Vanishing England by P. H. Ditchfield

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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 L150. An old window of fifteenth-century
workmanship in an old house at Shrewsbury was nearly exploited by an
enterprising American for the sum of L250; 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 archaeologist, 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.

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