Vanishing England. P. H. Ditchfield

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.

      

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.

      

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.