Balusters, in general, are defined as the distinctive supports of balustrades (Pl. 1a). Renaissance balusters, unlike the extravagant varieties developed during the Baroque period, are simple in form, usually consisting of a double bulb, although single bulb variants known as ‘dropped’ balusters because of their low centre of gravity are not uncommon (Pl. 1b).

Balustrades can be found as parapets — fronting balconies or flanking staircases — and also as the decorative crowning features of façades. While they are physically sturdy, they are not blind architectural barriers, so that they are well suited in cases where through-vision is necessary but direct access undesirable. The balustrade, however, was only one of several possibilities for Renaissance architects. The traditional medieval railing, with colonnettes rather than balusters, was still in common use up to the end of the fifteenth century, while metal-work grilles and the open lattice or solid parapet wall provided further alternatives (Pl. 3j).

Inigo Jones’s tour of Italy from 1613 to 1614 in the retinue of the Earl of Arundel has long been recognized as a turning point in the architect’s career and no account of his life has failed to mention it. But despite the fairly clear picture that has been formed of Jones’s movements in Italy, by collating the evidence of dated notes in his surviving books with that of letters referring to the progress of the Earl of Arundel, one aspect of the tour still presents a puzzle.

It has been assumed that the return journey from Italy in 1614 was made through Provence. Notes by Jones in his copy of Andrea Palladio’s I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura (Venice, 1601) prove that he saw the two Roman temples at Nîmes and that he visited Arles. A sketch elevation in the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Drawings Collection shows that he went to the Pont du Gard (Pl. 7a); and a hitherto unpublished comment in his copy of Daniele Barbaro’s Commentary on Vitruvius at Chatsworth reveals that he saw the Roman theatre at Orange. But unlike many of the notes that Jones made on site in Italy, or made later recalling what he saw there, none of the Provence notes bears a date. Even the careful elevation of the Pont du Gard, which with its accompanying list of measurements would seem to be Jones’s most detailed study of an antique monument, is undated.

In July 1972 the Hon. John Baring, owner of The Grange, Northington, Hampshire, held an auction to strip the house of all its saleable fittings: the staircase, doors, fireplaces and marble cladding were all removed. He then proposed to demolish the building, one of the earliest Greek Revival country houses in Europe, but the public outcry was so considerable that in 1975 it was taken into guardianship by the Department of the Environment. The house remained roofless and derelict until 1979–80 when the Department commissioned an independent architect, Donald Hankey, to restore the roof and exterior of the main east block and conservatory. The restoration presented a unique opportunity to examine the building in detail, revealing a great deal about the original seventeenth-century mansion, and how it had been converted to a Greek temple. The following account concentrates on the structural changes which took place in the main east block and in the conservatory. Some new information has also come to light about the gardens. The nineteenth-century extensions to the west of the house are omitted because they were demolished between 1972 and 1979, before restoration began.

The sudden appearance of the sash-window on the architectural scene towards the end of the seventeenth century and the speed with which this most ingenious product of seventeenth-century building technology spread over half of the Western world in the course of the next century, have always surprised the modern observer. Yet, despite much speculation, neither the sash-window’s inventor nor the date and place of its first appearance are known.

Among the many theories that have emerged in the one and a quarter centuries since the origin of the sash-window became a subject of serious discussion in letters to the editor of Notes and Queries, several have so little foundation in fact that they can be summarily dismissed. Other theories, although equally devoid of a sound factual base, at least rise to the level of informed conjecture and as such deserve further consideration.

Several attempts have been made to identify the source, or source areas, for the sepulchral chapel which Johann Philip Franz von Schönborn, Prince Bishop of Würzburg, erected between 1719 and 1724 for himself and his family in the northern transept of his cathedral (completed 1729–36). (Pl. 38b). Christian Otto, in his recent book on Balthasar Neumann’s churches, considering the scheme of the circular chapel opening laterally into two ancillary spaces with oval ground plans (Pl. 35b) and surmounted by an externally visible dome (Pl. 40b), concluded that Neumann may have been inspired by ‘a number of buildings in Italy, France and Germany’, and that ‘although the list of possible sources reflects his broad acquaintance with European architecture, yet only the most generalized relations to any specific prototype can be ascertained. The chapel remains distinctive and personal’. This raises two questions. First, is it futile to search for an individual prototype for the Schönborn Chapel? And second, can Balthasar Neumann without any reservations whatever be considered its author?

Whereas Sanfelice’s first works in architecture, the decoration of the church of the Cappuccini di Pozzuoli and the construction of the church of the Periclitanti on the Salita di Pontecorvo, date from 1701–02, and his earliest dated stair of the doubled open sloping arcaded type, that added to the Seminario at Nardò for his brother the Bishop from 1723–24, it has recently been established that the first plans for the monastery at St Florian and its new staircase, along with plans for the monastery church, were submitted by Carlo Antonio Carlone during the winter of 1700–01. The staircase was itself begun (to a design different from that which was eventually followed by Prandtauer, Carlone’s successor, after 1707, but keeping the sloping arcade motif), between 1 January and 18 May 1701, dates recorded in the monastery building accounts for the delivery of granite steps. Thus the use of the doubled sloping arcade motif at St Florian (Pl. 41a) would seem to antedate Sanfelice’s activities as an architect in Naples, and certainly antedates his use of this motif in staircase design — Plate 41b shows the Palazzo Fernandes (probably) not actually by Sanfelice but a typical example. That is, however, a long way from saying that South-North influence can be replaced by North-South influence.

An important collection of over two hundred and twenty drawings relating to the former Cambridge University Library (1829–40) by C. R. Cockerell (1788–1863) has recently come to light in the present University Library. The material consists of 153 drawings which were mounted in three elephant folios by J. W. Clark when they were acquired from Cockerell’s widow in 1887; and seventy-odd drawings contained loose in a portfolio, of which at least some were passed to the University Library from the Fitzwilliam Museum by M. R. James in 1907. Since Cockerell has always been admired not only as an architect of genius but as a draughtsman of rare quality, it is a matter for rejoicing to be able to report a substantial addition to the corpus of his architectural drawings for a building which was a turning point in his stylistic development.

In late March 1860 Sir Edward Page-Turner, 6th Baronet, decided to rebuild his house at Battlesden Park, near Woburn, Bedfordshire. Sir Joseph Paxton, by then famous for his work at the Crystal Palace, was consulted. Having had his first job as a garden boy on the Battlesden estate in the days of Sir Gregory, Sir Edward’s uncle, he was a natural choice. Over-burdened with work and growing old, Paxton suggested his son-in-law, George Henry Stokes, instead, as architect for the project. Together the two men visited the estate and found the old house ‘almost a ruin’. An agreement was quickly reached to build completely afresh with Stokes as the architect, though Paxton appears to have maintained an advisory position throughout construction. By 1864 the new house was finished.

Henry Clutton trained under Edward Blore and inherited many of Blore’s clients. Like Blore, Clutton was a proficient designer of Tudorbethan country houses. Clutton, however, was one of the younger, bolder generation of architects and — with conviction and occasional brilliance — broke out of the rather dull Bloreian tradition in which he had been trained. His red sandstone castle at Ruthin, his early sixteenth-century château at Minley, his experiments with the vernacular ‘Old English’ style and his interpretation of the Jacobean country house, show an originality of which Blore was incapable.