CARDINAL BEAUFORT’S TOWER--ST.
CROSS--WINCHESTER--SURREY--SALISBURY--CANTERBURY--ROCHESTER--RYE--EAST
GRINSTEAD--MIDDLESEX.
Cardinal Beaufort’s Tower was built in the early part of the fifteenth
century, when he revived the foundation of St. Cross. To the left of the
illustration is the brewery, formerly called the Hundred Men’s Hall,
because a hundred of the poorest inhabitants of Winchester were daily
entertained to dinner here, and, as that repast was provided on a very
bountiful scale, the guests were always permitted to carry provisions to
their families. This tower and the buildings around it are noble
examples of the domestic architecture of the fifteenth century. The
dwellings of the brethren consist of a parlour, bedroom, scullery, and
closet; they are beautiful examples of old cottage architecture, and are
compactly planned. In this hospital the custom yet prevails of giving
any wayfarer who may ask it a horn of ale and a dole of bread. The ale
is brewed on the premises, and is said to be the same kind as that which
was brewed here hundreds of years ago. The revenues of this building
were till lately enormous, and much dissatisfaction is openly expressed
at the way in which one high in office, recently appropriated the
greater part of them. Nothing can exceed the beauty of St. Cross as it
is approached from the Southampton road. This noble gateway is seen
through great elms and walnut trees, and the long lines of quaint high
chimneys, combining with the church and foliage, are astonishingly
picturesque. The river Itchen sometimes is well in view along the road,
and sometimes it is lost in the trees. The hospital itself, with the
brethren in their black gowns and silver crosses, gives, perhaps, a more
vivid picture of ancient England, and that in its best features, than
any other scene that is left us.
[Illustration: WINCHESTER GATE.]
Just a mile from this charming spot is the West Gate of Winchester.
Formerly there were four gates, but three have been demolished. The one
here shown is said (probably with accuracy) to have been built by King
John. It is unnecessary, however, to remark that later architecture has
been introduced. There is a strong room on the ground-floor, called a
cage, that was for the temporary confinement of disorderly persons, and
till lately it was used for a similar purpose.
The beautiful “Cross” at Winchester is supposed by Britton to have been
erected by Cardinal Beaufort. The cardinal is said to have spent much of
his ill-gotten wealth in splendid architectural works. His wealth was
prodigious, even for a high prelate of those days. In the fine scene
which closes his career in “Henry VI.,” he says in his last moments--
“If thou be’st death, I’ll give thee England’s treasure,
Enough to purchase such another island,
So thou wilt let me live and feel no pain.”
The probability is that the great dramatist more nearly hit off the
truth of the last hours and crimes of the great churchman than ordinary
history has done.
The Cathedral Close at Winchester is extremely picturesque, and the
little houses round it are of considerable antiquity. If the visitor
enters the church from the west end, the scene is of almost unequalled
grandeur. He looks through one continuous vista of pillars, arches, and
roof, extending
[Illustration: STREET IN CLOSE, WINCHESTER.]
to the eastern extremity, where the eye finally rests on the great
eastern window, that seems to dimly light up the choir. The size of this
magnificent vista may best be understood if we consider that a journey
from the west door to the east window and back is only some eighty yards
short of a quarter of a mile. It is curious that Winchester is really
cased in and hidden by a more recent style, in order to adapt it to the
more modern styles of thought and practice; and I am indebted to Mr.
Barry for bringing forward the following problem:--How is it that in the
Georgian era the great rage was for pulling down dwelling-houses, and,
indeed, unhappily, other buildings of a secular character, cathedrals
and parish churches were spared, especially as they were all generally
classified under the term of Gothic, or barbarous? Gothic, it must
always be remembered, is the term of reproach that Wren applied to all
mediæval architecture, though it has now been converted into a word of
praise. Vandalism was the parallel term in those days, and Goths and
Vandals were always brought forward when any signal piece of
art-spoliation had to be described:--
“The Goths and Vandals of our Isle,
Sworn foes to sense and law,
Have burnt to dust a nobler pile
Than Roman ever saw.”
These are the crowd that Cowper alludes to when describing the burning
of Lord Mansfield’s library. The second term only now is ever used in
reproach, the first being almost, as before remarked, a complimentary
epithet. Happily it is so, or else the cathedrals would have fallen in
the fashion of the period that made each new era in design paramount for
the time. Nothing can have been less conservative than the way in which
the monks of old regarded the works of their predecessors. In any
English cathedral we see the masonry of different eras, each with its
own peculiarity, and there was not the slightest hesitation in pulling
down the works of the previous century in order to replace them with
those in fashion; indeed we often find exquisite carved work broken in
pieces and used for rubble, when its very condition shows that the
builders who so used it could have easily restored it--not “restored” in
the modern sense of the word, but repaired it. To be so conservative as
we are now of the works of our ancestors in an age that is pre-eminently
one of progress, seems an anachronism, but it must be remembered that we
should not now have possessed much in the way of cathedrals if it were
not for the fact that after the Reformation, clergy fell almost into
contempt for a long time. Macaulay’s _History of England_ tells us how
lightly they were esteemed; a chaplain to a family of rank and wealth
was hardly held in greater honour than the head gamekeeper or huntsman;
and the wealth of the bishops and dignitaries seems almost to have
isolated rather than enabled them to mingle with their equals.
Ecclesiastical buildings were therefore neglected, happily for the
present generation, or else we should have had a dozen grand old Gothic
piles replaced by the architecture of Queen Anne or the Georges. The
tide of improvement that swept away so many old English mansions passed
by them.
Surrey is a very beautiful county, undulating and diversified. A great
part of it is not more than 300 feet above the level of the sea, and
Leith Hill, near Dorking, which is the highest part of it, is only about
900 feet in elevation. There are many old towns and villages in Surrey,
and not a few are of great historical interest. Esher is the place where
Cardinal Wolsey was ordered to retire to after his downfall. The gateway
still remains of Esher Palace. It is a fine old tower, with turrets at
the angles. Norfolk gives the--to him--congenial orders:--
“Hear the King’s pleasure, Cardinal; who commands you
To render up the great seal presently
Into our hands; and to confine yourself
To Esher-house--my lord of Winchester’s.”
The Town-hall of Guildford is a very characteristic building of the
earliest period of classic revival. I saw a painting of it that dated
back to the earlier part of last century, and the street seems hardly to
have been altered since this picture was executed. The balcony is of
course for addressing an audience at election times, and the clock
stands quaintly out into the street, supported by thin ribbons of
wrought
[Illustration: GUILDFORD, SURREY.]
iron. Much of the character of this and other classic buildings of the
period when the revival took place, came from Holland, and the stiff
gardening was introduced from the Netherlands, though of course the
Dutch element is more observable in places like Hull, that had more
direct communication with the Low Countries. The revivals of Wren and
Inigo Jones proceed from an entirely different quarter, though of course
they often combined with them.
[Illustration: SALISBURY: CATHEDRAL CLOSE.]
The city of Salisbury, it has been well said by one of our best
antiquarians, has its origin well defined, and in this respect differs
from English cities generally. It has nothing Roman, Saxon, or
[Illustration: SALISBURY OLD GATEWAY, HIGH STREET.]
even Norman in its origin, but is purely an English city, and it may be
considered as unique. It has abundant provision for cleanliness, and is
even without the remains of a baronial fortress. True it is that it was
surrounded by walls, and a very fine gateway is shown here, but these
walls were the boundaries of the precincts of the ecclesiastics. The
[Illustration: SALISBURY.]
[Illustration: OLD HOUSES, SALISBURY.]
See of Salisbury was removed from Old Sarum in 1215 to its present site,
in consequence of the “brawles and sadde blows,” as Holinshed states,
between the clergy and the castellans, and then the splendid cathedral
was commenced. King Henry III. granted the church a weekly market, and a
fair of eight days’ continuance; and, according to Dodsworth’s
_Salisbury_, “the city was divided into spaces of seven perches each in
length, and three in breadth,” and this accounts for the present
symmetrical arrangement of the streets.
The view in the High Street, looking into the close, shows one of the
entrance gatehouses. It is, of course, of later date than the Cathedral,
but extremely fine, and characteristic of ancient English architecture.
The view of Salisbury from the bridge includes the present
workhouse--the building on the right. There is a fine old chapel here,
and a curiously ornamented chimney-piece, and also an apartment Britton
calls a “monks’ parlor.”
[Illustration: SALISBURY, FROM BRIDGE.]
[Illustration: SALISBURY MARKET.]
Of Salisbury market little need be said. The engraver has reproduced the
scene excellently well, and it will at all times be numbered among the
most graceful stone structures, either ancient or modern, that adorn the
kingdom.
Surrey, from its position, has often occupied a conspicuous place in
English history, and it is hardly necessary to add that Runnymede, near
Egham, where the great and peaceful revolution took place that is felt
to the present day, is in Surrey.
Canterbury is one of the most delightful cities in England for an
antiquary. Not much remains of its military antiquities, but the
ecclesiastical and domestic relics are numerous and imposing. St.
Augustine’s monastery is worth a pilgrimage from any part of England,
and notwithstanding all it has suffered from having been used as a
brewery, it bears many grand traces of its ancient splendour.
Mercery Lane, which is here shown, is one of the ancient narrow streets
of the city, and the engraver has given an excellent idea of its present
appearance. The houses on each side are two storeys higher, and that
would still further seem to contract its width; but the Cathedral, and
the Christ Church gateway that shuts off the Cathedral precincts, and
appears to span the street, are very well given.
This is the principal gateway to the close, and was built by Prior
Goldstone in 1517. The octagonal sides were formerly surmounted by
elegant turrets, but these have been taken down as low as the
battlements. The arms of Becket are carved on one of the spandrels, and
there is an inscription:--“HOC OPUS CONSTRUCTUM EST ANNO DOMINI
MILESSIMO QUINGENTESSIMO DECIMO SEPTIMO.” The effect of the great
cathedral towers in warm gray, and the
[Illustration: CANTERBURY.]
precinct archway seen through a long vista of dark street, is peculiarly
grand.
There are not a few black-and-white gabled houses still standing in
Canterbury, and now all antiquities are preserved with jealous care. The
small houses shown at end of this chapter are characteristic of the
humbler dwellings of the city, and show how low a room was sometimes
considered to be sufficient. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth a British
town stood here as far back as nine centuries before the Christian era;
but the Romans early established a colony here, and changed the old
British name to Durovernum. A view of a Roman gateway is still given in
Gostling’s _Walks_, and another Roman gateway was taken down in 1790.
Falstaff Inn is an ancient hostelry of very considerable merit as to its
present accommodation. The signboard projects to an extraordinary extent
into the road, and is supported by elaborate wrought iron work.
The west gate, which is shown in the same engraving, is the only one of
the six ancient barriers of Canterbury. Britton tells us that it was
built by Archbishop Sudbury, who proposed to erect strong defences at
each entrance to the city, and connect
[Illustration: FALSTAFF HOTEL, CANTERBURY.]
them all by walls, which should completely surround it. “The barbarous
murder of that active and benevolent prelate by the insurgents under Wat
Tyler on Tower Hill, June 14, 1381, put an end to this among many other
appropriate and useful improvements planned for the advantage of his
metropolitan city. The gatehouse he, however, completed, and it is an
interesting feature among the numerous antiquities of the place. It
crosses the high road from London to Dover, and serves as a protection
to the bridge over the western branch of the Stour, which at this place
is only a small stream. It is embattled and machicolated, and the
grooves still remain which directed the fall of the portcullis. The arch
is of subsequent date, and forms part of the reparations effected by
Archbishop Juxon after the disturbance occasioned by the puritanical
Mayor at Christmas 1647. The centre is flanked by the very lofty and
spacious round towers, the foundations of which are laid in the river
Stour. They are divided into two storeys, and are pierced with loopholes
having circular endings, similar to those observable in the remains of
the fortifications near Dane-John-Hill, and are embattled.” This
gatehouse, when Britton wrote his description, was used as the city
prison both for criminals and debtors.
Canterbury is always associated with Chaucer’s wonderful work, the
_Canterbury Tales_, and the accurate insight that this gives into the
manners and customs of the time. The Tabard, afterwards the Talbot in
Southwark, retained till comparatively recent times many of the features
of the hostelry that it had when Chaucer described it. The landlord was
a man of great mark, and his social importance is rather startling to
our present ideas. His guests were composed of all ranks of people, and
after their dinner was over he proposed a journey to Canterbury at his
own cost and charges, and that he should judge the best story that any
of them could narrate on the road, being “wise and well ytaught”
himself. Chaucer’s characters of the guests are wonderfully clever and
lifelike, even at the present day; but it is rather curious to find him
so outspoken against the monk and friar, and contrasting them with the
“poure parson of a town,” and “the clerk of Oxenford.” The former seems
to have suggested Goldsmith’s village parson, and indeed it is
impossible to read Chaucer’s description without being reminded of
almost parallel passages, though Goldsmith’s are of course so much
sweeter.
“Fenced around with barbican and bastion on the one hand, and girded by
high walls towards the river, the legal and baronial occupiers of
Rochester Castle sat in safety,” says the historian, “whether dispensing
the rude justice to trembling serfs, or quaffing the red wine among
their knightly retainers.” The last repairs the castle received were at
the hands of the possessor in Edward VI.’s time. James I. granted it to
Sir Anthony Welldone, and his descendant Walker Welldone, according to
Grose, “sold the timbers of it to one Gimmit, and the stone stairs, and
other squared and wrought stone of the windows and arches, to different
masons in London; he would likewise have sold the whole materials of the
castle to a paviour, but on an essay made on the east side, near the
postern leading to Bully Hill, the effects of which are seen in a large
chasm, the mortar was found so hard that the expense of separating these
stones amounted to more than their value, by which this noble pile
escaped a total demolition.” The streets of Rochester, though they
contain many beautiful houses of ancient date, can boast of little, if
anything at all, equal to the castle in antiquity. There is one very
fine gabled residence, now used as a school, on the south side of the
city. The gateway called the College Gate is here shown. It is built of
oak, with clinker boarding, and is extremely picturesque. The street in
which it stands leads up to the cathedral precincts. The ancient house
architecture of Kent is very valuable for examples. In the neighbourhood
of Broadstairs the chimneys, both of brick and stone, afford a great
store of quaint examples for this little understood branch of building.
And all antiquarians are indebted to Kent as being the home of Camden,
the greatest of antiquaries, who died at Camden Place in 1623, at the
residence where the Emperor Napoleon III. expired exactly 250 years
later.
[Illustration: ROCHESTER.]
Two illustrations only are given in Sussex, though it has many quaint
old street scenes. Chichester is rather disappointing to those who see
it for the first time, and know it by its old cross and cathedral. There
still remain in the upper part of South Street some houses with
overhanging cornices, that are attributed, and in all probability
accurately so, to Sir Christopher Wren. The Cross has often been
described and drawn, and is a thoroughly good example of street
architecture. It is quite impossible to do more than hurry over this
county. Winchelsea was added to the Cinque Ports before the reign of
King John, and in the reign of Henry VI. it was the principal port of
embarkation for the continent. The Land Gate, the Strand Gate, and the
New Gate, three out of its old gateways, are still standing, though they
are rather ruinous, and Winchelsea itself is in a state of decay, hardly
being more now than a village.
Rye is about two miles to the north-east of Winchelsea, and is a very
ancient town with grass-grown streets. They are nearly all narrow,
steep, and very winding. Rye is one of the Cinque Ports, like
Winchelsea, and as yet its harbour continues to be of some little
consequence. The church clock, which is still in use, is said to be the
most ancient in England. The gabled houses here shown are very
characteristic of the town, and much resemble those in Chester and
Shrewsbury.
[Illustration: OLD HOUSES, RYE.]
It has been said that it is difficult to decide if this rather familiar
style of building which still adorns so many of our older county towns
is an adaptation of a still older form. “Owing to constant improvement,”
says an author of a paper read before the Liverpool Architectural
Society, “it is impossible to determine exactly the various periods,
because old timbers and productions in wood were used in the
construction of new houses. For the same reason it is difficult to say
whether examples were new in design or copies from earlier buildings.
Such an instance we have in the ceiling of Neworth Castle, which is
richly carved, and bears the character of the fourteenth century,
although the structure was rebuilt almost entirely towards the close of
Queen Elizabeth’s reign.” We have already remarked on the former part of
this sentence, as illustrated in so many street fronts in Chester, and
for the second part, there is no doubt that the ordinary street
architecture of Queen Elizabeth’s time, where it had none of the
peculiarities introduced by Thorpe into the country, was similar to that
which existed for centuries before. It is quite possible that the house
in Shrewsbury where Richmond lodged before the battle of Bosworth[2] was
of some age then--indeed, there are reasons for supposing so; yet there
is no characteristic in it that would distinguish it from a town house
of Charles II.’s time, unless, of course, the latter had some
enrichment. East Grinstead is seated on a hill near the borders of
Sussex. It contains many very interesting half-timbered houses, not
dissimilar in character to the illustrations from Rye. The one we have
shown is a characteristic stone house, with a fine massive chimney and
mullioned windows.
[Illustration: EAST GRINSTEAD.]
If some sort of a consecutive order is to be kept in the counties,
Middlesex would almost seem to follow Kent and Surrey, and London is yet
full of quaint old relics like Staples Inn, Lincoln’s Inn, Crosby Hall,
the interesting streets at the north side of St. Paul’s. There is also
much curious architecture in the buildings of the twelve great guilds,
and in the squares and streets round Russell Square are many fine old
remains of Queen Anne’s time. Many of these are turned into
lodging-houses, or let off in flats to professional men; but one thing
is certain, there is a wealth of old city architecture inside London
houses that would surprise many an old inhabitant.
This is more valuable now since the revival, by Mr. Norman Shaw, of the
Queen Anne architecture; not that it necessarily should supersede all
other styles, or any other, but there are places where it might have its
use, and form a valuable addition to the picturesque appearance of the
landscape. But in coming to London after the streets and homesteads we
have been considering, one feels almost like a country cousin that has
arrived from the shires. Anything that can be said is so well known
already by nearly all the residents. Every spot round London is classic
ground. Hampstead, where the meetings of the famous Kit Kat Club
[Illustration: PINNER.]
were held, and where Addison and Steele used often to be found, is only
just outside the metropolis on the north-west; Edmonton, on the
north-east, where the Bell Inn is standing, that is immortalised by
Cowper in “John Gilpin”; Finchley, familiar to every one through
Hogarth’s “March of the Guards” in 1745, on their way to suppress the
Pretender; and hundreds of other similar spots, would form not only an
interesting but a large work of themselves. Excepting the brickwork,
however, at Lincoln’s Inn[3] and “Pinner on the hill,” no illustrations
of Middlesex have been attempted.
[Illustration: STREET IN CANTERBURY.]
[Illustration: ANCIENT HOUSE NEAR ST. ALBANS.]