was no serious expense in obtaining timber.[1] He stated that in constructing his residence, he was compelled to pay out three times the amount which would have been required in the case of a house of the same proportions in London, where all the materials used had to be bought. In Virginia, it was necessary to allow three times the length of time that would have been taken to complete the same work in that city. The Fitzhugh dwelling, like so many of the houses in the Colony at this and in a later age, was doubtless in a measure the result of several additions at different periods as the wants of a growing family demanded, a room being joined to this wing or to that as convenience suggested. Many of the residences illustrated in the variety of their material the evolution through which so many of the planters’ mansions had passed; first the log house, then the framed, and finally the brick addition or the substitution of brick for the wood of which the central portion of the dwelling was made. It is an indication of how little attention was paid to the architectural effect of these additions that Bullock advised that the original residence should be built in such a manner that its extension in wings would not cause a defacement.[2] The simplicity of the houses in which many persons of good position lived is shown in a reference of Fitzhugh to the residence erected by a brother of Hayward; it was as, devoid of architectural beauty as a barn, which it must have resembled exactly, as it is described by Fitzhugh as lacking both chimneys and partitions.[3]
- ↑ Culpeper, writing in 1682, dwells upon the same fact. See Instructions, 1681-1682. Culpeper’s Reply to § 48, McDonald Papers, vol. VI, p. 147, Va. State Library.
- ↑ Bullock’s Virginia, p. 61. The references to the New Room” in the inventories are very frequent.
- ↑ Letters of William Fitzhugh, Jan. 30, 1686-1687. Fitzhugh probably intended to say that this house was lacking in substantial chimneys. It may have been in an unfinished state.
