Regency Household: A Parsonage House

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PLATE XIX DESIGN No XIV A Parsonage House THIS Design has a feature in which there is more of comfort than of architectural propriety The VERANDA belongs to Eastern and not to English architecture yet in some situations the large apertures rendered necessary by our climate require occasionally shelter and shade Lord Bacon's complaint when the quadrangular figure of our ancient houses yielded to more luminous and expanded forms that in these buildings one knows not where to become out of the sun was therefore not without reason the inconvenience however is too often obviated in recent practice by the misapplication of a cloister Foreign as the veranda is to the character of this style of Architec ture its aid has been borrowed in compliance with modern taste and as evidence that the author's prejudice in favour of ancient purity does not blind him to the interior advantages derived from such innovations or the comforts and conveniences which distinguish English houses of the nineteenth century from those of every other period and country of the world The dwellings of our smaller gentry three or four centuries ago were as inferior to those of the present day in capacity as in convenience The general disposition of their plans was as follows a passage or lobby running through the house with a hall on one side and a parlour beyond It may not be uninteresting to compare the warmth cleanliness and elegance of a country gentleman's house of this time with the internal economy of those of times by gone
and one or two chambers above on the opposite side a kitchen buttery and other offices The wals of our houses on the inner sides be either hanged with tapesterie arras worke or painted cloths wherein either diverse histories or hearbes beastes knots and such like are stained or els they are seeled with oke of our owne or wainscot brought hither out of the East countries whereby the roomes are not a little commended made warme and much more close than otherwise they would be As for stooves we have not hitherto used them greatlie yet doo they now begin to be made in diverse houses of the gentrie HARRISON The great hall was commonly strewed with marrow bones and full of hawk perches hounds spaniels and terriers The upper end was hung with fox skins of this and the last year's killing Here and there a pole cat was intermixed and hunters poles in great abundance The parlour was a large room completely furnished in the same style On a broad hearth paved with brick lay some of the choicest terriers hounds and spaniels One or two of the great chairs had litters of cats in them which were not to be disturbed Of these three or four always attended him at dinner and a little white wand lay by his trencher to defend it if they were too troublesome In the windows which were very large lay his arrows cross bows and other accoutrements His oyster table stood at the lower end of the room At the upper end stood a small table with a double desk one side of which held a church Bible the other the Book of Martyrs On different tables in the room lay hawk hoods bells old hats with their crowns thrust in full of pheasants eggs tables dice cards & c At one end of this room was a door which opened into a closet where stood bottles of strong beer and wine Answering to this closet was a door into a chapel which had been long disused for devotion but in the pulpit as the safest place was always to be found a cold chine of beef a venison pasty a gammon of bacon or a cold apple pie He drank a glass or two of wine at his meals put syrup of gillyflowers into his sack and had always a tun glass of small beer standing by him which he often stirred about with rosemary LORD SHAFTESBURY Few gentlemen's houses had more than two beds a house with three was thought to be very well provided By an inventory published in Strutt we learn that in the house of Mr Fermor the ancestor of the Earls of Pomfret the parlour which was wainscoted had a table and a few chairs the chambers above had two best beds and there was one servant's bed The best chambers had window shutters and curtains Mr Fermor being a merchant was probably better supplied than the neighbouring gentry

 

Design and description appeared in Hunt, T. F. (1826). Designs for Parsonage Houses, Alms Houses: Etc. Etc. with Examples of Gables, and Other Curious Remains of Old English Architecture. United Kingdom: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green.

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