Sunday 28 June 2020

THE ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSE ~ The Saloon




Generally a room for show and display, the eighteenth century saloon (which bears little relation to the drinking establishments of the ‘Wild West’) and nineteenth century picture gallery began life as the medieval solar before being transformed into the Great Chamber of the Elizabethan mansion. This large room was architecturally grand, being intended as a show-piece for large gatherings and semi-public assemblies of mostly masculine company. A good example of this is the High Great Chamber at Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, where plasterwork friezes and Brussels tapestries telling the story of Ulysses serve to remind the visitor of the insignificance of the human form. Difficult though it might be for a modern mind to comprehend, given its size, Hardwick was originally built as a hunting lodge. There are ‘banqueting houses’ in each tower, from where the spectacle of the chase could be observed – the fine gentlemen on their equally fine horses, the vociferous hounds, the beaters, yeoman prickers, archers and hawkers. In celebration of what has long been a favourite pastime of the privileged, Diana and her attendants thus grace a frieze in the High Great Chamber, setting out on the hunt through a magical green and leafy forest.


Hardwick Hall PD


Great Chambers were also used for feasting. In addition to the friezes, Hardwick has representations of the seasons of bounty on either side of the bay window: Spring, her flowers and other plants burgeoning into life, and opposite, the abundance of Summer. Between them stands, as it has done since the days of Bess of Hardwick, the heavy, famed eglantine table, its marquetry surface inlaid with boards for various dice and card games. In many such Great Chambers justice was also dispensed, taxes and rents collected and service orders issued on behalf of the local militia. Interestingly, although the ‘centre’ of the house in terms of formal ceremony and stewardship, the High Great Chamber at Hardwick is not in the centre of the house but to one side. In the Middle Ages such anomalies were overlooked, but a lack of order became less acceptable as architects looked for their designs to follow social precepts.

During the early years of the seventeenth century, the influence of Italian architect Andrea Palladio began to be seen in plans for English country houses. Now known as ‘Palladian’, one of his designs featured two large chambers, one above the other, in the centre of the house and smaller rooms then arranged in symmetry on either side. English architects immediately translated this as a central hall with a Great Chamber above, since the master would then be dining above his vassals in central dominion. Unfortunately for the lovers of symmetry, the typical English requirement for grand apartments for important guests and lesser accommodations for family did not easily adjust into this arrangement. However, it did adapt quite well for royal households, and once the advantages of symmetrical apartments for His and Her Majesty were recognized, a balanced arrangement of the two households could not but be the result. The Palladian plan was better suited to this end and soon began to be adopted by those lower down the social scale, leading to the decline of the old English style.

To begin with, the wealthy, with their need for display, could not resist ‘showing off’ the Great Chamber as a state room by the external means of a pediment with carved coat of arms or, better still, a grand portico! However, such conceits came at considerable cost. Around the middle of the sixteen hundreds, gentleman amateur Sir Roger Pratt designed a less ostentatious frontage at Coleshill House in Berkshire for his cousin, Sir George Pratt. Having spent five years on the Continent, he knew how French and Italian architecture was evolving, yet also understood what was required by the English gentry. At Coleshill, he built the house with a basement level. The ground floor then laid symmetrically, with a bedchamber, withdrawing chamber and parlour, all accompanied by inner closets, in three corners and steward’s room in the fourth. This allowed a two-storey Hall with Great Parlour behind, and above that, on the first floor, a Great Dining Chamber. A similar arrangement occupied the four corners, being a withdrawing chamber and three bedchambers with attendant closets. This was an adaptable arrangement, allowing for extra guest accommodation, be it withdrawing room, bedroom or parlour, as required. A long corridor dissected both floors between the Hall and Great Chambers, with back staircases at either end, a simple arrangement which was as yet an innovation. In order to maintain the symmetry, the main staircase was placed in the hall, and thus evolved the change from an eating room to a stately entrance, since it was now unfit for dining. The new style of entrance hall was also a magnificent ingress for the state chambers behind. Therefore the servants were moved to a servants’ hall beside the kitchen, which, along with the pantry, cellar, stores and offices, was in the basement. Externally, this great central purpose of the house was shown only by a flight of steps to the front door, a modest pediment and wider spaces between the windows.

Coleshill House, Berkshire PD


Staircase, Coleshill House
Country Life

Sir Roger designed three other houses after the Restoration of Charles II. The grandest was in Piccadilly for His Majesty’s first minster, the Earl of Clarendon. Once proclaimed the most magnificent house in England, Clarendon House was built on an H-shaped plan, with projecting wings to each side of a central pedimented bay. Due to the Earl’s position of power and the mansion’s prominent site, the design was imitated a great deal through the remaining decades of the seventeenth century. However, it had more influence on the style of country houses rather than the mansions of London. Belton House in Lincolnshire is perhaps the most celebrated example.


Clarendon House PD


Mentioned by Sir Roger Pratt in his writings, the saloon evolved from the ‘grand saloneduring this time. Created by Inigo Jones, the huge Double Cube room at Wilton House in Wiltshire was too gargantuan at thirty feet by sixty feet and thirty feet high to be copied in more than a very few residences, but the carved fruit and flowers on the panelling, the coved ceiling and the framed chimney-piece painting have all become standard fare. Yet, while some Great Chambers – for example, Knowle House in Kent – have elaborate panelling, as the seventeenth century progressed it became the custom to display large family portraits on the walls in place of the tapestries much used in earlier centuries. (These latter had a practical as well as decorative purpose, for they helped to protect the occupants from draughts.) Apparently, it was not unknown for peers to have totally imaginary portraits painted of forebears in armour or courtly robes, in the hopes of passing them off as from the Middle Ages.

Saloons are not necessarily built on a grand scale. The large chambers of the end of the sixteen hundreds gradually dwindled in succeeding centuries. As we have seen,, they were often built in the centre of the house, in tandem with the entrance hall, the so-called ‘state centre’ as described by Mark Girouard, with apartments containing bedchamber, dressing room, drawing room and closet occupying the house’s four corners. Nevertheless, with the function of the saloon gradually changing from feasting to a picture gallery and reception room for important guests, so the panelling and horse-hair covers (chosen for their imperviousness to the odours of food) gave way to rich wall-hangings and upholstery of velvet and silk. Gilt-framed furniture, including pier-glasses, side-tables, chairs and settees, all placed with a nice eye for symmetry, were introduced by William Kent at Houghton Hall for Sir Robert Walpole and very soon were copied across England.

At Hanbury Hall in Worcestershire, there is no saloon, but the Great Hall meets the criteria of the Great Chamber. The house bears a nineteenth century stone, with the date 1701, in the centre of its grand Georgian façade, but this could be the date of completion of works most likely carried out for Thomas Vernon, who inherited the estate in 1679. His grandfather, Edward Vernon, acquired the estate in 1631, thus the core of the house is Baroque in style. However, the reconstructed house is built on the E-plan, double-pile or ‘state centre’ arrangement employed by Sir Roger Pratt at Clarendon House. The Great Hall at Hanbury is low and long; the walls are covered in stained pine panelling around a wide, black marble fireplace. Opening directly into the hall, on the western side, is a dark wooden staircase. Both walls and ceilings above the staircase are painted with scenes (very much in the Baroque style) depicting, respectively, the life of Achilles and an assembly of the gods, the work of Sir James Thornhill. The doorways leading off the hall have arched tops and the ceiling is painted with corner panels representing the Seasons, and trompe l’oeil domes. The eastern circuit of rooms originally formed the ‘State Apartment’ and included the Great Parlour (now the Drawing Room), the Lobby (now the Dining Room), the Withdrawing Room, Bedchamber and Dressing Room.

Staircase, Great Hall, Hanbury Hall
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Created by Sir Robert Smirke (architect of the British Museum) for the 1st Earl Somers, c. 1812 (opinions vary), Eastnor Castle in Herefordshire is a Gothic revival mansion. Some, not least Charles Locke Eastlake in A History of the Gothic Revival, viewed the house with a jaundiced eye, deeming it ‘a picturesque mistake’ as a residence. Indeed, as it was built with ‘exceedingly small and narrow’ windows, the lack of light must have caused considerable inconvenience, especially in the winter months. The castle is large and symmetrical, with ‘round, or rather quatrefoil, angle towers and a boldly raised centre.’ (Nikolaus Pevsner) For the purposes of this article, however, the main point of interest lies at the centre of the building. The Great Hall, approached via the main entrance hall, measures up to the proportions of a Great Chamber. Sixty feet long and sixty-five feet high, it reaches up three storeys and has but a single row of windows, high up, decorated with Venetian tracery. On a sunny day, the sunshine blazes down upon carved walnut benches, tables and chairs, designed by Robert Smirke for the house, and the highly decorated walls and furnishings introduced by G. E. Fox in the 1860s. Above the doorway from the entrance hall is a gallery supported on polished columns. Two suits of armour guard the arched doorway into the Octagon Room and, interestingly, given the later function of the Great Chamber as a picture gallery, various portraits also adorn the walls. There is a State Apartment on the first floor, including a bedchamber with walnut canopy bed and wardrobe, and adjoining it, a luxuriously appointed bathroom. It would seem that this variant on the ‘state centre’ was not unusual.

Great Hall. Eastnor Castle
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Great Hall, Eastnor Castle
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Travelling across Herefordshire to the tiny village of Yarpole, we find a real castle that still has connections with the family it was named for. Croft Castle is a large, irregular quadrangle in shape, built in either the late fourteenth or early fifteenth centuries, with some sixteenth or seventeenth century windows, although most are now sashed. The entrance, thought to have originally been a carriage archway into the inner courtyard, is now into a hall, added in about the mid eighteenth century. (The porch is a much later addition of 1914.) While some of the panelling and woodwork is Jacobean and late seventeenth century (notably in the Oak Room) and the Drawing Room has early eighteenth century panelling, most of the furnishings date to the Georgian era, c. 1750-60, when the house was renovated to transform it into a country mansion. It was during this time that the sash windows were added, along with much of the interior decoration, such as the rococo ceiling in the Oak Room, the painted panels in the Blue Room, the painted bookcases in the library and the wonderful Gothic staircase with its stunning plasterwork. The chimney-piece in the Blue Room is also rococo, although the ceiling there is Gothic. There is no Great Hall or Great Chamber, despite the castle’s medieval origins, and although there is a saloon, it is not behind the entrance hall as we have seen before. It is a southern-facing room of fair proportions and adjoins the library, which is situated at the south-east corner of the house. It has a pretty, decorated fireplace, moulded ceiling and frieze, Georgian sofas and chairs as well as gorgeous carpets and furniture. Several paintings – mostly portraits – hang in the saloon, which has doors leading to the Blue Room and the corridor serving the wing. It is certainly a room for entertaining, and it is easy to imagine the carpets being taken up, the chairs pushed back and for dancing to take place on the polished floorboards, as was often the custom in houses of the Georgian era lacking a ballroom or large gallery.


Croft Castle, East Front
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Saloon Fireplace, Croft Castle
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Although State Apartments as described above are not in the floor plan of Croome Court in Worcestershire, the piano nobile (principal floor) constructed by Lancelot Brown does have a state centre. The saloon is a light and airy room, set directly behind and leading from the entrance hall via a ‘screen’ of four fluted Doric columns and a cross-corridor that reflects the layout of the seventeenth century. Facing on to the south garden front, where a wide flight of steps are guarded by a pair of Coade stone sphinxes, the saloon has plasterwork painted gold, white and green. The coved ceiling is composed of three plain panels (by Francesco Vassalli) and, symmetrically placed on either side of the central doorway, are two fireplaces with fluted Ionic chimney-pieces. Brown was responsible for the understated nature of the decoration, with deep moulded cornices, elaborate mantels generally of Rococo design and, for the most part, unpedimented door-cases also carved on fluted columns. The broken pediment over the saloon door is one exception.

Broken pedimented door-case, Saloon into Hall
Croome Court, Author
Saloon, Croome Court
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Hagley Hall, still home to the Lyttelton family, was also built with a saloon set behind the entrance hall, a corridor crossing between them to east and west staircases (as with Coleshill House), there being two overlapping circuits of rooms, one public and one private. The saloon is now the Crimson Dining Room, but was the start of the public circuit. Owning a fine Rococo ceiling of clouds and cherubs, it also boasted garlands and trophies decorating the walls. Such topics as painting, gardening, drama, music, literature and archery were represented by the trophies. A white and Siena marble chimney-piece surmounted on Ionic columns graced the fireplace and between the windows hung mirrors with stucco frames.

Motifs of fruit, flowers, animals, mythological creatures and classical figures, as used by Robert Adam at Saltram House, where honeysuckle and gryphons were repeated on chimney-pieces, cornices, carpets, chair frames, ceilings and even door furniture, were much copied. His use of colour on ceilings, where once the Rococo plasterwork had been painted a single shade, was also revolutionary. Moulded ceilings in Neoclassical design could not provide the same contrasts of light without the depth provided by colour, and thus Adam found inspiration in Greek and Roman temples for the strong pinks, blues and greys, accented by hints of black and red. Equally, as the fashion for picture galleries took hold, strong colours such as bright red or dark green became popular as background hues to set off gilt and carved frames where little wall space can be seen. Indeed, Sir Joshua Reynolds, when President of the Royal Academy, is said to have specified bright red silk damask for the galleries in that august establishment. It was an age of the best in English craftsmanship, for the attention to detail so important to Robert Adam was reflected in the gilt and carved borders used to hide the nails securing the silk, and in the manner in which those borders were shaped around door-cases and chimney-pieces.

Adam’s work naturally inspired other architects and, in due course, his ideas were adopted across England. At Berrington Hall, Herefordshire (built c. 1775), there is no saloon but the library ceiling is decorated in circular panels containing representations of famous authors, there are painted medallions on the upper walls, the carpet is patterned in bright red, blue and white, and the bookcases are decorated with white and gilt moulding.

Medallions and Frieze, Library, Berrington Hall
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Carpet, Library, Berrington Hall
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Library Ceiling, Berrington Hall
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At Carlton House, modernised extensively (and at vast expense) in 1788, with further improvements made in 1815, the Prince of Wales commissioned John Nash to take these earlier ideas several stages further. Modest furnishing was not to Prinny’s taste, of course, and every room was decked out in the grand style. The suite of State Apartments were particularly magnificent and included, ‘...on the upper floor... the circular cupola room, of the Ionic order; the throne-room, of the Corinthian order; the splendid ante-chamber; the rose-satin drawing-room, &c., all of which were furnished and embellished with the richest satins, carvings, cut glass, carpetings, &c..’ (Old and New London, Vol. IV by Edward Walford, 1873). On 5th February 1811, the day of the Prince’s inauguration as Regent, The Memoirs of George IV (Robert Huish, 1831) tells us, the Prince was escorted in grand procession by members of his household, his council and the Royal Dukes through the Circular Dining Room ‘into the grand saloon (a beautiful room in scarlet drapery, embellished with portraits of all the most distinguished admirals who have fought the battles that have given us the dominion of the seas); and here the Prince seated himself at the top of the table, his royal brothers and cousin seating themselves on each hand according to seniority, and all the officers of his household, not privy councillors, ranging themselves on each side of the entrance to the saloon.’ This grand saloon is more customarily ascribed the Crimson Drawing Room and is very grand indeed. The traditional function of the Great Chamber could hardly be better upheld, for not only was the above ceremony performed in these opulent surroundings, on 2nd May 1816, the Crimson Drawing Room also saw the Princess Charlotte marry Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. Pomp and ceremony could scarcely be of a higher degree!

Crimson Drawing Room, Carlton House PD



© Heather King

All pictures are the property of the author unless otherwise stated and may not be copied without the expressed permission of the owner.

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