buildings surround a courtyard, and are entered by an arched gateway from the street; and it is hardly possible in all the city architecture of England to find a more interesting and fine apartment than the great hall. It has been well described elsewhere. Bablake Hospital is another ancient corporation, and affords an admirable example of an old city building. It was founded in the latter part of Henry VII.’s reign by the Mayor of Coventry. In the distance is the tower of St. John’s Church. The whole groups very beautifully, and is in a good state of preservation.
Of Ford’s Hospital, in the same city, John Carter, the painstaking archæologist, made the minutest drawings, and declared that such a splendid specimen of domestic architecture “ought to be kept in a case.”
The ecclesiastical monuments of Derby are few, having rather more than shared the troubles of their brethren in 1536 and 1539; and, indeed, there are not many archæological remains of any kind in the county, always of course excepting Hadden. The title of the Earls of Derby is not derived from any part of this county as has been supposed, but from the hundred of West Derby, near Liverpool. The Iron Gate was a very fine old street till lately, but it is somewhat changed since the drawing from which this engraving is taken was made. The Church of All Saints remains, however, in its entirety.
There is a curious angle-post in Derby, apparently of about Henry IV.’s time; it is very richly panelled, but the building it supports has been much modernised and changed.
Wirksworth is a market-town of considerable antiquity, and, to judge from many architectural decorations in the houses, it must have been of much greater importance at one time than it is at present. Rooms in some of the shops have fine ceilings of Elizabethan character, and there are several curious fire-places. At the Hope and Anchor Inn, quite an unpretending house of accommodation, there is a chimney-piece of great splendour. Two tall Ionic columns support each side, and their caps are inverted. Carved flames seem to issue out and reach the ceiling, which is rather high. These columns are about eight feet apart, and except a square opening for a fire-place all the space between them to the ceiling is covered with rich but barbaric carvings. Wirksworth is about fourteen miles to the north-west of Derby. Wingfield Manor is three or four miles to the south of Matlock, and is a lovely ruin. Here Mary Queen of Scots was confined, and the Babbington conspiracy hatched, for which the head of the house of Tichborne lost his life. Bradshaw, the president of the council who tried and condemned Charles I., was a native of Derbyshire; and of the more peaceful residents it may suffice to say that Arkwright and Florence Nightingale were born in this county.
It is impossible to close our notice of Derbyshire without some little reference to Hadden Hall, the seat of the Duke of Rutland; but though it is of course on princely dimensions, there is much in it, very much, that would suit a humbler dwelling. The bow windows, for example, in the drawing-room and other rooms are large wide projections, and not a slight bulging out of a wall; and how greatly they always add to the pleasantry of a room where the sun can reach them at so many different angles, is a thing that goes without telling. Whatever the extra expense may be, it is slight as compared with the cheerful aspect they give to a room. It is almost impossible, indeed, to exaggerate the size to which bow windows may be reasonably extended with advantage. If they are too large for the winter, if the exposed surface is apt to make them cold, nothing is easier than to shut them off with a baize curtain. A window seat runs round the one in the dining-room, and how much this adds to the pleasure of a room any one who has ever seen such a feature can tell. All these things can be arranged with absolute economy, or they would not be here alluded to. The private chapel at Hadden has been admirably lithographed by Nash in his Ancient Mansions, and however unsuitable it may be for an appendage to a modern house, it is a very fine example for a village church; parts of it are very ancient indeed.
If it would be allowable, under any circumstances, to strain the aims and purposes of the present work, it might almost be permitted to describe something of the ancient “home-keeping” of Hadden in Queen Elizabeth’s days. The last possessor of the line, in whose hands it had been so long, was Sir George Vernon, the last male heir of the Vernon family—“the King of the Peak” as he was familiarly called by his neighbours. The present appearance of the hall differs little from that which it presented when it was finished in Henry VIII.’s reign; of course the ancient parts of the chapel, which to all appearance are four hundred years earlier than Henry VIII., remain as they were seen when Vernon altered it. The hospitality of Hadden was always proverbial, and when it changed hands, and came into the Duke of Rutland’s family, this was not neglected. The first Duke of Rutland is said to have employed nearly 150 servants in doing the rites of hospitality, and in Queen Anne’s time there were twelve days’ feasts at Christmas with accompanying revelry, the almost expiring life of the old days of the “Lord of Misrule.” Hadden, it is said, “like other magnificent abodes, seems to be cut out for appearance rather than comfort.” “The doors,” a chronicler states, “are very rudely contrived, except where picturesque effect is the object; few fit at all close, and their fastenings are nothing better than wooden bolts, clumsy bars, or iron hasps. To conceal these defects, and exclude draughts of air, tapestry was put up, which had to be lifted in order to pass in or out; and when it was necessary to hold back these hangings, there were great iron hooks fixed for the purpose. All the principal rooms, except the gallery, were hung with loose arras, and their doors were concealed behind.” This, however, says nothing for the broken beautiful style of building that prevailed in the Tudor age, and the hundred pleasant nooks and corners that are characteristic of it;—nooks and corners too, that need not cost any extra amount of money, and always make a house cheerful and companionable. If the only objection to these houses is that the carpentry and joiners’ work is not free from exception, this may apply to any bad work; some of it is excellent, but some of it rather tends to remind me of a country carpenter, who came from Formby to Liverpool to a joiner’s establishment at the beginning of the present century, or the end of the last, and when he was asked if his door would fit, by the foreman, and if he could get a hair through the space between the door and the jamb, he declared that it was impossible, he knew how to fit a door better than that, and said it would be as much as any hare could do to put her foot through. Whatever there may be, however, of want of precision in some of the domestic carpentry—always remembering one thing, that we must make due allowance for shrinking, for the summer sun, and the winter cold, and also remembering that the masonry, at any rate, which was free from such exigencies, is perfect, and evidently put up by men to whom we now could teach very little indeed, in the plenitude of our knowledge—nothing in this supposed shortcoming in carpentry can prevent our taking lessons in its general form and style. The chimneys and the doors of Hadden are well able to give us lessons of construction, even for modest dwellings.
Stratford-on-Avon is a remarkably bright-looking cheerful town, and is, of course, more visited than any other of its size in England. The population is not quite 4000. In the sixteenth century Stratford was an exceedingly beautiful town. The houses were mostly of wood, and each situated in its own garden. One of them still stands in High Street, and has a well-carved front, resembling one of the many that remain in Chester. Stratford derives its name from the ford over the Avon that was here, and which seems to have satisfied the primitive manners of the people till a wooden bridge was built; but this again was superseded by an excellent stone one. Of course the exterior of Shakespeare’s house, in Henley Street, is familiar to every one; it is an ordinary specimen of a house of about the early part of the sixteenth century. The one which Shakespeare himself built in New Place was pulled down in 1756, by the Rev. Francis Gastrell, who unhappily came into possession of the property. He first cut down the celebrated mulberry tree that the poet had planted, and when the inhabitants of Stratford were astounded, he showed them that he could even eclipse that by pulling down the house that Shakespeare had himself designed. From Kenilworth to Evesham, in Worcester, the Avon is full of beauty and interest. There is the celebrated Guy’s Cliff, Hatton Rock, where the river is confined in its course and rapid, the splendid Warwick Castle, the Marl Cliffs of Bidford, and Charlcote Park, while the river itself is full of quiet English beauty. It glides through richly cultivated meadows, and past overhanging boughs from wooded banks; there are long lines of alders and willows, and here and there some quaint quiet homestead, that looks the very embodiment of peace. Warton well describes this part of the river:—