House Garden 
planning. An arched entrance door in the 
north porch opens directly into a large hall¬ 
way (measuring 20 by 50 feet) that runs 
through the center of the house, unob¬ 
structed by stairs or by dividing arches, to a 
south porch. West of the hall are the 
drawing-room and the music room ; and on 
the east, are two smaller rooms—the dining 
room and the library—between which is a 
stairway hall opening through an archway 
into the main hall. 
The plan of the second floor is similar to 
that of the first, except that the space over 
the central hall below is taken up by two bed 
rooms with a hall between. The dormer story 
is still further subdivided and the center is 
occupied by a winding stairway leading up 
into the cupola. 
At “ Hampton ” there is none of that 
carved ornament or decorative plaster-work 
which distinguishes so many Colonial inte¬ 
riors, both in the North and in the South, 
but the principal elements in the design of the 
woodwork about the doors, windows, mantels, 
and around the ceilings, are pediments, “ cros- 
IN THE BOX GARDEN 
THE WALK TO THE ORANGERY 
setted” architraves, dentils, modillions, 
and the egg and dart ornament, all of 
which are executed with the delicacy 
and feeling characteristic of hand work. 
There is a tradition that much of this 
joinery was done by British prisoners 
obtained in gangs, by contract with the 
Continental Government, to labor at 
the Northampton Iron Works, which 
had been started on the northwestern 
part of the “ Hampton ” estate in 
1760. 
The walls of the big hall are entirely 
covered with paintings,— mostly ot 
the Italian schools of the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries. The seven¬ 
teenth century eclectics are represented 
by Sassoferrato and Carlo Dolci, and 
there are landscapes by Pagani, Zuc- 
carelli, Demarne and others. Near 
the drawing-room door hangs one of 
(filbert Stuart’s portraits of Washing¬ 
ton, and beneath it a picture of Colonel 
John Eager Howard, the hero of 
Cowpens and of Eutaw Springs. In 
the center of the west wall, opposite 
the stairway arch, is a striking painting 
45 
