THE NEW HOUSES OF THE TIME OF QUEEN ELIZABETH
1. There were, in the days of Queen Elizabeth, in all parts of the
country, hundreds of bare, gaunt ruins where once had been flourishing
houses and centres of life and work. It may seem strange to us that the
materials left were not sold and cleared away, and the sites made tidy.
We must remember, however, that people could not build houses either
in town or country as they chose. In Queen Elizabeth's reign the laws
against building new houses were very strict indeed, so that there was
not a very great demand for building material. Then, too, the quantity
of such stone and wood in all these many buildings, in every town and
almost every village, was enormous, so that the material was not worth
much. The ruins were left, a sad and sorry sight, for many a long year.
2. In the towns some of the buildings were turned by their new owners
into private houses, and the parts of the monastery were put to strange
uses. Nobody seemed to mind; the spirit of destruction seemed to be in
the air. Then, as years went on, and buildings needed repair, or roads
wanted mending, the old ruins were the handiest places from which to
get a load of stone; and so, with leave or without, many loads of stone
were carted away from them.
3. We said just now that there was no encouragement given to the
building of new houses in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and yet most
of the most picturesque old houses in our towns and villages still
standing were built at that time. These, however, were not new houses;
they were rebuilt on old sites, _improved_ according to the ideas of
the time.
4. You will notice in country places a great many houses built somewhat
after this style. Many of them are now cottages, but they were not
built for cottages; they were the ordinary houses in which yeomen lived
in the sixteenth century.
5. There was the hall or house-place--an oblong room in the centre,--on
to which other rooms were built, forming a wing at one end, or often a
wing at each end, with gables towards the street, and projecting upper
stories. A great deal might be said about this kind of house, but there
is only space for a very short account of it.
6. The house was built upon a foundation of stone or brick, so that
the wooden sill should be above the ground-level. Into this wooden sill
strong upright posts of timber, quite rough, some 8 or 9 inches square,
were set. The posts at the angles were larger, often being butts of
trees placed roots upwards, so that the upper story might project. Then
on the main posts beams were laid, the ends projecting, upon which the
framing of the upper story was set. It was just a timber skeleton, into
which other timbers were set 8 or 9 inches apart. In later times these
timbers were wider apart, and curved or diagonal braces were often
used, but at first the uprights were pretty closely set.
[Illustration: Old English House]
7. The spaces between the uprights were then filled in with lath and
plaster, flush with the wood-work. In some parts of the country
brick was used instead, set in a herring-bone fashion. In later times,
when the lath and plaster had decayed, the spaces were often filled in
with brickwork laid in the ordinary way. Then again, in other cases
the wood-work of the house shrank and left gaps between the lath and
plaster and the wood, so the whole of the outside has been covered with
plaster, or weather-boarded and painted or tarred, or hung over with
tiles.
8. The windows were small, and sometimes in the upper story one was
built out, forming an oriel. The roofs were high pitched, in many cases
tiled, but more often thatched. In these old houses the =chimney-stack=
is a great feature outside, and the huge fireplace, with its wide
chimney-corners, takes up half the house-place inside. From most of
these nowadays the old hearth is gone, and a small chimney-breast has
been bricked up to take a modern range; but the old chimney-corner,
with its funny little window, can usually still be traced.
9. There are quite a large number of =village inns= of this kind. Very
often these are the oldest and most picturesque buildings left in a
village, except the church. It is these old-fashioned houses which make
village scenery so pleasing to the eye after the dreary rows of bunches
of brick, with holes in them for windows, covered in with slate, which
fill the streets of our towns, all alike and all ugly.
=Summary.=--There were ruins in every town and nearly every
village in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Gradually the stones were
carted away for building purposes and for road-mending. There
were many restrictions on building new houses. Most of the quaint
old houses, with overhanging stories and high-pitched roofs,
belong to the time of Queen Elizabeth. They were built on older
foundations. The wood-work in later times has been in some cases
filled in with brickwork, in others covered with boarding or hung
with tiles. In those houses the chimney is usually at one end of
the house, and the queer little window on one side shows where the
chimney-corner once was.
[Illustration: An Elizabethan Interior]