Stair Parts Fig. 199 Vicarege at Puddletown, Dorset
Stair Parts. Fig. 200 House in St Giles, Oxford
It is in particular features, such as doorways, windows, balustrades, and panels, stair parts that Adam's gift of design shows to the best advantage. A doorway in Mansfield Street (Stair Parts Fig. 196), with its large fanlight, is characteristic of one treatment ; the projecting porch from Portman Square (Stair Parts Fig. 197) is equally so of another. The window from Sutton Court (Stair Parts Fig. 198) would be a prosaic affair, but for the fanlight and the detail imparted to the surrounding woodwork. It should be noticed that, in keeping with his delicate mouldings, the sash-bars are thin, in complete contrast to the more vigorous handling of his predecessors.
The delicacy of his detail was more appropriate to the inside of a house than to the outside, and nothing pleased him better than to design the whole decoration of a room-doors, chimney-piece, ceiling, plaster wall panels, lockplates and door handles, grate, and the whole of the furniture. Pretty, graceful, and refined, but rarely virile, his work appeals to the less tumultuous emotions ; indeed he made his mark not so much by his architecture as by his decoration, which exhibits extraordinary fecundity and fertility of design.
Stair Parts Design for Use in Smaller Houses, Town Houses, Exterior Features
Stair Parts. Fig. 201 The Court, near Bradford-on-Avon
IN the large houses which have been described in the preceding chapters, it has been impossible to avoid passing a certain amount of adverse criticism upon the manner in which comfort and convenience were often sacrificed to the claims of fine architecture in design of stair parts, as the term was understood during the eighteenth century. When we turn to the smaller houses this drawback is much less in evidence ; not because better architects were employed, for doubtless the unknown designers of these smaller buildings would have sinned equally with their more famous brethren, had the opportunity to do so come their way, but because the occasion demanded no great display, and there was no money wherewith to make it. Nothing more was wanted than a handsome-looking house with rooms of suitable size and number. It was very seldom that any great ingenuity was required of the designers. Two, three, or in the larger houses, four sitting rooms, a hall and staircase, a kitchen, back kitchen, and pantries usually completed the accommodation of, the ground floor; the floor above was occupied by bedrooms, which, if insufficient, were supplemented by others in the attic. There were no bathrooms, cloakrooms, or other sanitary conveniences ; it was not necessary to provide a fireplace to each room. The problems of design were therefore much simpler than those of the present day. There was no group of small rooms requiring a convenient yet inconspicuous situation: there was no need to struggle with single flues from isolated bedrooms,there was one staircase generally with carved stair parts which could not be led to the main stacks ; this difficulty was met by leaving the rooms without a fireplace. Nothing is commoner in old houses than to find two or perhaps three chimney-stacks, the position of which is determined by that of the sitting-rooms and kitchen, and to find that the bedrooms adjoining these stacks have fireplaces, while those away from them have none. As to sanitary conveniences, with the crude means of sewage disposal then in use, it was impossible to have them in the house ; it was only after the introduction of water-carriage that this could be done. In the ancient days of fortified houses it was of course necessary for them to be within the walls, and considerable skill was often displayed in placing them so as to be as innocuous as possible. On Elizabethan plans they were sometimes retained indoors, but they were obviously a source of annoyance and danger ; in later times they were removed outside, and in old houses, here and there, may still be found evidence of the handsome treatment provided for the family as distinguished from the servants. The bedrooms, as many old houses still testify, were provided with some variation and the stair parts carved designs of the chaise percee.
Stair Parts Fig. 202 The Church House, Beckley, Sussex
Stair Parts Fig. 203 House in The High, Oxford
Stair Parts Fig. 204 House at Shrivenham, Berkshire
Stair Parts. Fig. 205 House (now the Sea-Horse Inn) at Deene Northamptonshire