Newton House

[7] Newton has a big square plan which appears to be entirely of 1582; there seem to be no signs of additions, such as vertical joints in the exterior masonry. In the two lower stories of the house really are all of one build, the plan represents a very remarkable combination of ideas. Other houses which were built locally between 1580 and 1630, were all built on H or half H plans, that is they have a main range and two cross-wings, all one room thick. Compact square or rectangular plans of this sort are found in the last quarter of the 16th century in England. How common such plans were towards the close of Elizabeth's reign remains to be discovered; if the disputed example of Gaythorne Hall, in the remote county of Westmorland, could be satisfactorily established, the equally remote Newton would be easier to accept. Even this would not resolve the further difficulty caused by an important difference between Newton and any other block-plan houses, that whereas the hall in Whitehall and its successors has no more than the normal height of any ground-floor room, in Newton it preserves something of a medieval aspect by rising through two storeys. Before discussing the significance of this, however, it will be as well to describe the house in some detail.

The house is entered on the south side through a short projecting wing the full height of the building and which, on the ground floor, is divided between a porch and a small room about 8 ft. x 10 ft. The doorway into the hall, like the outer doorway of the porch, has moulded jambs and a four-centred head with simply carved spandrels ; it now leads into the present entrance hall, on the left of which is an early 17th century screen with classical columns. At the north end this screen was destroyed in the early 19th century to make a staircase, and, about a century earlier, had been altered by the insertion of a late 17th or early I8th century pedimented door head which opens into the hall. At the far end of the hall is a dais one step up from the floor, and at the side is the fireplace with its inscription and the date 1582. It is the position of the fireplace which links Newton with the other local houses. Opening off the dais is a staircase of the early years of the 18th century, perhaps as early as c. 1700 and contemporary with the pedimented doorway. Behind the hall, and originally entered by a door (now blocked) at the foot of the stairs, is the parlour, in which is a fireplace added in the late 17th century or c.1700; it has bolection-mouldings. The remaining ground-floor room, in the north-east corner, is and no doubt always was the kitchen. Just how the first and second floor rooms were used is now largely a matter of conjecture. Evidently the `great chamber,' the largest  upper room of an Elizabethan house and one which was normally on the first floor above the hall, was necessarily on the second floor (plan, Fig. 6) ; it had a large west window, now blocked and a ceiling with moulded plaster decoration of which some pendants remain. The remaining rooms were no doubt bedrooms with the exception of the room on the first floor which is entered from the staircase; this, if it were heated originally, will have been some sort of parlour or lesser-chamber. As built in 1582 the house no doubt had gabled elevations (Fig. 7).

To return now to the problems presented by the ground plan, it is clear that Newton does not make anything like so sharp a break with its medieval past as some other contemporary houses. Whatever uncertainties may be felt about the screens end, the general relation of the main elements at the front accords perfectly with the traditional planning of ruling-class houses in the county. Moreover the incorporation of a porch into a shallow wing at the service end suggests that the small room by the porch at Newton may have been one of the two customary service rooms, the buttery or the pantry; that the other one of these rooms was next to it, lit by a window in the east wall ; and that a passage led from porch to kitchen with a secondary passage to the side door. Since the kitchen had to be close to the service rooms its present position is the only possible one in a squarish plan ; and it follows that if any consideration were given to the economical disposition of chimney stacks or to an effective architectural grouping of them above the roof, the obvious position for the parlour is the present one, in which its hearth utilises the same stack as the hall. In this connection we assume that the present impressive group of six stacks dating from the late 17th century succeeds an earlier (and lower) attempt to achieve the same kind of architectural effect. [8]

By these arguments the unusual position of the staircase, opening off the upper rather than the lower end of the hall, can be accounted for. There was probably a subsidiary staircase at the service end of the house before the present one, mutilating the screen, was built.

It is thus possible to rationalise the individual elements of Newton once the extraordinary fact of a square or nearly square plan is accepted. But the hall screen, though not impossible for 1582, is so like the one at Gwernyfed that it is likely to be of the early I7th century, say c.1610-1620; could this be the date of the house, and the fireplace lintel be reused ? 'This would mean that Edward Games, son of Sir John pulled down a house that his father had spent enough money on to the rather vainglorious inscription, no more than 50 years after the work was done. It is possible, but unlikely and even more unlikely by that date is so lofty a hall. In any case Sir John Games seems the most likely member of his family to have built a house so extravagantly large by local standards. Such few details as are available of his career suggest he was typical of the emerging gentry class, proud, ruthless and brutal, ambitious to establish his descent and his posterity alike. The lofty hall will have been needed to maintain what was still in some respects a feudal or at least medieval way of life, no doubt with a body of liveried servants. He cannot be fitted into the classes of person who built square or rectangular block-plan houses in England during the reign of Elizabeth and James I - the lesser gentry, merchants, lawyers, and the men indifferent to or excluded from the Court - but then Welsh gentry did not conform to the English social pattern, so this is hardly surprising. Even so, the adoption by such a man of even a modified form of square plan is surprising.

Little need be said about the changes Newton has undergone. Much was done towards the end of the 17th century and has been mentioned previously. Other notable changes at that time were the heightening of the central chimney stack, the building of six new square chimney stacks in the latest or at least a recent fashion, and the provision of a new pyramidal roof of a kind that was apparently much favoured in Wales at this time. This last probably replaced original gables.