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Vanishing England

by P. H. Ditchfield · English · Gutenberg #14742 · 645,518 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Vanishing England

Author: P. H. Ditchfield


        
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                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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VANISHING ENGLAND

The Book

by

P. H. DITCHFIELD
M.A., F.S.A., F.H.S.L., F.R.HIST.S.

The Illustrations by FRED ROE, R.I.

Methuen & Co. Ltd.
36 Essex Street W.C.
London

1910








[Illustration: The George Inn, Norton St. Philip, Somerset]


[Illustration: Canopy over Doorway of Buckingham House, Portsmouth]




CONTENTS


    CHAPTER

        I. INTRODUCTION

       II. THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ENGLAND

      III. OLD WALLED TOWNS

       IV. IN STREETS AND LANES

        V. OLD CASTLES

       VI. VANISHING OR VANISHED CHURCHES

      VII. OLD MANSIONS

     VIII. THE DESTRUCTION OF PREHISTORIC REMAINS

       IX. CATHEDRAL CITIES AND ABBEY TOWNS

        X. OLD INNS

       XI. OLD MUNICIPAL BUILDINGS

      XII. OLD CROSSES

     XIII. STOCKS AND WHIPPING-POSTS

      XIV. OLD BRIDGES

       XV. OLD HOSPITALS AND ALMSHOUSES

      XVI. VANISHING FAIRS

     XVII. THE DISAPPEARANCE OF OLD DOCUMENTS

    XVIII. OLD CUSTOMS THAT ARE VANISHING

      XIX. THE VANISHING OF ENGLISH SCENERY

       XX. CONCLUSION

           INDEX




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


    The George Inn, Norton St. Philip, Somerset (Frontispiece)

    Canopy over Doorway of Buckingham House, Portsmouth (Title page)

    Rural Tenements, Capel, Surrey

    Detail of Seventeenth-century Table in Milton's Cottage,
      Chalfont St. Giles

    Seventeenth-century Trophy

    Old Shop, formerly standing in Cliffe High Street, Lewes

    Paradise Square, Banbury

    Norden's Chart of the River Ore and Suffolk Coast

    Disused Mooring-post on bank of the Rother, Rye

    Old Houses built on the Town Wall, Rye

    Bootham Bar, York

    Half-timbered House with early Fifteenth-century Doorway,
      King's Lynn, Norfolk

    The "Bone Tower," Town Walls, Great Yarmouth

    Row No. 83, Great Yarmouth

    The Old Jetty, Gorleston

    Tudor House, Ipswich, near the Custom House

    Three-gabled House, Fore Street, Ipswich

    "Melia's Passage," York

    Detail of Half-timbered House in High Street, Shrewsbury

    Tower on the Town Wall, Shrewsbury

    House that the Earl of Richmond stayed in before the Battle of
      Bosworth. Shrewsbury

    Old Houses formerly standing in Spon Street, Coventry

    West Street, Rye

    Monogram and Inscription in the Mermaid Inn, Rye

    Inscription in the Mermaid Inn, Rye

    Relic of Lynn Siege in Hampton Court, King's Lynn

    Hampton Court, King's Lynn, Norfolk

    Mill Street, Warwick

    Tudor Tenements, New Inn Hall Street, Oxford (now demolished)

    Gothic Corner-post. The Half Moon Inn, Ipswich

    Timber-built House, Shrewsbury

    Missbrook Farm, Capel, Surrey

    Cottage at Capel, Surrey

    Farm-house, Horsmonden, Kent

    Seventeenth-century Cottages, Stow Langtoft, Suffolk

    The "Fish House," Littleport, Cambs.

    Sixteenth-century Cottage, formerly standing in Upper Deal, Kent

    Gable, Upper Deal, Kent

    A Portsmouth "Row"

    Lich-gate, Chalfont St. Giles, Bucks

    Fifteenth-century Handle on Church Door, Monk's Risborough, Bucks

    Weather-boarded Houses, Crown Street, Portsmouth

    Inscription on Font, Parish Church, Burford, Oxon

    Detail of Fifteenth-century Barge-board, Burford, Oxon

    The George Inn, Burford, Oxon

    Maldon, Essex. Sky-line of the High Street at twilight

    St. Mary's Church, Maldon

    Norman Clamp on door of Heybridge Church, Essex

    Tudor Fire-place. Now walled up in the passage of a shop
      in Banbury

    Cottages in Witney Street, Burford, Oxon

    Burgh Castle, Suffolk

    Caister Castle, Norfolk

    Defaced Arms, Taunton Castle

    Knightly Basinet (_temp._ Henry V) in Norwich Castle

    Saxon Doorway in St. Lawrence's Church, Bradford-on-Avon, Wilts.

    St. George's Church, Great Yarmouth

    Carving on Rood-screen, Alcester Church, Warwick

    Fourteenth-century Coffer in Faversham Church, Kent

    Flanders Chest in East Dereham Church, Norfolk, _temp_.
      Henry VIII

    Reversed Rose carved on "Miserere" in Norwich Cathedral

    Oak Panelling. Wainscot of Fifteenth Century, with addition _circa_
      late Seventeenth Century, fitted on to it in
      angle of room in the Church House, Goudhurst, Kent

    Section of Mouldings of Cornice on Panelling, the Church House,
      Goudhurst

    The Wardrobe House, the Close, Salisbury

    Chimney at Compton Wynyates

    Window-catch, Brockhall, Northants

    Gothic Chimney, Norton St. Philip, Somerset

    The Moat, Crowhurst Place, Surrey

    Arms of the Gaynesfords in window, Crowhurst Place, Surrey

    Cupboard Hinge, Crowhurst Place, Surrey

    Fixed Bench in the hall, Crowhurst Place, Surrey

    Gothic Door-head, Goudhurst, Kent

    Knightly Basinet (_temp._ Henry V) in Norwich Castle

    Hilt of Thirteenth-century Sword in Norwich Museum

    "Hand-and-a-half" Sword. Mr. Seymour Lucas, R.A.

    Seventeenth-century Boot, in the possession of Ernest
      Crofts, Esq., R.A.

    Chapel de Fer at Ockwells, Berks

    Tudor Dresser Table, in the possession of Sir Alfred Dryden,
      Canon's Ashby, Northants

    Seventeenth-century Powder-horn, found in the wall of an
      old house at Glastonbury. Now in Glastonbury Museum

    Seventeenth-century Spy-glass in Taunton Museum

    Fourteenth-century Flagon. From an old Manor House in Norfolk

    Elizabethan Chest, in the possession of Sir Coleridge Grove, K.C.B.

    Staircase Newel, Cromwell House, Highgate

    Piece of Wood Carved with Inscription. Found with a sword (_temp._
      Charles II) in an old house at Stoke-under-Ham, Somerset

    Seventeenth-century Water-clock, in Norwich Museum

    Sun-dial. The Manor House, Sutton Courtenay

    Half-timber Cottages, Waterside, Evesham

    Quarter Jacks over the Clock on exterior of north wall of Wells
      Cathedral

    The Gate House, Bishop's Palace, Well

    House in which Bishop Hooper was imprisoned, Westgate Street,
      Gloucester

    The "Stone House," Rye, Sussex

    Fifteenth-century House, Market Place, Evesham

    Fifteenth-century House, Market Place, Evesham

    Fifteenth-century House in Cowl Street, Evesham

    Half-timber House, Alcester, Warwick

    Half-timber House at Alcester

    The Wheelwrights' Arms, Warwick

    Entrance to the Reindeer Inn, Banbury

    The Shoulder of Mutton Inn, King's Lynn

    A Quaint Gable, the Bell Inn, Stilton

    The Bell Inn, Stilton

    The "Briton's Arms," Norwich

    The Dolphin Inn, Heigham, Norwich

    Shield and Monogram on doorway of the Dolphin Inn, Heigham

    Staircase Newel at the Dolphin Inn

    The Falstaff Inn, Canterbury

    The Bear and Ragged Staff Inn, Tewkesbury

    Fire-place in the George Inn, Norton St. Philip, Somerset

    The Green Dragon Inn, Wymondham, Norfolk

    The Star Inn, Alfriston, Sussex

    Courtyard of the George Inn, Norton St. Philip, Somerset

    The Dark Lantern Inn, Aylesbury, Bucks

    Spandril. The Marquis of Granby Inn, Colchester

    The Town Hall, Shrewsbury

    The Greenland Fishery House, King's Lynn.
      An old Guild House of the time of James I

    The Market House, Wymondham, Norfolk

    Guild Mark and Date on doorway, Burford, Oxon

    Stretham Cross, Isle of Ely

    The Market Cross, Salisbury

    Under the Butter Cross, Witney, Oxon

    The Triangular Bridge, Crowland

    Huntingdon Bridge

    The Crane Bridge, Salisbury

    Watch House on the Bridge, Bradford-on-Avon, Wilts

    Gateway of St. John's Hospital, Canterbury

    Inmate of the Trinity Bede House at Castle Rising, Norfolk

    The Hospital for Ancient Fishermen, Great Yarmouth

    Inscription on the Hospital, King's Lynn

    Ancient Inmates of the Fishermen's Hospital, Great Yarmouth

    Cottages at Evesham

    Stalls at Banbury Fair

    An Old English Fair

    An Ancient Maker of Nets in a Kentish Fair

    Outside the Lamb Inn, Burford

    Tail Piece






CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION


This book is intended not to raise fears but to record facts. We wish
to describe with pen and pencil those features of England which are
gradually disappearing, and to preserve the memory of them. It may be
said that we have begun our quest too late; that so much has already
vanished that it is hardly worth while to record what is left.
Although much has gone, there is still, however, much remaining that
is good, that reveals the artistic skill and taste of our forefathers,
and recalls the wonders of old-time. It will be our endeavour to tell
of the old country houses that Time has spared, the cottages that
grace the village green, the stern grey walls that still guard some
few of our towns, the old moot halls and public buildings. We shall
see the old-time farmers and rustics gathering together at fair and
market, their games and sports and merry-makings, and whatever relics
of old English life have been left for an artist and scribe of the
twentieth century to record.

Our age is an age of progress. _Altiora peto_ is its motto. The spirit
of progress is in the air, and lures its votaries on to higher
flights. Sometimes they discover that they have been following a mere
will-o'-the-wisp, that leads them into bog and quagmire whence no
escape is possible. The England of a century, or even of half a
century ago, has vanished, and we find ourselves in the midst of a
busy, bustling world that knows no rest or peace. Inventions tread
upon each other's heels in one long vast bewildering procession. We
look back at the peaceful reign of the pack-horse, the rumbling wagon,
the advent of the merry coaching days, the "Lightning" and the
"Quicksilver," the chaining of the rivers with locks and bars, the
network of canals that spread over the whole country; and then the
first shriek of the railway engine startled the echoes of the
countryside, a poor powerless thing that had to be pulled up the steep
gradients by a chain attached to a big stationary engine at the
summit. But it was the herald of the doom of the old-world England.
Highways and coaching roads, canals and rivers, were abandoned and
deserted. The old coachmen, once lords of the road, ended their days
in the poorhouse, and steam, almighty steam, ruled everywhere.

Now the wayside inns wake up again with the bellow of the motor-car,
which like a hideous monster rushes through the old-world villages,
startling and killing old slow-footed rustics and scampering children,
dogs and hens, and clouds of dust strive in very mercy to hide the
view of the terrible rushing demon. In a few years' time the air will
be conquered, and aeroplanes, balloons, flying-machines and air-ships,
will drop down upon us from the skies and add a new terror to life.

  Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range,
  Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.

Life is for ever changing, and doubtless everything is for the best in
this best of possible worlds; but the antiquary may be forgiven for
mourning over the destruction of many of the picturesque features of
bygone times and revelling in the recollections of the past. The
half-educated and the progressive--I attach no political meaning to
the term--delight in their present environment, and care not to
inquire too deeply into the origin of things; the study of evolution
and development is outside their sphere; but yet, as Dean Church once
wisely said, "In our eagerness for improvement it concerns us to be
on our guard against the temptation of thinking that we can have the
fruit or the flower, and yet destroy the root.... It concerns us that
we do not despise our birthright and cast away our heritage of gifts
and of powers, which we may lose, but not recover."

Every day witnesses the destruction of some old link with the past
life of the people of England. A stone here, a buttress there--it
matters not; these are of no consequence to the innovator or the
iconoclast. If it may be our privilege to prevent any further
spoliation of the heritage of Englishmen, if we can awaken any respect
or reverence for the work of our forefathers, the labours of both
artist and author will not have been in vain. Our heritage has been
sadly diminished, but it has not yet altogether disappeared, and it is
our object to try to record some of those objects of interest which
are so fast perishing and vanishing from our view, in order that the
remembrance of all the treasures that our country possesses may not
disappear with them.

The beauty of our English scenery has in many parts of the country
entirely vanished, never to return. Coal-pits, blasting furnaces,
factories, and railways have converted once smiling landscapes and
pretty villages into an inferno of black smoke, hideous mounds of
ashes, huge mills with lofty chimneys belching forth clouds of smoke
that kills vegetation and covers the leaves of trees and plants with
exhalations. I remember attending at Oxford a lecture delivered by the
late Mr. Ruskin. He produced a charming drawing by Turner of a
beautiful old bridge spanning a clear stream, the banks of which were
clad with trees and foliage. The sun shone brightly, and the sky was
blue, with fleeting clouds. "This is what you are doing with your
scenery," said the lecturer, as he took his palette and brushes; he
began to paint on the glass that covered the picture, and in a few
minutes the scene was transformed. Instead of the beautiful bridge a
hideous iron girder structure spanned the stream, which was no longer
pellucid and clear, but black as the Styx; instead of the trees arose
a monstrous mill with a tall chimney vomiting black smoke that spread
in heavy clouds, hiding the sun and the blue sky. "That is* what you
are doing with your scenery," concluded Mr. Ruskin--a true picture of
the penalty we pay for trade, progress, and the pursuit of wealth. We
are losing faith in the testimony of our poets and painters to the
beauty of the English landscape which has inspired their art, and much
of the charm of our scenery in many parts has vanished. We happily
have some of it left still where factories are not, some interesting
objects that artists love to paint. It is well that they should be
recorded before they too pass away.

   *Transcriber's Note: Original "it".

[Illustration: Rural Tenements, Capel, Surrey]

Old houses of both peer and peasant and their contents are sooner or
later doomed to destruction. Historic mansions full of priceless
treasures amassed by succeeding generations of old families fall a
prey to relentless fire. Old panelled rooms and the ancient
floor-timbers understand not the latest experiments in electric
lighting, and yield themselves to the flames with scarce a struggle.
Our forefathers were content with hangings to keep out the draughts
and open fireplaces to keep them warm. They were a hardy race, and
feared not a touch or breath of cold. Their degenerate sons must have
an elaborate heating apparatus, which again distresses the old timbers
of the house and fires their hearts of oak. Our forefathers, indeed,
left behind them a terrible legacy of danger--that beam in the
chimney, which has caused the destruction of many country houses.
Perhaps it was not so great a source of danger in the days of the old
wood fires. It is deadly enough when huge coal fires burn in the
grates. It is a dangerous, subtle thing. For days, or even for a week
or two, it will smoulder and smoulder; and then at last it will blaze
up, and the old house with all its precious contents is wrecked.

The power of the purse of American millionaires also tends greatly to
the vanishing of much that is English--the treasures of English art,
rare pictures and books, and even of houses. Some nobleman or
gentleman, through the extravagance of himself or his ancestors, or on
account of the pressure of death duties, finds himself impoverished.
Some of our great art dealers hear of his unhappy state, and knowing
that he has some fine paintings--a Vandyke or a Romney--offer him
twenty-five or thirty thousand pounds for a work of art. The
temptation proves irresistible. The picture is sold, and soon finds
its way into the gallery of a rich American, no one in England having
the power or the good taste to purchase it. We spend our money in
other ways. The following conversation was overheard at Christie's:
"Here is a beautiful thing; you should buy it," said the speaker to a
newly fledged baronet. "I'm afraid I can't afford it," replied the
baronet. "Not afford it?" replied his companion. "It will cost you
infinitely less than a baronetcy and do you infinitely more credit."
The new baronet seemed rather offended. At the great art sales rare
folios of Shakespeare, pictures, Sevres, miniatures from English
houses are put up for auction, and of course find their way to
America. Sometimes our cousins from across the Atlantic fail to secure
their treasures. They have striven very eagerly to buy Milton's
cottage at Chalfont St. Giles, for transportation to America; but this
effort has happily been successfully resisted. The carved table in
the cottage was much sought after, and was with difficulty retained
against an offer of £150. An old window of fifteenth-century
workmanship in an old house at Shrewsbury was nearly exploited by an
enterprising American for the sum of £250; and some years ago an
application was received by the Home Secretary for permission to
unearth the body of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, from
its grave in the burial-ground of Jordans, near Chalfont St. Giles,
and transport it to Philadelphia. This action was successfully opposed
by the trustees of the burial-ground, but it was considered expedient
to watch the ground for some time to guard against the possibility of
any illicit attempts at removal.

[Illustration: Detail of Seventeenth-century Table in Milton's
Cottage, Chalfont St. Giles]

It was reported that an American purchaser had been more successful at
Ipswich, where in 1907 a Tudor house and corner-post, it was said, had
been secured by a London firm for shipment to America. We are glad to
hear that this report was incorrect, that the purchaser was an English
lord, who re-erected the house in his park.

Wanton destruction is another cause of the disappearance of old
mansions. Fashions change even in house-building. Many people prefer
new lamps to old ones, though the old ones alone can summon genii and
recall the glories of the past, the associations of centuries of
family life, and the stories of ancestral prowess. Sometimes fashion
decrees the downfall of old houses. Such a fashion raged at the
beginning of the last century, when every one wanted a brand-new house
built after the Palladian style; and the old weather-beaten pile that
had sheltered the family for generations, and was of good old English
design with nothing foreign or strange about it, was compelled to give
place to a new-fangled dwelling-place which was neither beautiful nor
comfortable. Indeed, a great wit once advised the builder of one of
these mansions to hire a room on the other side of the road and spend
his days looking at his Palladian house, but to be sure not to live
there.

Many old houses have disappeared on account of the loyalty of their
owners, who were unfortunate enough to reside within the regions
harassed by the Civil War. This was especially the case in the county
of Oxford. Still you may see avenues of venerable trees that lead to
no house. The old mansion or manor-house has vanished. Many of them
were put in a posture of defence. Earthworks and moats, if they did
not exist before, were hastily constructed, and some of these houses
were bravely defended by a competent and brave garrison, and were
thorns in the sides of the Parliamentary army. Upon the triumph of the
latter, revenge suffered not these nests of Malignants to live. Others
were so battered and ruinous that they were only fit residences for
owls and bats. Some loyal owners destroyed the remains of their homes
lest they should afford shelter to the Parliamentary forces. David
Walter set fire to his house at Godstow lest it should afford
accommodation to the "Rebels." For the same reason Governor Legge
burnt the new episcopal palace, which Bancroft had only finished ten
years before at Cuddesdon. At the same time Thomas Gardiner burnt his
manor-house in Cuddesdon village, and many other houses were so
battered that they were left untenanted, and so fell to ruin.[1] Sir
Bulstrode Whitelock describes how he slighted the works at Phillis
Court, "causing the bulwarks and lines to be digged down, the grafts
[i.e. moats] filled, the drawbridge to be pulled up, and all levelled.
I sent away the great guns, the granadoes, fireworks, and ammunition,
whereof there was good store in the fort. I procured pay for my
soldiers, and many of them undertook the service in Ireland." This is
doubtless typical of what went on in many other houses. The famous
royal manor-house of Woodstock was left battered and deserted, and
"haunted," as the readers of _Woodstock_ will remember, by an "adroit
and humorous royalist named Joe Collins," who frightened the
commissioners away by his ghostly pranks. In 1651 the old house was
gutted and almost destroyed. The war wrought havoc with the old
houses, as it did with the lives and other possessions of the
conquered.

  [1] _History of Oxfordshire_, by J. Meade Falkner.

[Illustration: Seventeenth-century Trophy]

But we are concerned with times less remote, with the vanishing of
historic monuments, of noble specimens of architecture, and of the
humble dwellings of the poor, the picturesque cottages by the wayside,
which form such attractive features of the English landscape. We have
only to look at the west end of St. Albans Abbey Church, which has
been "Grimthorped" out of all recognition, or at the over-restored
Lincoln's Inn Chapel, to see what evil can be done in the name of
"Restoration," how money can be lavishly spent to a thoroughly bad
purpose.

Property in private hands has suffered no less than many of our
public buildings, even when the owner is a lover of antiquity and does
not wish to remove and to destroy the objects of interest on his
estate. Estate agents are responsible for much destruction. Sir John
Stirling Maxwell, Bart., F.S.A., a keen archæologist, tells how an
agent on his estate transformed a fine old grim sixteenth-century
fortified dwelling, a very perfect specimen of its class, into a house
for himself, entirely altering the character of its appearance, adding
a lofty oriel and spacious windows with a new door and staircase,
while some of the old stones were made to adorn a rockery in the
garden. When he was abroad the elaborately contrived entrance for the
defence of a square fifteenth-century keep with four square towers at
the corners, very curious and complete, were entirely obliterated by a
zealous mason. In my own parish I awoke one day to find the old
village pound entirely removed by order of an estate agent, and a very
interesting stand near the village smithy for fastening oxen when they
were shod disappeared one day, the village publican wanting the posts
for his pig-sty. County councils sweep away old bridges because they
are inconveniently narrow and steep for the tourists' motors, and
deans and chapters are not always to be relied upon in regard to their
theories of restoration, and squire and parson work sad havoc on the
fabrics of old churches when they are doing their best to repair them.
Too often they have decided to entirely demolish the old building, the
most characteristic feature of the English landscape, with its square
grey tower or shapely spire, a tower that is, perhaps, loopholed and
battlemented, and tells of turbulent times when it afforded a secure
asylum and stronghold when hostile bands were roving the countryside.
Within, piscina, ambrey, and rood-loft tell of the ritual of former
days. Some monuments of knights and dames proclaim the achievements of
some great local family. But all this weighs for nothing in the eyes
of the renovating squire and parson. They must have a grand, new,
modern church with much architectural pretension and fine decorations
which can never have the charm which attaches to the old building. It
has no memories, this new structure. It has nothing to connect it with
the historic past. Besides, they decree that it must not cost too
much. The scheme of decoration is stereotyped, the construction
mechanical. There is an entire absence of true feeling and of any real
inspiration of devotional art. The design is conventional, the pattern
uniform. The work is often scamped and hurried, very different from
the old method of building. We note the contrast. The medieval
builders were never in a hurry to finish their work. The old fanes
took centuries to build; each generation doing its share, chancel or
nave, aisle or window, each trying to make the church as perfect as
the art of man could achieve. We shall see how much of this sound and
laborious work has vanished, a prey to restoration and ignorant
renovation. We shall see the house-breaker at work in rural hamlet and
in country town. Vanishing London we shall leave severely alone. Its
story has been already told in a large and comely volume by my friend
Mr. Philip Norman. Besides, is there anything that has not vanished,
having been doomed to destruction by the march of progress, now that
Crosby Hall has gone the way of life in the Great City? A few old
halls of the City companies remain, but most of them have given way to
modern palaces; a few City churches, very few, that escaped the Great
Fire, and every now and again we hear threatenings against the
masterpieces of Wren, and another City church has followed in the wake
of all the other London buildings on which the destroyer has laid his
hand. The site is so valuable; the modern world of business presses
out the life of these fine old edifices. They have to make way for
new-fangled erections built in the modern French style with sprawling
gigantic figures with bare limbs hanging on the porticoes which seem
to wonder how they ever got there, and however they were to keep
themselves from falling. London is hopeless! We can but delve its soil
when opportunities occur in order to find traces of Roman or medieval
life. Churches, inns, halls, mansions, palaces, exchanges have
vanished, or are quickly vanishing, and we cast off the dust of London
streets from our feet and seek more hopeful places.

[Illustration: Old Shop, formerly standing in Cliffe High Street,
Lewes]

But even in the sleepy hollows of old England the pulse beats faster
than of yore, and we shall only just be in time to rescue from
oblivion and the house-breaker some of our heritage. Old city walls
that have defied the attacks of time and of Cromwell's Ironsides are
often in danger from the wiseacres who preside on borough
corporations. Town halls picturesque and beautiful in their old age
have to make way for the creations of the local architect. Old shops
have to be pulled down in order to provide a site for a universal
emporium or a motor garage. Nor are buildings the only things that are
passing away. The extensive use of motor-cars and highway vandalism
are destroying the peculiar beauty of the English roadside. The
swift-speeding cars create clouds of white dust which settles upon the
hedges and trees, covering them with it and obscuring the wayside
flowers and hiding all their attractiveness. Corn and grass are
injured and destroyed by the dust clouds. The charm and poetry of the
country walk are destroyed by motoring demons, and the wayside
cottage-gardens, once the most attractive feature of the English
landscape, are ruined. The elder England, too, is vanishing in the
modes, habits, and manners of her people. Never was the truth of the
old oft-quoted Latin proverb--_Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in
illis_--so pathetically emphatic as it is to-day. The people are
changing in their habits and modes of thought. They no longer take
pleasure in the simple joys of their forefathers. Hence in our
chronicle of Vanishing England we shall have to refer to some of those
strange customs which date back to primeval ages, but which the
railways, excursion trains, and the schoolmaster in a few years will
render obsolete.

In recording the England that is vanishing the artist's pencil will
play a more prominent part than the writer's pen. The graphic sketches
that illustrate this book are far more valuable and helpful to the
discernment of the things that remain than the most effective
descriptions. We have tried together to gather up the fragments that
remain that nothing be lost; and though there may be much that we have
not gathered, the examples herein given of some of the treasures that
are left may be useful in creating a greater reverence for the work
bequeathed to us by our forefathers, and in strengthening the hands of
those who would preserve them. Happily we are still able to use the
present participle, not the past. It is vanishing England, not
vanished, of which we treat; and if we can succeed in promoting an
affection for the relics of antiquity that time has spared, our
labours will not have been in vain or the object of this book
unattained.

[Illustration: Paradise Square, Banbury]




CHAPTER II

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ENGLAND


Under this alarming heading, "The Disappearance of England," the
_Gaulois_ recently published an article by M. Guy Dorval on the
erosion of the English coasts. The writer refers to the predictions of
certain British men of science that England will one day disappear
altogether beneath the waves, and imagines that we British folk are
seized by a popular panic. Our neighbours are trembling for the fate
of the _entente cordiale_, which would speedily vanish with vanishing
England; but they have been assured by some of their savants that the
rate of erosion is only one kilometre in a thousand years, and that
the danger of total extinction is somewhat remote. Professor Stanislas
Meunier, however, declares that our "panic" is based on scientific
facts. He tells us that the cliffs of Brighton are now one kilometre
farther away from the French coast than in the days of Queen
Elizabeth, and that those of Kent are six kilometres farther away than
in the Roman period. He compares our island to a large piece of sugar
in water, but we may rest assured that before we disappear beneath the
waves the period which must elapse would be greater than the longest
civilizations known in history. So we may hope to be able to sing
"Rule Britannia" for many a long year.

Coast erosion is, however, a serious problem, and has caused the
destruction of many a fair town and noble forest that now lie beneath
the seas, and the crumbling cliffs on our eastern shore threaten to
destroy many a village church and smiling pasture. Fishermen tell you
that when storms rage and the waves swell they have heard the bells
chiming in the towers long covered by the seas, and nigh the
picturesque village of Bosham we were told of a stretch of sea that
was called the Park. This as late as the days of Henry VIII was a
favourite royal hunting forest, wherein stags and fawns and does
disported themselves; now fish are the only prey that can be slain
therein.

The Royal Commission on coast erosion relieves our minds somewhat by
assuring us that although the sea gains upon the land in many places,
the land gains upon the sea in others, and that the loss and gain are
more or less balanced. As a matter of area this is true. Most of the
land that has been rescued from the pitiless sea is below high-water
mark, and is protected by artificial banks. This work of reclaiming
land can, of course, only be accomplished in sheltered places, for
example, in the great flat bordering the Wash, which flat is formed by
the deposit of the rivers of the Fenland, and the seaward face of this
region is gradually being pushed forward by the careful processes of
enclosure. You can see the various old sea walls which have been
constructed from Roman times onward. Some accretions of land have
occurred where the sea piles up masses of shingle, unless foolish
people cart away the shingle in such quantities that the waves again
assert themselves. Sometimes sand silts up as at Southport in
Lancashire, where there is the second longest pier in England, a mile
in length, from the end of which it is said that on a clear day with a
powerful telescope you may perchance see the sea, that a distinguished
traveller accustomed to the deserts of Sahara once found it, and that
the name Southport is altogether a misnomer, as it is in the north and
there is no port at all.

But however much as an Englishman I might rejoice that the actual area
of "our tight little island," which after all is not very tight,
should not be diminishing, it would be a poor consolation to me, if I
possessed land and houses on the coast of Norfolk which were fast
slipping into the sea, to know that in the Fenland industrious farmers
were adding to their acres. And day by day, year by year, this
destruction is going on, and the gradual melting away of land. The
attack is not always persistent. It is intermittent. Sometimes the
progress of the sea seems to be stayed, and then a violent storm
arises and falling cliffs and submerged houses proclaim the sway of
the relentless waves. We find that the greatest loss has occurred on
the east and southern coasts of our island. Great damage has been
wrought all along the Yorkshire sea-board from Bridlington to Kilnsea,
and the following districts have been the greatest sufferers: between
Cromer and Happisburgh, Norfolk; between Pakefield and Southwold,
Suffolk; Hampton and Herne Bay, and then St. Margaret's Bay, near
Dover; the coast of Sussex, east of Brighton, and the Isle of Wight;
the region of Bournemouth and Poole; Lyme Bay, Dorset, and Bridgwater
Bay, Somerset.

All along the coast from Yarmouth to Eastbourne, with a few
exceptional parts, we find that the sea is gaining on the land by
leaps and bounds. It is a coast that is most favourably constructed
for coast erosion. There are no hard or firm rocks, no cliffs high
enough to give rise to a respectable landslip; the soil is composed of
loose sand and gravels, loams and clays, nothing to resist the
assaults of atmospheric action from above or the sea below. At
Covehithe, on the Suffolk coast, there has been the greatest loss of
land. In 1887 sixty feet was claimed by the sea, and in ten years
(1878-87) the loss was at the rate of over eighteen feet a year. In
1895 another heavy loss occurred between Southwold and Covehithe and a
new cove formed. Easton Bavent has entirely disappeared, and so have
the once prosperous villages of Covehithe, Burgh-next-Walton, and
Newton-by-Corton, and the same fate seems to be awaiting Pakefield,
Southwold, and other coast-lying towns. Easton Bavent once had such a
flourishing fishery that it paid an annual rent of 3110 herrings; and
millions of herrings must have been caught by the fishermen of
disappeared Dunwich, which we shall visit presently, as they paid
annually "fish-fare" to the clergy of the town 15,377 herrings,
besides 70,000 to the royal treasury.

The summer visitors to the pleasant watering-place Felixstowe, named
after St. Felix, who converted the East Anglians to Christianity and
was their first bishop, that being the place where the monks of the
priory of St. Felix in Walton held their annual fair, seldom reflect
that the old Saxon burgh was carried away as long ago as 1100 A.D.
Hence Earl Bigot was compelled to retire inland and erect his famous
castle at Walton. But the sea respected not the proud walls of the
baron's stronghold; the strong masonry that girt the keep lies beneath
the waves; a heap of stones, called by the rustics Stone Works, alone
marks the site of this once powerful castle. Two centuries later the
baron's marsh was destroyed by the sea, and eighty acres of land was
lost, much to the regret of the monks, who were thus deprived of the
rent and tithe corn.

The old chroniclers record many dread visitations of the relentless
foe. Thus in 1237 we read: "The sea burst with high tides and tempests
of winds, marsh countries near the sea were flooded, herds and flocks
perished, and no small number of men were lost and drowned. The sea
rose continually for two days and one night." Again in 1251: "On
Christmas night there was a great thunder and lightning in Suffolk;
the sea caused heavy floods." In much later times Defoe records:
"Aldeburgh has two streets, each near a mile long, but its breadth,
which was more considerable formerly, is not proportionable, and the
sea has of late years swallowed up one whole street." It has still
standing close to the shore its quaint picturesque town hall, erected
in the fifteenth century. Southwold is now practically an island,
bounded on the east by the sea, on the south-west by the Blyth River,
on the north-west by Buss Creek. It is only joined to the mainland by
a narrow neck of shingle that divides Buss Creek from the sea. I think
that I should prefer to hold property in a more secure region. You
invest your savings in stock, and dividends decrease and your capital
grows smaller, but you usually have something left. But when your land
and houses vanish entirely beneath the waves, the chapter is ended and
you have no further remedy except to sue Father Neptune, who has
rather a wide beat and may be difficult to find when he is wanted to
be served with a summons.

[Illustration: Norden's Chart of the River Ore and Suffolk Coast]

But the Suffolk coast does not show all loss. In the north much land
has been gained in the region of Beccles, which was at one time close
to the sea, and one of the finest spreads of shingle in England
extends from Aideburgh to Bawdry. This shingle has silted up many a
Suffolk port, but it has proved a very effectual barrier against the
inroads of the sea. Norden's map of the coast made in 1601[2] shows
this wonderful mass of shingle, which has greatly increased since
Norden's day. It has been growing in a southerly direction, until the
Aide River had until recently an estuary ten miles in length. But in
1907 the sea asserted itself, and "burst through the stony barrier,
making a passage for the exit of the river one mile further north, and
leaving a vast stretch of shingle and two deserted river-channels as a
protection to the Marshes of Hollesley from further inroads of the
sea."[3] Formerly the River Alde flowed direct to the sea just south
of the town of Aldeburgh. Perhaps some day it may be able to again
force a passage near its ancient course or by Havergate Island. This
alteration in the course of rivers is very remarkable, and may be
observed at Christ Church, Hants.

  [2] It is now in possession of Mr. Kenneth M. Clark, by whose
  permission the accompanying plan, reproduced from the _Memorials
  of Old Suffolk_, was made.

  [3] _Memorials of Old Suffolk_, edited by V.B. Redstone, p. 226.

It is pathetic to think of the historic churches, beautiful villages,
and smiling pastures that have been swept away by the relentless sea.
There are no less than twelve towns and villages in Yorkshire that
have been thus buried, and five in Suffolk. Ravensburgh, in the former
county, was once a flourishing seaport. Here landed Henry IV in 1399,
and Edward IV in 1471. It returned two members to Parliament. An old
picture of the place shows the church, a large cross, and houses; but
it has vanished with the neighbouring villages of Redmare,
Tharlethorp, Frismarch, and Potterfleet, and "left not a wrack
behind." Leland mentions it in 1538, after which time its place in
history and on the map knows it no more. The ancient church of Kilnsea
lost half its fabric in 1826, and the rest followed in 1831. Alborough
Church and the Castle of Grimston have entirely vanished. Mapleton
Church was formerly two miles from the sea; it is now on a cliff with
the sea at its feet, awaiting the final attack of the all-devouring
enemy. Nearly a century ago Owthorne Church and churchyard were
overwhelmed, and the shore was strewn with ruins and shattered
coffins. On the Tyneside the destruction has been remarkable and
rapid. In the district of Saltworks there was a house built standing
on the cliff, but it was never finished, and fell a prey to the waves.
At Percy Square an inn and two cottages have been destroyed. The edge
of the cliff in 1827 was eighty feet seaward, and the banks of Percy
Square receded a hundred and eighty feet between the years 1827 and
1892. Altogether four acres have disappeared. An old Roman building,
locally known as "Gingling Geordie's Hole," and large masses of the
Castle Cliff fell into the sea in the 'eighties. The remains of the
once flourishing town of Seaton, on the Durham coast, can be
discovered amid the sands at low tide. The modern village has sunk
inland, and cannot now boast of an ancient chapel dedicated to St.
Thomas of Canterbury, which has been devoured by the waves.

Skegness, on the Lincolnshire coast, was a large and important town;
it boasted of a castle with strong fortifications and a church with a
lofty spire; it now lies deep beneath the devouring sea, which no
guarding walls could conquer. Far out at sea, beneath the waves, lies
old Cromer Church, and when storms rage its bells are said to chime.
The churchyard wherein was written the pathetic ballad "The Garden of
Sleep" is gradually disappearing, and "the graves of the fair women
that sleep by the cliffs by the sea" have been outraged, and their
bodies scattered and devoured by the pitiless waves.

One of the greatest prizes of the sea is the ancient city of Dunwich,
which dates back to the Roman era. The Domesday Survey shows that it
was then a considerable town having 236 burgesses. It was girt with
strong walls; it possessed an episcopal palace, the seat of the East
Anglian bishopric; it had (so Stow asserts) fifty-two churches, a
monastery, brazen gates, a town hall, hospitals, and the dignity of
possessing a mint. Stow tells of its departed glories, its royal and
episcopal palaces, the sumptuous mansion of the mayor, its numerous
churches and its windmills, its harbour crowded with shipping, which
sent forth forty vessels for the king's service in the thirteenth
century. Though Dunwich was an important place, Stow's description of
it is rather exaggerated. It could never have had more than ten
churches and monasteries. Its "brazen gates" are mythical, though it
had its Lepers' Gate, South Gate, and others. It was once a thriving
city of wealthy merchants and industrious fishermen. King John granted
to it a charter. It suffered from the attacks of armed men as well as
from the ravages of the sea. Earl Bigot and the revolting barons
besieged it in the reign of Edward I. Its decay was gradual. In 1342,
in the parish of St. Nicholas, out of three hundred houses only
eighteen remained. Only seven out of a hundred houses were standing in
the parish of St. Martin. St. Peter's parish was devastated and
depopulated. It had a small round church, like that at Cambridge,
called the Temple, once the property of the Knights Templars, richly
endowed with costly gifts. This was a place of sanctuary, as were the
other churches in the city. With the destruction of the houses came
also the decay of the port which no ships could enter. Its rival,
Southwold, attracted the vessels of strangers. The markets and fairs
were deserted. Silence and ruin reigned over the doomed town, and the
ruined church of All Saints is all that remains of its former glories,
save what the storms sometimes toss along the beach for the study and
edification of antiquaries.

As we proceed down the coast we find that the sea is still gaining on
the land. The old church at Walton-on-the-Naze was swept away, and is
replaced by a new one. A flourishing town existed at Reculver, which
dates back to the Romans. It was a prosperous place, and had a noble
church, which in the sixteenth century was a mile from the sea.
Steadily have the waves advanced, until a century ago the church fell
into the sea, save two towers which have been preserved by means of
elaborate sea-walls as a landmark for sailors.

The fickle sea has deserted some towns and destroyed their prosperity;
it has receded all along the coast from Folkestone to the Sussex
border, and left some of the famous Cinque Ports, some of which we
shall visit again, Lymne, Romney, Hythe, Richborough, Stonor,
Sandwich, and Sarre high and dry, with little or no access to the sea.
Winchelsea has had a strange career. The old town lies beneath the
waves, but a new Winchelsea arose, once a flourishing port, but now
deserted and forlorn with the sea a mile away. Rye, too, has been
forsaken. It was once an island; now the little Rother stream conveys
small vessels to the sea, which looks very far away.

We cannot follow all the victories of the sea. We might examine the
inroads made by the waves at Selsea. There stood the first cathedral
of the district before Chichester was founded. The building is now
beneath the sea, and since Saxon times half of the Selsea Bill has
vanished. The village of Selsea rested securely in the centre of the
peninsula, but only half a mile now separates it from the sea. Some
land has been gained near this projecting headland by an industrious
farmer. His farm surrounded a large cove with a narrow mouth through
which the sea poured. If he could only dam up that entrance, he
thought he could rescue the bed of the cove and add to his acres. He
bought an old ship and sank it by the entrance and proceeded to drain.
But a tiresome storm arose and drove the ship right across the cove,
and the sea poured in again. By no means discouraged, he dammed up the
entrance more effectually, got rid of the water, increased his farm by
many acres, and the old ship makes an admirable cow-shed.

[Illustration: Disused Mooring-Post on bank of the Rother, Rye]

The Isle of Wight in remote geological periods was part of the
mainland. The Scilly Isles were once joined with Cornwall, and were
not severed until the fourteenth century, when by a mighty storm and
flood, 140 churches and villages were destroyed and overwhelmed, and
190 square miles of land carried away. Much land has been lost in the
Wirral district of Cheshire. Great forests have been overwhelmed, as
the skulls and bones of deer and horse and fresh-water shell-fish have
been frequently discovered at low tide. Fifty years ago a distance of
half a mile separated Leasowes Castle from the sea; now its walls are
washed by the waves. The Pennystone, off the Lancashire coast by
Blackpool, tells of a submerged village and manor, about which cluster
romantic legends.

Such is the sad record of the sea's destruction, for which the
industrious reclamation of land, the compensations wrought by the
accumulation of shingle and sand dunes and the silting of estuaries
can scarcely compensate us. How does the sea work this? There are
certain rock-boring animals, such as the Pholas, which help to decay
the rocks. Each mollusc cuts a series of augur-holes from two to four
inches deep, and so assists in destroying the bulwarks of England.
Atmospheric action, the disintegration of soft rocks by frost and by
the attack of the sea below, all tend in the same direction. But the
foolish action of man in removing shingle, the natural protection of
our coasts, is also very mischievous. There is an instance of this in
the Hall Sands and Bee Sands, Devon. A company a few years ago
obtained authority to dredge both from the foreshore and sea-bed. The
Commissioners of Woods and Forests and the Board of Trade granted this
permission, the latter receiving a royalty of £50 and the former £150.
This occurred in 1896. Soon afterwards a heavy gale arose and caused
an immense amount of damage, the result entirely of this dredging. The
company had to pay heavily, and the royalties were returned to them.
This is only one instance out of many which might be quoted. We are an
illogical nation, and our regulations and authorities are weirdly
confused. It appears that the foreshore is under the control of the
Board of Trade, and then a narrow strip of land is ruled over by the
Commissioners of Woods and Forests. Of course these bodies do not
agree; different policies are pursued by each, and the coast suffers.
Large sums are sometimes spent in coast-defence works. At Spurn no
less than £37,433 has been spent out of Parliamentary grants, besides
£14,227 out of the Mercantile Marine Fund. Corporations or county
authorities, finding their coasts being worn away, resolve to protect
it. They obtain a grant in aid from Parliament, spend vast sums, and
often find their work entirely thrown away, or proving itself most
disastrous to their neighbours. If you protect one part of the coast
you destroy another. Such is the rule of the sea. If you try to beat
it back at one point it will revenge itself on another. If only you
can cause shingle to accumulate before your threatened town or
homestead, you know you can make the place safe and secure from the
waves. But if you stop this flow of shingle you may protect your own
homes, but you deprive your neighbours of this safeguard against the
ravages of the sea. It was so at Deal. The good folks of Deal placed
groynes in order to stop the flow of shingle and protect the town.
They did their duty well; they stopped the shingle and made a good
bulwark against the sea. With what result? In a few years' time they
caused the destruction of Sandown, which had been deprived of its
natural protection. Mr. W. Whitaker, F.R.S., who has walked along the
whole coast from Norfolk to Cornwall, besides visiting other parts of
our English shore, and whose contributions to the Report of the Royal
Commission on Coast Erosion are so valuable, remembers when a boy the
Castle of Sandown, which dated from the time of Henry VIII. It was
then in a sound condition and was inhabited. Now it is destroyed, and
the batteries farther north have gone too. The same thing is going on
at Dover. The Admiralty Pier causes the accumulation of shingle on its
west side, and prevents it from following its natural course in a
north-easterly direction. Hence the base of the cliffs on the other
side of the pier and harbour is left bare and unprotected; this aids
erosion, and not unfrequently do we hear of the fall of the chalk
cliffs.

Isolated schemes for the prevention of coast erosion are of little
avail. They can do no good, and only increase the waste and
destruction of land in neighbouring shores. Stringent laws should be
passed to prevent the taking away of shingle from protecting beaches,
and to prohibit the ploughing of land near the edge of cliffs, which
greatly assists atmospheric destructive action from above. The State
has recently threatened the abandonment of the coastguard service.
This would be a disastrous policy. Though the primary object of
coastguards, the prevention of smuggling, has almost passed away, the
old sailors who act as guardians of our coast-line render valuable
services to the country. They are most useful in looking after the
foreshore. They save many lives from wrecked vessels, and keep watch
and ward to guard our shores, and give timely notice of the advance of
a hostile fleet, or of that ever-present foe which, though it affords
some protection for our island home from armed invasion, does not fail
to exact a heavy tithe from the land it guards, and has destroyed so
many once flourishing towns and villages by its ceaseless attack.




CHAPTER III

OLD WALLED TOWNS


The destruction of ancient buildings always causes grief and distress
to those who love antiquity. It is much to be deplored, but in some
cases is perhaps inevitable. Old-fashioned half-timbered shops with
small diamond-paned windows are not the most convenient for the
display of the elegant fashionable costumes effectively draped on
modelled forms. Motor-cars cannot be displayed in antiquated old
shops. Hence in modern up-to-date towns these old buildings are
doomed, and have to give place to grand emporiums with large
plate-glass windows and the refinements of luxurious display. We hope
to visit presently some of the old towns and cities which happily
retain their ancient beauties, where quaint houses with oversailing
upper stories still exist, and with the artist's aid to describe many
of their attractions.

Although much of the destruction is, as I have said, inevitable, a
vast amount is simply the result of ignorance and wilful perversity.
Ignorant persons get elected on town councils--worthy men doubtless,
and able men of business, who can attend to and regulate the financial
affairs of the town, look after its supply of gas and water, its
drainage and tramways; but they are absolutely ignorant of its
history, its associations, of architectural beauty, of anything that
is not modern and utilitarian. Unhappily, into the care of such men as
these is often confided the custody of historic buildings and
priceless treasures, of ruined abbey and ancient walls, of objects
consecrated by the lapse of centuries and by the associations of
hundreds of years of corporate life; and it is not surprising that in
many cases they betray their trust. They are not interested in such
things. "Let bygones be bygones," they say. "We care not for old
rubbish." Moreover, they frequently resent interference and
instruction. Hence they destroy wholesale what should be preserved,
and England is the poorer.

Not long ago the Edwardian wall of Berwick-on-Tweed was threatened
with demolition at the hands of those who ought to be its
guardians--the Corporation of the town. An official from the Office of
Works, when he saw the begrimed, neglected appearance of the two
fragments of this wall near the Bell Tower, with a stagnant pool in
the fosse, bestrewed with broken pitchers and rubbish, reported that
the Elizabethan walls of the town which were under the direction of
the War Department were in excellent condition, whereas the Edwardian
masonry was utterly neglected. And why was this relic of the town's
former greatness to be pulled down? Simply to clear the site for the
erection of modern dwelling-houses. A very strong protest was made
against this act of municipal barbarism by learned societies, the
Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, and others, and we
hope that the hand of the destroyer has been stayed.

Most of the principal towns in England were protected by walls, and
the citizens regarded it as a duty to build them and keep them in
repair. When we look at some of these fortifications, their strength,
their height, their thickness, we are struck by the fact that they
were very great achievements, and that they must have been raised with
immense labour and gigantic cost. In turbulent and warlike times they
were absolutely necessary. Look at some of these triumphs of medieval
engineering skill, so strong, so massive, able to defy the attacks of
lance and arrow, ram or catapult, and to withstand ages of neglect and
the storms of a tempestuous clime. Towers and bastions stood at
intervals against the wall at convenient distances, in order that
bowmen stationed in them could shoot down any who attempted to scale
the wall with ladders anywhere within the distance between the
towers. All along the wall there was a protected pathway for the
defenders to stand, and machicolations through which boiling oil or
lead, or heated sand could be poured on the heads of the attacking
force. The gateways were carefully constructed, flanked by defending
towers with a portcullis, and a guard-room overhead with holes in the
vaulted roof of the gateway for pouring down inconvenient substances
upon the heads of the besiegers. There were several gates, the usual
number being four; but Coventry had twelve, Canterbury six, and
Newcastle-on-Tyne seven, besides posterns.

[Illustration: Old Houses built on the Town Wall, Rye]

Berwick-upon-Tweed, York, Chester, and Conway have maintained their
walls in good condition. Berwick has three out of its four gates still
standing. They are called Scotchgate, Shoregate, and Cowgate, and in
the last two still remain the original massive wooden gates with their
bolts and hinges. The remaining fourth gate, named Bridgate, has
vanished. We have alluded to the neglect of the Edwardian wall and its
threatened destruction. Conway has a wall a mile and a quarter in
length, with twenty-one semicircular towers along its course and three
great gateways besides posterns. Edward I built this wall in order to
subjugate the Welsh, and also the walls round Carnarvon, some of which
survive, and Beaumaris. The name of his master-mason has been
preserved, one Henry le Elreton. The muniments of the Corporation of
Alnwick prove that often great difficulties arose in the matter of
wall-building. Its closeness to the Scottish border rendered a wall
necessary. The town was frequently attacked and burnt. The inhabitants
obtained a licence to build a wall in 1433, but they did not at once
proceed with the work. In 1448 the Scots came and pillaged the town,
and the poor burgesses were so robbed and despoiled that they could
not afford to proceed with the wall and petitioned the King for aid.
Then Letters Patent were issued for a collection to be made for the
object, and at last, forty years after the licence was granted,
Alnwick got its wall, and a very good wall it was--a mile in
circumference, twenty feet in height and six in thickness; "it had
four gateways--Bondgate, Clayport, Pottergate, and Narrowgate. Only
the first-named of these is standing. It is three stories in height.
Over the central archway is a panel on which was carved the Brabant
lion, now almost obliterated. On either side is a semi-octagonal
tower. The masonry is composed of huge blocks to which time and
weather have given dusky tints. On the front facing the expected foes
the openings are but little more than arrow-slits; on that within,
facing the town, are well-proportioned mullioned and transomed
windows. The great ribbed archway is grooved for a portcullis, now
removed, and a low doorway on either side gives entrance to the
chambers in the towers. Pottergate was rebuilt in the eighteenth
century and crowns a steep street; only four corner-stones marked T
indicate the site of Clayport. No trace of Narrowgate remains."[4]

As the destruction of many of our castles is due to the action of
Cromwell and the Parliament, who caused them to be "slighted" partly
out of revenge upon the loyal owners who had defended them, so several
of our town-walls were thrown down by order of Charles II at the
Restoration on account of the active assistance which the townspeople
had given to the rebels. The heads of rebels were often placed on
gateways. London Bridge, Lincoln, Newcastle, York, Berwick,
Canterbury, Temple Bar, and other gates have often been adorned with
these gruesome relics of barbarous punishments.

How were these strong walls ever taken in the days before gunpowder
was extensively used or cannon discharged their devastating shells?
Imagine you are present at a siege. You would see the attacking force
advancing a huge wooden tower, covered with hides and placed on
wheels, towards the walls. Inside this tower were ladders, and when
the "sow" had been pushed towards the wall the soldiers rushed up
these ladders and were able to fight on a level with the garrison.
Perhaps they were repulsed, and then a shed-like structure would be
advanced towards the wall, so as to enable the men to get close enough
to dig a hole beneath the walls in order to bring them down. The
besieged would not be inactive, but would cast heavy stones on the
roof of the shed. Molten lead and burning flax were favourite means of
defence to alarm and frighten away the enemy, who retaliated by
casting heavy stones by means of a catapult into the town.

  [4] _The Builder_, April 16, 1904.

[Illustration: Bootham Bar, York]

Amongst the fragments of walls still standing, those at Newcastle are
very massive, sooty, and impressive. Southampton has some grand walls
left and a gateway, which show how strongly the town was fortified.
The old Cinque Port, Sandwich, formerly a great and important town,
lately decayed, but somewhat renovated by golf, has two gates left,
and Rochester and Canterbury have some fragments of their walls
standing. The repair of the walls of towns was sometimes undertaken by
guilds. Generous benefactors, like Sir Richard Whittington, frequently
contributed to the cost, and sometimes a tax called murage was levied
for the purpose which was collected by officers named muragers.

The city of York has lost many of its treasures, and the City Fathers
seem to find it difficult to keep their hands off such relics of
antiquity as are left to them. There are few cities in England more
deeply marked with the impress of the storied past than York--the long
and moving story of its gates and walls, of the historical
associations of the city through century after century of English
history. About eighty years ago the Corporation destroyed the
picturesque old barbicans of the Bootham, Micklegate, and Monk Bars,
and only one, Walmgate, was suffered to retain this interesting
feature. It is a wonder they spared those curious stone half-length
figures of men, sculptured in a menacing attitude in the act of
hurling large stones downwards, which vaunt themselves on the summit
of Monk Bar--probably intended to deceive invaders--or that
interesting stone platform only twenty-two inches wide, which was the
only foothold available for the martial burghers who guarded the city
wall at Tower Place. A year or two ago the City Fathers decided, in
order to provide work for the unemployed, to interfere with the city
moats by laying them out as flower-beds and by planting shrubs and
making playgrounds of the banks. The protest of the Yorks
Archæological Society, we believe, stayed their hands.

The same story can be told of far too many towns and cities. A few
years ago several old houses were demolished in the High Street of the
city of Rochester to make room for electric tramways. Among these was
the old White Hart Inn, built in 1396, the sign being a badge of
Richard II, where Samuel Pepys stayed. He found that "the beds were
corded, and we had no sheets to our beds, only linen to our mouths" (a
narrow strip of linen to prevent the contact of the blanket with the
face). With regard to the disappearance of old inns, we must wait
until we arrive at another chapter.

We will now visit some old towns where we hope to discover some
buildings that are ancient and where all is not distressingly new,
hideous, and commonplace. First we will travel to the old-world town
of Lynn--"Lynn Regis, vulgarly called King's Lynn," as the royal
charter of Henry VIII terms it. On the land side the town was defended
by a fosse, and there are still considerable remains of the old wall,
including the fine Gothic South Gates. In the days of its ancient
glory it was known as Bishop's Lynn, the town being in the hands of
the Bishop of Norwich. Bishop Herbert de Losinga built the church of
St. Margaret at the beginning of the twelfth century, and gave it with
many privileges to the monks of Norwich, who held a priory at Lynn;
and Bishop Turbus did a wonderfully good stroke of business, reclaimed
a large tract of land about 1150 A.D., and amassed wealth for his see
from his markets, fairs, and mills. Another bishop, Bishop Grey,
induced or compelled King John to grant a free charter to the town,
but astutely managed to keep all the power in his own hands. Lynn was
always a very religious place, and most of the orders--Benedictines,
Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelite and Augustinian Friars, and the
Sack Friars--were represented at Lynn, and there were numerous
hospitals, a lazar-house, a college of secular canons, and other
religious institutions, until they were all swept away by the greed of
a rapacious king. There is not much left to-day of all these religious
foundations. The latest authority on the history of Lynn, Mr. H.J.
Hillen, well says: "Time's unpitying plough-share has spared few
vestiges of their architectural* grandeur." A cemetery cross in the
museum, the name "Paradise" that keeps up the remembrance of the cool,
verdant cloister-garth, a brick arch upon the east bank of the Nar,
and a similar gateway in "Austin" Street are all the relics that
remain of the old monastic life, save the slender hexagonal "Old
Tower," the graceful lantern of the convent of the grey-robed
Franciscans. The above writer also points out the beautifully carved
door in Queen Street, sole relic of the College of Secular Canons,
from which the chisel of the ruthless iconoclast has chipped off the
obnoxious _Orate pro anima_.

  *Transcriber's Note: Original "achitectural"

The quiet, narrow, almost deserted streets of Lynn, its port and quays
have another story to tell. They proclaim its former greatness as one
of the chief ports in England and the centre of vast mercantile
activity. A thirteenth-century historian, Friar William Newburg,
described Lynn as "a noble city noted for its trade." It was the key
of Norfolk. Through it flowed all the traffic to and from northern
East Anglia, and from its harbour crowds of ships carried English
produce, mainly wool, to the Netherlands, Norway, and the Rhine
Provinces. Who would have thought that this decayed harbour ranked
fourth among the ports of the kingdom? But its glories have departed.
Decay set in. Its prosperity began to decline.

Railways have been the ruin of King's Lynn. The merchant princes who
once abounded in the town exist here no longer. The last of the long
race died quite recently. Some ancient ledgers still exist in the
town, which exhibit for one firm alone a turnover of something like a
million and a half sterling per annum. Although possessed of a
similarly splendid waterway, unlike Ipswich, the trade of the town
seems to have quite decayed. Few signs of commerce are visible, except
where the advent of branch stations of enterprising "Cash" firms has
resulted in the squaring up of odd projections and consequent
overthrow of certain ancient buildings. There is one act of vandalism
which the town has never ceased to regret and which should serve as a
warning for the future. This is the demolition of the house of Walter
Coney, merchant, an unequalled specimen of fifteenth-century domestic
architecture, which formerly stood at the corner of the Saturday
Market Place and High Street. So strongly was this edifice constructed
that it was with the utmost difficulty that it was taken to pieces, in
order to make room for the ugly range of white brick buildings which
now stands upon its site. But Lynn had an era of much prosperity
during the rise of the Townshends, when the agricultural improvements
brought about by the second Viscount introduced much wealth to
Norfolk. Such buildings as the Duke's Head Hotel belong to the second
Viscount's time, and are indicative of the influx of visitors which
the town enjoyed. In the present day this hotel, though still a
good-sized establishment, occupies only half the building which it
formerly did. An interesting oak staircase of fine proportions, though
now much warped, may be seen here.

[Illustration: Half-timbered House with early Fifteenth-century
Doorway, King's Lynn, Norfolk]

In olden days the Hanseatic League had an office here. The Jews were
plentiful and supplied capital--you can find their traces in the name
of the "Jews' Lane Ward"--and then came the industrious Flemings, who
brought with them the art of weaving cloth and peculiar modes of
building houses, so that Lynn looks almost like a little Dutch town.
The old guild life of Lynn was strong and vigorous, from its Merchant
Guild to the humbler craft guilds, of which we are told that there
have been no less than seventy-five. Part of the old Guildhall,
erected in 1421, with its chequered flint and stone gable still stands
facing the market of St. Margaret with its Renaissance porch, and a
bit of the guild hall of St. George the Martyr remains in King Street.
The custom-house, which was originally built as an exchange for the
Lynn merchants, is a notable building, and has a statue of Charles II
placed in a niche.

This was the earliest work of a local architect, Henry Bell, who is
almost unknown. He was mayor of King's Lynn, and died in 1717, and his
memory has been saved from oblivion by Mr. Beloe of that town, and is
enshrined in Mr. Blomfield's _History of Renaissance Architecture_:--

  "This admirable little building originally consisted of an open
  loggia about 40 feet by 32 feet outside, with four columns down
  the centre, supporting the first floor, and an attic storey above.
  The walls are of Portland stone, with a Doric order to the ground
  storey supporting an Ionic order to the first floor. The cornice
  is of wood, and above this is a steep-pitched tile roof with
  dormers, surmounted by a balustrade inclosing a flat, from which
  rises a most picturesque wooden cupola. The details are extremely
  refined, and the technical knowledge and delicate sense of scale
  and proportion shown in this building are surprising in a designer
  who was under thirty, and is not known to have done any previous
  work."[5]

  [5] _History of Renaissance Architecture_, by R. Blomfield.

A building which the town should make an effort to preserve is the old
"Greenland Fishery House," a tenement dating from the commencement of
the seventeenth century.

The Duke's Head Inn, erected in 1689, now spoilt by its coating of
plaster, a house in Queen's Street, the old market cross, destroyed in
1831 and sold for old materials, and the altarpieces of the churches
of St. Margaret and St. Nicholas, destroyed during "restoration," and
North Runcton church, three miles from Lynn, are other works of this
very able artist.

Until the Reformation Lynn was known as Bishop's Lynn, and galled
itself under the yoke of the Bishop of Norwich; but Henry freed the
townsfolk from their bondage and ordered the name to be changed to
Lynn Regis. Whether the good people throve better under the control of
the tyrant who crushed all their guilds and appropriated the spoil
than under the episcopal yoke may be doubtful; but the change pleased
them, and with satisfaction they placed the royal arms on their East
Gate, which, after the manner of gates and walls, has been pulled
down. If you doubt the former greatness of this old seaport you must
examine its civic plate. It possesses the oldest and most important
and most beautiful specimen of municipal plate in England, a grand,
massive silver-gilt cup of exquisite workmanship. It is called "King
John's Cup," but it cannot be earlier than the reign of Edward III. In
addition to this there is a superb sword of state of the time of Henry
VIII, another cup, four silver maces, and other treasures. Moreover,
the town had a famous goldsmiths' company, and several specimens of
their handicraft remain. The defences of the town were sorely tried in
the Civil War, when for three weeks it sustained the attacks of the
rebels. The town was forced to surrender, and the poor folk were
obliged to pay ten shillings a head, besides a month's pay to the
soldiers, in order to save their homes from plunder. Lynn has many
memories. It sheltered King John when fleeing from the revolting
barons, and kept his treasures until he took them away and left them
in a still more secure place buried in the sands of the Wash. It
welcomed Queen Isabella during her retirement at Castle Rising,
entertained Edward IV when he was hotly pursued by the Earl of
Warwick, and has been worthy of its name as a loyal king's town.

Another walled town on the Norfolk coast attracts the attention of all
who love the relics of ancient times, Great Yarmouth, with its
wonderful record of triumphant industry and its associations with many
great events in history. Henry III, recognizing the important
strategical position of the town in 1260, granted a charter to the
townsfolk empowering them to fortify the place with a wall and a moat,
but more than a century elapsed before the fortifications were
completed. This was partly owing to the Black Death, which left few
men in Yarmouth to carry on the work. The walls were built of cut
flint and Caen stone, and extended from the north-east tower in St.
Nicholas Churchyard, called King Henry's Tower, to Blackfriars Tower
at the south end, and from the same King Henry's Tower to the
north-west tower on the bank of the Bure. Only a few years ago a large
portion of this, north of Ramp Row, now called Rampart Road, was taken
down, much to the regret of many. And here I may mention a grand
movement which might be with advantage imitated in every historic
town. A small private company has been formed called the "Great
Yarmouth Historical Buildings, Limited." Its object is to acquire
and preserve the relics of ancient Yarmouth. The founders deserve the
highest praise for their public spirit and patriotism. How many
cherished objects in Vanishing England might have been preserved if
each town or county possessed such a valuable association! This
Yarmouth society owns the remains of the cloisters of Grey Friars and
other remains of ancient buildings. It is only to be regretted that it
was not formed earlier. There were nine gates in the walls of the
town, but none of them are left, and of the sixteen towers which
protected the walls only a very few remain.

[Illustration: The "Bone Tower", Town walls, Great Yarmouth]

These walls guard much that is important. The ecclesiastical buildings
are very fine, including the largest parish church in England, founded
by the same Herbert de Losinga whose good work we saw at King's Lynn.
The church of St. Nicholas has had many vicissitudes, and is now one
of the finest in the country. It was in medieval times the church of a
Benedictine Priory; a cell of the monastery at Norwich and the Priory
Hall remains, and is now restored and used as a school. Royal guests
have been entertained there, but part of the buildings were turned
into cottages and the great hall into stables. As we have said, part
of the Grey Friars Monastery remains, and also part of the house of
the Augustine Friars. The Yarmouth rows are a great feature of the
town. They are not like the Chester rows, but are long, narrow streets
crossing the town from east to west, only six feet wide, and one row
called Kitty-witches only measures at one end two feet three inches.
It has been suggested that this plan of the town arose from the
fishermen hanging out their nets to dry and leaving a narrow passage
between each other's nets, and that in course of time these narrow
passages became defined and were permanently retained. In former days
rich merchants and traders lived in the houses that line these rows,
and had large gardens behind their dwellings; and sometimes you can
see relics of former greatness--a panelled room or a richly decorated
ceiling. But the ancient glory of the rows is past, and the houses
are occupied now by fishermen or labourers. These rows are so narrow
that no ordinary vehicle could be driven along them. Hence there arose
special Yarmouth carts about three and a half feet wide and twelve
feet long with wheels underneath the body. Very brave and gallant have
always been the fishermen of Yarmouth, not only in fighting the
elements, but in defeating the enemies of England. History tells of
many a sea-fight in which they did good service to their king and
country. They gallantly helped to win the battle of Sluys, and sent
forty-three ships and one thousand men to help with the siege of
Calais in the time of Edward III. They captured and burned the town
and harbour of Cherbourg in the time of Edward I, and performed many
other acts of daring.

[Illustration: Row No. 83, Great Yarmouth]

One of the most interesting houses in the town is the Tolhouse, the
centre of the civic life of Yarmouth. It is said to be six hundred
years old, having been erected in the time of Henry III, though some
of the windows are decorated, but may have been inserted later. Here
the customs or tolls were collected, and the Corporation held its
meetings. There is a curious open external staircase leading to the
first floor, where the great hall is situated. Under the hall is a
gaol, a wretched prison wherein the miserable captives were chained to
a beam that ran down the centre. Nothing in the town bears stronger
witness to the industry and perseverance of the Yarmouth men than the
harbour. They have scoured the sea for a thousand years to fill their
nets with its spoil, and made their trade of world-wide fame, but
their port speaks louder in their praise. Again and again has the
fickle sea played havoc with their harbour, silting it up with sand
and deserting the town as if in revenge for the harvest they reap from
her. They have had to cut out no less than seven harbours in the
course of the town's existence, and royally have they triumphed over
all difficulties and made Yarmouth a great and prosperous port.

Near Yarmouth is the little port of Gorleston with its old jetty-head,
of which we give an illustration. It was once the rival of Yarmouth.
The old magnificent church of the Augustine Friars stood in this
village and had a lofty, square, embattled tower which was a landmark
to sailors. But the church was unroofed and despoiled at the
Reformation, and its remains were pulled down in 1760, only a small
portion of the tower remaining, and this fell a victim to a violent
storm at the beginning of the last century. The grand parish church
was much plundered at the Reformation, and left piteously bare by the
despoilers.

[Illustration: The Old Jetty, Gorleston]

The town, now incorporated with Yarmouth, has a proud boast:--

        Gorleston was Gorleston ere Yarmouth begun,
        And will be Gorleston when Yarmouth is done.

Another leading East Anglian port in former days was the county town
of Suffolk, Ipswich. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
ships from most of the countries of Western Europe disembarked their
cargoes on its quays--wines from Spain, timber from Norway, cloth from
Flanders, salt from France, and "mercerie" from Italy left its crowded
wharves to be offered for sale in the narrow, busy streets of the
borough. Stores of fish from Iceland, bales of wool, loads of untanned
hides, as well as the varied agricultural produce of the district,
were exposed twice in the week on the market stalls.[6] The learned
editor of the _Memorials of Old Suffolk_, who knows the old town so
well, tells us that the stalls of the numerous markets lay within a
narrow limit of space near the principal churches of the town--St.
Mary-le-Tower, St. Mildred, and St. Lawrence. The Tavern Street of
to-day was the site of the flesh market or cowerye. A narrow street
leading thence to the Tower Church was the Poultry, and Cooks' Row,
Butter Market, Cheese and Fish markets were in the vicinity. The
manufacture of leather was the leading industry of old Ipswich, and
there was a goodly company of skinners, barkers, and tanners employed
in the trade. Tavern Street had, as its name implies, many taverns,
and was called the Vintry, from the large number of opulent vintners
who carried on their trade with London and Bordeaux. Many of these men
were not merely peaceful merchants, but fought with Edward III in his
wars with France and were knighted for their feats of arms. Ipswich
once boasted of a castle which was destroyed in Stephen's reign. In
Saxon times it was fortified by a ditch and a rampart which were
destroyed by the Danes, but the fortifications were renewed in the
time of King John, when a wall was built round the town with four
gates which took their names from the points of the compass. Portions
of these remain to bear witness to the importance of this ancient
town. We give views of an old building near the custom-house in
College Street and Fore Street, examples of the narrow, tortuous
thoroughfares which modern improvements have not swept away.

  [6] Cf. _Memorials of Suffolk_, edited by V.B. Redstone.

[Illustration: Tudor House, Ipswich, near the Custom House]

[Illustration: Three-gabled House, Fore Street, Ipswich]

We cannot give accounts of all the old fortified towns in England and
can only make selections. We have alluded to the ancient walls of
York. Few cities can rival it in interest and architectural beauty,
its relics of Roman times, its stately and magnificent cathedral, the
beautiful ruins of St. Mary's Abbey, the numerous churches exhibiting
all the grandeur of the various styles of Gothic architecture, the old
merchants' hall, and the quaint old narrow streets with gabled houses
and widely projecting storeys. And then there is the varied history of
the place dating from far-off Roman times. Not the least interesting
feature of York are its gates and walls. Some parts of the walls are
Roman, that curious thirteen-sided building called the multangular
tower forming part of it, and also the lower part of the wall leading
from this tower to Bootham Bar, the upper part being of later origin.
These walls have witnessed much fighting, and the cannons in the Civil
War during the siege in 1644 battered down some portions of them and
sorely tried their hearts. But they have been kept in good
preservation and repaired at times, and the part on the west of the
Ouse is especially well preserved. You can see some Norman and Early
English work, but the bulk of it belongs to Edwardian times, when York
played a great part in the history of England, and King Edward I made
it his capital during the war with Scotland, and all the great nobles
of England sojourned there. Edward II spent much time there, and the
minster saw the marriage of his son. These walls were often sorely
needed to check the inroads of the Scots. After Bannockburn fifteen
thousand of these northern warriors advanced to the gates of York. The
four gates of the city are very remarkable. Micklegate Bar consists of
a square tower built over a circular arch of Norman date with
embattled turrets at the angles. On it the heads of traitors were
formerly exposed. It bears on its front the arms of France as well as
those of England.

[Illustration: "Melia's Passage," York]

Bootham Bar is the main entrance from the north, and has a Norman arch
with later additions and turrets with narrow slits for the discharge
of arrows. It saw the burning of the suburb of Bootham in 1265 and
much bloodshed, when a mighty quarrel raged between the citizens and
the monks of the Abbey of St. Mary owing to the abuse of the privilege
of sanctuary possessed by the monastery. Monk Bar has nothing to do
with monks. Its former name was Goodramgate, and after the Restoration
it was changed to Monk Bar in honour of General Monk. The present
structure was probably built in the fourteenth century. Walmgate Bar,
a strong, formidable structure, was built in the reign of Edward I,
and as we have said, it is the only gate that retains its curious
barbican, originally built in the time of Edward III and rebuilt in
1648. The inner front of the gate has been altered from its original
form in order to secure more accommodation within. The remains of the
Clifford's Tower, which played an important part in the siege, tell of
the destruction caused by the blowing up of the magazine in 1683, an
event which had more the appearance of design than accident. York
abounds with quaint houses and narrow streets. We give an illustration
of the curious Melia's Passage; the origin of the name I am at a loss
to conjecture.

Chester is, we believe, the only city in England which has retained
the entire circuit of its walls complete. According to old unreliable
legends, Marius, or Marcius, King of the British, grandson of
Cymbeline, who began his reign A.D. 73, first surrounded Chester with
a wall, a mysterious person who must be classed with Leon Gawr, or
Vawr, a mighty strong giant who founded Chester, digging caverns in
the rocks for habitations, and with the story of King Leir, who first
made human habitations in the future city. Possibly there was here a
British camp. It was certainly a Roman city, and has preserved the
form and plan which the Romans were accustomed to affect; its four
principal streets diverging at right angles from a common centre, and
extending north, east, south, and west, and terminating in a gate, the
other streets forming insulæ as at Silchester. There is every reason
to believe that the Romans surrounded the city with a wall. Its
strength was often tried. Hither the Saxons came under Ethelfrith and
pillaged the city, but left it to the Britons, who were not again
dislodged until Egbert came in 828 and recovered it. The Danish
pirates came here and were besieged by Alfred, who slew all within its
walls. These walls were standing but ruinous when the noble daughter
of Alfred, Ethelfleda, restored them in 907. A volume would be needed
to give a full account of Chester's varied history, and our main
concern is with the treasures that remain. The circumference of the
walls is nearly two miles, and there are four principal gates besides
posterns--the North, East, Bridge-gate, and Water-gate. The North Gate
was in the charge of the citizens; the others were held by persons who
had that office by serjeanty under the Earls of Chester, and were
entitled to certain tolls, which, with the custody of the gates, were
frequently purchased by the Corporation. The custody of the
Bridge-gate belonged to the Raby family in the reign of Edward III. It
had two round towers, on the westernmost of which was an octagonal
water-tower. These were all taken down in 1710-81 and the gate
rebuilt. The East Gate was given by Edward I to Henry Bradford, who
was bound to find a crannoc and a bushel for measuring the salt that
might be brought in. Needless to say, the old gate has vanished. It
was of Roman architecture, and consisted of two arches formed by large
stones. Between the tops of the arches, which were cased with Norman
masonry, was the whole-length figure of a Roman soldier. This gate was
a _porta principalis_, the termination of the great Watling Street
that led from Dover through London to Chester. It was destroyed in
1768, and the present gate erected by Earl Grosvenor. The custody of
the Water-gate belonged to the Earls of Derby. It also was destroyed,
and the present arch erected in 1788. A new North Gate was built in
1809 by Robert, Earl Grosvenor. The principal postern-gates were Cale
Yard Gate, made by the abbot and convent in the reign of Edward I as a
passage to their kitchen garden; New-gate, formerly Woolfield or
Wolf-gate, repaired in 1608, also called Pepper-gate;[7] and
Ship-gate, or Hole-in-the-wall, which alone retains its Roman arch,
and leads to a ferry across the Dee.

  [7] The Chester folk have a proverb, "When the daughter is stolen,
  shut Pepper-gate"--referring to the well-known story of a daughter
  of a Mayor of Chester having made her escape with her lover
  through this gate, which he ordered to be closed, but too late to
  prevent the fugitives.

The walls are strengthened by round towers so placed as not to be
beyond bowshot of each other, in order that their arrows might reach
the enemy who should attempt to scale the walls in the intervals. At
the north-east corner is Newton's Tower, better known as the Phoenix
from a sculptured figure, the ensign of one of the city guilds,
appearing over its door. From this tower Charles I saw the battle of
Rowton Heath and the defeat of his troops during the famous siege of
Chester. This was one of the most prolonged and deadly in the whole
history of the Civil War. It would take many pages to describe the
varied fortunes of the gallant Chester men, who were at length
constrained to feed on horses, dogs, and cats. There is much in the
city to delight the antiquary and the artist--the famous rows, the
three-gabled old timber mansion of the Stanleys with its massive
staircase, oaken floors, and panelled walls, built in 1591, Bishop
Lloyd's house in Water-gate with its timber front sculptured with
Scripture subjects, and God's Providence House with its motto "God's
Providence is mine inheritance," the inhabitants of which are said to
have escaped one of the terrible plagues that used to rage frequently
in old Chester.

[Illustration: Detail of Half-timbered House in High Street,
Shrewsbury]

Journeying southwards we come to Shrewsbury, another walled town,
abounding with delightful half-timbered houses, less spoiled than any
town we know. It was never a Roman town, though six miles away, at
Uriconium, the Romans had a flourishing city with a great basilica,
baths, shops, and villas, and the usual accessories of luxury.
Tradition says that its earliest Celtic name was Pengwern, where a
British prince had his palace; but the town Scrobbesbyrig came into
existence under Offa's rule in Mercia, and with the Normans came Roger
de Montgomery, Shrewsbury's first Earl, and a castle and the stately
abbey of SS. Peter and Paul. A little later the town took to itself
walls, which were abundantly necessary on account of the constant
inroads of the wild Welsh.

        For the barbican's massy and high,
                  Bloudie Jacke!
        And the oak-door is heavy and brown;
        And with iron it's plated and machicolated,
        To pour boiling oil and lead down;
                  How you'd frown
        Should a ladle-full fall on your crown!

        The rock that it stands on is steep,
                  Bloudie Jacke!
        To gain it one's forced for to creep;
        The Portcullis is strong, and the Drawbridge is long,
        And the water runs all round the Keep;
                  At a peep
        You can see that the moat's very deep!

So rhymed the author of the _Ingoldsby Legends_, when in his "Legend
of Shropshire" he described the red stone fortress that towers over
the loop of the Severn enclosing the picturesque old town of
Shrewsbury. The castle, or rather its keep, for the outworks have
disappeared, has been modernized past antiquarian value now. Memories
of its importance as the key of the Northern Marches, and of the
ancient custom of girding the knights of the shire with their swords
by the sheriffs on the grass plot of its inner court, still remain.
The town now stands on a peninsula girt by the Severn. On the high
ground between the narrow neck stood the castle, and under its shelter
most of the houses of the inhabitants. Around this was erected the
first wall. The latest historian of Shrewsbury[8] tells us that it
started from the gate of the castle, passed along the ridge at the
back of Pride Hill, at the bottom of which it turned along the line of
High Street, past St. Julian's Church which overhung it, to the top
of Wyle Cop, when it followed the ridge back to the castle. Of the
part extending from Pride Hill to Wyle Cop only scant traces exist at
the back of more modern buildings.

  [8] The Rev. T. Auden, _Shrewsbury_ (Methuen and Co.).

The town continued to grow and more extensive defences were needed,
and in the time of Henry III, Mr. Auden states that this followed the
old line at the back of Pride Hill, but as the ground began to slope
downwards, another wall branched from it in the direction of Roushill
and extended to the Welsh Bridge. This became the main defence,
leaving the old wall as an inner rampart. From the Welsh Bridge the
new wall turned up Claremont Bank to where St. Chad's Church now
stands, and where one of the original towers stood. Then it passed
along Murivance, where the only existing tower is to be seen, and so
along the still remaining portion of the wall to English Bridge, where
it turned up the hill at the back of what is now Dogpole, and passing
the Watergate, again joined the fortifications of the castle.[9] The
castle itself was reconstructed by Prince Edward, the son of Henry
III, at the end of the thirteenth century, and is of the Edwardian
type of concentric castle. The Norman keep was incorporated within a
larger circle of tower and wall, forming an inner bailey; besides this
there was formerly an outer bailey, in which were various buildings,
including the chapel of St. Nicholas. Only part of the buildings on
one side of the inner bailey remains in its original form, but the
massive character of the whole may be judged from the fragments now
visible.

  [9] _Ibid._, p. 48.

These walls guarded a noble town full of churches and monasteries,
merchants' houses, guild halls, and much else. We will glance at the
beauties that remain: St. Mary's, containing specimens of every style
of architecture from Norman downward, with its curious foreign glass;
St. Julian's, mainly rebuilt in 1748, though the old tower remains;
St. Alkmund's; the Church of St. Chad; St. Giles's Church; and the
nave and refectory pulpit of the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul. It
is distressing to see this interesting gem of fourteenth-century
architecture amid the incongruous surroundings of a coalyard. You can
find considerable remains of the domestic buildings of the Grey
Friars' Monastery near the footbridge across the Severn, and also of
the home of the Austin Friars in a builder's yard at the end of Baker
Street.

[Illustration: Tower on the Town Wall, Shrewsbury]

In many towns we find here and there an old half-timbered dwelling,
but in Shrewsbury there is a surprising wealth of them--streets full
of them, bearing such strange medieval names as "Mardel" or "Wyle
Cop." Shrewsbury is second to no other town in England in the interest
of its ancient domestic buildings. There is the gatehouse of the old
Council House, bearing the date 1620, with its high gable and carved
barge-boards, its panelled front, the square spaces between the
upright and horizontal timbers being ornamented with cut timber. The
old buildings of the famous Shrewsbury School are now used as a Free
Library and Museum and abound in interest. The house remains in which
Prince Rupert stayed during his sojourn in 1644, then owned by "Master
Jones the lawyer," at the west end of St. Mary's Church, with its fine
old staircase. Whitehall, a fine mansion of red sandstone, was built
by Richard Prince, a lawyer, in 1578-82, "to his great chardge with
fame to hym and hys posterite for ever." The Old Market Hall in the
Renaissance style, with its mixture of debased Gothic and classic
details, is worthy of study. Even in Shrewsbury we have to record the
work of the demon of destruction. The erection of the New Market Hall
entailed the disappearance of several old picturesque houses.
Bellstone House, erected in 1582, is incorporated in the National
Provincial Bank. The old mansion known as Vaughan's Place is swallowed
up by the music-hall, though part of the ancient dwelling-place
remains. St. Peter's Abbey Church in the commencement of the
nineteenth century had an extraordinary annexe of timber and plaster,
probably used at one time as parsonage house, which, with several
buttressed remains of the adjacent conventual buildings, have long ago
been squared up and "improved" out of existence. Rowley's mansion, in
Hill's Lane, built of brick in 1618 by William Rowley, is now a
warehouse. Butcher Row has some old houses with projecting storeys,
including a fine specimen of a medieval shop. Some of the houses in
Grope Lane lean together from opposite sides of the road, so that
people in the highest storey can almost shake hands with their
neighbours across the way. You can see the "Olde House" in which Mary
Tudor is said to have stayed, and the mansion of the Owens, built in
1592 as an inscription tells us, and that of the Irelands, with its
range of bow-windows, four storeys high, and terminating in gables,
erected about 1579. The half-timbered hall of the Drapers' Guild, some
old houses in Frankwell, including the inn with the quaint sign--the
String of Horses, the ancient hostels--the Lion, famous in the
coaching age, the Ship, and the Raven--Bennett's Hall, which was the
mint when Shrewsbury played its part in the Civil War, and last, but
not least, the house in Wyle Cop, one of the finest in the town, where
Henry Earl of Richmond stayed on his way to Bosworth field to win the
English Crown. Such are some of the beauties of old Shrewsbury which
happily have not yet vanished.

[Illustration: House that the Earl of Richmond stayed in before the
Battle of Bosworth, Shrewsbury]

Not far removed from Shrewsbury is Coventry, which at one time could
boast of a city wall and a castle. In the reign of Richard II this
wall was built, strengthened by towers. Leland, writing in the time of
Henry VIII, states that the city was begun to be walled in when Edward
II reigned, and that it had six gates, many fair towers, and streets
well built with timber. Other writers speak of thirty-two towers and
twelve gates. But few traces of these remain. The citizens of Coventry
took an active part in the Civil War in favour of the Parliamentary
army, and when Charles II came to the throne he ordered these defences
to be demolished. The gates were left, but most of them have since
been destroyed. Coventry is a city of fine old timber-framed
fifteenth-century houses with gables and carved barge-boards and
projecting storeys, though many of them are decayed and may not last
many years. The city has had a fortunate immunity from serious fires.
We give an illustration of one of the old Coventry streets called Spon
Street, with its picturesque houses. These old streets are numerous,
tortuous and irregular. One of the richest and most interesting
examples of domestic architecture in England is St. Mary's Hall,
erected in the time of Henry VI. Its origin is connected with ancient
guilds of the city, and in it were stored their books and archives.
The grotesquely carved roof, minstrels' gallery, armoury, state-chair,
great painted window, and a fine specimen of fifteenth-century
tapestry are interesting features of this famous hall, which furnishes
a vivid idea of the manners and civic customs of the age when Coventry
was the favourite resort of kings and princes. It has several fine
churches, though the cathedral was levelled with the ground by that
arch-destroyer Henry VIII. Coventry remains one of the most
interesting towns in England.

One other walled town we will single out for especial notice in this
chapter--the quaint, picturesque, peaceful, placid town of Rye on the
Sussex coast. It was once wooed by the sea, which surrounded the rocky
island on which it stands, but the fickle sea has retired and left it
lonely on its hill with a long stretch of marshland between it and the
waves. This must have taken place about the fifteenth century. Our
illustration of a disused mooring-post (p. 24) is a symbol of the
departed greatness of the town as a naval station. The River Rother
connects it with the sea, and the few barges and humble craft and a
few small shipbuilding yards remind it of its palmy days when it was
a member of the Cinque Ports, a rich and prosperous town that sent
forth its ships to fight the naval battles of England and win honour
for Rye and St. George. During the French wars English vessels often
visited French ports and towns along the coast and burned and pillaged
them. The French sailors retaliated with equal zest, and many of our
southern towns have suffered from fire and sword during those
adventurous days.

[Illustration: Old Houses formerly standing in Spon Street Coventry]

Rye was strongly fortified by a wall with gates and towers and a
fosse, but the defences suffered grievously from the attacks of the
French, and the folk of Rye were obliged to send a moving petition to
King Richard II, praying him "to have consideration of the poor town
of Rye, inasmuch as it had been several times taken, and is unable
further to repair the walls, wherefore the town is, on the sea-side,
open to enemies." I am afraid that the King did not at once grant
their petition, as two years later, in 1380, the French came again and
set fire to the town. With the departure of the sea and the
diminishing of the harbour, the population decreased and the
prosperity of Rye declined. Refugees from France have on two notable
occasions added to the number of its inhabitants. After the Massacre
of St. Bartholomew seven hundred scared and frightened Protestants
arrived at Rye and brought with them their industry, and later on,
after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, many Huguenots settled
here and made it almost a French town. We need not record all the
royal visits, the alarms of attack, the plagues, and other incidents
that have diversified the life of Rye. We will glance at the relics
that remain. The walls seem never to have recovered from the attack of
the French, but one gate is standing--the Landgate on the north-east
of the town, built in 1360, and consisting of a broad arch flanked by
two massive towers with chambers above for archers and defenders.
Formerly there were two other gates, but these have vanished save only
the sculptured arms of the Cinque Ports that once adorned the Strand
Gate. The Ypres tower is a memorial of the ancient strength of the
town, and was originally built by William de Ypres, Earl of Kent, in
the twelfth century, but has received later additions. It has a stern,
gaunt appearance, and until recent times was used as a jail. The
church possesses many points of unique interest. The builders began in
the twelfth century to build the tower and transepts, which are
Norman; then they proceeded with the nave, which is Transitional; and
when they reached the choir, which is very large and fine, the style
had merged into the Early English. Later windows were inserted in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The church has suffered with the
town at the hands of the French invaders, who did much damage. The old
clock, with its huge swinging pendulum, is curious. The church has a
collection of old books, including some old Bibles, including a
Vinegar and a Breeches Bible, and some stone cannon-balls, mementoes
of the French invasion of 1448.

[Illustration: West Street, Rye]

Near the church is the Town Hall, which contains several relics of
olden days. The list of mayors extends from the time of Edward I, and
we notice the long continuance of the office in families. Thus the
Lambs held office from 1723 to 1832, and the Grebells from 1631 to
1741. A great tragedy happened in the churchyard. A man named Breedes
had a grudge against one of the Lambs, and intended to kill him. He
saw, as he thought, his victim walking along the dark path through the
shrubs in the churchyard, attacked and murdered him. But he had made a
mistake; his victim was Mr. Grebell. The murderer was hanged and
quartered. The Town Hall contains the ancient pillory, which was
described as a very handy affair, handcuffs, leg-irons, special
constables' staves, which were always much needed for the usual riots
on Gunpowder Plot Day, and the old primitive fire-engine dated 1745.
The town has some remarkable plate. There is the mayor's handbell
with the inscription:--

      O MATER DEI
      MEMENTO MEI.
         1566.
    PETRUS GHEINEUS
       ME FECIT.

The maces of Queen Elizabeth with the date 1570 and bearing the
fleur-de-lis and the Tudor rose are interesting, and the two silver
maces presented by George III, bearing the arms of Rye and weighing
962 oz., are said to be the finest in Europe.

[Illustration: Monogram and Inscription in the Mermaid Inn, Rye]

The chief charm of Rye is to walk along the narrow streets and lanes,
and see the picturesque rows and groups of old fifteenth-and
sixteenth-century houses with their tiled roofs and gables,
weather-boarded or tile-hung after the manner of Sussex cottages,
graceful bay-windows--altogether pleasing. Wherever one wanders one
meets with these charming dwellings, especially in West Street and
Pump Street; the oldest house in Rye being at the corner of the
churchyard. The Mermaid Inn is delightful both outside and inside,
with its low panelled rooms, immense fire-places and dog-grates. We
see the monogram and names and dates carved on the stone fire-places,
1643, 1646, the name Loffelholtz seeming to indicate some foreign
refugee or settler. It is pleasant to find at least in one town in
England so much that has been left unaltered and so little spoilt.

[Illustration: Inscription in the Mermaid Inn, Rye]




CHAPTER IV

IN STREETS AND LANES


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.[10] 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.

  [10] _The Charm of the English Village_ (Batsford).

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."

[Illustration: Relic of Lynn Siege in Hampton Court, King's Lynn]

[Illustration: Hampton Court, King's Lynn, Norfolk]

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.

[Illustration: Mill Street, Warwick]

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.

[Illustration: Tudor Tenements, New Inn Hall St, Oxford. Now
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,[11] 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.

  [11] _The Charm of the English Village_, pp. 50-7.

[Illustration: Gothic Corner-post. The Half Moon Inn, Ipswich]

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.

[Illustration: Timber-built House, Shrewsbury]

[Illustration]

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."[12]

  [12] _Old West Surrey_, by Gertrude Jekyll, p. 206.

[Illustration: Missbrook Farm. Capel, Surrey.]

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."[13] 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.

  [13] _Highways and Byways in Sussex_, by E.V. Lucas.

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.

[Illustration: Cottage at Capel, Surrey ]

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[14]
          To shelter me from the cold;
        And there shall the Sussex songs be sung
          And the story of Sussex told.

  [14] I fear the poet's plans will never be passed by the rural
  district council.

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.

[Illustration: Farm-house, Horsmonden, Kent]

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.

[Illustration: Seventeenth-century Cottages, 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.

[Illustration: The "Fish House," Littleport, Cambs]

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.

[Illustration: Sixteenth-century Cottage, formerly standing in Upper
Deal, Kent]

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.

[Illustration: Gable, Upper Deal, Kent]

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.

[Illustration: A Portsmouth "Row"]

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.

[Illustration: Lich-gate, Chalfont St. Giles, Bucks]

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.[15]

  [15] The rood-loft has unfortunately disappeared.

[Illustration: Fifteenth-century Handle on Church Door, Monk's
Risborough, Bucks]

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 Grossetête 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.

[Illustration: Weather-boarded Houses, Crown Street, Portsmouth]

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.

[Illustration: Inscription on Font, Parish Church, Burford, Oxon]

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 3s. 4d."

[Illustration: Detail of Fifteenth-century Barge-board, Burford,
Oxon.]

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.

[Illustration: The George Inn, Burford, Oxon]

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,"[16] 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.

  [16] _Excursions in Essex_, published in 1819, states: "The old
  market cross and gaol are taking down. The market cross has long
  been considered a nuisance."

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.E. 1730," 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.[17]
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.

  [17] These tiles have now found a place in the excellent local museum.

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, Feby. 27th. 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 animâ 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.

[Illustration: Maldon, Essex. Sky-line of the High Street at twilight]

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.

[Illustration: St. Mary's Church, Maldon]

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.

[Illustration: Norman Clamp on door of Heybridge Church, Essex]

[Illustration: Tudor Fire-place. Now walled up in the passage of a
shop in Banbury]

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.

[Illustration: Wilney Street Burford]




CHAPTER V

OLD CASTLES


Castles have played a prominent part in the making of England. Many
towns owe their existence to the protecting guard of an old fortress.
They grew up beneath its sheltering walls like children holding the
gown of their good mother, though the castle often proved but a harsh
and cruel stepmother, and exacted heavy tribute in return for partial
security from pillage and rapine. Thus Newcastle-upon-Tyne arose about
the early fortress erected in 1080 by Robert Curthose to guard the
passage of the river at the Pons Aelii. The poor little Saxon village
of Monkchester was then its neighbour. But the castle occupying a fine
strategic position soon attracted townsfolk, who built their houses
'neath its shadow. The town of Richmond owes its existence to the
lordly castle which Alain Rufus, a cousin of the Duke of Brittany,
erected on land granted to him by the Conqueror. An old rhyme tells
how he

        Came out of Brittany
        With his wife Tiffany,
        And his maid Manfras,
        And his dog Hardigras.

He built his walls of stone. We must not imagine, however, that an
early Norman castle was always a vast keep of stone. That came later.
The Normans called their earliest strongholds _mottes_, which
consisted of a mound with stockades and a deep ditch and a
bailey-court also defended by a ditch and stockades. Instead of the
great stone keep of later days, "foursquare to every wind that blew,"
there was a wooden tower for the shelter of the garrison. You can see
in the Bayeux tapestry the followers of William the Conqueror in the
act of erecting some such tower of defence. Such structures were
somewhat easily erected, and did not require a long period for their
construction. Hence they were very useful for the holding of a
conquered country. Sometimes advantage was taken of the works that the
Romans had left. The Normans made use of the old stone walls built by
the earliest conquerors of Britain. Thus we find at Pevensey a Norman
fortress born within the ancient fortress reared by the Romans to
protect that portion of the southern coast from the attacks of the
northern pirates. Porchester Keep rose in the time of the first Henry
at the north-west angle of the Roman fort. William I erected his
castle at Colchester on the site of the Roman _castrum_. The old Roman
wall of London was used by the Conqueror for the eastern defence of
his Tower that he erected to keep in awe the citizens of the
metropolis, and at Lincoln and Colchester the works of the first
conquerors of Britain were eagerly utilized by him.

One of the most important Roman castles in the country is Burgh
Castle, in North Suffolk, with its grand and noble walls. The late Mr.
G.E. Fox thus described the ruins:--

  "According to the plan on the Ordnance Survey map, the walls
  enclose a quadrangular area roughly 640 feet long by 413 wide, the
  walls being 9 feet thick with a foundation 12 feet in width. The
  angles of the station are rounded. The eastern wall is
  strengthened by four solid bastions, one standing against each of
  the rounded angles, the other two intermediate, and the north and
  south sides have one each, neither of them being in the centre of
  the side, but rather west of it. The quaggy ground between the
  camp and the stream would be an excellent defence against sudden
  attack."

[Illustration: Burgh Castle]

Burgh Castle, according to the late Canon Raven, was the Roman station
_Gariannonum_ of the _Notitia Imperii_. Its walls are built of
flint-rubble concrete, and there are lacing courses of tiles. There
is no wall on the west, and Canon Raven used to contend that one
existed there but has been destroyed. But this conjecture seems
improbable. That side was probably defended by the sea, which has
considerably receded. Two gates remain, the principal one being the
east gate, commanded by towers a hundred feet high; while the north is
a postern-gate about five feet wide. The Romans have not left many
traces behind them. Some coins have been found, including a silver one
of Gratian and some of Constantine. Here St. Furseus, an Irish
missionary, is said to have settled with a colony of monks, having
been favourably received by Sigebert, the ruler of the East Angles, in
633 A.D. Burgh Castle is one of the finest specimens of a Roman fort
which our earliest conquerors have left us, and ranks with Reculver,
Richborough, and Pevensey, those strong fortresses which were erected
nearly two thousand years ago to guard the coasts against foreign
foes.

In early days, ere Norman and Saxon became a united people, the castle
was the sign of the supremacy of the conquerors and the subjugation of
the English. It kept watch and ward over tumultuous townsfolk and
prevented any acts of rebellion and hostility to their new masters.
Thus London's Tower arose to keep the turbulent citizens in awe as
well as to protect them from foreign foes. Thus at Norwich the castle
dominated the town, and required for its erection the destruction of
over a hundred houses. At Lincoln the Conqueror destroyed 166 houses
in order to construct a strong _motte_ at the south-west corner of the
old _castrum_ in order to overawe the city. Sometimes castles were
erected to protect the land from foreign foes. The fort at Colchester
was intended to resist the Danes if ever their threatened invasion
came, and Norwich Castle was erected quite as much to drive back the
Scandinavian hosts as to keep in order the citizens. Newcastle and
Carlisle were of strategic importance for driving back the Scots, and
Lancaster Keep, traditionally said to have been reared by Roger de
Poitou, but probably of later date, bore the brunt of many a marauding
invasion. To check the incursions of the Welsh, who made frequent and
powerful irruptions into Herefordshire, many castles were erected in
Shropshire and Herefordshire, forming a chain of fortresses which are
more numerous than in any other part of England. They are of every
shape and size, from stately piles like Wigmore and Goodrich, to the
smallest fortified farm, like Urishay Castle, a house half mansion,
half fortress. Even the church towers of Herefordshire, with their
walls seven or eight feet thick, such as that at Ewias Harold, look as
if they were designed as strongholds in case of need. On the western
and northern borders of England we find the largest number of
fortresses, erected to restrain and keep back troublesome neighbours.

The story of the English castles abounds in interest and romance. Most
of them are ruins now, but fancy pictures them in the days of their
splendour, the abodes of chivalry and knightly deeds, of "fair ladies
and brave men," and each one can tell its story of siege and
battle-cries, of strenuous attack and gallant defence, of prominent
parts played in the drama of English history. To some of these we
shall presently refer, but it would need a very large volume to record
the whole story of our English fortresses.

We have said that the earliest Norman castle was a _motte_ fortified
by a stockade, an earthwork protected with timber palings. That is the
latest theory amongst antiquaries, but there are not a few who
maintain that the Normans, who proved themselves such admirable
builders of the stoutest of stone churches, would not long content
themselves with such poor fortresses. There were stone castles before
the Normans, besides the old Roman walls at Pevensey, Colchester,
London, and Lincoln. And there came from Normandy a monk named Gundulf
in 1070 who was a mighty builder. He was consecrated Bishop of
Rochester and began to build his cathedral with wondrous architectural
skill. He is credited with devising a new style of military
architecture, and found much favour with the Conqueror, who at the
time especially needed strong walls to guard himself and his hungry
followers. He was ordered by the King to build the first beginnings of
the Tower of London. He probably designed the keep at Colchester and
the castle of his cathedral town, and set the fashion of building
these great ramparts of stone which were so serviceable in the
subjugation and overawing of the English. The fashion grew, much to
the displeasure of the conquered, who deemed them "homes of wrong and
badges of bondage," hateful places filled with devils and evil men who
robbed and spoiled them. And when they were ordered to set to work on
castle-building their impotent wrath knew no bounds. It is difficult
to ascertain how many were constructed during the Conqueror's reign.
Domesday tells of forty-nine. Another authority, Mr. Pearson, mentions
ninety-nine, and Mrs. Armitage after a careful examination of
documents contends for eighty-six. But there may have been many
others. In Stephen's reign castles spread like an evil sore over the
land. His traitorous subjects broke their allegiance to their king and
preyed upon the country. The _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_ records that
"every rich man built his castles and defended them against him, and
they filled the land full of castles. They greatly oppressed the
wretched people by making them work at these castles, and when the
castles were finished they filled them with devils and evil men. Then
they took those whom they suspected to have any goods, by night and by
day, seizing both men and women, and they put them in prison for their
gold and silver, and tortured them with pains unspeakable, for never
were any martyrs tormented as these were. They hung some up by their
feet and smoked them with foul smoke; some by their thumbs or by the
head, and they hung burning things on their feet. They put a knotted
string about their heads, and twisted it till it went into the brain.
They put them into dungeons wherein were adders and snakes and toads,
and thus wore them out. Some they put into a crucet-house, that is,
into a chest that was short and narrow and not deep, and they put
sharp stones in it, and crushed the man therein so that they broke all
his limbs. There were hateful and grim things called Sachenteges in
many of the castles, and which two or three men had enough to do to
carry. The Sachentege was made thus: it was fastened to a beam, having
a sharp iron to go round a man's throat and neck, so that he might
noways sit, nor lie, nor sleep, but that he must bear all the iron.
Many thousands they exhausted with hunger. I cannot, and I may not,
tell of all the wounds and all the tortures that they inflicted upon
the wretched men of this land; and this state of things lasted the
nineteen years that Stephen was king, and ever grew worse and worse.
They were continually levying an exaction from the towns, which they
called Tenserie,[18] and when the miserable inhabitants had no more to
give, then plundered they and burnt all the towns, so that well
mightest thou walk a whole day's journey nor ever shouldest thou find
a man seated in a town or its lands tilled."

  [18] A payment to the superior lord for protection.

More than a thousand of these abodes of infamy are said to have been
built. Possibly many of them were timber structures only. Countless
small towns and villages boast of once possessing a fortress. The name
Castle Street remains, though the actual site of the stronghold has
long vanished. Sometimes we find a mound which seems to proclaim its
position, but memory is silent, and the people of England, if the
story of the chronicler be true, have to be grateful to Henry II, who
set himself to work to root up and destroy very many of these
adulterine castles which were the abodes of tyranny and oppression.
However, for the protection of his kingdom, he raised other
strongholds, in the south the grand fortress of Dover, which still
guards the straits; in the west, Berkeley Castle, for his friend
Robert FitzHarding, ancestor of Lord Berkeley, which has remained in
the same family until the present day; in the north, Richmond,
Scarborough, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and in the east, Orford Keep.
The same stern Norman keep remains, but you can see some changes in
the architecture. The projection of the buttresses is increased, and
there is some attempt at ornamentation. Orford Castle, which some
guide-books and directories will insist on confusing with Oxford
Castle and stating that it was built by Robert D'Oiley in 1072, was
erected by Henry II to defend the country against the incursions of
the Flemings and to safeguard Orford Haven. Caen stone was brought for
the stone dressings to windows and doors, parapets and groins, but
masses of septaria found on the shore and in the neighbouring marshes
were utilized with such good effect that the walls have stood the
attacks of besiegers and weathered the storms of the east coast for
more than seven centuries. It was built in a new fashion that was made
in France, and to which our English eyes were unaccustomed, and is
somewhat similar in plan to Conisborough Castle, in the valley of the
Don. The plan is circular with three projecting towers, and the keep
was protected by two circular ditches, one fifteen feet and the other
thirty feet distant from its walls. Between the two ditches was a
circular wall with parapet and battlements. The interior of the castle
was divided into three floors; the towers, exclusive of the turrets,
had five, two of which were entresols, and were ninety-six feet high,
the central keep being seventy feet.[19] The oven was at the top of
the keep. The chapel is one of the most interesting chambers, with its
original altar still in position, though much damaged, and also
piscina, aumbrey, and ciborium. This castle nearly vanished with other
features of vanishing England in the middle of the eighteenth century,
Lord Hereford proposing to pull it down for the sake of the material;
but "it being a necessary sea-mark, especially for ships coming from
Holland, who by steering so as to make the castle cover or hide the
church thereby avoid a dangerous sandbank called the Whiting,
Government interfered and prevented the destruction of the
building."[20]

  [19] Cf. _Memorials of Old Suffolk_, p. 65.

  [20] Grose's _Antiquities._

In these keeps the thickness of the walls enabled them to contain
chambers, stairs, and passages. At Guildford there is an oratory with
rude carvings of sacred subjects, including a crucifixion. The first
and second floors were usually vaulted, and the upper ones were of
timber. Fireplaces were built in most of the rooms, and some sort of
domestic comfort was not altogether forgotten. In the earlier
fortresses the walls of the keep enclosed an inner court, which had
rooms built up to the great stone walls, the court afterwards being
vaulted and floors erected. In order to protect the entrance there
were heavy doors with a portcullis, and by degrees the outward
defences were strengthened. There was an outer bailey or court
surrounded by a strong wall, with a barbican guarding the entrance,
consisting of a strong gate protected by two towers. In this lower or
outer court are the stables, and the mound where the lord of the
castle dispenses justice, and where criminals and traitors are
executed. Another strong gateway flanked by towers protects the inner
bailey, on the edge of which stands the keep, which frowns down upon
us as we enter. An immense household was supported in these castles.
Not only were there men-at-arms, but also cooks, bakers, brewers,
tailors, carpenters, smiths, masons, and all kinds of craftsmen; and
all this crowd of workers had to be provided with accommodation by the
lord of the castle. Hence a building in the form of a large hall was
erected, sometimes of stone, usually of wood, in the lower or upper
bailey, for these soldiers and artisans, where they slept and had
their meals.

Amongst other castles which arose during this late Norman and early
English period of architecture we may mention Barnard Castle, a mighty
stronghold, held by the royal house of Balliol, the Prince Bishops of
Durham, the Earls of Warwick, the Nevilles, and other powerful
families. Sir Walter Scott immortalized the Castle in _Rokeby_. Here
is his description of the fortress:--

        High crowned he sits, in dawning pale,
        The sovereign of the lovely vale.
        What prospects from the watch-tower high
        Gleam gradual on the warder's eye?
        Far sweeping to the east he sees
        Down his deep woods the course of Tees,
        And tracks his wanderings by the steam
        Of summer vapours from the stream;
        And ere he pace his destined hour
        By Brackenbury's dungeon tower,
        These silver mists shall melt away
        And dew the woods with glittering spray.
        Then in broad lustre shall be shown
        That mighty trench of living stone.
        And each huge trunk that from the side,
        Reclines him o'er the darksome tide,
        Where Tees, full many a fathom low,
        Wears with his rage no common foe;
        Nor pebbly bank, nor sand-bed here,
        Nor clay-mound checks his fierce career,
        Condemned to mine a channelled way
        O'er solid sheets of marble grey.

This lordly pile has seen the Balliols fighting with the Scots, of
whom John Balliol became king, the fierce contests between the warlike
prelates of Durham and Barnard's lord, the triumph of the former, who
were deprived of their conquest by Edward I, and then its surrender in
later times to the rebels of Queen Elizabeth.

Another northern border castle is Norham, the possession of the Bishop
of Durham, built during this period. It was a mighty fortress, and
witnessed the gorgeous scene of the arbitration between the rival
claimants to the Scottish throne, the arbiter being King Edward I of
England, who forgot not to assert his own fancied rights to the
overlordship of the northern kingdom. It was, however, besieged by the
Scots, and valiant deeds were wrought before its walls by Sir William
Marmion and Sir Thomas Grey, but the Scots captured it in 1327 and
again in 1513. It is now but a battered ruin. Prudhoe, with its
memories of border wars, and Castle Rising, redolent with the memories
of the last years of the wicked widow of Edward II, belong to this age
of castle-architecture, and also the older portions of Kenilworth.

Pontefract Castle, the last fortress that held out for King Charles in
the Civil War, and in consequence slighted and ruined, can tell of
many dark deeds and strange events in English history. The De Lacys
built it in the early part of the thirteenth century. Its area was
seven acres. The wall of the castle court was high and flanked by
seven towers; a deep moat was cut on the western side, where was the
barbican and drawbridge. It had terrible dungeons, one a room
twenty-five feet square, without any entrance save a trap-door in the
floor of a turret. The castle passed, in 1310, by marriage to Thomas
Earl of Lancaster, who took part in the strife between Edward II and
his nobles, was captured, and in his own hall condemned to death. The
castle is always associated with the murder of Richard II, but
contemporary historians, Thomas of Walsingham and Gower the poet,
assert that he starved himself to death; others contend that his
starvation was not voluntary; while there are not wanting those who
say that he escaped to Scotland, lived there many years, and died in
peace in the castle of Stirling, an honoured guest of Robert III of
Scotland, in 1419. I have not seen the entries, but I am told in the
accounts of the Chamberlain of Scotland there are items for the
maintenance of the King for eleven years. But popular tales die hard,
and doubtless you will hear the groans and see the ghost of the
wronged Richard some moonlight night in the ruined keep of Pontefract.
He has many companion ghosts--the Earl of Salisbury, Richard Duke of
York, Anthony Wydeville, Earl Rivers and Grey his brother, and Sir
Thomas Vaughan, whose feet trod the way to the block, that was worn
hard by many victims. The dying days of the old castle made it
illustrious. It was besieged three times, taken and retaken, and saw
amazing scenes of gallantry and bravery. It held out until after the
death of the martyr king; it heard the proclamation of Charles II, but
at length was compelled to surrender, and "the strongest inland
garrison in the kingdom," as Oliver Cromwell termed it, was slighted
and made a ruin. Its sister fortress Knaresborough shared its fate.
Lord Lytton, in _Eugene Aram_, wrote of it:--

  "You will be at a loss to recognise now the truth of old Leland's
  description of that once stout and gallant bulwark of the north,
  when 'he numbrid 11 or 12 Toures in the walles of the Castel, and
  one very fayre beside in the second area.' In that castle the four
  knightly murderers of the haughty Becket (the Wolsey of his age)
  remained for a whole year, defying the weak justice of the times.
  There, too, the unfortunate Richard II passed some portion of his
  bitter imprisonment. And there, after the battle of Marston Moor,
  waved the banner of the loyalists against the soldiers of
  Lilburn."

An interesting story is told of the siege. A youth, whose father was
in the garrison, each night went into the deep, dry moat, climbed up
the glacis, and put provisions through a hole where his father stood
ready to receive them. He was seen at length, fired on by the
Parliamentary soldiers, and sentenced to be hanged in sight of the
besieged as a warning to others. But a good lady obtained his respite,
and after the conquest of the place was released. The castle then,
once the residence of Piers Gaveston, of Henry III, and of John of
Gaunt, was dismantled and destroyed.

During the reign of Henry III great progress was made in the
improvement and development of castle-building. The comfort and
convenience of the dwellers in these fortresses were considered, and
if not very luxurious places they were made more beautiful by art and
more desirable as residences. During the reigns of the Edwards this
progress continued, and a new type of castle was introduced. The
stern, massive, and high-towering keep was abandoned, and the
fortifications arranged in a concentric fashion. A fine hall with
kitchens occupied the centre of the fortress; a large number of
chambers were added. The stronghold itself consisted of a large square
or oblong like that at Donnington, Berkshire, and the approach was
carefully guarded by strong gateways, advanced works, walled
galleries, and barbicans. Deep moats filled with water increased their
strength and improved their beauty.

We will give some examples of these Edwardian castles, of which Leeds
Castle, Kent, is a fine specimen. It stands on three islands in a
sheet of water about fifteen acres in extent, these islands being
connected in former times by double drawbridges. It consists of two
huge piles of buildings which with a strong gate-house and barbican
form four distinct forts, capable of separate defence should any one
or other fall into the hands of an enemy. Three causeways, each with
its drawbridge, gate, and portcullis, lead to the smallest island or
inner barbican, a fortified mill contributing to the defences. A stone
bridge connects this island with the main island. There stands the
Constable's Tower, and a stone wall surrounds the island and within is
the modern mansion. The Maiden's Tower and the Water Tower defend the
island on the south. A two-storeyed building on arches now connects
the main island with the Tower of the Gloriette, which has a curious
old bell with the Virgin and Child, St. George and the Dragon, and the
Crucifixion depicted on it, and an ancient clock. The castle withstood
a siege in the time of Edward II because Queen Isabella was refused
admission. The King hung the Governor, Thomas de Colepepper, by the
chain of the drawbridge. Henry IV retired here on account of the
Plague in London, and his second wife, Joan of Navarre, was imprisoned
here. It was a favourite residence of the Court in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. Here the wife of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester,
was tried for witchcraft. Dutch prisoners were confined here in 1666
and contrived to set fire to some of the buildings. It is the home of
the Wykeham Martin family, and is one of the most picturesque castles
in the country.

In the same neighbourhood is Allington Castle, an ivy-mantled ruin,
another example of vanished glory, only two tenements occupying the
princely residence of the Wyatts, famous in the history of State and
Letters. Sir Henry, the father of the poet, felt the power of the
Hunchback Richard, and was racked and imprisoned in Scotland, and
would have died in the Tower of London but for a cat. He rose to great
honour under Henry VII, and here entertained the King in great style.
At Allington the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt was born, and spent his days in
writing prose and verse, hunting and hawking, and occasionally
dallying after Mistress Anne Boleyn at the neighbouring castle of
Hever. He died here in 1542, and his son Sir Thomas led the
insurrection against Queen Mary and sealed the fate of himself and his
race.

Hever Castle, to which allusion has been made, is an example of the
transition between the old fortress and the more comfortable mansion
of a country squire or magnate. Times were less dangerous, the country
more peaceful when Sir Geoffrey Boleyn transformed and rebuilt the
castle built in the reign of Edward III by William de Hever, but the
strong entrance-gate flanked by towers, embattled and machicolated,
and defended by stout doors and three portcullises and the surrounding
moat, shows that the need of defence had not quite passed away. The
gates lead into a courtyard around which the hall, chapel, and
domestic chambers are grouped. The long gallery Anne Boleyn so often
traversed with impatience still seems to re-echo her steps, and her
bedchamber, which used to contain some of the original furniture, has
always a pathetic interest. The story of the courtship of Henry VIII
with "the brown girl with a perthroat and an extra finger," as
Margaret More described her, is well known. Her old home, which was
much in decay, has passed into the possession of a wealthy American
gentleman, and has been recently greatly restored and transformed.

Sussex can boast of many a lordly castle, and in its day Bodiam must
have been very magnificent. Even in its decay and ruin it is one of
the most beautiful in England. It combined the palace of the feudal
lord and the fortress of a knight. The founder, Sir John Dalyngrudge,
was a gallant soldier in the wars of Edward III, and spent most of his
best years in France, where he had doubtless learned the art of making
his house comfortable as well as secure. He acquired licence to
fortify his castle in 1385 "for resistance against our enemies." There
was need of strong walls, as the French often at that period ravaged
the coast of Sussex, burning towns and manor-houses. Clark, the great
authority on castles, says that "Bodiam is a complete and typical
castle of the end of the fourteenth century, laid out entirely on a
new site, and constructed after one design and at one period. It but
seldom happens that a great fortress is wholly original, of one, and
that a known, date, and so completely free from alterations or
additions." It is nearly square, with circular tower sixty-five feet
high at the four corners, connected by embattled curtain-walls, in the
centre of each of which square towers rise to an equal height with the
circular. The gateway is a large structure composed of two flanking
towers defended by numerous oiletts for arrows, embattled parapets,
and deep machicolations. Over the gateway are three shields bearing
the arms of Bodiam, Dalyngrudge, and Wardieu. A huge portcullis still
frowns down upon us, and two others opposed the way, while above are
openings in the vault through which melted lead, heated sand, pitch,
and other disagreeable things could be poured on the heads of the foe.
In the courtyard on the south stands the great hall with its oriel,
buttery, and kitchen, and amidst the ruins you can discern the chapel,
sacristy, ladies' bower, presence chamber. The castle stayed not long
in the family of the builder, his son John probably perishing in the
wars, and passed to Sir Thomas Lewknor, who opposed Richard III, and
was therefore attainted of high treason and his castle besieged and
taken. It was restored to him again by Henry VII, but the Lewknors
never resided there again. Waller destroyed it after the capture of
Arundel, and since that time it has been left a prey to the rains and
frosts and storms, but manages to preserve much of its beauty, and to
tell how noble knights lived in the days of chivalry.

Caister Castle is one of the four principal castles in Norfolk. It is
built of brick, and is one of the earliest edifices in England
constructed of that material after its rediscovery as suitable for
building purposes. It stands with its strong defences not far from the
sea on the barren coast. It was built by Sir John Fastolfe, who fought
with great distinction in the French wars of Henry V and Henry VI, and
was the hero of the Battle of the Herrings in 1428, when he defeated
the French and succeeded in convoying a load of herrings in triumph to
the English camp before Orleans. It is supposed that he was the
prototype of Shakespeare's Falstaff, but beyond the resemblance in the
names there is little similarity in the exploits of the two "heroes."
Sir John Fastolfe, much to the chagrin of other friends and relatives,
made John Paston his heir, who became a great and prosperous man,
represented his county in Parliament, and was a favourite of Edward
IV. Paston loved Caister, his "fair jewell"; but misfortunes befell
him. He had great losses, and was thrice confined in the Fleet Prison
and then outlawed. Those were dangerous days, and friends often
quarrelled. Hence during his troubles the Duke of Norfolk and Lord
Scales tried to get possession of Caister, and after his death laid
siege to it. The Pastons lacked not courage and determination, and
defended it for a year, but were then forced to surrender. However, it
was restored to them, but again forcibly taken from them. However, not
by the sword but by negotiations and legal efforts, Sir John again
gained his own, and an embattled tower at the north-west corner, one
hundred feet high, and the north and west walls remain to tell the
story of this brave old Norfolk family, who by their _Letters_ have
done so much to guide us through the dark period to which they relate.

[Illustration: Caister Castle 7 Aug 1908]

[Illustration: Defaced Arms. Taunton Castle]

We will journey to the West Country, a region of castles. The Saxons
were obliged to erect their rude earthen strongholds to keep back the
turbulent Welsh, and these were succeeded by Norman keeps.
Monmouthshire is famous for its castles. Out of the thousand erected
in Norman times twenty-five were built in that county. There is
Chepstow Castle with its Early Norman gateway spanned by a circular
arch flanked by round towers. In the inner court there are gardens
and ruins of a grand hall, and in the outer the remains of a chapel
with evidences of beautifully groined vaulting, and also a winding
staircase leading to the battlements. In the dungeon of the old keep
at the south-east corner of the inner court Roger de Britolio, Earl of
Hereford, was imprisoned for rebellion against the Conqueror, and in
later times Henry Martin, the regicide, lingered as a prisoner for
thirty years, employing his enforced leisure in writing a book in
order to prove that it is not right for a man to be governed by one
wife. Then there is Glosmont Castle, the fortified residence of the
Earl of Lancaster; Skenfrith Castle, White Castle, the _Album Castrum_
of the Latin records, the Landreilo of the Welsh, with its six towers,
portcullis and drawbridge flanked by massive towers, barbican, and
other outworks; and Raglan Castle with its splendid gateway, its
Elizabethan banqueting-hall ornamented with rich stone tracery, its
bowling-green, garden terraces, and spacious courts--an ideal place
for knightly tournaments. Raglan is associated with the gallant
defence of the castle by the Marquis of Worcester in the Civil War.

Another famous siege is connected with the old castle of Taunton.
Taunton was a noted place in Saxon days, and the castle is the
earliest English fortress by some two hundred years of which we have
any written historical record.[21] The Anglo-Saxon chronicler states,
under the date 722 A.D.: "This year Queen Ethelburge overthrew
Taunton, which Ina had before built." The buildings tell their story.
We see a Norman keep built to the westward of Ina's earthwork,
probably by Henry de Blois, Bishop of Winchester, the warlike brother
of King Stephen. The gatehouse with the curtain ending in drum towers,
of which one only remains, was first built at the close of the
thirteenth century under Edward I; but it was restored with
Perpendicular additions by Bishop Thomas Langton, whose arms with the
date 1495 may be seen on the escutcheon above the arch. Probably
Bishop Langton also built the great hall; whilst Bishop Home, who is
sometimes credited with this work, most likely only repaired the hall,
but tacked on to it the southward structure on pilasters, which shows
his arms with the date 1577. The hall of the castle was for a long
period used as Assize Courts. The castle was purchased by the Taunton
and Somerset Archæological Society, and is now most appropriately a
museum. Taunton has seen many strange sights. The town was owned by
the Bishop of Winchester, and the castle had its constable, an office
held by many great men. When Lord Daubeney of Barrington Court was
constable in 1497 Taunton saw thousands of gaunt Cornishmen marching
on to London to protest against the king's subsidy, and they aroused
the sympathy of the kind-hearted Somerset folk, who fed them, and were
afterwards fined for "aiding and comforting" them. Again, crowds of
Cornishmen here flocked to the standard of Perkin Warbeck. The gallant
defence of Taunton by Robert Blake, aided by the townsfolk, against
the whole force of the Royalists, is a matter of history, and also the
rebellion of Monmouth, who made Taunton his head-quarters. This
castle, like every other one in England, has much to tell us of the
chief events in our national annals.

  [21] _Taunton and its Castle_, by D.P. Alford (Memorials of Old
  Somerset), p. 149.

In the principality of Wales we find many noted strong holds--Conway,
Harlech, and many others. Carnarvon Castle, the repair of which is
being undertaken by Sir John Puleston, has no rival among our medieval
fortresses for the grandeur and extent of the ruins. It was commenced
about 1283 by Edward I, but took forty years to complete. In 1295 a
playful North Walian, named Madoc, who was an illegitimate son of
Prince David, took the rising stronghold by surprise upon a fair day,
massacred the entire garrison, and hanged the constable from his own
half-finished walls. Sir John Puleston, the present constable, though
he derives his patronymic from the "base, bloody, and brutal Saxon,"
is really a warmly patriotic Welshman, and is doing a good work in
preserving the ruins of the fortress of which he is the titular
governor.

We should like to record the romantic stories that have woven
themselves around each crumbling keep and bailey-court, to see them in
the days of their glory when warders kept the gate and watching
archers guarded the wall, and the lord and lady and their knights and
esquires dined in the great hall, and knights practised feats of arms
in the tilting-ground, and the banner of the lord waved over the
battlements, and everything was ready for war or sport, hunting or
hawking. But all the glories of most of the castles of England have
vanished, and naught is to be seen but ruined walls and deserted
halls. Some few have survived and become royal palaces or noblemen's
mansions. Such are Windsor, Warwick, Raby, Alnwick, and Arundel, but
the fate of most of them is very similar. The old fortress aimed at
being impregnable in the days of bows and arrows; but the progress of
guns and artillery somewhat changed the ideas with regard to their
security. In the struggle between Yorkists and Lancastrians many a
noble owner lost his castle and his head. Edward IV thinned down
castle-ownership, and many a fine fortress was left to die. When the
Spaniards threatened our shores those who possessed castles tried to
adapt them for the use of artillery, and when the Civil War began many
of them were strengthened and fortified and often made gallant
defences against their enemies, such as Donnington, Colchester,
Scarborough, and Pontefract. When the Civil War ended the last bugle
sounded the signal for their destruction. Orders were issued for their
destruction, lest they should ever again be thorns in the sides of the
Parliamentary army. Sometimes they were destroyed for revenge, or
because of their materials, which were sold for the benefit of the
Government or for the satisfaction of private greed. Lead was torn
from the roofs of chapels and banqueting-halls. The massive walls were
so strong that they resisted to the last and had to be demolished
with the aid of gunpowder. They became convenient quarries for stone
and furnished many a farm, cottage and manor-house with materials for
their construction. Henceforth the old castle became a ruin. In its
silent marshy moat reeds and rushes grow, and ivy covers its walls,
and trees have sprung up in the quiet and deserted courts. Picnic
parties encamp on the green sward, and excursionists amuse themselves
in strolling along the walls and wonder why they were built so thick,
and imagine that the castle was always a ruin erected for the
amusement of the cheap-tripper for jest and playground. Happily care
is usually bestowed upon the relics that remain, and diligent
antiquaries excavate and try to rear in imagination the stately
buildings. Some have been fortunate enough to become museums, and some
modernized and restored are private residences. The English castle
recalls some of the most eventful scenes in English history, and its
bones and skeleton should be treated with respect and veneration as an
important feature of vanishing England.

[Illustration: Knightly Bascinet (_temp._ Henry V) in Norwich Castle]




CHAPTER VI

VANISHING OR VANISHED CHURCHES


No buildings have suffered more than our parish churches in the course
of ages. Many have vanished entirely. A few stones or ruins mark the
site of others, and iconoclasm has left such enduring marks on the
fabric of many that remain that it is difficult to read their story
and history. A volume, several volumes, would be needed to record all
the vandalism that has been done to our ecclesiastical structures in
the ages that have passed. We can only be thankful that some churches
have survived to proclaim the glories of English architecture and the
skill of our masons and artificers who wrought so well and worthily in
olden days.

In the chapter that relates to the erosion of our coasts we have
mentioned many of the towns and villages which have been devoured by
the sea with their churches. These now lie beneath the waves, and the
bells in their towers are still said to ring when storms rage. We need
not record again the submerged Ravenspur, Dunwich, Kilnsea, and other
unfortunate towns with their churches where now only mermaids can form
the congregation.

       And as the fisherman strays
       When the clear cold eve's declining,
       He sees the round tower of other days
       In the wave beneath him shining.

In the depths of the country, far from the sea, we can find many
deserted shrines, many churches that once echoed with the songs of
praise of faithful worshippers, wherein were celebrated the divine
mysteries, and organs pealed forth celestial music, but now forsaken,
desecrated, ruined, forgotten.

        The altar has vanished, the rood screen flown,
        Foundation and buttress are ivy-grown;
        The arches are shattered, the roof has gone,
        The mullions are mouldering one by one;
        Foxglove and cow-grass and waving weed
        Grow over the scrolls where you once could read
        Benedicite.

Many of them have been used as quarries, and only a few stones remain
to mark the spot where once stood a holy house of God. Before the
Reformation the land must have teemed with churches. I know not the
exact number of monastic houses once existing in England. There must
have been at least a thousand, and each had its church. Each parish
had a church. Besides these were the cathedrals, chantry chapels,
chapels attached to the mansions, castles, and manor-houses of the
lords and squires, to almshouses and hospitals, pilgrim churches by
the roadside, where bands of pilgrims would halt and pay their
devotions ere they passed along to the shrine of St. Thomas at
Canterbury or to Our Lady at Walsingham. When chantries and guilds as
well as monasteries were suppressed, their chapels were no longer used
for divine service; some of the monastic churches became cathedrals or
parish churches, but most of them were pillaged, desecrated, and
destroyed. When pilgrimages were declared to be "fond things vainly
invented," and the pilgrim bands ceased to travel along the pilgrim
way, the wayside chapel fell into decay, or was turned into a barn or
stable.

It is all very sad and deplorable. But the roll of abandoned shrines
is not complete. At the present day many old churches are vanishing.
Some have been abandoned or pulled down because they were deemed too
near to the squire's house, an

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