Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/514

 A HISTORY OF SURREY

��which is entirely native to the soil. The hall door- way, flanked by three-light windows and distinguished by a double row of terra-cotta amorini above its head, is framed by a pair of half-octagonal terra-cotta but- tresses running up beyond the general lines of the elevations, and capped by domed pinnacles, having between them a high embattled parapet, forming as it were the centrepiece to the whole design. Yet the very centre of the composition, the facade of the first floor over the hall doorway, where a Palladian archi- tect would have put forth his full strength, is a blank expanse of brickwork.

The original windows are all of three lights, except in the projecting bays, and are worked in terra-cotta. All have transoms with trefoiled heads beneath them, but the upper lights on the first floor are trefoiled, while those on the ground floor are cinquefoiled. Heads, sills, and mullions are enriched with a line of Italian ornament in low relief, adding a peculiar dis- tinction to the work. The line of the first floor is marked by a string-course of Gothic section decorated with tuns (a Weston rebus) set in Italian floral scrollwork, and there is a similar string-course at the base of the parapet, but without ornament, except on the fa9ade of the hall. On the east and west sides of the courtyard this string runs just over the first- floor window-heads and below it and between the windows is a line of lozenge-shaped panels with leaf ornament. On the hall fa9ade, as formerly on the south front of the gatehouse range, the string is at a higher level, and the line of lozenge-shaped panels runs unbroken over the windows. The parapet itself is solid, ornamented with similar lozenge panels or with quatrefoiled panels ; its outline was originally broken by pinnacles, of which only the stumps now remain, while the higher parapet above the hall door has a further band of trefoiled panels containing amorini, and lozenge panels on the battlements. The masonry of the half-octagonal buttresses which flank it is moulded with cusped panels containing the initials of the builder, R.W., or bunches of grapes, and the same detail occurs on the bays at either end of the fa9ade of the hall, and on the north ends of the east and west wings ; otherwise the external eleva- tions of the house have no ornament, except the south elevation, where the existing parapet of the hall block is, however, of mid-iyth-century date. The model- ling of the floral ornament leaves little to be desired; but that on the quoins is markedly inferior, and the amorini are very stiff and clumsy and evidently some way from their Italian originals. That a good deal of this renaissance work was carried out by English workmen is known, as at Hampton Court, where, however, Richard Ridge and his fellow workmen wrought the pendants of the great hall roof of Henry VIII in masterly style ; but here at Sutton it must be confessed that the lesson has not been so thoroughly learned.

The terra-cotta work has, with little exception, stood nearly four centuries of English weather in a wonderful way. A good deal of the window tracery, especially on the external elevations, was at one time or another taken out and replaced by sash-windows, but these in their turn have nearly all given way to modern copies of the original work.

It seems probable that the principal alterations to the house, other than those of quite recent date, took

��place in the iyth century, after the sale of Clandon in 1641, and of Gatton in 1654, when John Weston had command of money. The parapet on the south side of the hail, with its large mill-rind crosses, is clearly of this time, the crosses being the arms of Copley, whose heiress married John Weston in 1637. A great deal of panelling in the house is also of this time, and the impaled arms of Weston and Copley are painted over the fireplace in the small hall in the west wing. The second or kitchen court was doubtless added at this time ; being set against the west side of the house, it is quite unpretentious, and makes no attempt to harmonize with the 16th- century work.

The partition walls dividing the original house were as usual of timber, the only internal masonry walls being those which separated the north and south wings from the eat and west. Apart, therefore, from the fire of 1560, the chances of alteration of the original arrangements must have been many, particu- larly as regards the staircases, none which now exist being older than the lyth century. The disposition of the house at present is that the principal entrance is from the court at the south end of the west wing, the doorway opening to a narrow lobby which leads directly to the small hall on the north, and going northward from the hall are successively a staircase, the dining-room, and the smoking-room. The dining- room is furnished with very good oak panelling, a recent importation, but the stair, which is good 18th-century work, has its south wall covered with early 17th-century panelling which seems to be in situ. The drawing-room is on the ground floor at the south-west angle of the old building, a fine modern room, and between it and the great hall is a lobby opening to a staircase in a projecting bay, the woodwork showing its date to be c. 1 700. This with the other staircases is doubtless part of the work of John Weston, 1701-30.

The great hall is approximately two squares on plan, and its arrangement, as already noted, is abnormal, as its entrance doorways on the north and south are two bays east of the line of the screens, and could never have opened into anything of the nature of a passage. The present panelling is in part of Jacobean date, and the rest of later 17th-century work with 18th- century alterations. From the inventory of 1542 it is clear that the hall was hung with tapestry, and there was probably no panelling in the first instance. But the principal attraction of the hall is its glass ; a great deal of this was evidently put in after the marriage of Richard Weston and Mary Copley in 1637, but some pieces are of earlier date, and may be in their original position, in which case they must have been made about 1530. Some also, which may have come from the royal manor-house at Woking, are apparently older than this, and there are Onslow arms and others which are doubtless added from various sources.

The set of Tudor arms and badges is extremely good, and the arms of Richard III as Duke of Gloucester also occur. The glass was repaired in 1724 by John Weston, and again in i844. 66a The fireplace is part of the original work, and has in its spandrels the Weston rebus and the pomegranate.

The east wing, as already noted, was practically abandoned for a long time, and only partly refitted early in the 1 8th century by John Weston, to whom

��664 For a complete and thorough description of it see Mr. Frederic Harrison's Annals of an Old Manor House,

3 86

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