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The Architecture of
Wingfield Manor
By J. Alfred Gotch
Wingfield
Manor rivals its more famous neighbour, Haddon
Hall, in extent; but in some respects it is less
interesting, inasmuch as it is more ruinous and
has not the same variety of work to link it up
with all periods from the thirteenth century
onwards. Wingfield is practically all of one
date, having been built by Ralph Cromwell, Lord
Treasurer to Henry VI, about 1435-40. A glance at
the plan shows how ample the accommodation must
have been before the house was destroyed. There
are two large courts: the outer (or southern)
formed of barns, stables, guard-houses and other
inferior buildings; the inner (or northern), of
the hall, kitchen, and the chambers occupied by
the family.
 This
arrangement is an advance in classification and
it is one which controlled the planning of some
of the finest of the mansions of the Elizabethan
and Jacobean periods. Here, however, the courts
are irregular in shape and disposition. There is
no attempt at symmetry, nor much at alignment.
The outer court is entered at the south-east
corner and, although the gateway to the inner is
fairly central and is placed almost opposite to
the porch of the hall, there is little of that
accuracy of planning which marks the great houses
of a hundred and fifty years later. Some attempt
at alignment there is. For standing in the south
court, the eye obtains a vista through the large
arch of the gatehouse, across the north court,
through the porch and the doors beyond and so on
to the distant woods. There is a curious
variation from the customary relation of the
great hall and kitchens, caused by the insertion
on the upper floor of a large state apartment
between the hall and the servants' quarters. This
is an arrangement not usually found either before
or after this period. It does not mark the first
step in a new departure. The hall stands on a
vaulted undercroft and must have been a fine
room. It measures 71ft 7in long by 36ft 5in wide
and is considerably larger than the hall at
Haddon, which is 43ft by 28ft. It is now roofless
and ruinous, but the bay window (Fig. 1) and
porch, which still survive, are fine examples of
late  perpendicular work, as also is the
adjacent gable of the state apartment (Fig. 2).
There is nothing to indicate where the hall
fireplace was situated. The probability is that
it was in one of the long side walls but, even as
late as a hundred years after this time, fires
were sometimes placed upon central hearths and it
may have been so here.
The apartments, devoted to the use of the
family, which we should expect to find at the
upper end of the hall (in this case the east
end), did in fact once exist, as may be seen by
various indications on the building itself and
the adjacent ground, but they have all been
destroyed, leaving their extent and nature as a
matter for conjecture. They were reached by means
of the circular staircase at the north-cast
corner of the hall, which still retains the
doorways that led into them.
 The
undercroft beneath the hall is one of the finest
pieces of work left (Fig. 3). It is vaulted with
heavy stone ribs springing from columns down the
middle, and responds on the walls. The ribs meet
at the summit on large traceried bosses and the
junction of the ceiling-ribs with the wall-ribs
is emphasised in certain cases by carved
grotesques. In spite of the care bestowed upon
the work, there is no reason to suppose that the
undercroft was put to noble uses. It was, in all
probability, merely a cellar and store place. It
is approached from four directions: externally,
from under the porch and through the east wall,
whence there is easy access to the north-east
stair turret; and internally, from one of the
rooms beneath the state chamber and from the bay
of the hall (Fig. 4). As the buffet often stood
in the hall bay, this staircase gave easy access
for replenishing the buffet from the cellar.
 The kitchen department is well
supplied with rooms and with large fireplaces. A
straight passage led from the middle of the lower
end of the hall direct to the kitchen. It passed
beneath the state apartment, and along the side
of a small room which was probably the
"surveying place" or serving room,
since the wall is pierced with two large
openings, through which the dishes would be
passed and thence carried to the hall. The
kitchen itself has three huge fireplaces, in two
of which there are ovens. In later years it
became customary to place the ovens in a room by
themselves, called the "pastry." Some
of the walls and fireplaces in this part of the
house are clearly insertions and point to the
fact that the original means of cooking were
inadequate for the needs of the large household,
which found accommodation in the long ranges of
rooms, most of which are now destroyed.
The wing on the west of the inner court is
traditionally assigned to the use of Mary, Queen
of Scots, when she was detained in confinement
here from 1569 onwards, under the care of George,
sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, whose ancestor, the
second earl, had purchased the estate from the
builder of the house (See Historical
Essay). An interesting
light is thrown upon the sanitary habits of the
time by the fact that three weeks after her
installation at Wingfield she fell ill. Two
physicians deputed by the Privy Council reported
that the sanitary conditions of her quarters were
bad, whereupon her custodian, the Earl of
Shrewsbury, retorted that the evil state of her
rooms arose from the uncleanly habits of her own
retinue. There seems to be little doubt that, in
Elizabeth's time, the care bestowed upon sanitary
arrangements was not nearly so great as in the
preceding centuries. An examination of house
plans of the end of the sixteenth century shows
that the isolation of garde-robes or the
grouping of them together in separate towers was
no longer carried out. They were often placed
with a view to convenience of access regardless
of their unsavoury characteristics. In the case
of the particular complaint at Wingfield,
however, the inference is that they were not
sufficiently convenient for the views of Mary's
household and yet the west wing, which she is
said to have occupied, is well furnished with garde-robes
placed in the large square projections on
this face, two in each on each floor.
The gatehouses have each a large and a small
archway (Fig. 5), the large one for vehicles, the
small for foot passengers. This double archway
was now coming into vogue, and was very generally
adopted in gatehouses of the fifteenth century.
It indicates, among other things, that vehicles
had come into more general use. Adjoining the
outer gatehouse is a barn, still in excellent
preservation, and offering an interesting example
of this kind of building.
 Although the accommodation at
Wingfield is more elaborate than in houses of
earlier date, it is still rather roughly and
unscientifically thrown together, involving much
waste both of space and material. It is also
worthy of note that in spite of its great extent
and its magnificent rooms, the only staircases
were the old fashioned circular turret stairs of
no great diameter. There was indeed, as yet, no
other fashion to follow. For the ancient newel
stair held its own until the time of Elizabeth
when it was suddenly and without any transitional
form replaced by wide wooden staircases in
straight flights. England has no examples of the
magnificent development of circular staircases
which are to be seen in so many of the great
chateaux of France.
Wingfield, it is also to be noted, was
carefully built for defence. It stands nearly at
the end of a spur of land and the ground, on
three of its sides, slopes steeply away,
rendering access difficult. At the north end,
where the ground is in part rather flatter, it is
protected by a deep dry moat and a wall. The
south side is the most level and consequently the
outer and inferior court was placed on this side.
Even supposing that an attacking force gained
possession of this court, there was still the
mass of its north wing (Fig. 5) between them and
the principal part of the house. The only
internal communication between the two courts was
through an exceedingly narrow doorway leading to
a narrow crooked passage. The external walls of
the north court are practically devoid of windows
on the ground floor. Those of the hall and
adjoining rooms looked out on to a garden which
lay between them and the high wall overhanging
the moat. Here then, as in other houses, the hall
was placed in a secure position and one in which
it was possible to make use of large windows.
That this part of the house was tolerably secure
is proved by the fact that so much of it remains.
For when the place was besieged and captured
during the Civil War, it was the south court
through which the breach was made and entrance
was effected. It is to the Civil War that
Wingfield owes its destruction. For, having
caused some trouble to the Parliamentary forces,
it was ordered to be "slighted" and was
so far destroyed as to be rendered uninhabitable.
It passed from the descendants of the Earl of
Shrewsbury and the hall was for a time patched up
as a dwelling. Subsequently it was further
dismantled in order to build a new house at the
foot of the hill. Since then, time, as
destructive as siege-guns, has wrought further
havoc, for no more than "summer's honey
breath" can an unprotected building. But
fortunately in recent years the owners have
realised this, and have taken what steps they can
to arrest further decay by placing the manor in
the care of English Heritage.
Edited from J. Alfred Gotch's The
Growth of the English House (1909)
Historical Details
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