ANCIENT STREETS

AND

HOMESTEADS OF ENGLAND

Ancient   Streets

AND

Homesteads   of   England

By ALFRED RIMMER

AND AN INTRODUCTION

BY THE VERY REV. J. S. HOWSON, D.D.
DEAN OF CHESTER

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WITH ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR

ENGRAVED BY J. D. COOPER


London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1877

PREFACE.

There is, however, what may be termed a minor monumental history, which has not by any means always received its due attention. Our country is full of historic scenes, where the past is visibly recorded, and where, a few years ago, it was more visibly recorded than at present. Old states of society, old modes of living, obsolete habits of the people, are commemorated in many a small building which attracts little notice from the ordinary passer by. The lives of eminent persons, public events of high significance, have left their mark in villages, and market towns, and wayside places, where these recollections ought to be cherished, and where, if possible, the hand of the destroyer ought to be arrested. It should be added that nearly all such scenes and such fragments are pleasing in their aspect and worthy of the artist’s pencil as well as of the historian’s pen.

Under the influence of mixed feelings, made up partly of delight in what remains of this kind, partly of sorrowful regret for what is lost, I cannot hesitate to recommend these drawings by Mr. Rimmer, which he has illustrated by a running commentary. I do not commit myself to all his conclusions, which embrace a great multiplicity of subjects connected with very various parts of our country. The plan of the book is, of necessity, somewhat desultory; but I think there is some advantage, as certainly there is no fatigue, in rambling with him irregularly from county to county, through towns and hamlets, and using his eyes as we travel. We cannot all literally see these places ourselves; and if we were to see them, we might easily, through the want of some guidance, fail to observe their true character and expressive meaning. It should be remembered, too, that large numbers of such historic and picturesque buildings as Mr. Rimmer here delineates have been destroyed, or are in danger now of destruction. It is something if drawings preserve for us in one sense what in another sense (and a very melancholy one) is irreparably lost. Such views, too, and such pages as these, may help us to set a higher value on that which survives. On the whole, it seems to me evident that this book is a very useful contribution to what I have termed minor monumental history.

I will exemplify what I mean, and what I understand Mr. Rimmer to mean, by one or two independent illustrations, that suggest themselves to my memory; and if, in some degree, I appear to differ from him as to the resources of this kind which are afforded by different parts of the country, this only shows that, with all his care and diligence, he has not exhausted his subject.

Two illustrations shall be taken from the northern counties: and the first shall be the town of Kendal, which our author dismisses as containing hardly any architectural reminiscences of the past. To this I somewhat demur. Kendal, indeed, has no ancient houses, but its ground-arrangement is very singular; and this must be very ancient. It consists almost entirely of one broad winding street a mile in length, from which narrow lanes, which are not properly streets, open to the right and left, each being entered by a very small passage. Such narrow passages could very easily have been defended, in case of forays from the Scottish border; and it might be conjectured that they were planned with this danger in view. This question, indeed, must be dismissed as a puzzle nearly as great as that which is connected with the origin of the Chester Rows. The point of historical interest, for the sake of which Kendal is here brought forward, is this,—that through this broad winding street, where the ground rises and falls very boldly, and where even now the houses are so varied in character that on days of light and shade they supply many good subjects for pictures, the troops of Charles Edward marched or straggled in 1745, both on the way to Derby and on their return. Through this circumstance, especially if we combine it with stories current in the neighbourhood concerning that time, this dull Westmorland street acquires a new and lively interest.

A second example is supplied by village after village in that wide-spread country of the dales which lies south-east of Kendal. Through Airedale and Ribblesdale, from Bradford to Lancaster, and northward to some considerable distance, there are a multitude of specimens of a curious kind of doorway, which I do not recollect to have seen elsewhere. These doorways generally consist of two curves, more or less regular, and more or less enriched with ornament, and with the initials of the families of some now forgotten dalesmen: the dates range from about 1630 to 1730: the earlier forms are simpler than those which follow; and after the later period they seem to cease suddenly. However this provincialism of rural architecture is to be explained, it is a social and artistic fact worthy of being observed and permanently recorded.

Turning now to the Midland Counties, I will again illustrate the subject by a couple of instances. Mr. Rimmer most accurately notes that the ancient Roman way of Watling Street passes along the north-eastern frontier of Warwickshire: but beyond this he does not make much use of a county which is by no means poor in historical associations. One place which would have given him excellent materials for description and for drawing, and not far from that part of this county, where, to quote the old rhyme,

is the village of Polesworth. My attention was especially called to its picturesque and suggestive aspect, because I happened to visit the place just when I was within reach of the opportunity of inspecting some of the manuscripts of that prince of archæologists, Sir William Dugdale. The historian of Warwickshire remarks that “for Antiquitie and venerable esteem,” the village of Polesworth “needs not to give Precedence to any in the Countie;” and indeed there is a charming impression of age and quiet dignity in its remains of old walls, its remains of old trees, its church, and its open common. Not far off, on an eminence commanding a delightful view, is Pooley Hall, the Lord of which “by Reason of the Floods at some time, especially in Winter, which hindered his Accesse to the Mother Church,” obtained a license from Pope Urban IV. to build a chapel within the precincts of his lordship. And here, in the garden of this modest hall, is a little chapel of comparatively late architecture, but doubtless built on the site of the old one; and here, full in view, on the level ground below, with the village beyond, is the river, evidently liable to floods. I give this scene merely as a specimen of the wealth that our English counties contain for the historian who is also an artist.

The other county of which I am thinking is Bedfordshire. Of course Mr. Rimmer does not fail to take notice of the town of Bedford, and its neighbouring village of Elstow, and their still visible associations with John Bunyan; but there still remain some things to be added to those which he has so well described. I fear it must be admitted that the prison, in which the author of the Pilgrim’s Progress spent those days and nights that have enriched the world, was not on the bridge over the Ouse, but in another part of Bedford. The jailor’s door, by a most curious accident, survives, built into the wall of a granary, and with quite enough of character to deserve an engraving on descriptive pages. As regards the village of Elstow, there is abundant material of this kind in the isolated church tower, containing the very bells in the ringing of which Bunyan rejoiced and afterwards trembled; in the curious building, undoubtedly contemporary, upon the green where he danced; and, above all, I must mention what appears till recently to have escaped attention. The “wicket-gate” of the Pilgrim’s Progress is commonly represented as a garden-gate or a turnpike-gate; but really the term denotes a small doorway, cut out of a large door; and concealed behind a tree at the west end of Elstow Church, is just such a small doorway in the broad wooden surface of the great door. Through this lowly opening Bunyan must often have passed when a boy; and if it were simply drawn and engraved, I believe we should have a correct picture of that which was before his imagination when he described the early steps of Christian’s pilgrimage.

It is natural to both Mr. Rimmer and myself, with such thoughts in our minds, that we should make much of the ancient and striking city where we happen to dwell. He begins with Chester: and I will end with some words concerning it by a recent American traveller. Those who come for the first time from the United States to Europe frequently hasten to Chester with a feeling of extraordinary interest, partly because it is the nearest cathedral city, partly because it is a walled city. This writer is describing the walls. “Chester has everywhere,” he says, “a rugged outer parapet, and a broad hollow flagging, wide enough for two strollers abreast. Thus equipped, it wanders through its adventurous circuit; now sloping, now bending, now broadening into a terrace, now narrowing into an alley, now swelling into an arch, now dipping into steps, now passing some thorn-screened garden, and now reminding you that it was once a more serious matter than all this, by the occurrence of a rugged ivy-smothered tower. Every few steps as you go you see some little court or alley boring toward it through the close-pressed houses. It is full of that delightful element of the crooked, the accidental, the unforeseen, which to American eyes, accustomed to our eternal straight lines and right angles, is the striking feature of European street scenery. An American strolling in the Chester streets finds a perfect feast of crookedness—of those random corners, projections, and recesses, odd domestic interspaces charmingly saved or lost, those innumerable architectural surprises and caprices and fantasies, which offer such a delicious holiday to a vision nourished upon brown stone fronts.”

The pleasure which I feel in having anything to do with a book like this is very much increased by the reflection that American readers are likely to take the warmest interest in the visible reminiscences of history, in which the country that they recognise as their mother-land still abounds.

J. S. H.

The Deanery, Chester,
October 6, 1876.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.