Prodigy houses are large and showy English country houses built by courtiers and other wealthy families, either "noble palaces of an awesome scale"[1] or "proud, ambitious heaps"[2] according to taste. The prodigy houses stretch over the periods of Tudor, Elizabethan, and Jacobean architecture, though the term may be restricted to a core period of roughly 1570 to 1620.[3] Many of the grandest were built with a view to housing Elizabeth I and her large retinue as they made their annual royal progress around her realm. Many are therefore close to major roads, often in the English Midlands.
The term originates with the architectural historian Sir John Summerson, and has been generally adopted. He called them "... the most daring of all English buildings."[4] The houses fall within the broad style of Renaissance architecture, but represent a distinctive English take on the style, mainly reliant on books for their knowledge of developments on the Continent. Andrea Palladio (1508–1580) was already dead before the prodigy houses reached their peak, but it has conveniently been said that his more restrained classical style did not reach England until the work of Inigo Jones in the 1620s, and that as regards ornament, French and Flemish Northern Mannerist decoration was more influential than Italian.[5]
Elizabeth I travelled through southern England in annual summer "progresses", staying at the houses of wealthy courtiers,[6] on these trips she went as far north as Coventry, and planned a trip to Shrewsbury (where she planned on watching plays staged by Thomas Ashton), but this leg was cancelled because of illness.[7]
The hosts were expected to house the monarch in style, and provide sufficient accommodation for about 150 travelling members of the court, for whom temporary buildings might need to be erected.[8] Elizabeth was not slow to complain if she felt her accommodation had not been appropriate, and did so even about two of the largest prodigy houses, Theobalds House and Old Gorhambury House (the former destroyed, the latter ruined).[9]
Partly as a result of this imperative, but also general increasing wealth, there was an Elizabethan building boom, with large houses built in the most modern styles by courtiers, wealthy from acquired monastic estates, who wished to display their wealth and status.[10] A characteristic was the large area of glass – a new feature that superseded the need for easily defended external walls and announced the owners' wealth. Hardwick Hall, for example, was proverbially described as "Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall."[11] Many other smaller prodigy houses were built by businessmen and administrators, as well as long-established families of the peerage and gentry. The large Doddington Hall, Lincolnshire, was built between 1593 and 1600 by Robert Smythson for Thomas Tailor, who was the recorder to the Bishop of Lincoln; "Tailor was a lawyer and therefore rich", says Simon Jenkins.[12]
Some recent uses of the term extend the meaning to describe large ostentatious houses in the United States of later periods, such as colonial mansions in Virginia, first so described by the American writer Cary Carson.[13]
Style
In many respects the style of the houses varies greatly, but consistent features are a love of glass, a high elevation, symmetrical exteriors, consistency between all sides of the building, a rather square plan, often with tower pavilions at the corners that rise above the main roofline, and a decorated skyline. Altogether "...a strange amalgam of exuberant pinnacles and turrets, native Gothic mullioned windows, and Renaissance decoration."[14] Many houses stand alone, with stables and other outbuildings at a discreet distance. Glass was then an expensive material, and its use on a large scale a demonstration of wealth. The large windows required mullions, normally in stone even in houses mainly in brick. For the main structure, stone is preferred, often as a facing over brick, but some buildings use mostly brick, for example Hatfield House, following the precedent of Hampton Court Palace and other earlier houses. Though there were often reminiscences of the medieval castle, the houses were exceptionally without defences, compared to contemporary Italian and French equivalents.
To have two internal courtyards, requiring a very large building, was a status symbol, found at Audley End, Blickling Hall, and others. By the end of the Elizabethan period this sprawling style, essentially developing the form of late medieval buildings like Knole in Kent (which has a total of 7 courtyards), and many Oxbridge colleges, was giving way to more compact high-rising structures with a coherent and dramatic structural plan, making the whole form of the building visible from outside the house. Hardwick Hall, Burghley House, and on a smaller scale Wollaton Hall, exemplify this trend.[15] The outer exteriors of the house are more decorated than internal exteriors such as courtyards, the reverse of the usual priority in medieval houses. The common E- and H-shaped plans, and in effect incorporating an imposing gatehouse into the main facade, rather than placing it on the far side of an initial courtyard, increased the visibility of the most grandly decorated parts of the exterior.[16]
The classical orders were often used as decoration, piled up one above the other on the storeys over the main entrance. But, with a few exceptions such as Kirby Hall,[17] columns were restricted to such individual features; in other buildings, such as the Bodleian Library, similar "Towers of the Five Orders" sit at the centre of frankly Gothic facades. At Longleat and Wollaton shallow pilasters are used across the facades. A crib-book, The First and Chief Grounds of Architecture by John Shute (1563) had been commissioned or sponsored by "Protector Somerset", John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, and is recorded in the libraries of many important clients of buildings, along with Sebastiano Serlio's Architettura, initially in Italian or another language until 1611, when Robert Peake published four of the volumes in English.[18] The heavily illustrated books on ornament by the Netherlander Hans Vredeman de Vries (1560s onwards) and German Wendel Dietterlin (1598) supplied much of the Northern Mannerist decorative detail such as strapwork. It is evident from surviving letters that courtiers took a keen and competitive interest in architectural matters.[19]
Interiors
Inside, most houses still had a large hall in the medieval style, often with a stone or wood screen at one end. But this was only used for eating in by the servants, except on special occasions. The main room for the family to eat and live in was the great chamber, usually on the first floor (above the ground floor), a continuation of late medieval developments. In the 16th century a withdrawing room was usually added between the great chamber and the principal bedroom, as well as the long gallery. The parlour was another name for a more private room, and increasingly there were a number of these in larger houses, where the immediate family would now usually eat,[20] and where they might retreat entirely in cold weather. Although the first modern corridor in England was probably built in this period, in 1579, they remained rare, and houses continued to have most rooms only accessible through other rooms, with the most intimate spaces of the family at the end of a suite.[21]
Staircases became wide and elaborate, and normally made of oak; Burghley and Hardwick are exceptions using stone.[22] The new concept of a large long gallery was an important space,[14] and many houses had spaces for entertaining on the top floor, whether small rooms in towers on the roof, or the very large top-floor rooms at Hardwick and Wollaton. Meanwhile, the servants lived on the ground floor. This might be seen as a lingering memory of the medieval castle, where domestic spaces were often placed high above the soldiery, and viewpoints were highly functional, and is a feature rarely found in subsequent large houses for two centuries or more. At Hardwick the windows increase in size as the storeys rise up, reflecting the increasing status of the rooms.[23] In several houses the mostly flat roof itself was part of the reception spaces, with banqueting houses in the towers that were only accessible from "the leads", and a layout that allowed walking around to admire the views.[24]
Architects
The designers are often unclear, and the leading figures had a background in one of the specialisms of building. Sometimes owners played a part in the detailed design, though the age of the gentleman amateur architect mostly came later. Few original drawings survive, though there are some by the architect-mason Robert Smythson (1535–1614) who was an important figure; many houses at least show his influence. Robert Lyminge was in charge of Hatfield and Blickling. John Thorpe laid the foundation stone of Kirby Hall as a five-year old (his father was chief mason, and children were often asked to perform this ritual) and is associated with Charlton House, Longford Castle, Condover Hall and the original Holland House, and perhaps Rushton Hall and Audley End. The demand for skilled senior builders, able to design and manage projects or parts of them, exceeded supply, and, at least in the largest houses, they appear to have been usually given a great deal of freedom in deciding the actual design by their mainly absentee clients.[25]
The first "prodigy house" might be said to be Henry VII's Richmond Palace, completed in 1501 but now destroyed, although as a royal palace it does not strictly fit the definition. Hampton Court Palace, built by Cardinal Wolsey but taken over by the king on his fall, is certainly an example. The trend continued through the reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth, and into the reign of James I, when it reached its height. Henry was a prolific builder himself, though little of his work survives, but the prudent Elizabeth (like her siblings) built nothing herself, instead encouraging her courtiers to "...build on a scale which in the past would have been seen as a dynastic threat."[26]
Important political families such as the Cecils and Bacons were serial builders of houses. These newly-risen families were typically the most frenetic builders.[29] Sites were chosen for their potential convenience for royal progresses, rather than being the centre of landholdings, which were looked after by agents, or any local political powerbase.[30]
The term prodigy house ceases to be used for houses built after about 1620. Despite some features of more strictly classical houses like Wilton House (rebuilding begun 1630) continuing those of the prodigy house, the term is not used of them. Much later houses like Houghton Hall and Blenheim Palace show a lingering fondness for elements of the 16th-century prodigy style.[31]
In the 19th century Jacobethan revivals began, most spectacularly at Harlaxton Manor, which Anthony Salvin began in 1837. This manages to impart a Baroque swagger to the Northern Mannerist vocabulary.[32]Mentmore Towers, by Joseph Paxton, is an enormous revival of a Smythson-type style, and like Westonbirt House (Lewis Vulliamy, 1860s) and Highclere Castle (by Sir Charles Barry 1839–42, used for filming Downton Abbey), is something of an inflated Wollaton.[33] The royal Sandringham House in Norfolk includes prodigy elements in its mixed styles. Apart from private houses, elements of the prodigy style were popular for at least the exteriors of all other types of public buildings, and office buildings designed to impress.
Many of the houses were later demolished, in the English Civil War or other times, and many smothered by later rebuilding. But the period retained a prestige, especially for families who rose to prominence during it, and in many the exteriors at least were largely retained. The north fronts of The Vyne and Lyme Park are examples of a slightly incongruous mixture of the Elizabethan and Palladian in a single facade.[34]
The houses attracted criticism from the first, surprisingly often from their owners. The flattering poem To Penshurst by Ben Jonson (1616), contrasts Penshurst Place, a large and important late medieval house that was extended in a similar style under Elizabeth, with prodigy houses:[35]
Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show, Of touch or marble; nor canst boast a row Of polished pillars, or a roof of gold; Thou hast no lantern, whereof tales are told, Or stair, or courts; but stand’st an ancient pile, ...
And though thy walls be of the country stone, They’re reared with no man’s ruin, no man’s groan; There’s none that dwell about them wish them down; But all come in, the farmer and the clown, ...
Now, Penshurst, they that will proportion thee With other edifices, when they see Those proud, ambitious heaps, and nothing else, May say their lords have built, but thy lord dwells.
As new fashions in architecture took over, the prodigy houses came to seem old-fashioned, and by the standards of Palladian architecture often over-fussy and over-decorated. Even though the style was being revived in his time, in 1905 the American architectural historian Charles Herbert Moore held that: "While one great house of the period differs from another in unimportant ways, those in which ornaments are extensively applied are without exception disfigured by them. The Elizabethan architectural ornamention is at once pretentious and grotesquely ugly." In particular "few are more tasteless and pretentious than Woolaton Hall", which he analyses.[37]
Earlier, Compton Wynyates (begun c. 1481, greatly extended 1515–1525) was a resolutely unsymmetrical jumble of essentially medieval styles, including prominent half-timbering on the gables of the facade.[39] It also nestles in a hollow, as medieval houses often did, avoiding the worst of the wind. In contrast, prodigy houses, like castles before them, often deliberately chose exposed sites where they could command the landscape (Wollaton, Hardwick); their owners mostly did not anticipate being there in winter.
Georgian architecture is the name given in most English-speaking countries to the set of architectural styles current between 1714 and 1830. It is named after the first four British monarchs of the House of Hanover, George I, George II, George III, and George IV, who reigned in continuous succession from August 1714 to June 1830.
Harlaxton Manor is a Victorian country house in Harlaxton, Lincolnshire, England. It was built for Gregory Gregory, a local squire and businessman. Gregory employed two of the leading architects of Victorian England, Anthony Salvin and William Burn and consulted a third, Edward Blore, during its construction. Its architecture, which combines elements of Jacobean and Elizabethan styles with Baroque decoration, makes it unique among England's Jacobethan houses. Harlaxton is a Grade I listed building on the National Heritage List for England, and many other structures on the estate are also listed. The surrounding park and gardens are listed Grade II* on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. It is now the British campus of the University of Evansville.
In English architecture, mainly from the Tudor period onwards, a banqueting house is a separate pavilion-like building reached through the gardens from the main residence, whose use is purely for entertaining, especially eating. Or it may be built on the roof of a main house, as in many 16th-century prodigy houses. It may be raised for additional air or a vista, with a simple kitchen below, as at Hampton Court Palace and Wrest Park, and it may be richly decorated, but it normally contains no bedrooms, and typically a single grand room apart from any service spaces. The design is often ornamental, if not downright fanciful, and some are also follies, as in Paxton's Tower. There are usually plenty of windows, as appreciating the view was a large part of their purpose. Often they are built on a slope, so that from the front, only the door to the main room can be seen; the door to the servants' spaces underneath was hidden at the back. The Banqueting House, Gibside is an example.
Regency architecture encompasses classical buildings built in the United Kingdom during the Regency era in the early 19th century when George IV was Prince Regent, and also to earlier and later buildings following the same style. The period coincides with the Biedermeier style in the German-speaking lands, Federal style in the United States and the French Empire style. Regency style is also applied to interior design and decorative arts of the period, typified by elegant furniture and vertically striped wallpaper, and to styles of clothing; for men, as typified by the dandy Beau Brummell and for women the Empire silhouette.
Wollaton Hall is an Elizabethan country house of the 1580s standing on a small but prominent hill in Wollaton Park, Nottingham, England. The house is now Nottingham Natural History Museum, with Nottingham Industrial Museum in the outbuildings. The surrounding parkland has a herd of deer, and is regularly used for large-scale outdoor events such as rock concerts, sporting events and festivals.
An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a town house. This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these people, the term distinguished between town and country. However, the term also encompasses houses that were, and often still are, the full-time residence for the landed gentry who dominated rural Britain until the Reform Act 1832. Frequently, the formal business of the counties was transacted in these country houses, having functional antecedents in manor houses.
Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire is an architecturally significant country house from the Elizabethan era, a leading example of the Elizabethan prodigy house. Built between 1590 and 1597 for Bess of Hardwick, it was designed by the architect Robert Smythson, an exponent of the Renaissance style. Hardwick Hall is one of the earliest examples of the English interpretation of this style, which came into fashion having slowly spread from Florence. Its arrival in Britain coincided with the period when it was no longer necessary or legal to fortify a domestic dwelling.
Sir John Newenham Summerson, was one of the leading British architectural historians of the 20th century.
Robert Smythson was an English architect. Smythson designed a number of notable houses during the Elizabethan era. Little is known about his birth and upbringing—his first mention in historical records comes in 1556, when he was stonemason for the house at Longleat, built by Sir John Thynne. He later designed Hardwick Hall, Wollaton Hall, Burton Agnes Hall, and other significant projects. Historically, a number of other Elizabethan houses, such as Gawthorpe Hall and Chastleton House, have been attributed to him on stylistic grounds.
Rustication is a range of masonry techniques used in classical architecture giving visible surfaces a finish texture that contrasts with smooth, squared-block masonry called ashlar. The visible face of each individual block is cut back around the edges to make its size and placing very clear. In addition the central part of the face of each block may be given a deliberately rough or patterned surface.
The Jacobean style is the second phase of Renaissance architecture in England, following the Elizabethan style. It is named after King James VI and I, with whose reign it is associated. At the start of James' reign, there was little stylistic break in architecture, as Elizabethan trends continued their development. However, his death in 1625 came as a decisive change towards more classical architecture, with Italian influence, was in progress, led by Inigo Jones. The style this began is sometimes called Stuart architecture, or English Baroque.
Elizabethan architecture refers to buildings of a certain medieval style constructed during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland from 1558–1603. Historically, the era sits between the long era of the dominant architectural style of religious buildings by the Catholic Church, which ended abruptly at the Dissolution of the Monasteries from c.1536, and the advent of a court culture of pan-European artistic ambition under James I (1603–25). Stylistically, Elizabethan architecture is notably pluralistic. It came at the end of insular traditions in design and construction called the Perpendicular style in church building, the fenestration, vaulting techniques, and open truss designs of which often affected the detail of larger domestic buildings. However, English design had become open to the influence of early printed architectural texts imported to England by members of the church as early as the 1480s. Into the 16th century, illustrated continental pattern-books introduced a wide range of architectural exemplars, fueled by the archaeology of Ancient Rome which inspired myriad printed designs of increasing elaboration and abstraction.
The Tudor architectural style is the final development of medieval architecture in England and Wales, during the Tudor period (1485–1603) and even beyond, and also the tentative introduction of Renaissance architecture to Britain. It followed the Late Gothic Perpendicular style and, gradually, it evolved into an aesthetic more consistent with trends already in motion on the continent, evidenced by other nations already having the Northern Renaissance underway Italy, and especially France already well into its revolution in art, architecture, and thought. A subtype of Tudor architecture is Elizabethan architecture, from about 1560 to 1600, which has continuity with the subsequent Jacobean architecture in the early Stuart period.
Tudor Revival architecture, also known as mock Tudor in the UK, first manifested in domestic architecture in the United Kingdom in the latter half of the 19th century. Based on revival of aspects that were perceived as Tudor architecture, in reality it usually took the style of English vernacular architecture of the Middle Ages that had survived into the Tudor period.
Broughton Castle is a medieval fortified manor house in the village of Broughton, which is about two miles south-west of Banbury in Oxfordshire, England, on the B4035 road. It is the home of the Fiennes family, Barons Saye and Sele. The castle sits on an artificial island in pastureland and is surrounded by a wide moat. Across the small bridge lies the parish church of St Mary the Virgin, surrounded by its historic cemetery. A Grade I listed building, it opens to the public during the summer.
Burton Agnes Hall is an Elizabethan manor house in the village of Burton Agnes, near Driffield in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It was built by Sir Henry Griffith in 1601–10 to designs attributed to Robert Smythson. The older Norman Burton Agnes Manor House, originally built in 1173, still stands on an adjacent site; both buildings are now Grade I listed buildings.
Worksop Manor is a Grade I listed 18th-century country house in Bassetlaw, Nottinghamshire. It stands in one of the four contiguous estates in the Dukeries area of Nottinghamshire. Traditionally, the Lord of the Manor of Worksop may assist a British monarch at his or her coronation by providing a glove and putting it on the monarch's right hand and supporting his or her right arm. Worksop Manor was the seat of the ancient Lords of Worksop.
Mark Girouard was a British architectural historian. He was an authority on the country house, and Elizabethan and Victorian architecture.
John of Padua was an elusive figure of the English Renaissance who was employed at the courts of Henry VIII and his successor, Edward VI, during a period in which numerous foreign architects and artisans arrived in England, bringing with them the new concepts and evolutions of the Italian Renaissance as it spread across Europe. He disappears from the records after 1557.
Sir Charles Cavendish was an English landowner. He was a son of Bess of Hardwick and William Cavendish (1505–1557).
Airs, Malcolm, The Buildings of Britain, A Guide and Gazetteer, Tudor and Jacobean, 1982, Barrie & Jenkins (London), ISBN0091478316
Barbagli, Marzio, Kertzer, David I. (eds.), The History of the European Family: Family life in early modern times (1500–1789), The History of the European Family, 2001, Yale University Press, ISBN0300094949, 9780300094947, ISBN0300089716, 9780300089714, google books
Summerson (1993), Summerson, John, Architecture in Britain, 1530 to 1830, 1993 edition, Yale University Press Pelican History of Art, Yale University Press, ISBN0300058861, 9780300058864
Mark Girouard: Montacute House, Somerset (1964); Robert Smythson and the Architecture of the Elizabethan Era (1966); Hardwick Hall (1976); Robert Smythson and the Elizabethan Country House (1983); Elizabethan Architecture: Its Rise and Fall, 1540–1640 (2009)
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