Stair Parts Fig. 212. Sign of the Swan Hotel, Market Harborough
Fig. 213. The Sign of an Inn at Salibury
In most of the county towns the gentry of the district used to have their winter residences, to which they repaired when the state of the roads rendered locomotion difficult. It must be remembered that the roads in those days, except the most important, were little more than tracks across the country; nothing was done to make them hard or permanent-they merely traversed the natural soil. " Where there is good land there is foul way," was a saying of the time ; and conversely, where the ground was stony the roads were fairly hard. Horace Walpole, among other writers, recounts the difficulties he experienced on country roads in bad weather, and this condition of things accounts for the number of horses which, according to old prints, were harnessed to family coaches. These in their turn were built in a strong and heavy fashion, in order to withstand the shocks to which they were inevitably subjected. When the wet weather came on, families who lived in country houses betook themselves to the town for society and amusement. In places like Nottingham and Derby there still remain a fair number of houses which were built for county magnates, but in every instance they have been diverted from their original purpose and have become business premises. This affords another proof, if such were needed, that no lay out can be expected to retain in perpetuity its original character. Half the squares of London point the same moral.
Stair Parts. Fig 214. Ralph Allen’s House at Bath
Stair parts. Fig 215 The Aylesford Hotel, Warcick
Staircase (Stair Parts) Design in the Notable Houses of Bath
Stair Parts. Fig 216 Shops at Cirencester
No doubt the house at Warwick, which, for the time being, is the Aylesford Hotel (Fig. 215), was built for some such purpose as has just been indicated ; it is a handsome and interesting example of the early part of the eighteenth century. Just outside the east gate is the house where Walter Savage Landor was born in 1775. Another house of the same kind is that of Ralph Allen at Bath (Stair Parts Fig. 214), which is an architectural composition on the design of stair parts gave a much greater pretensions, now almost hidden from public view. It will be remembered that his country house was Prior Park.
Bath, of course, is full of good examples of town houses ; but Bath was much more than a town to which the neighbouring gentry resorted for the winter. It was a fashionable watering place, and provision had to be made for visitors throughout the year. Some of its buildings have already been mentioned, but the accompanying engraving of Milsom Street (Stair Parts Fig. 211) gives a good idea of its street architecture, devoted partly to residential purposes and partly to business premises. This mixture of dwellings and shops is still met with in old-fashioned towns, where the principal streets are made up of houses-some large and some small-interspersed with shops and inns. But in places where factories are introduced and the population increases, the universal tendency is towards the multiplication of shops and the diminution of houses. Every growing town experiences this change. As the houses part with their tenants, whether through death or otherwise, they are either converted into shops and offices, or they are pulled down to make room for tradesmen seeking the best situations for their business ; the tradesmen themselves seek the cheaper and larger spaces and simple stair parts for houses of the suburbs for their own dwellings. The intentional combination of shop and dwelling, such as those at Cirencester (Fig. 216) or Cheltenham (Fig. 217), seldom occurs in the present day, when by-laws require for a house a certain amount of open space which can be more profitably used for business pure and simple. In the example from Cirencester the ground story, if not actually of the same date as the superstructure, has been skilfully designed to harmonise with it, and appears sufficiently sturdy to support it. But most tradesmen of the present day require so much room for the display of their goods, that they grudge every inch given to the purposes of support, and they would regard with equal disfavour the columns employed at Cirencester and the caryatides at Cheltenham.
Eighteenth-Century Shops
Stair Parts. Fig 217. Shops Montpellier, Cheltenham
Needless to say, the little old-fashioned shop fronts with small panes are quite out of the question in the present day, except for a very few trades. They would fill a modern shop fitter with contempt, yet there is something quite refreshing about such a front as that at Wareham (Stair Parts Fig. 218) or that at Dorking (Stair Parts Fig. 219). The outward curve, according to the simple ideas of the time, brought the goods into prominence, and when as yet it was unnecessary for rivals to shout each other down, the modest depth of the frieze was sufficient to display the name and calling of the occupier. The delicate ornament in the cornice is in scale with its surroundings, but it would be out of place on the top of a sheet of plate glass two or three hundred feet in area, or surmounting a name board with letters two feet high.
Shop Fronts
Stair Parts. Fig 218. Shop in East Street, Wareham, Dorset
Stair Parts. Fig 219. Shop Front at Dorking, Surrey