Curb appeal, minus the curb

"...............write to the king
that which I durst not speak: his present gift
Shall furnish me to those Italian fields,
where noble fellows strike: war is no strife
To the dark house and the detested wife."

                                             All's Well That Ends Well     (II, iii)


Shakespeare's Bertram, Count of Rousillon, doesn't mince his words: he toes the line that warriors drew long before Achilles stood outside the walls of Troy, waiting for Hector.

Honor is won on the field of battle, not within the confines of the home. Bertram makes a comic allusion to domestic arguments ferocious enough to make war a mere holiday picnic in comparison. No doubt he wins the nodding approval of his follower Parolles, who refers to stay-at-homes as "wearing their honor in a box unseen."

Shakespeare's reference to "the dark house" would not have been lost on the average Elizabethan playgoer: most Tudor homes were pretty dark. Leaded glass windows of any size were a luxury that few could afford. Glass was expensive, and to make matters worse, windows were at times also taxed, as were the hearths in a dwelling. Windows also made it harder to keep rooms warm, and made a building less secure, always a consideration when times turned violent. And in a turbulent city like London, street violence was all too often just around the corner and on the move.

Despite these drawbacks, there were noblemen with deep pockets in both town and country who regarded glass windows as a luxury well worth having. A landowner like Agecroft Hall's William Dauntesey could afford to have sizable windows in his manor house. Clearly, Dauntesey had attained some sense of security by the time he had his portrait painted in 1566, when William Shakespeare was two years old. That portrait of Dauntesey still hangs at Agecroft Hall.

The relatively large windows not only added light to the rooms of the house but served as an unambiguous symbol of wealth and status. In the second of two views of Agecroft Hall posted above, it is evident that the more ornate and extensive oak timbering and large lower-level windows visible in the wing on the left reflect a time during Agecroft's construction in Lancashire when its owners felt most prosperous, and most willing to spend money to impress.

When times got tighter financially (and deforestation made good English oak harder to come by), the oak half-timbering became less elaborate as newer wings were added to the manor house during the Jacobean era and thereafter. At least the Elizabethans didn't have to worry about whether their houses had curb appeal: there were no curbs to speak of.