Staircases and garden steps

Front matter

LIBRARY

Brigham Young University

CBe Bouse Decoration Series i

Preface

In this, the third of The House Decoration Series, the same evolutionary plan as adopted in the preceding volumes has been adhered to. An endeavour has been made to show how the staircase developed in importance with the advance of art, suffered an eclipse when architecture was at a low ebb, and now gives evidence of receiving renewed attention.

While adopting the historical form, the aim in writing the book has been to point out that which is good in past work and present tendencies, and that which is bad, or carries the signs of weakness that leads to decadence.

It has been thought necessary to add a brief glossary of technical terms.

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

I. EARLY BEGINNINGS .... I

II. THE CASTLE TYPE . . . . 17

Chapter I

In Babylonia, that wonderful region of mud and sun-dried brick buildings, we find traces of well-designed stairways dating back to at least circa 6000 b. c. It must be remembered that the civil engineers and architects of those far-off days, in that cradle of civilization, went about their work with considerable deliberation. Their first care was to provide huge platforms of baked clay, platforms which were often staged, and whereon they erected a palace, a temple, or a group of dwellings clustering in orderly array around the public edifices. These platforms were usually many feet above the ground. For instance, at Tel-lo (Sirpula) the platform is 36 feet high. Not only were these reached by inclined planes, but also by broad ranges of steps. At Tel-lo the barrel-vaulted palace standing on its pedestal about 656 feet long, 139 feet broad and nearly 40 feet high, was approached both by inclined planes and steps. But that was not all. Tall towers of many stories were a feature of the local architecture, and these were served sometime by inclined planes winding heliacally round the outside. In other instances the successive floors were connected by means of short flights of stairs rising from storey to storey, usually clinging to the side of the walls. Both methods showed a stage of constructional art far in advance of those which gave us many types of staircases still prevailing in Europe until well past the Middle Ages. They were methods, however, which were the natural outcome of human dealings with far - stretching flat expanses and plastic building materials.

In ancient Egypt outside stairways were used for domestic purposes placed inside the courts against the dwellings. Sometimes there were two flights, right and left, flanking the building from one side to the other, meeting in the middle of the first floor on a common platform. In many cases, the stairs, steep and at right angles, interrupted by frequent small square landings.

In other regions other limitations led to the evolution of quite different modes of attacking the problems of ascent.

Arboreal builders, whether they placed their dwellings on platforms above the forest undergrowth, or amidst the forked branches of trees under the canopy and screen of foliage, resorted to the ladder method of access, suggested by the intertwined lianes and the stepped trunks of palms, with their spirally disposed diamondshaped butt ends of fallen leaves. These, starting from much the same point, would eventually evolve along quite opposite lines, as we shall soon see.

Then troglodyte man in many parts of the world imitated Nature in another of her moods, turning the ‘‘accidental” to his own ends. In all geological formations where caverns occur there is a tendency either towards stratification of rocks or a pitting of the cliffs surface, both of which inequalities assist man in his aspirations, and may be improved upon without much difficulty. Indeed it is not alone the Giant’s Causeway in County Antrim, that presents

I us with a stairway on a grandiose scale ; other basaltic outcrops, lime and chalk deposits provide the same lesson. With practical modesty cave-dwellers toilsomely carved deeper the crevices, systematised the pittings to provide foot and finger hold, so that they might gain their rocky refuges. This primitive step-making of the Ligurian troglodyte may be seen on the Riviera, where prehistoric dwellings are found on the shore, some close to the waves, others high up, and only approachable by precariously following clefts in the almost perpendicular face, with occasional assistance from man-made footholes.

The Pyrenees and Dordogne afford examples both of prehistoric and historic cave - dwellings side by side. In “Cliff Castles ” the Rev. S. Baring Gould, writing of La Roche Gageac, on the Dordogne just below Sarlat, says :

u The white Pirassic limestone dappled orange, fawn colour, and silver grey, rises 250 feet above the river, the lower portion is in terraces, very narrow, in which are the houses clinging to the rock, cramped between the Dordogne and the cliff which rises 140 to 160 feet above The old houses are Echeloned along the face of the rock, superposed the one on the other. The habitations are either partly or wholly caves, they do not reach half-way up the rock which overhangs to the west. In the face of the cliff are two castles built into its recesses : one pertained to the Bishop of Sarlat, and the other to the F6nelon family. Both were ideals of a stronghold in the Middle Ages, impossible to escalade or to undermine. The principal castle, that which belonged to the Bishop of Sarlat, occupies one of the profound horizontal furrows in the face of the rock, that are so common in the limestone and chalk formations. It consists of three towers, two of which are square, and one round, with curtains uniting them and a gate-tower, to which a flight of steps cut in the rock gives access for a part of the way. But to reach this flight one has to mount by a series of posts serving as steps driven into sockets in this rock, with only here and there a sustaining iron bar.”

He dealt with the subject even more picturesquely in his novel “ Noemi,” where he tells us :

“To make the position — the eagle nest

B in the rock — absolutely inaccessible to an enemy, the stair had been contrived so that it could be wrecked by those flying up it with facility, and that thereby they might cut off possibility of pursuit. The method adopted was this. Holes had been bored into the rock face in gradual ascent from the platform at the foot of the rock to the gate-tower of the castle, nestled on the platform in the precipice. In each such hole a balk or billet of wood was planted, sliced away below where it entered, and this end was then made fast by a wedge driven under it. From each step, when once secured, that above it could next be made firm. To release the steps a tap from underneath sufficed to loosen the wedge and send it and the balk it supported clattering down.”

At La Roche Corail, just below Angouleme on the river Charente, there are the remains of a once extensive cliff castle. Originally it was approached by steps cut in the face of the rock, most of them having openings communicating with internal galleries, so that unwelcome intruders could be pushed off with pikes or swords.

Much the same practices were adopted in other countries and other ages. Not only so, but we even find the principle adapted to more regular forms of architecture, as, for instance, when we see an outside stairway, supported on successive arches and clinging to the castle wall, break off abruptly, the void of the unfinished arch being bridged by a removable wooden platform.

A great deal of controversy has raged about the subject of the Round Towers in Ireland. Although the reason why the circular form (a difficult one in masonry) was adopted remains obscure, and suggests some observance of a forgotten religious custom, their actual use need leave no doubt whatever. They are always found either directly connected to or in close association with churches or monastic buildings. Clearly they were the storehouses and places of refuge for the clergy and monks. Windows are small, placed high up, and in the great majority of examples the doorways, seldom very large, are many feet above the ground. The fact that there are no signs of any means to reach these doorways long puzzled investigators, but it is evident that some rudimentary form of stairs in wood, probably little more than ladders, easily destroyed or hauled up, were used. Thus these Round

Towers may be looked upon as the ecclesiastic counterparts of the rock castles and refuges of the bishops and seigneurs, the remains of which are still to be seen on the Continent.

Yet another phase of the troglodyte development is to be seen not only in the rock villages of the Riviera and certain parts of Asia, but even in our own hilly districts and seaside cliff towns, where we see sometimes considerable buildings clinging to the declivity, each storey entered from a separate level. In such cases the need for stairways is obviated by a serpentine road with branch approaches. A house of this kind looked at from the front may be said to have four, five, or six storeys, yet each is truly a ground floor, with its direct outside communication, though frequently enough without any internal intercommunication. We may take Nottingham as an example, where the Long Stairs are cut in the perpendicular face of the rock, reaching from the old church to the summit, and having houses stepped one above the other, with access from the stairs. The Short Stairs are altogether artificial, and have houses on both sides.

SPIRAL STAIRCASE, COLCHESTER CASTLE.

In an elementary and varied form this may be seen in the valley of the Hindu Kush, where underground dwellings on a steep hillside are brought into communication by a “corded way,” consisting of ladders placed on the ground, and, naturally, constantly changing gradients.

Of course the ladder and the vertical notched pole have their limitations, although they are still extensively used as means of communication in buildings. A ladder, unless it be of the rope variety, cannot be lengthened indefinitely, and if carried beyond a certain length must tend to become vertical. Hence the breaking up of the flights, placed successively with the same inclination or with alternating inclinations, as in the Babylonian towers and our own quarter-turn straight flight staircases. Then the notched pole, while suggesting the yoke newel, or central support for steps, also brought about a recognition of the advantages in gyratory advance, or in other words, the greater practicability of the spiral over the direct vertical ascent.

It is curious to observe that our notions of safety in staircase building are not always apparent to the undeveloped mind. Semisavage dwellers in the beehive type of hut, although quite familiar with tree climbing, when first brought into contact with our commodious broad flights of indoor stairs have felt it incumbent to go up and down on all fours, which, by the way, is the attitude assumed to the staircase by that primitive ” creature the baby, all the world over. The ladder or notched pole, practically vertical, where both hands and feet are utilised, is comprehensible, but the easy flight of stairs appears awful in its ambitious course. Indeed, there seems to be something fundamental in this feeling, for the waking terrors of the savage are very much akin to widely prevailing conditions in the dream state.

Thomas De Quincey in his “ Confessions of an English Opium Eater,” describing his fantastically troubled slumber says :

“ Many years ago I was looking over Piranesi’s ‘ Antiquities of Rome.’ Mr Coleridge, who was standing by, described to me a set of plates by that artist, called his Dreams , which record the scenery of his own visions during the delirium of a fever. Some of them represented vast Gothic halls . . . Creeping along the sides of the walls ii you perceived a staircase, and upon it, groping his way upwards, was Piranesi himself ; follow the stairs a little farther and you perceive it came to a sudden, abrupt termination, without any balustrade, and allowing no step onwards to him who had reached the extremity except into the depths below. Whatever is to become of poor Piranesi ? You suppose, at least, that his labours must in some way terminate here. But raise your eyes, and behold a second flight of stairs still higher, on which again Piranesi is perceived, by this time standing on the very brink of the abyss. Again elevate your eye, and a still more aerial flight of stairs is beheld, and again is poor Piranesi busy in his aspiring labours, and so on, until the unfinished stairs and Piranesi both are lost in the upper gloom of the hall. With the same power of endless growth and self-reproduction did my architecture proceed in dreams. In the early stages of my malady the splendours of my dreams were indeed chiefly architectural, and I beheld such a group of cities and palaces as was never yet beheld by the waking eye, unless in the clouds.”

Many who have never read “ The

English Opium Eater,” who have never studied architecture in its dizziest moods, have suffered from these nightmares. The terrible sinking that overwhelms as the broken stairways, the unbridged chasms are revealed, is apt to haunt the troubled or overwrought brain when it swoons into that “ brother of death,” which “ exacteth a third part of our lives,” as Sir Thomas Browne hath it.

Fundamentally the stairway is an outside accession, as with the Babylonia spiral inclined plane. The same idea appears to have prevailed in Greece, where the exiguous first floors were reached by outside stairways, either opening into the streets or the inner courts.

In Rome somewhat more attention was given to staircases. Both the inclined plane and the spiral staircase were used in public buildings ; for instance, for the ascent of the triumphal columns. It is probable also that staircases of some magnitude were in use in such palaces as the Golden House of Nero. But so far as direct evidence is concerned staircases in domestic buildings were few, narrow and steep. Vitruvius is quite silent on the point, which is rather significant. It would appear, however, that in Rome itself and in other populous towns, each storey in the tall houses was approached by a separate staircase. As a rule these were built in the house itself, having an outlet into the street, but no communication with other parts of the house. The outside staircase was exceptional. In some instances, where the building consisted of a ground floor and first floor, with an inner court, the staircase led from the ground floor itself or the court. Examples of this arrangement are to be seen at Pompeii, where, however, we must remember that Greek influence was very much felt. Nevertheless one of these examples furnishes most interesting if somewhat indirect evidence as regards design and structural detail. Only rough indications remain as to the exact position of the staircase in the court, but luckily the decorative artist at work was anxious to achieve not merely good balance, but actual symmetry, so he painted a staircase opposite the real one. This pictured make-weight shows us narrow, steep steps with high risers, protected by a severely plain balustrade, a mere wooden paling under a square handrail. Yet the house was evidently one of some pretentions to elegance. Vestiges of longer flights, supported on vaultings, are also extant. Sometimes a succession of arches were used, one end of the steps being engaged in the side wall. When narrow, the staircases were generally carried up between two walls, the steps being engaged on each side. This was the type prevailing in the insulae, or blocks of many storeyd buildings, of Rome, the soffits usually being barrel-vaulted.

Roman practice as modified by local conditions away from the Imperial centre are interesting, especially as shown in Syria, when we remember the ancient methods prevailing there. A house at Shakka of the Romanised type, belonging to the 2nd or 3rd century, has a remarkable flight of external stairs. Broad stone steps are carried from the ground at a gentle inclination about half way up one flank of the building, where it reaches a landing, thence the flight rises again, turns the corner and is carried half way along the broad fa$ade to a platform, with a final short, steep flight to the flat, parapeted roof. A doorway is provided on each platform. The steps jut out and have no other support than their engagement in the wall. No signs of parapet exist, but it is possible that a wooden balustrade originally finished off this curious exposed work. Another house at Dama, belonging to the same period, has short external flights to the first floor, and then an internal flight to the second floor, a system which we find common among Mediaeval builders.

STAIRCASE IN ROMAN AMPHITHEATRES

For public buildings stairways were given due consideration. We have already referred to the inclined planes and spiral staircases. In amphitheatres a common practice was to provide alternate opposed flights separated by a curtain wall, one flight leading to the principal gallery and the others to the upper seats.

Both the Greeks and Romans, and indeed also Asiatic peoples, provided their temples with broad flights of deep, low steps, generally in uneven numbers, so that those who mounted them began and ended with the right foot, which, no doubt, had something to do with the ritual of approaching the altar with the right hand uplifted in submission and supplication. Palladio states that the number usually chosen was eleven or thirteen. If more were used, then a broader step, a half-way platform for rest, was provided to break up the flight into two sections.

Chapter II

Builders of the Romanesque period, like those of antiquity, treated staircases somewhat in the light of necessary evils, or at all events merely as contrivances for reaching upper floors. All notion of their monumental and artistic value, any idea of their being treated otherwise than from the purely utilitarian point of view came very much later. It is well, however, to emphasise the fact that this applies to domestic economy only ; both the Greeks and Romans perfectly well understood the charm of nobly proportioned flights of steps as a setting for their temples and other public buildings. But even with them it was a question of outside effect alone.

In our Norman castles, and even in those constructed down to the 13th century, we find a curious combination of two principles in building. One of the main preoccupations of the builders both in connection with the castle dependencies and the keep or tower itself, was to render them as nearly impregnable as possible. They were masses of masonry intended to repel rather than to attract the stranger. For this reason the ground floors were practically dungeons, that is to say they rarely had any direct communication with the outside. At this level the walls were of immense thickness, and probably originally were never pierced except by rara- narrow embrasures, mere slits of windows, placed high up and constructed with a skyward slant. It was the first floor which formed the real entrance level. It was reached by way of an outside stairway and used as a kind of vestibule or guardroom. These outside staircases were often entirely open, though sometimes roofed over with wood, and in the later centuries even enclosed by wooden walls. They were generally very narrow. Quite commonly such stairways commenced abruptly, at other times the foot was protected by a porch. At the top of this flight was usually a landing leading into an outer

ROMANESQUE STAIRCASE, PAINTED CHAMBER, WESTMINSTER.

vestibule ; or the stairs passing under a machiolated and embrasured gateway opened straight into the guardroom. Inside, a winding staircase, or a succession of straight flights, led from the ground floor to the top of the edifice. In very many cases there were supplementary stairs linking different floors or particular sets of chambers. Such were the chief points so far as perpendicular communication from the ground to the crenelated terrace were concerned.

Now let us consider more in detail how these several features were dealt with by the Mediaeval builder. Happily for our purpose we have many existing relics and fairly good records of those which have passed away.

We can still trace the outside stairways which were at one time the only approaches to the interiors of the castles and keeps of Canterbury, Colchester, Conisborough, Dover, Guildford, Norwich, Porchester, Rochester and many others scattered up and down the country.

At Rochester the stairs were planned in two flights. They were placed parallel to the castle walls, commencing on one face, turning the corner and ending on the second side. At the angle of the castle and staircase there was a landing under an arched gatehouse ; then the open flight continued along the second face and ended abruptly some distance from the fortified portal. A drawbridge provided the necessary communication. The arched gateway gave access to a short corridor and a second portal barred the way to the guardroom. Possibly the whole staircase may have been covered by a timber pent-house, or even a hipped roof supported by wooden pillars, for such could be speedily removed in the event of danger. At all events we know that there was a wooden porch outside the first portal, for we read in the Liberate Rolls of 24 and 25 Henry III. the instructions : “ To renovate the stair before the outer gate of the tower at Rochester Castle and make certain pent-house above the stair aforesaid.” Referring to another outside staircase connected with the same stronghold, further instructions are given : “ To cause to be made certain iron trellis on the staircase before our chambers towards our herbery.”

Evidently this was originally an open stairway with unprotected side, and the iron trellis was a guard or balustrade, added at a more polished period. From these Liberate Rolls and other sources it appears that towards the 13th century additional outside stairways were provided, possibly to connect the tower with the dependencies, when these wooden structures were replaced by more permanent edifices of stone or bock.

It is instructive to observe elaborate development along these lines at quite an early date. For evidence of this it is significant that we have to go to another Kentish castle, the magnificent ancient pile at Dover. This great Norman stronghold originally had an open flight of stairs, spreading slightly fanwise at base, and placed at right angles to the building. At the top of this first flight is a landing and an arched doorway, but to the right of the landing another flight was run up parallel and clinging to the wall of the castle. It leads through an arched portal to a crenelated vestibule. Thence forward the staircase is covered in, and turning the angle of the building leads to a second vestibule on the third floor level, where there was a fine doorway (afterwards c blocked) giving entrance to the State apartments, which were thus very well protected, for adequate precautions were taken to isolate internally each separate storey. One evident advantage of this extended outside staircase was that it gave a semi-private entrance to the State apartments, which could be reached without going through those parts of the castle occupied by the garrison.

At Norwich the arrangements were quite elaborate. The exceptionally large proportioned external stone staircase, running along the south-eastern front, had to pass under two fortified archways. Probably when erected there was a drawbridge near the gate-house tower, which was pierced by an archway leading into the guardroom.

Conisborough keep possessed a straight flight of stone steps, which led to a square vestibule built outside the tower. Through this entrance was gained to the main apartment on the first floor.

At Bolton Castle, Yorkshire, originally there was an external staircase to the first floor, and, curiously enough, another one on the north side, reaching to the second floor. In this latter case there was a short

FOOT OF SPIRAL STAIRS, CHATEAUDUN, FRANCE.

flight leading to a long terrace, thence a right and left steep flight led up to the arched door. Bolton Castle was erected by Richard Scrope, Chancellor to Richard II., and took eighteen years to build, according to Leland. It seems almost certain that this second entrance, with its rudimentary grand perron, was an addition of much later date.

At Scarborough Castle there was a pit in the ground immediately below the first floor entrance. It would appear, therefore, that the stone landing must have replaced an earlier drawbridge or wooden platform. Over its doorway was a shute for discharging stones, molten lead or boiling water.

Hedingham Castle, a Norman keep in Essex built by the de Veres, is interesting in many ways. The keep is a lofty square tower of stone, five storeys high. The entrance was placed on the western side, where there was a flight of steps to the first floor. At the head of the stairs was a lofty doorway flanked by columns supporting a semi-circular arch, decorated with zigzag ornaments. On the sides were grooves for a portcullis, so that apparently the landing was in the form of a drawbridge.

In some cases these external stairs were built at right angles to the castle. We have here the beginnings of the grand staircase leading to a terrace, the perron of the Continental chateaux builders. More often, however, the stairs were built parallel to the outer walls, clinging to the side of the castle, which was an evolution from the primitive protruding isolated steps used, as we have seen, by cave-dwellers. Dacre Castle, Cumberland, offers us a curious and not unhandsome combination of the two methods. From the first floor there is a flight of steps clinging to the side of the castle, and leading to a considerable platform, jutting out at right angles. This is approached by short right and left flights at right angles to the landing, and consequently parallel to the building. This is distinctly the perron in a modest form.

Farther stages in the evolution from the cave-dwelling type are to be seen in several old castellated structures. For instance in the Tour d’Orange at Carpentras Castle there is a very ornamental set of protruding steps. They project a fair distance and run up a considerable height. Each step is flat on the top and rounded at the base.

The steps are placed close together, one below the other, and are supported by three rows of similar projections. This quaint stairway, therefore, is in the form of a diagonal band of four courses of corbelling.

CORBELLED STEPS, CARPENTRAS

It was a decorative way of treating an exceedingly crude contrivance. While quite pretty to look at, the way is narrow, steep, without parapet, without even a handrail on the perpendicular wall face. But doubtless in the way of comfort and safety it was an improvement on the isolated steps with gaps between.

A safer method, also taking its origin from cave -dwellings and early masonry work, was to build an extra thickness on the wall, diminishing it gradually from bottom to top and then placing steps on the inclined plane. While in later times stairways of this pattern were made of great width and with some regard to monumental effect, they were often narrow and extremely steep. An example of this can be seen at Belsay Castle, Northumberland, built about 1320.

To obviate the disadvantages of this steepness and the consequent height of the individual steps, an ingenious device was adopted. The method hit upon was to cut away half of each step diagonally, the broad side of the top wedge being against the wall, and the broad side of the lower wedge outside. By this simple means each step was made dual, the steepness being divided by half, and thus while ascending was made easier, descent was rendered less dangerous, so that the practical utility of the stairs was greatly increased. On giving the matter a very little consideration it will be seen that the arrangement of these wedges in zigzag formation is directly in accordance with the natural movements of man, who, under normal conditions, only places one foot at a time on one step, it therefore provides an admirable solution of a difficult problem. Examples of this kind of step may be seen in the galleries of the transept of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, and also at the Church of St Nazaire, Carcassonne. As we shall see later on, the zigzag system of stepping is a natural and favourite way to soften the sharpness of declivities in gardens.

Returning to the plan of building stairways parallel to outside walls, it will be found on examining the very numerous examples of old work still existing that considerable diversity of treatment prevailed. The supporting wall was often so contrived as to merge into the general body of the structure, so that the stairway was merely a more or less wide and comfortable stepped vertical course. Quite as frequently, however, it was frankly an addition, the whole mass protruding from the building. In either case it seems to have been early realised that where the steps were to be of considerable width, economy of material and labour, with a very welcome gain in the diminishing of weight, could be secured by building not a solid supporting wall, but a series of blind arches. This suggested many possibilities for improvement.

For instance, at one point, either at the intermediary resting-place or on the top landing, the arch could be left uncompleted, the void being crossed by a platform of wood, or by a drawbridge. In this way the approach could be interrupted by producing a gap whenever attack was threatened. Another outcome of this was the carrying up of a curtain wall, to form a guard or