On Invention and Inspiration

This past Spring I had the opportunity to visit some English country houses with Clive Aslet, the writer; his book on Quinlan Terry was one of my first autodidact’s trips down the rabbit-hole, being inspired by classicist mannerism. Listening to him over a week, he’s clearly forgotten more than I’ll ever learn about English country houses… Eyford Park was a revelation (helped, not a little bit, by a warm spring afternoon, the pale local stone glowing in the sun’s low angle); a simple, symmetrical composition, reimagined thousands of times in colonial materials, but as you walked up to it, the power of its subtlety gets borne-in: nothing quirky or unusual—all well-known classical elements—but layered-on sparingly, the proportion and scale so elegant… And the mews—the car-court—much more offhand—no Palladian allusions here—but beautifully balanced nonetheless… Homewood, at Knebworth, was a house I thought I knew well from photographs, but seeing it in the flesh surprised me; so small, compared to your typical English country seat, and—until you walk around back—a rustic vernacular cottage, sided in bare elm clapboards…but, on the garden side a painted classical façade busts-out through the roof: Perhaps the best example I’ve seen (yet) of how inventive and inspired traditional architecture can be. And wonderfully playful with scale; the chair in the detail shot shows the scale; Those arc-topped French doors are less than head-height; the room behind is a (small) dining-room—you look out form a seated perspective—and doors in and out of the drawing-room next door are via the loggia, where your hair brushes the soffit as you walk under…all very deliberate, but just as drawn. At another country house—this one a big renovation—the severe Georgian garden façade is enlivened by a delightful mannerist flourish: The door’s architrave is “eroded” from flush, plain stone of pilasters, quoins and casing: The simple, beautiful molding of cove, pulvinated frieze and broken pediment are offset by the plain exclamation point of the keystone…note too the main floor’s double-hung sash; they look “normal” in the photo, but they’re huge—more than 7 feet tall by themselves—standing below 12-foot ceilings above… Even when Luytens worked on market-spec or “estate” housing, the invention in detail is so delightful; at first you notice lovely—if straight-forward detail; But then you see a stair-hall’s window break through the eave: Or a door-frame lifted twelve feet high over a transom, to light another stair-well: Or a rusticated archway, complete with beaux-artes triglyphs, leading you back to service court beyond (clearly just there as a whimsical delineation between two units, left and right)… Finally, a typical English country-house table-scape; museum-worthy little sculpture tossed on a window-sill, with some twine trying to hold the steel sash closed… Skylight photo at top, and window bay at bottom both from Ashby St. Ledgers…