Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Peter Mills was a highly qualified, prominent individual who played a not
insignificant role in taking English domestic architecture out of the Tudor/
Elizabethan models. He must surely have used his craftsmanship and influence
to help advance the skill base of his craft to a new level of use and quality. This
would have served as a springboard for the highly capable city bricklayers of
the post-Restoration Period, to be readily able to absorb and use the advanced
Dutch skills of refined gauged brickwork.
Godfrey (1946, 168) emphasises the contribution that Mills made to
architecture:
In 1639 a scheme of building in the new Italian style was started in Great Queen
Street and Lincoln's Inn Fields. The houses in the former have unfortunately
been pulled down. They appear to have been built by Peter Mills who in his early
career was bricklayer to the City of London, but rapidly acquired reputation as
surveyor and architect.
Of the Great Queen Street houses and Lincoln's Inn Fields, Summerson
(1947, 18-19) states:
The Great Queen Street houses were reputed, in the 18th century, to constitute
'the first regular street in London'. They laid down the canon of street design
which put an end to gabled individualism, and provided a discipline for London's
streets, which was accepted for more than two hundred years….
In Lincoln's Inn Fields… (Nos. 59-60) under the name of Lindsay House…is one
of the many buildings of the kind which is attributed (on the evidence of Colin
Campbell) to Inigo Jones himself. Its brickwork is covered with stucco, though
the fine brickwork of the original fore-court piers is still exposed.
Summerson (1953, 102) suggests the architect for this property may not have
been Jones, but rather the influential master mason, Nicholas Stone. Stone is
discussed below in possible connection with the introduction of early English
gauged brickwork. Peter Mills and Nicholas Stone, both of whom had worked
with Inigo Jones, were familiar with brick and stone at the highest level of
preparation and application; so it is not surprising that either man's name may
be placed against early English gauged brickwork.
The aforementioned forecourt brick piers are themselves of importance
and are mentioned by Gomme and Norman (1932, 97) as 'Two noble piers of
brick, surmounted by lofty carved stone terminals, stand in the courtyard and
were justly praised by Hatton in 1708'.
These 'noble piers', shown in Fig. 35 (restored by Nimbus Conservation
Limited), are of rusticated brickwork, which, if original, are an early exam-
ple of quality gauged work. It is most probable that the brickwork is later - 'It
