Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/341

 17 ., APML 26. -56.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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"back hair," that teaze, which is always "coming down," even when left to itself. And, by the by, there have been as many changes in the dressing of that natural ornament as in any other fashion ; for which changes we are indebted of late years to Her Majesty, the Empress Eugenie, and Jenny Lind, and I doubt not other illustrious person- ages are answerable for the anterior-dating va- garies.

Again, passing from the ladies to the " lords of the Creation," I should like to hear something about pigtails, pantaloons, and perriwigs ; and, above all, to know who first induced the genus homo to wear that everlasting chimney-pot he does on his head. Of course, in such minor matters as Wellington boots, Albert ties, Joinvilles, &c., there never will be much doubt as to what par- ticular epochs to refer them, or whence they de- rived, at least, their names. But in cases where such unmistakeable indices are not given to their origin, and as comfort and convenience are un- fortunately answerable for very few of fashion's vagaries, it becomes a matter worth noting to whom or to what circumstances we are indebted for the curious, and sometimes absurd, changes which take place from time to time in our manners, customs, and personal adornments.

R. W. HACK.WOOD.

THE UNKNOWN ARCHITECT OP NOTTINGHAM CASTLE AND WOLLATON HALL, NEAR NOTTING- HAM.

In the Rambles round Nottingham, now pub- lishing, the author arrives at the conclusion, founded on architectural and ornamental details of a remarkable character (such as the ornamenta- tion with busts of kings, queens, emperors, im- peratrices, lords, ladies, &c.), or alternation of the sexes, that both these places were built from de- signs, not of the parties to whom they are usually attributed, but of one Smithson, who flourished about the period of their erection. The castle referred to, the last Castle of Nottingham, dates, with respect to its building, about 1674 80; it is the same which was destroyed in the Reform Riots, 1832. The date on Wollaton Hall is, how- ever, 1588. The story goes that the castle was built by a Lincolnshire man named March, and decorated by a sculptor named \\ r ilson, whom a Lady Putsey fell in love with, and had dubbed Sir William to raise him to the rank of her lady- ship : whilst as respects Wollaton Hall it has always been attributed to the designs of the founder, Sir Francis Willoughby. The author of the Rambles round Nottingham, however, main- tains that the first was reproduced from a model left by Smithson, and that Sir Francis Willoughby adopted the designs of that architect, then living.

It may be remarked that Smithson's monument in Wollaton Church, which I think has never before been copied, appears to bear out the latter proba- bility :

' Here lyeth ye body of Mr. Robert Smithson, Gent., Architecter and Surveyor unto the most worthy House of Wollaton, with diverse others of great account. He lived in ye faith of Christ 79 years, and then departed this life ye xv th of October, Anno Dmi. 1614."

In case any of your correspondents may be unac- quainted with the life and works of Smithson, I subjoin the extracts from the Rambles :

" The hackneyed story that the architect of this castle was ' March, a Lincolnshire man,' a great unknown whose name there now remains nothing else to celebrate, has always appeared to us a gross absurdity. March may have been the builder. Be it so ; the man is now as mute as his bricks and mortar. In that age, however, which has seen Vanbrugh emulating the earlier flights of Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher Wren, England possessed ar- chitects whose works she would not willingly let die; and amongst the foremost of them the incomparable artist Smithson, whose fluent Gothic castle of Wollaton will yet be owned to be the ne plus ultra of British manorial ar- chitecture as it has already been transcribed by Baron Rothschild (at Mentmore) as the most illustrious ex- ample of the kind which money could enable him to follow in all this wealthy and aristocratic isle. We call it the English Feudal Flamboyant, and could swear that the same unknown architect who designed Wollaton for the Willoughbys devised the extraordinary facade of Nottingham Castle. If so, it was Smithson. Denny has preserved a copy of a plan of Nottingham Castle by Smith- son, taken in 1617, from which it has been alleged that the present building was completed in 1678-83, a long period, and the architect did not live to see one half of its accomplishment ; but then the inscription on the castle, preserved by a servant, bears out the fact of the work having been constructed [from a model." Rambles round Nottingham, part i. p. 37.

" In a former chapter we assigned some reasons for as- cribing to the architect Smithson from whose model the somewhat analogous structure of Nottingham Castle was framed the suggestion, if not the production, also of Wollaton Hall. We are perfectly aware that other traditions have been preserved, and that Sir Francis Wil- loughby, the founder, who seems undoubtedly to have been a man of taste and spirit, receives the credit of having designed the structure. Now when we are told that Mr. Ruskin, the great authority on modern Gothic architecture, is to build a house, we are told at the same time that he is to be assisted by an architect ; and it is our belief that if such a man existed as we have already ventured to describe, there can be no question that Sir Francis Willoughby, the Mecaenas of his day and district, would certainly consult him." Ibid, part iii. p. 100.

Smithson, who was born in 1535, would have been fifty-three at the date of Wollaton Hall ; his monument proves that he died in the service of the family twenty-six years afterwards. S. M. D.

DEFOE S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

Some time back my attention was drawn to a little book entitled An Abstract of the Re-