Guise Abbey Architecture (The Pretext)

Like Hill Street, Guise Abbey, the home of Guy Dawnish’s uncle Lord Askern, has its own architecture and look. It is described through the photographs Guy Dawnish gave to Mrs. Margaret Ransom and at which she looks while she tries to self-collect herself (Lewis, 1968, p. 637). Guise Abbey has “a long gabled Jacobean façade” (Lewis, 1968, p. 637).

The first picture above shows a rather long gabled Jacobean façade probably like the one a visitor gets to see at Guise Abbey. Jacobean is a style of architecture which originates in the second phase of Renaissance architecture in England (Jacobean, 2021). The term is named after King James I of England who reigned from 1603 - 25 (Hornby, 2015, p. 838). There is scarcely a noticeable difference between Elizabethan and Jacobean architecture but the Jacobean style has its own type of plan and elevation. The ornamentation of the Jacobean architecture is more distinct than in the Elizabethan style which can be traced back to the increasing employment of foreign craftsmen. The foreign craftsmen started to build “columns and pilasters, round-arch arcades, and flat roofs with openwork parapets” which were mixed with the “prismatic rustications and ornamental detail of scrolls, straps and lozenges” (Jacobean, 2021). The Jacobean estate in the short story is described as “many-chimneyed, ivy-draped” and “overhung […] by the boughs of a venerable rookery.” (Lewis, 1968, p. 637). The former can be imagined similar to the roof in the first picture above. Even though the Jacobean façade in this picture is not ivy-draped or overhung by boughs the reader can imagine the ivy growing up the stone walls and trees standing in front of the house. Besides the main house there are “almshouses” (Lewis, 1968, p. 638) at Guise Abbey. According to Hornby (2015) an almshouse is “a house owned by a charity where poor people (usually the old) lived without paying rent” (p. 41). Almshouses already existed in the medieval times when they were used to give shelter to sick people, poor people or travelers and they were led by religious institutions (History of Almshouses, 2021). Because Abbey is defined as a place where monks or nuns live (Hornby, 2015, p. 2) it is plausible that almshouses existed at Guise Abbey like the ones in the second picture above which, of course, are renovated.

Sources:

Hornby, A. S. (2015). Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lewis, R. W. B. (1968). The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

“History of Almshouses”. The Almshouse Association, 2021, https://www.almshouses.org/history-of-almshouses/. Accessed May 25, 2021.

“Jacobean”. Mayfair Office, 2021, https://www.mayfairoffice.co.uk/members-home/British-Architectural-Styles/British-Architectural-Styles-Jacobean. Accessed May 24, 2021.