The era of the later Stuarts was a period of massive rebuilding or extending of mansions, stables and gardens. Tudor houses, no matter how charming to modern eyes, were characterised by low ceilings, inconveniently large dining halls, gargantuan staircases leading too often to draughty, unappealing passageways, and cluttered mullioned windows which were ill-suited to revealing increasingly elaborate gardens and grounds. Such houses were replaced by mansions on a grander scale, high ceilinged, lit by large sash windows, equipped with dining rooms which were designed to seat the family and their guests in some degree of intimacy and privacy, despite their grandeur, rather than the whole household as in earlier centuries. Architects like Wren, Hawksmoor, Vanbrugh and Talman and their less famous competitors laboured to meet the demands of noblemen and the greater gentry for elaborate seats which would not merely house them in greater comfort but also symbolise and indeed assert their wealth and their status in the county hierarchy.