I have said in another place that no country in the world can boast of possessing rural homes and villages which have half the charm and picturesqueness of our English cottages and hamlets. They have to be known in order that they may be loved. The hasty visitor may pass them by and miss half their attractiveness. They have to be wooed in varying moods in order that they may display their charms when the blossoms are bright in the village orchards, when the sun shines on the streams and pools and gleams on the glories of old thatch, when autumn has tinged the trees with golden tints, or when the hoar frost makes their bare branches beautiful again with new and glistening foliage. Not even in their summer garb do they look more beautiful. There is a sense of stability and a wondrous variety caused by the different nature of the materials used, the peculiar stone indigenous in various districts and the individuality stamped upon them by traditional modes of building.

We have still a large number of examples of the humbler kind of ancient domestic architecture, but every year sees the destruction of several of these old buildings, which a little care and judicious restoration might have saved. Ruskin’s words should be writ in bold, big letters at the head of the by-laws of every district council.

“Watch an old building with anxious care; guard it as best you may, and at any cost, from any influence of dilapidation. Count its stones as you would the jewels of a crown. Set watchers about it, as if at the gate of a besieged city; bind it together with iron when it loosens; stay it with timber when it declines. Do not care about the unsightliness of the aid better a crutch than a lost limb; and do this tenderly and reverently and continually, and many a generation will still be born and pass away beneath its shadow.”

If this sound advice had been universally taken many a beautiful old cottage would have been spared to us, and our eyes would not be offended by the wondrous creations of the estate agents and local builders, who have no other ambition but to build cheaply. The contrast between the new and the old is indeed deplorable. The old cottage is a thing of beauty. Its odd, irregular form and various harmonious colouring, the effects of weather, time, and accident, environed with smiling verdure and sweet old-fashioned garden flowers, its thatched roof, high gabled front, inviting porch overgrown with creepers, and casement windows, all combine to form a fair and beautiful home. And then look at the modern cottage with its glaring brick walls, slate roof, ungainly stunted chimney, and note the difference. Usually these modern cottages are built in a row, each one exactly like its fellow, with door and window frames exactly alike, brought over ready-made from Norway or Sweden. The walls are thin, and the winds of winter blow through them piteously, and if a man and his wife should unfortunately “have words” (the pleasing country euphemism for a violent quarrel) all their neighbours can hear them. The scenery is utterly spoilt by these ugly eyesores. Villas at Hindhead seem to have broken out upon the once majestic hill like a red skin eruption. The jerry-built villa is invading our heaths and pine-woods; every street in our towns is undergoing improvement; we are covering whole counties with houses. In Lancashire no sooner does one village end its mean streets than another begins. London is ever enlarging itself, extending its great maw over all the country round. The Rev. Canon Erskine Clarke, Vicar of Battersea, when he first came to reside near Clapham Junction, remembers the green fields and quiet lanes with trees on each side that are now built over. The street leading from the station lined with shops forty years ago had hedges and trees on each side. There were great houses situated in beautiful gardens and parks wherein resided some of the great City merchants, county families, the leaders in old days of the influential “Clapham sect.” These gardens and parks have been covered with streets and rows of cottages and villas; some of the great houses have been pulled down and others turned into schools or hospitals, valued only at the rent of the land on which they stand. All this is inevitable. You cannot stop all this any more than Mrs. Partington could stem the Atlantic tide with a housemaid’s mop. But ere the flood has quite swallowed up all that remains of England’s natural and architectural beauties, it may be useful to glance at some of the buildings that remain in town and country ere they have quite vanished.

Beneath the shade of the lordly castle of Warwick, which has played such an important part in the history of England, the town of Warwick sprang into existence, seeking protection in lawless times from its strong walls and powerful garrison. Through its streets often rode in state the proud rulers of the castle with their men-at-arms the Beauchamps, the Nevilles, including the great “King-maker,” Richard Neville, the Dudleys, and the Grevilles. They contributed to the building of their noble castle, protected the town, and were borne to their last resting-place in the fine church, where their tombs remain. The town has many relics of its lords, and possesses many half-timbered graceful houses. Mill Street is one of the most picturesque groups of old-time dwellings, a picture that lingers in our minds long after we have left the town and fortress of the grim old Earls of Warwick.

Oxford is a unique city. There is no place like it in the world. Scholars of Cambridge, of course, will tell me that I am wrong, and that the town on the Cam is a far superior place, and then point triumphantly to “the backs.” Yes, they are very beautiful, but as a loyal son of Oxford I may be allowed to prefer that stately city with its towers and spires, its wealth of college buildings, its exquisite architecture unrivalled in the world. Nor is the new unworthy of the old. The buildings at Magdalen, at Brazenose, and even the New Schools harmonize not unseemly with the ancient structures. Happily Keble is far removed from the heart of the city, so that that somewhat unsatisfactory, unsuccessful pile of brickwork interferes not with its joy. In the streets and lanes of modern Oxford we can search for and discover many types of old-fashioned, humble specimens of domestic art, and we give as an illustration some houses which date back to Tudor times, but have, alas! been recently demolished.

Many conjectures have been made as to the reason why our forefathers preferred to rear their houses with the upper storeys projecting out into the streets. We can understand that in towns where space was limited it would be an advantage to increase the size of the upper rooms, if one did not object to the lack of air in the narrow street and the absence of sunlight. But we find these same projecting storeys in the depth of the country, where there could have been no restriction as to the ground to be occupied by the house. Possibly the fashion was first established of necessity in towns, and the traditional mode of building was continued in the country. Some say that by this means our ancestors tried to protect the lower part of the house, the foundations, from the influence of the weather; others with some ingenuity suggest that these projecting storeys were intended to form a covered walk for passengers in the streets, and to protect them from the showers of slops which the careless housewife of Elizabethan times cast recklessly from the upstairs windows. Architects tell us that it was purely a matter of construction. Our forefathers used to place four strong corner-posts, framed from the trunks of oak trees, firmly sunk into the ground with their roots left on and placed upward, the roots curving outwards so as to form supports for the upper storeys. These curved parts, and often the posts also, were often elaborately carved and ornamented, as in the example which our artist gives us of a corner-post of a house in Ipswich.

In The Charm of the English Village I have tried to describe the methods of the construction of these timber-framed houses, and it is perhaps unnecessary for me to repeat what is there recorded. In fact, there were three types of these dwelling-places, to which have been given the names Post and Pan, Transom Framed, and Intertie Work. In judging of the age of a house it will be remembered that the nearer together the upright posts are placed the older the house is. The builders as time went on obtained greater confidence, set their posts wider apart, and held them together by transoms.

Surrey is a county of good cottages and farm-houses, and these have had their chroniclers in Miss Gertrude Jekyll’s delightful Old West Surrey and in the more technical work of Mr. Ralph Nevill, F.S.A. The numerous works on cottage and farm-house building published by Mr. Batsford illustrate the variety of styles that prevailed in different counties, and which are mainly attributable to the variety in the local materials in the counties. Thus in the Cotswolds, Northamptonshire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Westmorland, Somersetshire, and elsewhere there is good building-stone; and there we find charming examples of stone-built cottages and farm-houses, altogether satisfying. In several counties where there is little stone and large forests of timber we find the timber-framed dwelling flourishing in all its native beauty. In Surrey there are several materials for building, hence there is a charming diversity of domiciles. Even the same building sometimes shows walls of stone and brick, half-timber and plaster, half-timber and tile-hanging, half-timber with panels filled with red brick, and roofs of thatch or tiles, or stone slates which the Horsham quarries supplied.

These Surrey cottages have changed with age. Originally they were built with timber frames, the panels being filled in with wattle and daub, but the storms of many winters have had their effect upon the structure. Rain drove through the walls, especially when the ends of the wattle rotted a little, and draughts were strong enough to blow out the rushlights and to make the house very uncomfortable. Oak timbers often shrink. Hence the joints came apart, and being exposed to the weather became decayed. In consequence of this the buildings settled, and new methods had to be devised to make them weather-proof. The villages therefore adopted two or three means in order to attain this end. They plastered the whole surface of the walls on the outside, or they hung them with deal boarding or covered them with tiles. In Surrey tile-hung houses are more common than in any other part of the country. This use of weather-tiles is not very ancient, probably not earlier than 1750, and much of this work was done in that century or early in the nineteenth. Many of these tile-hung houses are the old sixteenth-century timber-framed structures in a new shell. Weather-tiles are generally flatter and thinner than those used for roofing, and when bedded in mortar make a thoroughly weather-proof wall. Sometimes they are nailed to boarding, but the former plan makes the work more durable, though the courses are not so regular. These tiles have various shapes, of which the commonest is semicircular, resembling a fish-scale. The same form with a small square shoulder is very generally used, but there is a great variety, and sometimes those with ornamental ends are blended with plain ones. Age imparts a very beautiful colour to old tiles, and when covered with lichen they assume a charming appearance which artists love to depict.

The mortar used in these old buildings is very strong and good. In order to strengthen the mortar used in Sussex and Surrey houses and elsewhere, the process of “galleting” or “garreting” was adopted. The brick-layers used to decorate the rather wide and uneven mortar joint with small pieces of black ironstone stuck into the mortar. Sussex was once famous for its ironwork, and ironstone is found in plenty near the surface of the ground in this district. “Galleting” dates back to Jacobean times, and is not to be found in sixteenth-century work.

Sussex houses are usually whitewashed and have thatched roofs, except when Horsham slates or tiles are used. Thatch as a roofing material will soon have altogether vanished with other features of vanishing England. District councils in their by-laws usually insert regulations prohibiting thatch to be used for roofing. This is one of the mysteries of the legislation of district councils. Rules, suitable enough for towns, are applied to the country villages, where they are altogether unsuitable or unnecessary. The danger of fire makes it inadvisable to have thatched roofs in towns, or even in some villages where the houses are close together, but that does not apply to isolated cottages in the country. The district councils do not compel the removal of thatch, but prohibit new cottages from being roofed with that material. There is, however, another cause for the disappearance of thatched roofs, which form such a beautiful feature in the English landscape. Since mowing-machines came into general use in the harvest fields the straw is so bruised that it is not fit for thatching, at least it is not so suitable as the straw which was cut by the hand. Thatching, too, is almost a lost art in the country. Indeed ricks have to be covered with thatch, but “the work for this temporary purpose cannot compare with that of the old roof-thatcher, with his ‘strood’ or ‘frail’ to hold the loose straw, and his spars split hazel rods pointed at each end that with a dexterous twist in the middle make neat pegs for the fastening of the straw rope that he cleverly twists with a simple implement called a ‘wimble.’ The lowest course was finished with an ornamental bordering of rods with a diagonal criss-cross pattern between, all neatly pegged and held down by the spars."

Horsham stone makes splendid roofing material. This stone easily flakes into plates like thick slates, and forms large grey flat slabs on which “the weather works like a great artist in harmonies of moss lichen and stain. No roofing so combines dignity and homeliness, and no roofing, except possibly thatch (which, however, is short-lived), so surely passes into the landscape." It is to be regretted that this stone is no longer used for roofing another feature of vanishing England. The stone is somewhat thick and heavy, and modern rafters are not adapted to bear their weight. If you want to have a roof of Horsham stone, you can only accomplish your purpose by pulling down an old cottage and carrying off the slabs. Perhaps the small Cotswold stone slabs are even more beautiful. Old Lancashire and Yorkshire cottages have heavy stone roofs which somewhat resemble those fashioned with Horsham slabs.

The builders and masons of our country cottages were cunning men, and adapted their designs to their materials. You will have noticed that the pitch of the Horsham-slated roof is unusually flat. They observed that when the sides of the roof were deeply sloping, as in the case of thatched roofs, the heavy stone slates strained and dragged at the pegs and laths and fell and injured the roof. Hence they determined to make the slope less steep. Unfortunately the rain did not then easily run off, and in order to prevent the water penetrating into the house they were obliged to adopt additional precautions. Therefore they cemented their roofs and stopped them with mortar.

Very lovely are these South Country cottages, peaceful, picturesque, pleasant, with their graceful gables and jutting eaves, altogether delightful. Well sang a loyal Sussex poet:

If I ever become a rich man,
Or if ever I grow to be old,
I will build a house with deep thatch
To shelter me from the cold;
And there shall the Sussex songs be sung
And the story of Sussex told.

We give some good examples of Surrey cottages at the village of Capel in the neighbourhood of Dorking, a charming region for the study of cottage-building. There you can see some charming ingle-nooks in the interior of the dwellings, and some grand farm-houses. Attached to the ingle-nook is the oven, wherein bread is baked in the old-fashioned way, and the chimneys are large and carried up above the floor of the first storey, so as to form space for curing bacon.

Horsmonden, Kent, near Lamberhurst, is beautifully situated among well-wooded scenery, and the farm-house shown in the illustration is a good example of the pleasant dwellings to be found therein.

East Anglia has no good building-stone, and brick and flint are the principal materials used in that region. The houses built of the dark, dull, thin old bricks, not of the great staring modern varieties, are very charming, especially when they are seen against a background of wooded hills. We give an illustration of some cottages at Stow Langtoft, Suffolk.

The old town of Banbury, celebrated for its cakes, its Cross, and its fine lady who rode on a white horse accompanied by the sound of bells, has some excellent “black and white” houses with pointed gables and enriched barge-boards pierced in every variety of patterns, their finials and pendants, and pargeted fronts, which give an air of picturesqueness contrasting strangely with the stiffness of the modern brick buildings. In one of these is established the old Banbury Cake Shop. In the High Street there is a very perfect example of these Elizabethan houses, erected about the year 1600. It has a fine oak staircase, the newels beautifully carved and enriched with pierced finials and pendants. The market-place has two good specimens of the same date, one of which is probably the front of the Unicorn Inn, and had a fine pair of wooden gates bearing the date 1684, but I am not sure whether they are still there. The Reindeer Inn is one of the chief architectural attractions of the town. We see the dates 1624 and 1637 inscribed on different parts of the building, but its chief glory is the Globe Room, with a large window, rich plaster ceiling, good panelling, elaborately decorated doorways and chimney-piece. The courtyard is a fine specimen of sixteenth-century architecture. A curious feature is the mounting-block near the large oriel window. It must have been designed not for mounting horses, unless these were of giant size, but for climbing to the top of coaches. The Globe Room is a typical example of Vanishing England, as it is reported that the whole building has been sold for transportation to America. We give an illustration of some old houses in Paradise Square, that does not belie its name. The houses all round the square are thatched, and the gardens in the centre are a blaze of colour, full of old-fashioned flowers. The King’s Head Inn has a good courtyard. Banbury suffered from a disastrous fire in 1628 which destroyed a great part of the town, and called forth a vehement sermon from the Rev. William Whateley, of two hours’ duration, on the depravity of the town, which merited such a severe judgment. In spite of the fire much old work survived, and we give an illustration of a Tudor fire-place which you cannot now discover, as it is walled up into the passage of an ironmonger’s shop.

The old ports and harbours are always attractive. The old fishermen mending their nets delight to tell their stories of their adventures, and retain their old customs and usages, which are profoundly interesting to the lovers of folk-lore. Their houses are often primitive and quaint. There is the curious Fish House at Littleport, Cambridgeshire, with part of it built of stone, having a gable and Tudor weather-moulding over the windows. The rest of the building was added at a later date.

In Upper Deal there is an interesting house which shows Flemish influence in the construction of its picturesque gable and octagonal chimney, and contrasted with it an early sixteenth-century cottage much the worse for wear.

We give a sketch of a Portsmouth row which resembles in narrowness those at Yarmouth, and in Crown Street there is a battered, three-gabled, weather-boarded house which has evidently seen better days. There is a fine canopy over the front door of Buckingham House, wherein George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, was assassinated by John Felton on August 23rd, 1628.

The Vale of Aylesbury is one of the sweetest and most charmingly characteristic tracts of land in the whole of rural England, abounding with old houses. The whole countryside literally teems with picturesque evidences of the past life and history of England. Ancient landmarks and associations are so numerous that it is difficult to mention a few without seeming to ignore unfairly their equally interesting neighbours. Let us take the London road, which enters the shire from Middlesex and makes for Aylesbury, a meandering road with patches of scenery strongly suggestive of Birket Foster’s landscapes. Down a turning at the foot of the lovely Chiltern Hills lies the secluded village of Chalfont St. Giles. Here Milton, the poet, sought refuge from plague-stricken London among a colony of fellow Quakers, and here remains, in a very perfect state, the cottage in which he lived and was visited by Andrew Marvel. It is said that his neighbour Elwood, one of the Quaker fraternity, suggested the idea of “Paradise Regained,” and that the draft of the latter poem was written upon a great oak table which may be seen in one of the low-pitched rooms on the ground floor. I fancy that Milton must have beautified and repaired the cottage at the period of his tenancy. The mantelpiece with its classic ogee moulding belongs certainly to his day, and some other minor details may also be noticed which support this inference. It is not difficult to imagine that one who was accustomed to metropolitan comforts would be dissatisfied with the open hearth common to country cottages of that poet’s time, and have it enclosed in the manner in which we now see it. Outside the garden is brilliant with old-fashioned flowers, such as the poet loved. A stone scutcheon may be seen peeping through the shrubbery which covers the front of the cottage, but the arms which it displays are those of the Fleetwoods, one time owners of these tenements. Between the years 1709 and 1807 the house was used as an inn. Milton’s cottage is one of our national treasures, which (though not actually belonging to the nation) has successfully resisted purchase by our American cousins and transportation across the Atlantic.

The entrance to the churchyard in Chalfont St. Giles is through a wonderfully picturesque turnstile or lich-gate under an ancient house in the High Street. The gate formerly closed itself mechanically by means of a pulley to which was attached a heavy weight. Unfortunately this weight was not boxed in as in the somewhat similar example at Hayes, in Middlesex and an accident which happened to some children resulted in its removal.

A good many picturesque old houses remain in the village, among them being one called Stonewall Farm, a structure of the fifteenth century with an original billet-moulded porch and Gothic barge-boards.

There is a certain similarity about the villages that dot the Vale of Aylesbury. The old Market House is usually a feature of the High Street where it has not been spoilt as at Wendover. Groups of picturesque timber cottages, thickest round the church, and shouldered here and there by their more respectable and severe Georgian brethren, are common to all, and vary but little in their general aspect and colouring. Memories and legends haunt every hamlet, the very names of which have an ancient sound carrying us vaguely back to former days. Prince’s Risborough, once a manor of the Black Prince; Wendover, the birthplace of Roger of Wendover, the medieval historian, and author of the Chronicle Flores Historiarum, or History of the World from the Creation to the year 1235, in modern language a somewhat “large order”; Hampden, identified to all time with the patriot of that name; and so on indefinitely. At Monk’s Risborough, another hamlet with an ancient-sounding name, but possessing no special history, is a church of the Perpendicular period containing some features of exceptional interest, and internally one of the most charmingly picturesque of its kind. The carved tie-beams of the porch with their masks and tracery and the great stone stoup which appears in one corner have an unrestored appearance which is quite delightful in these days of over-restoration. The massive oak door has some curious iron fittings, and the interior of the church itself displays such treasures as a magnificent early Tudor roof and an elegant fifteenth-century chancel-screen, on the latter of which some remains of ancient painting exist.

Thame, just across the Oxfordshire border, is another town of the greatest interest. The noble parish church here contains a number of fine brasses and tombs, including the recumbent effigies of Lord John Williams of Thame and his wife, who flourished in the reign of Queen Mary. The chancel-screen is of uncommon character, the base being richly decorated with linen panelling, while above rises an arcade in which Gothic form mingles freely with the grotesqueness of the Renaissance. The choir-stalls are also lavishly ornamented with the linen-fold decoration.

The centre of Thame’s broad High Street is narrowed by an island of houses, once termed Middle Row, and above the jumble of tiled roofs here rises like a watch-tower a most curious and interesting medieval house known as the “Bird Cage Inn.” About this structure little is known; it is, however, referred to in an old document as the “tenement called the Cage, demised to James Rosse by indenture for the term of 100 years, yielding therefor by the year 8s.,” and appears to have been a farm-house. The document in question is a grant of Edward IV to Sir John William of the Charity or Guild of St. Christopher in Thame, founded by Richard Quartemayne, Squier, who died in the year 1460. This house, though in some respects adapted during later years from its original plan, is structurally but little altered, and should be taken in hand and intelligently restored as an object of local attraction and interest. The choicest oaks of a small forest must have supplied its framework, which stands firm as the day when it was built. The fine corner-posts (now enclosed) should be exposed to view, and the mullioned windows which jut out over a narrow passage should be opened up. If this could be done and not overdone the “Bird Cage” would hardly be surpassed as a miniature specimen of medieval timber architecture in the county. A stone doorway of Gothic form and a kind of almery or safe exist in its cellars.

A school was founded at Thame by Lord John Williams, whose recumbent effigy exists in the church, and amongst the students there during the second quarter of the seventeenth century was Anthony Wood, the Oxford antiquary. Thame about this time was the centre of military operations between the King’s forces and the rebels, and was continually being beaten up by one side or the other. Wood, though but a boy at the time, has left on record in his narrative some vivid impressions of the conflicts which he personally witnessed, and which bring the disjointed times before us in a vision of strange and absolute reality.

He tells of Colonel Blagge, the Governor of Wallingford Castle, who was on a marauding expedition, being chased through the streets of Thame by Colonel Crafford, who commanded the Parliamentary garrison at Aylesbury, and how one man fell from his horse, and the Colonel “held a pistol to him, but the trooper cried ‘Quarter!’ and the rebels came up and rifled him and took him and his horse away with them.” On another occasion, just as a company of Roundhead soldiers were sitting down to dinner, a Cavalier force appeared “to beat up their quarters,” and the Roundheads retired in a hurry, leaving “A.W. and the schoolboyes, sojourners in the house,” to enjoy their venison pasties.

He tells also of certain doings at the Nag’s Head, a house that still exists a very ancient hostelry, though not nearly so old a building as the Bird Cage Inn. The sign is no longer there, but some interesting features remain, among them the huge strap hinges on the outer door, fashioned at their extremities in the form of fleurs-de-lis. We should like to linger long at Thame and describe the wonders at Thame Park, with its remains of a Cistercian abbey and the fine Tudor buildings of Robert King, last abbot and afterward the first Bishop of Oxford. The three fine oriel windows and stair-turret, the noble Gothic dining-hall and abbot’s parlour panelled with oak in the style of the linen pattern, are some of the finest Tudor work in the country. The Prebendal house and chapel built by Grossetete are also worthy of the closest attention. The chapel is an architectural gem of Early English design, and the rest of the house with its later Perpendicular windows is admirable. Not far away is the interesting village of Long Crendon, once a market-town, with its fine church and its many picturesque houses, including Staple Hall, near the church, with its noble hall, used for more than five centuries as a manorial court-house on behalf of various lords of the manor, including Queen Katherine, widow of Henry V. It has now fortunately passed into the care of the National Trust, and its future is secured for the benefit of the nation. The house is a beautiful half-timbered structure, and was in a terribly dilapidated condition. It is interesting both historically and architecturally, and is note-worthy as illustrating the continuity of English life, that the three owners from whom the Trust received the building, Lady Kinloss, All Souls’ College, and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, are the successors in title of three daughters of an Earl of Pembroke in the thirteenth century. It is fortunate that the old house has fallen into such good hands. The village has a Tudor manor-house which has been restored.

Another court-house, that at Udimore, in Sussex, near Rye, has, we believe, been saved by the Trust, though the owner has retained possession. It is a picturesque half-timbered building of two storeys with modern wings projecting at right angles at each end. The older portion is all that remains of a larger house which appears to have been built in the fifteenth century. The manor belonged to the Crown, and it is said that both Edward I and Edward III visited it. The building was in a very dilapidated condition, and the owner intended to destroy it and replace it with modern cottages. We hope that this scheme has now been abandoned, and that the old house is safe for many years to come.

At the other end of the county of Oxfordshire remote from Thame is the beautiful little town of Burford, the gem of the Cotswolds. No wonder that my friend “Sylvanus Urban,” otherwise Canon Beeching, sings of its charm:

Oh fair is Moreton in the marsh
And Stow on the wide wold,
Yet fairer far is Burford town
With its stone roofs grey and old;
And whether the sky be hot and high,
Or rain fall thin and chill,
The grey old town on the lonely down
Is where I would be still.

O broad and smooth the Avon flows
By Stratford’s many piers;
And Shakespeare lies by Avon’s side
These thrice a hundred years;
But I would be where Windrush sweet
Laves Burford’s lovely hill
The grey old town on the lonely down
Is where I would be still.

It is unlike any other place, this quaint old Burford, a right pleasing place when the sun is pouring its beams upon the fantastic creations of the builders of long ago, and when the moon is full there is no place in England which surpasses it in picturesqueness. It is very quiet and still now, but there was a time when Burford cloth, Burford wool, Burford stone, Burford malt, and Burford saddles were renowned throughout the land. Did not the townsfolk present two of its famous saddles to “Dutch William” when he came to Burford with the view of ingratiating himself into the affections of his subjects before an important general election? It has been the scene of battles. Not far off is Battle Edge, where the fierce kings of Wessex and Mercia fought in 720 A.D. on Midsummer Eve, in commemoration of which the good folks of Burford used to carry a dragon up and down the streets, the great dragon of Wessex. Perhaps the origin of this procession dates back to early pagan days before the battle was fought, but tradition connects it with the fight. Memories cluster thickly around one as you walk up the old street. It was the first place in England to receive the privilege of a Merchant Guild. The gaunt Earl of Warwick, the King-maker, owned the place, and appropriated to himself the credit of erecting the almshouses, though Henry Bird gave the money. You can still see the Earl’s signature at the foot of the document relating to this foundation R. Warrewych the only signature known save one at Belvoir. You can see the ruined Burford Priory. It is not the conventual building wherein the monks lived in pre-Reformation days and served God in the grand old church that is Burford’s chief glory. Edmund Harman, the royal barber-surgeon, received a grant of the Priory from Henry VIII for curing him from a severe illness. Then Sir Laurence Tanfield, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, owned it, who married a Burford lady, Elizabeth Cobbe. An aged correspondent tells me that in the days of her youth there was standing a house called Cobb Hall, evidently the former residence of Lady Tanfield’s family. He built a grand Elizabethan mansion on the site of the old Priory, and here was born Lucius Gary, Lord Falkland, who was slain in Newbury fight. That Civil War brought stirring times to Burford. You have heard of the fame of the Levellers, the discontented mutineers in Cromwell’s army, the followers of John Lilburne, who for a brief space threatened the existence of the Parliamentary regime. Cromwell dealt with them with an iron hand. He caught and surprised them at Burford and imprisoned them in the church, wherein carved roughly on the font with a dagger you can see this touching memorial of one of these poor men:

ANTHONY SEDLEY PRISNER 1649.

Three of the leaders were shot in the churchyard on the following morning in view of the other prisoners, who were placed on the leaden roof of the church, and you can still see the bullet-holes in the old wall against which the unhappy men were placed. The following entries in the books of the church tell the sad story tersely:

Burials. “1649 Three soldiers shot to death in Burford
Churchyard May 17th.”

“Pd. to Daniel Muncke for cleansinge the Church when the
Levellers were taken 3d.”

A walk through the streets of the old town is refreshing to an antiquary’s eyes. The old stone buildings grey with age with tile roofs, the old Tolsey much restored, the merchants’ guild mark over many of the ancient doorways, the noble church with its eight chapels and fine tombs, the plate of the old corporation, now in the custody of its oldest surviving member (Burford has ceased to be an incorporated borough), are all full of interest. Vandalism is not, however, quite lacking, even in Burford. One of the few Gothic chimneys remaining, a gem with a crocketed and pinnacled canopy, was taken down some thirty years ago, while the Priory is said to be in danger of being pulled down, though a later report speaks only of its restoration. In the coaching age the town was alive with traffic, and Burford races, established by the Merry Monarch, brought it much gaiety. At the George Inn, now degraded from its old estate and cut up into tenements, Charles I stayed. It was an inn for more than a century before his time, and was only converted from that purpose during the early years of the nineteenth century, when the proprietor of the Bull Inn bought it up and closed its doors to the public with a view to improving the prosperity of his own house. The restoration of the picturesque almshouses founded by Henry Bird in the time of the King-maker, a difficult piece of work, was well carried out in the decadent days of the “twenties,” and happily they do not seem to have suffered much in the process.

During our wanderings in the streets and lanes of rural England we must not fail to visit the county of Essex. It is one of the least picturesque of our counties, but it possesses much wealth of interesting antiquities in the timber houses at Colchester, Saffron Walden, the old town of Maldon, the inns at Chigwell and Brentwood, and the halls of Layer Marney and Horsham at Thaxted. Saffron Walden is one of those quaint agricultural towns whose local trade is a thing of the past. From the records which are left of it in the shape of prints and drawings, the town in the early part of the nineteenth century must have been a medieval wonder. It is useless now to rail against the crass ignorance and vandalism which has swept away so many irreplaceable specimens of bygone architecture only to fill their sites with brick boxes, “likely indeed and all alike.”

Itineraries of the Georgian period when mentioning Saffron Walden describe the houses as being of “mean appearance," which remark, taking into consideration the debased taste of the times, is significant. A perfect holocaust followed, which extending through that shocking time known as the Churchwarden Period has not yet spent itself in the present day. Municipal improvements threaten to go further still, and in these commercial days, when combined capital under such appellations as the “Metropolitan Co-operative” or the “Universal Supply Stores” endeavours to increase its display behind plate-glass windows of immodest size, the life of old buildings seems painfully insecure.

A good number of fine early barge-boards still remain in Saffron Walden, and the timber houses which have been allowed to remain speak only too eloquently of the beauties which have vanished. One of these structures a large timber building or collection of buildings, for the dates of erection are various stands in Church Street, and was formerly the Sun Inn, a hostel of much importance in bygone times. This house of entertainment is said to have been in 1645 the quarters of the Parliamentary Generals Cromwell, Ireton, and Skippon. In 1870, during the conversion of the Sun Inn into private residences, some glazed tiles were discovered bricked up in what had once been an open hearth. These tiles were collectively painted with a picture on each side of the hearth, and bore the inscription “W.,” while on one of them a bust of the Lord Protector was depicted, thus showing the tradition to have been honoured during the second George’s time. Saffron Walden was the rendezvous of the Parliamentarian forces after the sacking of Leicester, having their encampment on Triplow Heath. A remarkable incident may be mentioned in connexion with this fact. In 1826 a rustic, while ploughing some land to the south of the town, turned up with his share the brass seal of Leicester Hospital, which seal had doubtless formed part of the loot acquired by the rebel army.

The Sun Inn, or “House of the Giants,” as it has sometimes been called, from the colossal figures which appear in the pargeting over its gateway, is a building which evidently grew with the needs of the town, and a study of its architectural features is curiously instructive.

The following extract from Pepys’s Diary is interesting as referring to Saffron Walden:

“1659, Febth. Up by four o’clock. Mr. Blayton and I took horse and straight to Saffron Walden, where at the White Hart we set up our horses and took the master to show us Audley End House, where the housekeeper showed us all the house, in which the stateliness of the ceilings, chimney-pieces, and form of the whole was exceedingly worth seeing. He took us into the cellar, where we drank most admirable drink, a health to the King. Here I played on my flageolette, there being an excellent echo. He showed us excellent pictures; two especially, those of the four Evangelists and Henry VIII. In our going my landlord carried us through a very old hospital or almshouse, where forty poor people were maintained; a very old foundation, and over the chimney-piece was an inscription in brass: ‘Orato pro anima Thomae Bird,’ &c. They brought me a draft of their drink in a brown bowl, tipt with silver, which I drank off, and at the bottom was a picture of the Virgin with the child in her arms done in silver. So we took leave....”

The inscription and the “brown bowl” (which is a mazer cup) still remain, but the picturesque front of the hospital, built in the reign of Edward VI, disappeared during the awful “improvements” which took place during the “fifties.” A drawing of it survives in the local museum.

Maldon, the capital of the Blackwater district, is to the eye of an artist a town for twilight effects. The picturesque skyline of its long, straggling street is accentuated in the early morning or afterglow, when much undesirable detail of modern times below the tiled roofs is blurred and lost. In broad daylight the quaintness of its suburbs towards the river reeks of the salt flavour of W.W. Jacobs’s stories. Formerly the town was rich with such massive timber buildings as still appear in the yard of the Blue Boar an ancient hostelry which was evidently modernized externally in Pickwickian times. While exploring in the outhouses of this hostel Mr. Roe lighted on a venerable posting-coach of early nineteenth-century origin among some other decaying vehicles, a curiosity even more rare nowadays than the Gothic king-posts to be seen in the picturesque half-timbered billiard-room.

The country around Maldon is dotted plentifully with evidences of past ages; Layer Marney, with its famous towers; D’Arcy Hall, noted for containing some of the finest linen panelling in England; Beeleigh Abbey, and other old-world buildings. The sea-serpent may still be seen at Heybridge, on the Norman church-door, one of the best of its kind, and exhibiting almost all its original ironwork, including the chimerical decorative clamp.

The ancient house exhibited at the Franco-British Exhibition at Shepherd’s Bush was a typical example of an Elizabethan dwelling. It was brought from Ipswich, where it was doomed to make room for the extension of Co-operative Stores, but so firmly was it built that, in spite of its age of three hundred and fifty years, it defied for some time the attacks of the house-breakers. It was built in 1563, as the date carved on the solid lintel shows, but some parts of the structure may have been earlier. All the oak joists and rafters had been securely mortised into each other and fixed with stout wooden pins. So securely were these pins fixed, that after many vain attempts to knock them out, they had all to be bored out with augers. The mortises and tenons were found to be as sound and clean as on the day when they were fitted by the sixteenth-century carpenters. The foundations and the chimneys were built of brick. The house contained a large entrance-hall, a kitchen, a splendidly carved staircase, a living-room, and two good bedrooms, on the upper floor. The whole house was a fine specimen of East Anglian half-timber work. The timbers that formed the framework were all straight, the diamond and curved patterns, familiar in western counties, signs of later construction, being altogether absent. One of the striking features of this, as of many other timber-framed houses, is the carved corner or angle post. It curves outwards as a support to the projecting first floor to the extent of nearly two feet, and the whole piece was hewn out of one massive oak log, the root, as was usual, having been placed upwards, and beautifully carved with Gothic floriations. The full overhang of the gables is four feet six inches. In later examples this distance between the gables and the wall was considerably reduced, until at last the barge-boards were flush with the wall. The joists of the first floor project from under a finely carved string-course, and the end of each joist has a carved finial. All the inside walls were panelled with oak, and the fire-place is of the typical old English character, with seats for half a dozen people in the ingle-nook. The principal room had a fine Tudor door, and the frieze and some of the panels were enriched with an inlay of holly. When the house was demolished many of the choicest fittings which were missing from their places were found carefully stowed under the floor boards. Possibly a raid or a riot had alarmed the owners in some distant period, and they hid their nicest things and then were slain, and no one knew of the secret hiding-place.

The Rector of Haughton calls attention to a curious old house which certainly ought to be preserved if it has not yet quite vanished.

“It is completely hidden from the public gaze. Right away in the fields, to be reached only by footpath, or by strangely circuitous lane, in the parish of Ranton, there stands a little old half-timbered house, known as the Vicarage Farm. Only a very practised eye would suspect the treasures that it contains. Entering through the original door, with quaint knocker intact, you are in the kitchen with a fine open fire-place, noble beam, and walls panelled with oak. But the principal treasure consists in what I have heard called ‘The priest’s room.’ I should venture to put the date of the house at about 1500 certainly pre-Reformation. How did it come to be there? and what purpose did it serve? I have only been able to find one note which can throw any possible light on the matter. Gough says that a certain Rose (Dunston?) brought land at Ranton to her husband John Doiley; and he goes on: ’This man had the consent of William, the Prior of Ranton, to erect a chapel at Ranton.’ The little church at Ranton has stood there from the thirteenth century, as the architecture of the west end and south-west doorway plainly testify. The church and cell (or whatever you may call it) must clearly have been an off-shoot from the Priory. But the room: for this is what is principally worth seeing. The beam is richly moulded, and so is the panelling throughout. It has a very well carved course of panelling all round the top, and this is surmounted by an elaborate cornice. The stone mantelpiece is remarkably fine and of unusual character. But the most striking feature of the room is a square-headed arched recess, or niche, with pierced spandrels. What was its use? It is about the right height for a seat, and what may have been the seat is there unaltered. Or was it a niche containing a Calvary, or some figure? I confess I know nothing. Is this a unique example? I cannot remember any other. But possibly there may be others, equally hidden away, comparison with which might unfold its secret. In this room, and in other parts of the house, much of the old ironwork of hinges and door-fasteners remains, and is simply excellent. The old oak sliding shutters are still there, and two more fine stone mantelpieces; on one hearth the original encaustic tiles with patterns, chiefly a Maltese cross, and the oak cill surrounding them, are in situ. I confess I tremble for the safety of this priceless relic. The house is in a somewhat dilapidated condition; and I know that one attempt was made to buy the panelling and take it away. Surely such a monument of the past should be in some way guarded by the nation.”

The beauty of English cottage-building, its directness, simplicity, variety, and above all its inevitable quality, the intimate way in which the buildings ally themselves with the soil and blend with the ever-varied and exquisite landscape, the delicate harmonies, almost musical in their nature, that grow from their gentle relationship with their surroundings, the modulation from man’s handiwork to God’s enveloping world that lies in the quiet gardening that binds one to the other without discord or dissonance all these things are wonderfully attractive to those who have eyes to see and hearts to understand. The English cottages have an importance in the story of the development of architecture far greater than that which concerns their mere beauty and picturesqueness. As we follow the history of Gothic art we find that for the most part the instinctive art in relation to church architecture came to an end in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, but the right impulse did not cease. House-building went on, though there was no church-building, and we admire greatly some of those grand mansions which were reared in the time of Elizabeth and the early Stuarts; but art was declining, a crumbling taste causing disintegration of the sense of real beauty and refinement of detail. A creeping paralysis set in later, and the end came swiftly when the dark days of the eighteenth century blotted out even the memory of a great past. And yet during all this time the people, the poor and middle classes, the yeomen and farmers, were ever building, building, quietly and simply, untroubled by any thoughts of style, of Gothic art or Renaissance; hence the cottages and dwellings of the humblest type maintained in all their integrity the real principles that made medieval architecture great. Frank, simple, and direct, built for use and not for the establishment of architectural theories, they have transmitted their messages to the ages and have preserved their beauties for the admiration of mankind and as models for all time.