22 C O N T E X T 1 7 2 : J U N E 2 0 2 2 1John Summerson (1993) Architecture in Britain, 1530–1830 end of the 17th century with Hampton Court Palace. It was a much easier and less costly material than stone. From around 1700, symmetrically fronted Queen Anne small country houses began to appear. Even in rural counties like Lincolnshire, small country houses such as Little Grimsby Hall and Gunby Hall, both new builds of 1700, soon provided inspiration and influence, and pared-down copies began to emerge within 30 years in some quite isolated locations. The middle gentry in the 18th century used their wealth to build new houses in the latest fashionable taste. To achieve this required a decoding of the rules of architecture and proportion. As early as 1693 the Italian architect Andrea Pozzo published his Rules and Examples of Perspective Proper for Painters and Architects, with illustrations showing perspective and sections of architectural features. In 1728 James Gibbs produced his Book of Architecture containing Designs of Buildings and Ornament. According to Gibbs, designs could be executed ‘by any workman who understands lines’1. But there is little by way of technical advice other than in plates for window surrounds, in which the void for the window shows a semi-circle touching top and bottom as a guide to proportion. The book contains elevations and floor plans for what Gibbs calls ‘small but perfectly formed houses’. A wealth of builders’ pattern books began to appear, decodifying the mathematical rules of classical architecture by separating its elements into component parts and providing mathematical formulae. One of the first and best known is A Sure Guide to Builders: Or, The Principles and Practice of Architecture Geometrically Demonstrated, and made Easy, For the Use of Workmen in general, published in 1729 by the landscape gardener and author Batty Langley (1696–1751). Langley showed with dashed lines the ratio of each component of an architectural feature and advised how this related to the necessary correct proportions. The architect and builder William Halfpenny (died 1751) also produced pattern books. Between them Langley and Halfpenny published more than 50 books on architecture over a period of 30 years. The pattern books were aimed at gentry level, making what was once the sole preserve of the educated elite accessible to architects, masonbuilders, individual craftsmen and reasonably educated clients. Design codes abounded by the middle of the 18th century. Georgian dwellings were almost an exercise in designing by numbers. Classically derived design codes usually resulted in a harmonious elevation, pulled together by its fenestration. Windows could be designed either by using golden section, to the ratio of 1: 618, or as a double square, square-and-a-half or square. They could be set within the numerous styles of classical surrounds in either stone, or without a surround, or with rubbed bricks forming a subtly contrasting surround, with the window set beneath an elegantly splayed flat arch of gauged brick. In these the bricks would be carefully rubbed, with no two shapes the same, their shapes dictated by a radius taken from a point Little Grimsby Hall, 1700. The unknown architect of this fine Queen Anne house may be William Catlyn of Hull.
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