Chapter XL: 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.

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.