Читать книгу Vanishing England - P. H. Ditchfield - Страница 11

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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.

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."

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Timber-built House, Shrewsbury

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