has 

 a semicircular head and is flanked by Tuscan pilasters, 

 from which spring bold consoles of considerable pro- 

 jection supporting a balcony above. Their design and 

 that of the ornament above the keystone of the door- 

 way betray their early 17th-century origin. The first- 

 floor window over the doorway has also a semicircular 

 head with a continuously moulded architrave, and is 

 flanked by Ionic pilasters, each with a swag depend- 

 ing between the volutes. In the tympanum of the 

 pediment which crowns the design is the shield of 

 Harrison, with the crest of a cuffed arm holding in 

 the hand a broken dart. The centres of the eleva- 

 tions on either side of the doorway are accentuated 

 by semicircular heads to the first-floor windows, 

 which with those of the ground floor are elsewhere 

 square-headed. The basement is lighted by semi- 

 circular-headed openings with rusticated dressings of 

 moulded brick. The south front has a central door- 

 way with a porch supported by fluted Ionic columns. 

 This feature is clearly shown to be an addition of 

 the Queen Anne period as well by its greater purity 

 of design as by the method in which the moulded 

 brick string-course at the first floor level is rudely cut 

 away for its insertion — a strong contrast to the 

 workmanlike way in which it is stopped in stone for 

 the dressing of the entrance doorway on the north 

 front. Above is a semicircular- headed window 

 flanked by sham ' ceils-de-bceuf.' The east and 

 west elevations are of similar type, with the exception 

 that each stage has pilasters at the angles. The later 

 additions on the west partly conceal this elevation. 



The entrance doorway leads by a short passage 

 directly into the central court, known as the vestibule, 

 which has recently been panelled with oak in the 

 Jacobean style, replacing a painted scheme of wall 

 decoration dating from the Queen Anne reconstruc- 

 tion of the house. The fireplace here, which is of 

 Jacobean date, was brought from elsewhere. To the 

 east of the entrance, occupying the remainder of the 



413 



