Longford Castle,[1] another design by John Thorpe, is triangular on plan with a round tower at each angle. Though the building has been more or less altered in some of its details, the main features tally with Thorpe's elevation, preserved in the Soane collection, and reproduced by Gotch (vol. 1, p. 20). French influence is marked here in the general disposition of the principal façade, and in some of the more conspicuous details. This façade, in the relation of the central block to the angle towers, bears a striking resemblance to the east front of Chambord. The towers have nearly the same form and proportions, but the central block is longer in Longford than in Chambord. The architectural scheme of this block, though not a reproduction of that of Chambord, has enough similarity to provoke comparison. Both are divided into three stories, and both have open arcades framed with orders. But in Longford the arcades are confined to the centre of the block, and to the first two stories, while in Chambord, above the ground story, they are differently disposed, and occur in all three stories. The long block of Longford has two projecting pavilions which are connected by the arcades, while the front of Chambord is all in one plane; but in a general front view the effect is not greatly different. In the orders of his pavilions Thorpe has employed De l'Orme's pilaster of the Tuileries, and in the attics which he has set at intervals over his main cornice, other features, as the hermæ supporting the pediments of the Tuileries, are reproduced in modified form.[2]
The caprice of design shown in the Elizabethan neo-classic ornamentation assumes an astonishing variety of forms, of which it may be well to give a few further examples. A window in the entrance front of Lower Walterstone Hall has a lintel in the form of an architrave supported on short sections of pilasters carried on brackets, while over this a pediment is inserted in the wall with an interval between it and the lintel, the whole forming the semblance of an entablature beneath the pediment, with its frieze in the wall plane (Fig. 130). In the porch of Cranborne Manor-House an entablature over an arcade is
