Part 11

Hitherto, we have mostly spoken of palaces and mansions. It is, however, very difficult to discover any fragments of houses inhabited by the gentry, before the reign, at soonest, of Edward III., or even to trace them by engravings in the older topographical works; not only from the dilapidations of time, but because very few considerable mansions had been erected by that class. It is an error to suppose that the English gentry were lodged in stately, or even in well-sized houses. They usually consisted of an entrance-passage, running through the house, with a hall on one side, a parlour beyond, and one or two chambers above; and on the opposite side, a kitchen, pantry, and other offices. Such was the ordinary manor-house of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. "In the remains of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Somersetshire is especially rich. Almost every village has a house, a parsonage, or some building or other of this class, to say nothing of extensive monastic remains, as at Glastonbury, Woodspring, Muchelney, and Old Cleve. Among the Somersetshire houses, the original portions of Clevedon Court may claim the first place. Then comes a long list, of which, perhaps, the manor-house and 'fish-house' of Meare, near Glastonbury, are the most curious and beautiful."[38]

Larger houses were erected by men of great estates during the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV.; but very few can be traced higher; and Mr. Hallam, in his _History of the Middle Ages_, conceives it to be difficult to name a house in England, still inhabited by a gentleman, and not of the castle description, the principal apartments of which are older than the reign of Henry VII. There may be a few solitary specimens of earlier date. The Rev. Mr. Lysons says:--"The most remarkable fragment of early building which I have anywhere found mentioned, is at a house in Berkshire, called Appleton, where there is a sort of prodigy--an entrance-passage with circular arches in the Saxon (? Norman) style, which must, probably, be as old as the reign of Henry II. No other private house in England, as I conceive, can boast of such a monument of antiquity."

Wood and stone were the earliest materials used in house-building; but as great part of England affords no stone fit for building, her oak-forests were thinned, and less durable dwellings were erected with inferior timber. Stone houses are, however, mentioned as belonging to the citizens of London, even in the latter half of the twelfth century. Flints bound together with strong cement were employed in building manor-houses. Hewn stone was employed for castles, and the larger mansions: much stone was, in early times, brought from Normandy. Chestnut was much employed. Evelyn, in his _Sylva_, states that "The chestnut is, next the oak, one of the most sought after by the carpenter and joiner. It hath formerly built a good part of our ancient houses in the City of London, as does yet appear. I had once a very large barn near the City, framed entirely of this timber; and certainly the trees grew not far off, probably in some woods near the town; for in that description of London, written by Fitz-Stephen, in the reign of Henry II. he speaks of a very noble and large forest which grew on the boreal [north] part of it."[39]

Ducarel, in his _Anglo-Norman Antiquities_, says: "Rudhall, near Ross, in Herefordshire, is built with chestnut, which probably grew on the estate, although no tree of the kind is now to be found growing wild in that part of the country. The old houses in the city of Gloucester are constructed of chestnut, derived assuredly from the chestnut-trees in the forest of Dean. In some of the oldest houses of Faversham much genuine chestnut as well as oak is employed. In the nunnery of Davington, near Faversham (now entire), the timber consists of oak, intermingled with chestnut."

In the fourteenth century, ornamental carpentry had reached a high degree of excellence. There are many examples of ancient timber houses yet remaining in this country: they have massive beams and timbers, and are generally of unnecessary strength. The intermixture of wood, brick, and stone, or wood and plaster, in the exterior of houses, was, for a considerable period, the common style of building in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Weatherboard--that is, planks overlapping each other--was formerly much used for house-fronts, and possessed great durability. Overhanging roofs, walls of plaster with lofty gables, bay-windows, and porches of timber, with each story projecting beyond the other, are so many characteristics of a mixed style, when the rude dangers of the timber houses became progressively intermingled with the massive architecture of a subsequent period; and the external use of timber in the walls continued to prevail for a very long time. Beaconsfield Rectory, of the sixteenth century, has the basement story completely built of glazed bricks in chequered patterns; the superincumbent story has elevated roofs and gables, and is constructed with massive timbers placed near together, and plastered between. The staircase, which is semi-cylindrical and composed of timber, is added to the north side of the house. The entire structure forms three sides of a quadrangle, with a lofty wall and entrance on the fourth; its interior is rude and massive.

In an account of a topographical excursion in 1634, the hall of Kenilworth is described with a roof "all of Irish wood, neatly and handsomely framed;" in it are five chimneys, "answerable to so great a room:" then we read of the Guard, Presence, and Privy chambers, fretted above richly with coats of arms, and all adorned with fair and rich chimney-pieces of alabaster, black marble, and joiners' work in curiously carved wood; all the fair and rich rooms and lodgings in the spacious tower not long since built, and repaired at great cost by Leicester. "The priuate, plaine, retiring-chamber wherein or renowned Queene of euer famous memory, alwayes made choice to repose her Selfe. Also the famous, strong old tower, called Julius Cæsar's, on top whereof was view'd the pleasant, large Poole continually sporting and playing on the Castle: the Parke, and the fforest contiguous thereto." Kenilworth has been already described at pp. 101-103.

Many a middle-aged reader can recollect the disappearance of rows of gabled houses, with timber and plaster fronts, from the metropolis: great part of the High-street of Southwark, built in this manner, was taken down between 1810 and 1831; at the latter period, some houses with ornamental plaster fronts disappeared. In Chancery-lane, a very old thoroughfare, several houses of this class have been taken down within memory; and many an old house-front, with ornamental carving, is missed from the Strand; a few linger in Holywell-street and Wych-street. And, in 1865, was taken down one side of Great Winchester-street, stated to be one of the oldest specimens of domestic architecture remaining in the metropolis. The casement hung on hinges was the earliest form of window, properly so called. Sash-windows were not introduced till the early part of the reign of Charles I., and were not general till the latter part of the time of Queen Anne.

In the construction of farm-houses and cottages there have been, probably, fewer changes than in large mansions. Cottages in England seem to have generally consisted of a single room, without division of stories. The Spaniards who came to England in Queen Mary's time, wondered when they saw the large diet used by the inmates of the most homely-looking cottages. "The English, they said, make their houses of sticks and dirt, but they fare as well as the king; whereby it appeareth (says Harrison), that they like better of our goode fare in such coarse cabins, than of their own thin diet in their princelike habitations and palaces."

In various counties we can scarcely fail to be struck with the difference in the forms of the cottages, as in the height of the building, the pitch of the roof, as well as the materials. Only let the traveller on the Brighton railway look out after he has passed Redhill, and he may see evidence of the truth of the above remark. Cobbett has left us this charming picture of the Sussex cottages in one of his _Rural Rides_:--

"I never had," he writes, "that I recollect, a more pleasant journey, or ride, than this into Sussex. The weather was pleasant, the elder-trees in full bloom, and they make a fine show; the woods just in their greatest beauty; the grass-fields generally uncut; and the little gardens of the labourers full of flowers; the roses and honeysuckles perfuming the air at every cottage door. Throughout all England, these cottages and gardens are the most interesting objects that the country presents, and they are particularly so in Kent and Sussex. This part of these counties has the great blessing of numerous woods; these furnish fuel, nice, sweet fuel, for the heating of ovens and all other purposes: they afford materials for the making of pretty pigsties, hurdles, and dead fences, of various sorts; they afford materials for making little cow-sheds; for the sticking of peas and beans in the gardens; and for giving to everything a neat and substantial appearance. These gardens, and the look of the cottages, the little flower-gardens, which you everywhere see, and the beautiful hedges of thorn and of privet,--these are the objects to delight the eyes, to gladden the heart, and to fill it with gratitude to God, and love for the people; and as far as my observation has gone, they are objects to be seen in no other country in the world. Those who see nothing but the nasty, slovenly places in which labourers live round London, know nothing of England. The fruit-trees are all kept in the nicest order; every bit of paling or wall is made use of, for the training of some sort or other. At Lamberhurst, which is one of the most beautiful villages that ever man set his eyes on, I saw what I never saw before, namely, _a gooseberry-tree trained against a house_. The house was one of those ancient buildings, consisting of a frame of oak-wood, the interval filled up with brick, plastered over. The tree had been planted at the foot of one of the perpendicular pieces of wood; from the stem which mounted up this piece of wood were taken side limbs, to run along the horizontal pieces. There were two windows, round the frame of each of which the limbs had been trained. The height of the highest shoot was about ten feet from the ground, and the horizontal shoots from each side were from eight to ten feet in length. The tree had been judiciously pruned, and all the limbs were full of very large gooseberries, considering the age of the fruit. This is only one instance out of thousands that I saw of extraordinary pains taken with the gardens."

Those who love the picturesque will excuse our halting to sketch an episode from the history of the royal forest of Ashdown, in Sussex, once possessed by John of Gaunt, and hence called "Lancaster great Park." Upon the borders of the forest lies the manor of Brambertie of Domesday, and Brambletye of Horace Smith; the home of the Comptons, and in the tale of fiction, as in fact, dismantled by Parliament troopers, and within two centuries a ruin. Richard Lewknor is the first person described as of Brambletye. He most probably built in one of the forest glens the moated mansion known as "Old Brambletye House," which, with its gables and clustered chimneys, and its moat and drawbridge, long remained an interesting specimen of the fortified manor-house of the reign of Henry VII. We remember the old place, some sixty years since, but it has long been taken down. Towards the middle of the seventeenth century, Brambletye came into the possession of the Comptons, an ancient Roman Catholic family; and here Sir Henry Compton built himself, from an Italian design, another Brambletye House, of the white stone of the country. Over the principal entrance to the mansion were sculptured the coat-armour of Compton, with the arms of Spencer, in a shield, on the dexter side: and on the upper story was cut in stone, C. H. M. 1631. This fixes the period when the house was built; and when Sir Henry Compton, who had before inhabited the old moated house in the neighbourhood, abandoned it to take up his residence in this once elegant and substantial baronial mansion.

From the court-rolls of the manor, it does not appear who succeeded the Comptons in the property; but Sir James Rickards, in his patent of baronetcy, 1683-4, is described as of Brambletye House. The story goes, that "a proprietor of the mansion being suspected of treasonable purposes, officers of justice were dispatched to search the premises, when a considerable quantity of arms and military stores was discovered and removed; he was out hunting at the time, but receiving intimation of the circumstance, deemed it most prudent to abscond." The historical version is, that in the Civil War, Sir John Compton, a true Royalist, took an active part against the Parliament armies: although never capable of any regular defence, yet Brambletye, being partially fortified, refused the summons of the Parliamentary Colonel Okey, by whom it was invested and speedily taken. The mansion was subsequently deserted. From a sketch taken in 1780, the principal front was nearly entire: it consisted of three square towers, the entrance doorway being in the central tower; the two wings had handsome bay-windows; the three towers were surmounted with cupolas and weather-vanes; but one had half its cupola shattered away, and was internally blackened, as if with gunpowder. In front of the house were an inclosed courtyard and two entrance-gates, one flanked by two massive, square towers, with cupolas. Horace Smith having named his romance _Brambletye House_, the opening scenes being laid there, has sent hundreds of tourists to pic-nic among the ruins; but the spoilers were constantly at work. Some fifteen years ago, "all that remained of Brambletye House was one of the towers clothed with stately ivy, and little more than one story of each of the other towers; the intervening portions, with their bay-windows, had disappeared. Nature had, however, lent a helping hand: by the shrubby trees and the ivy, the ruins had gained that picturesqueness which so often lends a graceful charm to scenes of decaying art."[40]

FOOTNOTES:

[32] In the noble park of Cowdray, the home of the Montagues, Queen Elizabeth, in 1591, killed three or four deer with her cross-bow, while on a visit to Lord Montague. Three deaths in one family by drowning, and the almost total destruction of a fine mansion by fire, within the memory of living man, are enough to make one tread the beautiful grounds of Cowdray with feelings of awe, and to invest it with a superstitious melancholy. Three hundred years ago, however, there was no more festive house in England, when "three oxen and 120 geese" figured in its bill of fare for breakfast. The then proprietor was a strict disciplinarian, and the "Orders and Rules of Sir Anthony Browne" curiously illustrate the domestic economy of a great man's family in the sixteenth century, especially as regards its important departments of the "ewerye" and the "buttyre," and those pet officers, "my server" and "my carver."--_Quarterly Review_, 1861.

[33] "The cat's behind the _buttery_-shelf."--_Old Ditty._

[34] _Saturday Review_, 1861.

[35] There is an oft-quoted passage in the Aubrey MSS. which may be appositely represented here as a life-like picture of the economy of the Hall: "The lords of manouers did eate in their great gothicque halls, at the high tables or oreile, the folk at the side-tables. The meat was served up by watchwords. Jacks are but an invention of the other days; the poor boys did turn the spitts, and licked the dripping-pan, and grew to be huge lusty knaves. The body of the servants were in the Great Hall, as now in the guard-chamber, privy-chamber, &c. The hearth was commonly in the midst, as at colleges, whence the saying, 'round about our coal-fire.' Here, in the Halls were the mummings, cob-loaf stealing, and great number of old Christmas playes performed. In great houses were lords of misrule during the twelve dayes after Christmas. The halls of justices were dreadful to behold. The screens were garnished with corslets and helmets gaping with open mouth, with coates of mail, lances, pikes, halberts, brown-bills, battle-axes, bucklers, and the modern callivers, petronells, and (in King Charles's time) muskets and pistolls."

[36] _Saturday Review_, 1859.

[37] Abridged from a paper in _Once a Week_, 1860.

[38] _Saturday Review_, 1859.

[39] In times anterior to this date, the greater part of the City was built of wood. The houses being roofed with straw, reeds, &c. frequent fires took place, owing to this mode of building: thus, in the first year of the reign of Stephen, a conflagration spread from London Bridge to the church of St. Clement Danes, in the Strand. Thenceforth, the houses were built of stone, covered and protected by thick tiles against the fury of fire, whenever it arose. The change from wood to stone dates from this period.

[40] _Something for Everybody, and a Garland for the Year._ By the Author of the present volume. Pp. 170-176, Second Edition.

THE ENGLISHMAN'S FIRESIDE.

Healthful Warmth and Ventilation are to this day problems to be worked out; and few practical subjects have so extensively enlisted ingenious minds in their service. Yet, much remains to be done.

Dr. Arnott, the worthy successor of Count Rumford[41] in _heat philosophy_, when seeking to shame us out of using ill-contrived fireplaces and scientific bunglings, tells us that the savages of North America place fire in the middle of the floor of their huts, and sit around in the smoke, for which there is escape only in the one opening in the hut, which serves as chimney, window, and door. Some of the peasantry in remote parts of Ireland and Scotland still place their fires in the middle of their floors, and, for the escape of the smoke, leave only a small opening in the roof, often not directly over the fire. In Italy and Spain, almost the only fires seen in sitting-rooms are large dishes of live charcoal, or braziers, placed in the middle, with the inmates sitting around, and having to breathe the noxious carbonic-acid gas which ascends from the fire, and mixes with the air in the room; there being no chimney, the ventilation of the room is imperfectly accomplished by the windows and doors. The difference between the burned air from a charcoal fire, and smoke from a fire of coal or wood, is that in the latter there are added to the chief ingredient, carbonic acid, which is little perceived, others which disagreeably affect the eyes and nose, and so force attention.

With these facts before us, it is not difficult to imagine how our ancestors tolerated the nuisance of wood smoke filling their rooms till it found its way through the roof lantern, as was generally the case until the general introduction of chimneys late in the reign of Elizabeth. It should, however, be mentioned that the temperature of their apartments was kept considerably below that of our sitting-rooms in the present day. Before the fourteenth century, except for culinary and smithery purposes, robust Englishmen appear to have cared little about heating their dwellings, and to have dispensed with it altogether during the warmer months of the year. Even so late as the reign of Henry VIII. it seems that no fire was allowed in the University of Oxford: after supping at eight o'clock, the students went to their books till nine in winter, and then took a run for half an hour to warm themselves previously to going to bed. Therefore, all ideas of the firesides of our forefathers should be confined to four centuries.

The usage of making the fire in the middle of the hall, a lover of olden architecture says, "was not without its advantages: not only was a greater amount of heat obtained, but the warmth became more generally diffused, which, when we consider the size of the hall, was a matter of some importance. The huge logs were piled upon the andirons or thrown upon the hearth, and the use of wood and charcoal had few of those inconveniences which would have resulted from coal;" an opinion strangely at variance with that of the heat philosopher already quoted.

We are now approaching the age of Chimneys. A practical writer has thus pictured the domestic contrivance, _ad interim_: "The hearth recess was generally wide, high, deep, and had a large flue. The hearth, usually raised a few inches above the floor, had sometimes a halpas or daïs made before it, as in the King's and Queen's chambers in the Tower. Before the hearth recess, or on the halpas, when there was one, a piece of green cloth or tapestry was spread, as a substitute for the rushes that covered the lower part of the floor. On this were placed a very high-backed chair or two, and foot-stools, that sometimes had cushions; and above all high-backed forms, and screens, both most admirable inventions for neutralizing draughts of cold air in these dank and chilling apartments. Andirons, fire-forks, fire-pans, and tongs were the implements to supply and arrange the fuel. Hearth recesses with flues were common in the principal chambers and houses of persons of condition; and were superseding what Aubrey calls flues, like loover holes, in the habitations of all classes. The adage that 'one good fire heats the whole house,' was found true only in the humbler dwellings; for in palace and mansion, though great fires blazed in the presence-chamber, or hall, or parlour, the domestics were literally famishing with cold. This discomfort did not, however, proceed from selfish or stingy housekeeping, but rather from an affectation of hardihood, particularly among the lower classes, when effeminacy was reckoned a reproach. Besides, few could know what comfort really was; but those who did, valued it highly. Sanders relates that Henry VIII. gave the revenues of a convent, which he had confiscated, to a person who placed a chair for him commodiously before the fire and out of all draughts."

On the introduction of chimneys, in the year 1200, only one chimney was allowed in a manor-house, and one in the great hall of a castle or lord's house: other houses had only the rere-dosse, a sort of raised hearth, where the inmates cooked their food. Harrison, in a passage prefixed to _Holinshed's Chronicle_, writes in the reign of Elizabeth: "There are old men dwelling in the village where I remayne, who have noted three things to be marvellously altered in England, within their sound remembrance. One is the multitude of chimneys lately erected; whereas, in their younger days, there was not about two or three, if so many, in most uplandish towns of the realm (the religious houses and manor places of the lords always excepted, and peradventure some great personage's); but each made his fire against a reré-dosse in the hall, where he dined and dressed his meat."

Numerous instances, however, remain of fireplaces and chimneys of the fourteenth century, even in the hall, though they were more usual in the smaller apartments. In the hall at Meare, in Somersetshire, the fireplace had a hood of stone, perfect, finely corbelled out; and by the side of the fireplace is a bracket for a light, ornamented with foliage.