INTRODUCTION

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THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ENGLAND >>

Inmate of the Trinity Bede House at Castle Rising, Norfolk

339

The Hospital for Ancient Fishermen, Great Yarmouth

341

Inscription on the Hospital, King's Lynn

343

Ancient Inmates of the Fishermen's Hospital, Great

347

Yarmouth

Cottages at Evesham

348

Stalls at Banbury Fair

350

An Old English Fair

356

An Ancient Maker of Nets in a Kentish Fair

359

Outside the Lamb Inn, Burford

361

Tail Piece

363

VANISHING ENGLAND

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.

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 £150. An old

window of fifteenth-century workmanship in an old house at Shrewsbury was

nearly exploited by an enterprising American for the sum of £250; 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.

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.

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.

In recording the England that is vanishing the artist's pencil will play a more

prominent part than the writer's pen. The graphic sketches that illustrate this book

are far more valuable and helpful to the discernment of the things that remain than

the most effective descriptions. We have tried together to gather up the fragments

that remain that nothing be lost; and though there may be much that we have not

gathered, the examples herein given of some of the treasures that are left may be

useful in creating a greater reverence for the work bequeathed to us by our

forefathers, and in strengthening the hands of those who would preserve them.

Happily we are still able to use the present participle, not the past. It is vanishing

England, not vanished, of which we treat; and if we can succeed in promoting an

affection for the relics of antiquity that time has spared, our labours will not have

been in vain or the object of this book unattained.

Paradise Square, Banbury

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