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The Seventeenth Century
Architecture
Out of Print
This book was first published in 1949.
It is 1690. Barbara and Geoffrey live with their aunt and widower father in London. Their father is an architect and he gets a commission to build a great house in the country. Father decides to take both the children to the country with him. Geoffrey has been ill and Father is afraid that he will catch the smallpox which killed his mother.
Barbara and Geoffrey go with their father on his first visit to Ladybourne Hall. It is a beautiful old house but the owner wants it demolished and replaced with a house built in the modern style. Barbara privately thinks it a shame that such a lovely old house should be torn down.
Father has to go back to London but Barbara and Geoffrey stay on in the care of the innkeeper's wife.
One afternoon Mrs Jarvis, packs some food for them in a basket and takes them to a natural terrace overlooking the river. She tells them they can stay there as long as they like.
Geoffrey at once decides that the terrace would make a wonderful site for a house. Geoffrey wants to be an architect. His father agrees but there is still the question as to whether Geoffrey should be allowed to go to Oxford or be apprenticed to a builder. Geoffrey's hero is Sir Christopher Wren and his great ambition is to go to Oxford.
His father's plans for the new house have been left in Geoffrey's care and he takes them and pegs out the foundations of the new house on the terrace above the river. Barbara helps him. Later Barbara has an idea. She decides to fill in the spaces between the pegs with little white stones. When she shows Geoffrey he thinks it a good idea.
When Father comes back from London the children mean to show him what they have done. They both hope that the new house will be built on the site overlooking the river -- but for different reasons. Barbara hopes it will mean that the lovely old house will not have to be torn down and Geoffrey hopes to prove to his father that it will be well worth while letting him go to Oxford to study to become an architect.
But first the children will have to find the right moment to tell him -- and that proves difficult because Geoffrey finds himself in trouble with his puritanical father for gambling and for going to a cock-fight.
Will the old house be saved and will Geoffrey be allowed to go to Oxford?
The Great House is illustrated with Cynthia Harnett's own illustrations. It is also packed with details of how people lived at the end of the 17th century and there is a historical note at the back.
This book has a detailed and authentic background and it has an engrossing story which certainly held my attention. But it must be said that the story is interesting rather than exciting and it probably would not suit those reared on a diet of cliff hangers. Which I think is a pity.
10+