A COTSWOLD VILLAGE.
The village is not a hundred miles from London, yet "far from the
madding crowd's ignoble strife." A green, well-wooded valley, in the
midst of those far-stretching, cold-looking Cotswold Hills, it is like
an oasis in the desert.
Up above on the wolds all is bleak, dull, and uninteresting. The air up
there is ever chill; walls of loose stone divide field from field, and
few houses are to be seen. But down in the valley all is fertile and
full of life. It is here that the old-fashioned villagers dwell. How
well I remember the first time I came upon it! One fine September
evening, having left all traces of railways and the ancient Roman town
of Cirencester some seven long miles behind me, with wearied limbs I
sought this quiet, sequestered spot. Suddenly, as I was wondering how
amid these never ending hills there could be such a place as I had been
told existed, I beheld it at my feet, surpassing beautiful! Below me was
a small village, nestling amid a wealth of stately trees. The hand of
man seemed in some bygone time to have done all that was necessary to
render the place habitable, but no more. There were cottages, bridges,
and farm buildings, but all were ivy clad and time worn. The very trees
themselves appeared to be laden with a mantle of ivy that was more than
they could bear. Many a tall fir, from base to topmost twig, was
completely robed with the smooth, five-pointed leaves of this rapacious
evergreen. Through the thick foliage, of elm and ash and beech, I could
just see an old manor house, and round about it, as if for protection,
were clustered some thirty cottages. A murmuring of waters filled my
ears, and on descending the hill I came upon a silvery trout stream,
which winds its way down the valley, broad and shallow, now gently
gliding over smooth gravel, now dashing over moss-grown stones and rock.
The cottages, like the manor house and farm buildings, are all built of
the native stone, and all are gabled and picturesque. Indeed, save a few
new cottages, most of the dwellings appeared to be two or three hundred
years old. One farmhouse I noted carefully, and I longed to tear away
the ivy from the old and crumbling porch, to see if I could not discern
some half-effaced inscription telling me the date of this relic of the
days of "Merrie England."
This quaint old place appeared older than the rest of the buildings. On
enquiry, I learnt that long, long ago, before the present manor house
existed, this was the abode of the old squires of the place; but for the
last hundred years it had been the home of the principal tenant and his
ancestors--yeomen farmers of the old-fashioned school, with some six
hundred acres of land. The present occupants appeared to be an old man
of some seventy years of age and his three sons. Keen sportsmen these,
who dearly love to walk for hours in pursuit of game in the autumn, on
the chance of bagging an occasional brace of partridges or a wild
pheasant (for everything here is wild), or, in winter, when lake and fen
are frostbound, by the river and its withybeds after snipe and
wildfowl--for the Cotswold stream has never been known to freeze!
In this small hamlet I noticed that there were no less than three huge
barns. At first I thought they were churches, so magnificent were their
proportions and so delicate and interesting their architecture. One of
these barns is four hundred years old.
Fifty years ago, what with the wool from his sheep and the grain that
was stored in these barns year by year, the Cotswold farmer was a rich
man. Alas! _Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis!_ One can picture
the harvest home, annually held in the barn, in old days so cheery, but
now often nothing more than a form. Here, however, in this village, I
learnt that, in spite of bad times, some of the old customs have not
been allowed to pass away, and right merry is the harvest home. And
Christmastide is kept in real old English fashion; nor do the mummers
forget to go their nightly rounds, with their strange tale of "St.
George and the dragon."
As I walk down the road I come suddenly upon the manor house--the "big
house" of the village. Long and somewhat low, it stands close to the
road, and is of some size. Over the doorway of the porch is the
following inscription, engraven on stone in a recess:--
"PLEAD THOU MY CAVSE; OH LORD."
"BY JHON COXWEL ANO DOMENY 1590."
Underneath this inscription, and immediately over the entrance, are five
heads, elaborately carved in stone. In the centre is Queen Elizabeth; to
the right are portrayed what I take to be the features of Henry VIII.;
whilst on the left is Mary. The other two are uncertain, but they are
probably Philip of Spain and James I.
I was enchanted with the place. The quaint old Elizabethan gables and
sombre bell-tower, the old-fashioned entrance gates, the luxuriant
growth of ivy, combined together to give that air of peace, that charm
which belongs so exclusively to the buildings of the middle ages.
Knowing that the house was for the time being unoccupied, I walked
boldly into the outer porch, meaning to go no further. But another
inscription over the solid oak door encouraged me to enter:
"PORTA PATENS ESTO, NULLI CLAUDARIS HONESTO."
I therefore opened the inner door with some difficulty, for it was
heavy and cumbersome, and found myself in the hall. Although nothing
remarkable met my eye, I was delighted to find everything in keeping
with the place. The old-fashioned furniture, the old oak, the grim
portraits and quaint heraldry, all were there. I was much interested in
some carved beams of black oak, which I afterwards learnt originally
formed part of the magnificent roof of the village church. When the roof
was under repair a few years back, these beams were thrown aside as
rotten and useless, and thus found their way into the manor house. Every
atom of genuine old work of this kind is deeply interesting,
representing as it does the rude chiselling which hands that have long
been dust in the village churchyard wrought with infinite pains. That
oak roof, carved in rich tracery, resting for ages on arcades of
dog-tooth Norman and graceful Early English work, had echoed back the
songs of praise and prayer that rose Sunday after Sunday from the lips
of successive generations of simple country folk at matins and at
evensong, before the strains of the Angelus had been hushed for ever by
the Reformation. And who can tell how long before the Conquest, and by
what manner of men, were planted the trees destined to provide these
massive beams of oak?
In the centre of the hall was a round table, with very ancient-looking,
high-backed chairs scattered about, of all shapes and sizes. Portraits
of various degrees of indifferent oil painting adorned the walls of the
hall and staircase. Somebody appeared to have been shooting with a
catapult at some of the pictures. One old gentleman had a shot through
his nose; and an old fellow with a hat on, over the window, had received
a pellet in the right eye![1]
[Footnote 1: The writer, in a fit of infantile insanity, being then aged
about nine, was discovered in the very act of committing this assault on
his ancestors some twenty years ago, in Hertfordshire.]
A copy of the Magna Charta, a suit of mediaeval armour, several rusty
helmets (Cromwellian and otherwise), antlers of several kinds of deer,
and a variety of old swords, pistols, and guns were the objects that
chiefly attracted my attention. The walls were likewise adorned with a
large number of heraldic shields.
I like to see coats-of-arms and escutcheons hanging up in churches and
in the halls of old country houses, for the following simple reasons.
There is meaning in them--deep, mystic meaning, such as no ordinary
picture can boast. Every quartering on that ancient shield emblazoned in
red, black, and gold has a legend attached to it Hundreds of years ago,
in those splendid mediaeval times--nay, farther back than that, in the
dim, mysterious, dark ages--each of those quarterings was a device worn
by some brave knight or squire on his heavy shield. It was his
cognizance in the field of battle and at the tournament. It was borne at
Agincourt perhaps; at Creçy, or Poitiers, or in the lists for some
"faire ladye"; and it is a token of ancient chivalry, an emblem of the
days that have been and never more will be. It was doubtless the sight
of those eighteen great hatchments which still hang in the little
church at Stoke Poges that inspired Gray to attune his harp to such
lofty strains.
"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour
The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
Among other old masters was a portrait of the "John Coxwel" who built
the house, by Cornelius Jansen, dated 1613. The house did not appear
remarkable either for size or grandeur; yet there is always something
particularly pleasing to me to alight unexpectedly on buildings of this
kind, and to find that although they are obscure and unknown, they are
on a small scale as interesting to the antiquarian as Knole, Hatfield,
and other more famous mediaeval houses. Some lattice windows, evidently
at some time out of doors, but now on the inner walls, showed that in
more recent times the house had been enlarged, and the old courtyard
walled in and made part of the hall. Over one of these windows is the
inscription, "_Post tenebras lux_." The part I liked best, however, was
the old-fashioned passage, with its lattice windows and musty dungeon
savour, leading to the ancient kitchen and to a little oak-panelled
sitting-room: but, knocking my head severely against the oak beam in the
doorway, I nearly brought the whole ceiling down, a catastrophe which
they tell me has happened before now in this rather rickety old manor
house. Opening a door on the other side of the house, I passed out into
the garden. How characteristic of the place!--a broad terrace running
along the whole length of the house, and beyond that a few flower beds
with the old sundial in their midst Beyond these a lawn, and then grass
sweeping down to the edge of the river, some hundred yards away. Beyond
the river again more grass, but of a wilder description, where the
rabbits are scudding about or listening with pricked ears; and in the
background a magnificent hanging wood, crowning the side of the valley,
with a large rookery in it. I was much struck with the different tints
of the foliage; for although autumn had not yet begun to turn the
leaves, the different shades of green were most striking. A gigantic ash
tree on the far side of the river stood out in bold relief, its lighter
leaves being in striking contrast to the dark firs in the background.
Then walnut and hazel, beech and chestnut all offered infinite variety
of shape and foliage. The river here had been broadened to a width of
some ninety feet, and an island had been made. The place seemed to be a
veritable sportsman's paradise! Dearly would Isaac Walton have loved to
dwell here! From the windows of the old house he would have loved to
listen to the splash of the trout, the cawing of the rooks, and the
quack of the waterfowl, while all the air is filled with the cooing of
doves and the songs of birds. At night he could have heard the murmuring
waterfall amid a stillness only broken at intervals by the scream of the
owl, the clatter of the goatsucker, or the weird barking of the foxes:
for not two hundred yards from the house and practically in the garden,
is a fox earth that has never been without a litter of, cubs for
forty years!
In an ivy-covered house in the stable-yard I saw a very large number of
foxes' noses nailed to boards of wood--as Sir Roger de Coverley used to
nail them. They appeared to have been slain by one Dick Turpin, huntsman
to the Vale of White Horse hounds, some thirty or forty years ago, when
a quondam master of those hounds lived in this old place.
What a charm there is in an old-fashioned English garden! The great tall
hollyhocks and phlox, the bright orange marigolds and large purple
poppies. The beds and borders crammed with cloves and many-coloured
asters, the sweet blue of the cornflower, and the little lobelias.
Zinneas, too, of all colours; dahlias, tall stalks of anenome japonica,
and such tangled masses of stocks! As I walked down by the old garden
wall, whereon lots of roses hung their dainty heads, I thought I had
never seen grass so green and fresh looking, except in certain parts
of Ireland.
But the wild flowers by the silent river pleased me best of all. Such a
medley of graceful, fragrant meadow-sweet, and tall, rough-leaved
willow-herbs with their lovely pink flowers. Light blue scorpion-grasses
and forget-me-nots were there too, not only among the sword-flags and
the tall fescue-grasses by the bank, but little islands of them dotted
about a over the brook. Thyme-scented water-mint, with lilac-tinted
spikes and downy stalks, was almost lost amongst the taller wild flowers
and the "segs" that fringed the brook-side.
There are no flowers like the wild ones; they last right through the
summer and autumn--yet we can never have enough of them, never cease
wondering at their marvellous delicacy and beauty.
Darting straight up stream on the wings of the soft south wind comes a
kingfisher clothed in priceless jewelry, sparkling in the sun: sapphire
and amethyst on his bright blue back, rubies on his ruddy breast, and
diamonds round his princely neck. Monarch he is of silvery stream, and
petty tyrant of the silvery fish.
I was told by a labourer that the trout ran from a quarter of a pound to
three pounds, and that they average one pound in weight; that in the
"may-fly" season a score of fish are often taken in the day by one rod,
and that the method of taking them is by the artificial fly, well dried
and deftly floated over feeding fish. These Cotswold streams are fed at
intervals of about half a mile by the most beautiful springs, and from
the rock comes pouring forth an everlasting supply of the purest and
clearest of water. I was shown such a spring in a withybed hard by the
old manor house. I saw nothing at first but a still, transparent pool,
nine feet deep (they told me); it looked but three! But as I gaze at the
beautiful fernlike weeds at the bottom, they are seen to be gently
fanned by the water that rises--never failing even in the hottest and
driest of summers--from the invisible rock below. The whole scene--the
silent pool at my feet, the rich, well-timbered valley, with its marked
contrast to the cold hills that overlook it--reminded me forcibly of
Whyte-Melville's lines at the conclusion of the most impressive poem he
ever wrote: "The Fairies' Spring":
"And sweet to the thirsting lips of men
Is the spring of tears in the fairies' glen."
Out of this fairy spring was taken quite recently, but not with the
"dry" fly--for no fish could be deceived in water of such stainless
transparency--a trout that weighed three pounds and a half. He was far
and away the most beautiful trout we ever saw; as silvery as a salmon
that has just left the sea, he was a worthy denizen of the secluded
depths of that crystal spring, still welling up from the pure limestone
rock in the heart of the Cotswold Hills, as it has for a thousand years.
I was told that the place was still owned by the descendants of the
pious John Coxwell who built the manor house and commemorated it by the
quaint inscription over the porch in 1590. Doubtless the architecture of
all our Elizabethan manor houses in the shape of a letter E owes its
origin to the first letter in the name of that great queen.
That year was a fitting time for the building of "those haunts of
ancient peace" that have ever since beautified the villages of rural
England. Not two years before men's minds had been stirred to a pitch of
deep religious enthusiasm by what was then regarded throughout all
England as a divine miracle--the destruction of the Spanish Armada.
Scarce three years had passed since the war with Scotland had terminated
in the execution of the ill-fated Mary Queen of Scots. It is difficult
for us, at the close of this nineteenth century, to realise the feelings
of our ancestors in those times of daily terror and anxiety. And when
men were daily executed, and human life was held as cheap as we now
value a sheep or an ox, no wonder John Coxwell was pious, and no wonder
he engraved that pious inscription over those crumbling walls.
In the year 1590 there was a lull in those tempestuous times, and men
were able to turn for a while from the strife of battle and the daily
fear of death and cultivate the arts of peace.
Thus this stately little manor house was reared, and many like it
throughout the kingdom; and there it still stands, and will stand long
after the modern building has fallen to the ground. For not without much
hard toil and sweat of brow did our forefathers erect these monuments of
"a day that is dead"; and they remain to testify to the solid masonry
and laborious workmanship of ancient times.
The descendants of this John Coxwell live on another property of theirs
some twelve miles away; it is nearly seventy years since they have
inhabited this old house. I was pleased to find, however, that the
present occupiers look after the labouring classes; that what rabbits
are killed on the manor are not sold, but distributed in the village.
There is an old ivy-clad building in the grounds, only a few paces from
the manor house. This is the village club. Here squire, farmer, and
labourer are accustomed to meet on equal terms. I was somewhat surprised
to see on the club table the _Times_, the _Pall Mall Gazette_, and other
papers. These wonderful specimens of nineteenth-century literature
contrast strangely with a place that in many respects has remained
unchanged for centuries.
There are few labourers in England, even in these days, who have the
opportunity--if they will take it--of reading the _Times'_ report of
every speech made in parliament. Perhaps, some day, will come forth from
this hamlet
"Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood";
one who from earliest youth has kept himself in touch with the politics
of the day, and has fitted himself to sit in the House of Commons as the
representative of his class. There are still a few "little tyrants" in
the fields in all parts of England, but they are very much scarcer than
was the case fifty years ago.
I was much pleased with a conversation I had with an old-fashioned
labouring man who, though not past middle age, appeared to be
incapacitated from work owing to a "game leg," and whom I found sitting
under a walnut tree in the manor grounds hard by the brook. He informed
me that there was bagatelle at the club for those who liked it, and all
sorts of games, and smoking concerts: that it was a question who was the
best bagatelle player in the club; but that it probably lay between the
squire and his head gardener, though Tom, the carter, was likely to run
them close! I was glad to find so much good feeling existing among all
classes of this little community, and was not surprised to learn that
this was a contented and happy village.
In this description of "a Cotswold village" we have been looking on the
bright side of things, and there is, thank Heaven! many a place,
_mutato nomine_, that would answer to it. Alas! that there should be
another side to the picture, which we would fain leave untouched.
Gloucestershire, nay England, is full of old manor houses and fair,
smiling villages; but in many parts of the country we see buildings
falling out of repair and deserted mansions. Would that we knew the
remedy for agricultural depression! But let us not despair.
"The future hides in it
Gladness and sorrow;
We press still thorow,
Nought that abides in it
Daunting us,--onward!"
It is a sad thing when the "big house" of the village is empty. The
labourers who never see their squire begin to look upon him as a sort of
ogre, who exists merely to screw rents out of the land they till. Those
who are dependent on land alone are often the men who do their duty best
on their estates, and, poor though they may be, they are much beloved.
But it is to be feared that in some parts of England men who are not
suffering from the depression--rich tenants of country houses and the
like--are apt to take a somewhat limited view of their duty towards
their poorer neighbours. To be sure, the good ladies at the "great
house" are invariably "ministering angels" to the poor in time of
sickness, but even in these democratic days there is too great a gulf
fixed between all classes. Let all those who are fortunate enough to
live in such a place as we have attempted to describe remember that a
kind word, a shake of the hand, the occasional distribution of game
throughout the village, and a hundred other small kindnesses do more to
win the heart of the labouring man than much talk at election times of
Small Holdings, Parish Councils, or Free Education.
A tea given two or three times a year by the squire to the whole
village, when the grounds are thrown open to them, does much to lighten
the dulness of their existence and to cheer the monotonous round of
daily toil. It is often thoughtlessness rather than poverty that
prevents those who live in the large house of the village from being
really loved by those around them. There are many instances of unpopular
squires whose faces the cottagers never behold, and yet these men may be
spending hundreds of pounds each year for the benefit of those whose
affection they fail to gain.
Alas! that there should exist in so many country places that class
feeling that is called Radicalism. It is perhaps fortunate that under
the guise of politics what is really nothing else but bitterness and
discontent is hidden and prevented from being recognised by its
true name.
There are many country houses that are shut up for the greater part of
the year for other reasons than agricultural depression, often because
the owner, while preferring to reside elsewhere, is too proud to let the
place to a stranger. This should not be. Let these rich men who own
large houses and great estates live _in_ those houses and _on_ those
estates, or endeavour to find a tenant. We repeat that the landowners
who really feel the stress of bad times for the most part do their duty
nobly. They have learnt it in the severe school of adversity. It is the
richer class that we should like to see taking a greater interest in
their humble neighbours; and their power is great. The possessor of
wealth is too often the tacit upholder of the doctrine of _laissez
faire_. The times we live in will no longer allow it. Let us be up and
doing. In many small ways we may do much to promote good fellowship, and
bitterness and discontent shall be no longer known in the rural villages
of England.
II.
In the dead of winter these old grey houses of the Cotswolds are a
little melancholy, save when the sun shines. But to every variety of
scenery winter is the least becoming season of the year, though the hoar
frost or a touch of snow will transform a whole village into fairyland
at a moment's notice. Then the trout stream, which at other seasons of
the year is a never failing attraction, running as it does for the most
part through the woods, in mid winter seldom reflects the light of the
sun, and looks cold and uninviting. One may learn much, it is true, of
the wonders of nature in the dead time of the year by watching the great
trout on the spawn beds as they pile up the gravel day by day, and store
up beautiful, transparent ova, of which but a ten-thousandth part will
live to replenish the stock for future years. But the delight of a clear
stream is found in the spring and summer; then those cool, shaded deeps
and sparkling eddies please us by their contrast to the hot, burning
sun; and we love, even if we are not fishermen, to linger by the bank
'neath the shade of ash and beech and alder, and watch the wonderful
life around us in the water and in the air.
As you sit sometimes on a bench hard by the Coln, watching the crystal
water as it pours down the artificial fall from the miniature lake in
the wild garden above, you may make a minute calculation of the day and
hour that that very water which is flowing past you now will reach
London Bridge, two hundred miles below. Allowing one mile an hour as the
average pace of the current, ten days is, roughly speaking, the time it
will take on its journey. And when one reflects that every drop that
passes has its work to do, in carrying down to the sea lime and I know
not how many other ingredients, and in depositing that lime and all that
it picked up on its way at the bottom of the ocean, to help perhaps in
forming the great rolling downs of a new continent--after this island of
ours has ceased to be--one cannot but realise that in all seasons of the
year a trout stream is a wonderfully interesting and instructive thing.
TO THE COLN.
Flow on, clear, fresh trout stream, emblem of purity and perfect truth;
thou hast accomplished a mighty work, thou hast a mighty work to do. Who
can count the millions of tons of lime that thou hast borne down to the
sea in far-off Kent? Thou hast indeed "strength to remove mountains,"
for day by day the soil that thou hast taken from these limestone hills
is being piled up at the mouth of the great historic river, and some day
perchance it shall become rolling downs again. Fed by clear springs,
thou shalt gradually steal thy way along the Cotswold valleys, draining
foul marshes, irrigating the sweet meadows. Thou shalt turn the wheels
and grind many a hundred sacks of corn ere to-morrow's sun is set. And
then thou shalt change thy name. No longer silvery Coln, but mighty
Thames, shalt thou be called; and many a fair scene shall gladden thy
sight as thou slowly passest along towards thy goal.
Smiling meadows and Gloucestershire vales will soon give place to fair
Berkshire villages, and, further on, to those glorious spires and courts
of Oxford; and here shalt thou make many friends--friends who will
evermore think kindly of thee, ever associate thy placid waters with all
that they loved best and held dearest during their brief sojourning in
those old walls which tower above thy banks. A few short miles, and thou
shalt pass a quiet and sacred spot--sacred to me, and dear above all
other spots; for close to that little village church of Clifton Hampden,
and close to thee, we laid some years ago the mortal body of a noble
man. And when thou stealest gently by, and night mists rise from off thy
glassy face, be sure and drop a tear in silvery dew upon the moss-grown
stone I know so well. And then pass on to Eton, fairest spot on earth.
Mark well the playing-fields, the glorious trees, and Windsor towering
high. Here shalt thou be loved by many a generous heart, and youth and
hope and smiling faces greet thee, as they long since greeted me. Ah
well! those friendships never could have been made so firm and lasting
mid any other scenes save under thy wide-spreading elms, beloved Eton.
But onwards, onwards thou must glide, from scenes of tranquil beauty
such as these. The flag which sails o'er Windsor's stately towers must
soon be lost to sight. Thy course once more through silent fields is
laid; but not for long; for, Hampton Court's fair palace passed, already
canst thou hear the wondrous roar of unceasing footsteps in the busy
haunts of men.
Courage! thy goal is nearly reached: already thou art great, and greater
still shalt thou become. Thy once transparent waters shall be merged
with salt. Thus shalt thou be given strength to bear great ships upon
thy bosom, and thine eyes shall behold the greatest city of the whole
wide world. Nay, more; thou shalt become the most indispensable part of
that city--its very life-blood, of a value not to be measured by gold.
Thou makest England what it is.
Flow on, historic waters, symbolic of all that is good, all that is
great--flow on, and do thy glorious work until this world shall cease;
bearing thy mighty burden down towards the sea, showing mankind what can
be wrought from small beginnings by slow and patient labour day by day.
* * * * *
Even in winter I do not know any scene more pleasing to the eye than the
sight of a Cotswold hamlet nestling amid the stately trees in the
valley, if you happen to see it on a fine day. And if there has been a
period of rainy, sunless weather for a month past, you are probably all
the more ready to appreciate the changed appearance which everything
wears. If that peaceful, bright aspect had been habitual, you would
never have noticed anything remarkable to-day. It is this very changeful
nature of our English climate which gives it more than half its charm.
But the great attraction of this country lies in its being one of the
few spots now remaining on earth which have not only been made beautiful
by God, but in which the hand of man has erected scarcely a building
which is not in strict conformity and good taste. One cannot walk
through these Cotswold hamlets without noticing that the architecture of
the country in past ages, as well as in the present day to a certain
degree, shows obedience to some of those divine laws which Ruskin has
told us ought to govern all the works of man's hand.
"The spirit of sacrifice," "the lamp of truth" are manifest in the
ancient churches and manor houses, as well as in the humble farmhouses,
cottages, and even the tithe barns of this district. Two thirds of the
buildings are old, and, as Ruskin has beautifully expressed it: "The
greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, nor in its gold. Its
glory is in its age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern
watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation,
which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves
of humanity. It is in their lasting witness against men, in their quiet
contrast with the transitional character of all things, in the strength
which, through the lapse of seasons and times, and the decline and birth
of dynasties, and the changing of the face of the earth, and of the
limits of the sea, maintains its sculptured shapeliness for a time
insuperable, connects forgotten and following ages with each other, and
half constitutes the identity, as it concentrates the sympathy, of
nations;--it is in that golden stain of time that we are to look for the
real light and colour and preciousness of architecture; and it is not
until a building has assumed this character, till it has been entrusted
with the fame and hallowed by the deeds of men, till its walls have been
witnesses of suffering and its pillars rise out of the shadow of death,
that its existence, more lasting as it is than that of the natural
objects of the world around it, can be gifted with even so much as these
possess of language and of life."
If we would seek a lesson in sacrifice from the men who lived and
laboured here in the remote past, we can learn many a one from those
deep walls of native stone, and that laborious workmanship which was the
chief characteristic of the toil of our simple ancestors. "All old work,
nearly, has been hard work; it may be the hard work of children, of
barbarians, of rustics, but it is always their utmost." They may have
been ignorant of the sanitary laws which govern health, and ill advised
in some of the sites they chose, but they grudged neither hand labour
nor sweat of brow; they spent the best years of their lives in the
erection of the temples where we still worship and the manor houses we
still inhabit.
It is not claimed that there is much _ornamental_ architecture to be
found in these Cotswold buildings; it is something in these days if we
can boast that there is nothing to offend the eye in a district which is
less than a hundred miles from London. There is no other district of
equal extent within the same radius of which as much could be said.
"Jam pauca aratro jugera regiae
Moles relinquent."
But here all the houses are picturesque, great and small alike. And
there are here and there pieces of work which testify to the piety and
faith of very early days: fragments of inscriptions chiselled out more
than fifteen hundred years ago--such as the four stones at Chedworth,
discovered some thirty years ago, together with many other interesting
relics of the Roman occupation, by a gamekeeper in search of a ferret.
On these stones were found the Greek letters [GREEK: Ch] and [GREEK: r],
forming the sacred monogram "C.H.R." Fifteen hundred years had not
obliterated this simple evidence of ancient faith, nor had the
devastation of the ages impaired the beauty of design, nor marred the
harmony of colouring of those delicate pavements and tesserae with which
these wonderful people loved to adorn their habitations. Since this
strange discovery the diligent research of one man has rescued from
oblivion, and the liberality of another now protects from further
injury, one of the best specimens of a Roman country house to be found
in England. Far away from the haunts of men, in the depths of the
Chedworth woods, where no sound save the ripple of the Coln and the song
of birds is heard, rude buildings and a museum have been erected; here
these ancient relics are sheltered from wind and storm for the sake of
those who lived and laboured in the remote past, and for the benefit and
instruction of him, be he casual passer-by or pilgrim from afar, who
cares to inspect them.
The ancient Roman town of Cirencester, too, affords many historical
remains of the same era. But it is to the part which English hands and
hearts have played towards beautifying the Cotswold district that I
would fain direct attention; to the stately Abbey Church of Cirencester
and its glorious south porch, with its rich fan-tracery groining within
and its pierced battlements and pinnacles without; to the arched gateway
of twelfth century work, the sole remnant of that once famous
monastery--the mitred Abbey of St. Mary--founded by the piety of the
first Henry, and overthrown by the barbarity of the last king of that
name, who ordained "that all the edifices within the site and precincts
of the monastery should be pulled down and carried away";--it is to the
glorious windows of Fairford Church--the most beautiful specimens
remaining to us of glass of the early part of the sixteenth century--and
to many an ancient church and mediaeval manor house still standing
throughout this wide district, "to point a moral of adorn a tale," that
we must look for traces of the exquisite workmanship of English hands in
bygone days, "the only witnesses, perhaps, that remain to us of the
faith and fear of nations. All else for which the builders sacrificed
has passed away--all their living interests and aims and achievements.
We know not for what they laboured, and we see no evidence of their
reward. Victory, wealth, authority, happiness--all have departed, though
bought by many a bitter sacrifice. But of them, and their life, and
their toil upon earth, one reward, one evidence is left to us in those
grey heaps of deep-wrought stone. They have taken with them to the grave
their powers, their honours, and their errors; but they have left us
their adoration." [2]
[Footnote 2: Ruskin, "Seven Lamps of Architecture."]
Too many of our modern buildings are a sham from beginning to end--sham
marble, sham stonework, sham wallpapers, sham wainscoting, sham carpets
on the ground, and sham people walking about on them: even the very
bookcases are sham. In these old Cotswold houses we have the reverse.
The stonework is real, and the material is the best of its kind--good,
honest, native stone. The oak wainscoting is real, though patched with
deal and painted white in recent times. The same pains in the carving
are apparent in those parts of the house which are never seen except by
the servants, as in the important rooms. And so it is with all the work
of three, four, and five hundred years ago. The builders may have had
their faults, their prejudices, and their ignorances,--their very
simplicity may have been the means of saving them from error,--but they
were at all events truthful and genuine.
In many villages throughout the Cotswolds are to be seen ancient
wayside crosses of exquisite workmanship and design. These were for the
most part erected in the fourteenth century. One of the best specimens
of the kind stands in the market-place of old Malmesbury, hard by the
ancient monastery there. The date of this cross is A.D. 1480. Leland
remarks upon it as follows: "There is a right faire and costely peace of
worke for poor market folks to stand dry when rayne cummeth; the men of
the towne made this peace of worke in _hominum memoriâ_." Malmesbury, by
the bye, is just outside the Cotswold district.
At Calmsden--a tiny isolated hamlet near North Cerney--is a grey and
weather-beaten wayside cross of beautiful Gothic workmanship, erected
(men say) by the Knights Templar of Quenington; and there are ancient
crosses or remnants of them at Cirencester, Eastleach, Harnhill,
Rendcombe, Stow-on-the-Wold, and many other places in the district. But
few of these old village crosses still stand intact in their pristine
beauty. May they never suffer the terrible fate of a very beautiful one
which was erected in the fourteenth century at Bristol! Pope, writing a
century and a half ago, describes it as "a very fine old cross of Gothic
curious work, but spoiled with the folly of _new gilding it_, that takes
away all the venerable antiquity."
Happily there is no likelihood of the ancient crosses in the Cotswolds
being decorated by a coating of gold. The precious metal is all too
scarce there, even if the good taste of the country folk did not
prohibit it.
I have spoken before of the ancient barns. Every hamlet has one or more
of these grand old edifices, and there are often as many as three or
four in a small village. In some of these large barns the tithe was
gathered together in kind, until rather more than sixty years ago it was
converted into a rent charge.
_Tithe_ was made on all kinds of farm produce. The vicar's man went into
the cornfields and placed a bough in every tenth "stook"; then the
titheman came with the parson's horses and took the stuff away to the
barn. The tithe for every cock in the farmyard was three eggs; for every
hen, two eggs. Besides poultry, geese, pigs, and sheep, the parson had a
right to his share of the milk, and even of the cheeses that were made
in his parish.
In an ancient manuscript which the vicar of Bibury lately acquired, and
which contains the history of his parish since the Conquest, are set
down some interesting and amusing details concerning tithe and the cash
compensations that had been paid time out of mind. The entries form part
of a diary kept by a former incumbent, and were made nearly two hundred
years ago.
"For every new Milch Cow three pence.
"For every thorough Milch Cow one penny.
"N.B. Nothing is paid for a dry cow, and therefore tithe in kind must be
paid for all fatting cattle.
"For every calf weaned a half penny.
"For every calf sold four pence or _the left shoulder_.
"For every calf killed in the family four pence or _the left shoulder_.
"I have heard that one or two left shoulders of veal were paid to the
widow Hignall at Arlington when she rented the tithes of Dr. Vannam, but
_I have received none_."
Then follows an annual account of the value of the tithes of the parish
(about five thousand acres), from 1763 to 1802, by which it appears that
the year 1800 was the best during these four decades. Here is
the entry:--
"1800 The crops of this year were very deficient, but corn of all sort
sold at an extraordinary high price. I made of my tithes and living this
year clear £1,200; from the dearness of labourers the outgoing expenses
amounted to £900 in addition."
The worst year seems to have been 1766, when the parson only got £360
clear of all expenses; but even this was not bad for those days.
The architecture of the Cotswold barns is often very beautiful. The
pointed windows, massive buttresses, and elaborate pinnacles are
sufficient indications of their great age and the care bestowed on the
building. Some of the interiors of these Gothic structures have fine old
oak roofs.
The cottages, too, though in a few instances sadly deficient in sanitary
improvements and internal comfort, are not only picturesque, but strong
and lasting. Many of them bear dates varying from 1600 to 1700.
It is evident that in everything they did our ancestors who lived in the
Elizabethan age fully realised that they were working under the eye of
"a great taskmaster." This spirit was the making of the great men of
that day, and in great part laid the foundation of our national
greatness. The glorious churches of Cirencester, Northleach, Burford,
and Bibury, and the ancient manor houses scattered throughout the
Cotswolds are fitting monuments to the men who laboured to erect them.
Would that space allowed a detailed account of all these old manor
houses! Enough has been said, at all events, to show that there are
places little known and little cared for in England where you may still
dwell without, every time you go out of doors, being forcibly reminded
of the utilitarian spirit of the age.
[Illustration: Cotswold Cottages. 057.png]