Old East Anglian cottages have their own special characteristics, arising from local conditions, but one feature they share in common with all old rustic dwellings; the great size and relative importance of their genial chimneys, suggesting warmth and the lavish laying on of logs. They tell the passer-by of old times when wood was the only fuel; when it was to be gathered for the mere labour of gathering, and plenty of it was piled upon the generous open hearth. Modern cottages, all over the kingdom, tell a different tale, in the look of their meagre chimney-pots—a tale of coal, dearly purchased, economised in tiny grates.
But the special features of East Anglian cottage architecture? They are here, in the highways and byways, for all to see who will. It is a land without stone, this East of England, where timber and flint and brick play important constructional parts in church and hall and manor-house, and where timber framing, lath and plaster, parge-work, and a few bricks for the chimney stacks, are combined to build up the cottages.
Out of their necessities our ancestors contrived dwellings that for durability, comfort and artistry put modern houses, whether halls or cottages, to shame. The stone cottages of Somersetshire, Rutland, Leicestershire; the cob and thatch of Devon, the granite of Cornwall; the timber and plaster, or timber and brick noggin of Cheshire and Herefordshire are all evidence to this day of how skilfully our forbears employed the materials to their hands; and here in Essex you shall find a something in the art of cottage building hardly to be discovered elsewhere. This is the frequent use of parge-work, or pargetting, as it is sometimes called, on old cottage exteriors. Parge-work is the ornamental filling or surfacing of walls with plaster. The term is just as often applied to the elaborately-moulded and panelled plaster ceilings of Elizabethan and Jacobean halls as to the exterior decoration that forms so remarkable and pleasing a feature of Essex rustic cottage architecture. Few Essex villages that can claim to preserve many relics of old times are without examples of this peculiarly local style; although, to be sure, an ignorant want of appreciation has been the cause of much destruction of late years. The commoner forms of this decoration are frequently seen, in the easily incised patterns that even the unskilful can make in the plaster while still wet, by the aid of anything from a trowel to the finger-tips; just as a cook ornaments the dough of her uncooked pies. Many of these patterns are traditional; as much a matter of tradition, for instance, as are the needlework patterns wrought on the breast of an old smock-frock. The commonest is one produced by a process of combing the plaster in repetitions of a device resembling an elongated figure 8 laid flat, or perhaps more narrowly resembling a hank of worsted. Other patterns, of whorls or concentric circles, stars, triangles and the like, are produced by wooden stamps. But the really beautiful examples are not the products of to-day. These belong to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and are lavish in decoration of a Renaissance character moulded in high relief. Architects with sufficient culture and understanding to enable them to appreciate local style have, in recent years, reintroduced decoration of this character when building residences in the country, but many a humble cottager lives within walls that display a profusion of artistic devices unapproached by the houses of the wealthy.
Discoveries close by the church on Chipping Hill have led to the belief that the building stands on, or near, the site of a Temple of Diana, and certainly Roman bricks are still visible in great numbers in the walls of the tower. A memorial in the chancel to Sir Gilbert East, who died in 1828, reminds the historian of some strange survivals existing at that time. The Easts were owners of the tithes at Witham, and although they lived so far distant as Berkshire, always insisted on their right of being buried here. Sir Gilbert East's body was, by his express direction, buried beside his wife, with a band of brass encircling both, engraved with the words from the marriage service, "Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder." His funeral was a three days' business, with knights bannerets accompanying, and much pomp and circumstance. In the family vault they laid him, wrapped in linen, returned to Berkshire for the reading of the will, when, to the dismay of the family, it was found that the knight had expressly wished to be buried in woollen. The family solicitor hurried back and, disinterring his defunct client, saw to it that he was comfortably tucked in as desired.
Between Witham and Kelvedon, where the road runs level, there is but one hamlet, an offshoot of Rivenhall known as Rivenhall End, where a cottage close by the "Fox" inn, once a toll-house, bears its former history, plain to read, in the evidence of its windows commanding either approach, up or down the road. A mile and a half beyond begins Kelvedon, set down in the flats beside the River Blackwater; "Kelvedon Easterford, vulgo Keldon," as Ogilby calls it; "consisting," he continues, "chiefly of inns"; a description which remains strikingly true to this day. This pronunciation, "Keldon," throws some light upon the following remarks of an old traveller who kept a diary of his wayfaring, and, writing in 1744, says, "From Colchester in an hour or two, I came to an old Village call'd Kildane, where they tell you the famous Massacre of the Danes began; but the true Name of the Town is Kelvedon."
How Kelvedon can ever have escaped being called "Long" Kelvedon is a mystery, for it straggles on and on and must be nearly a mile in length; a street of handsome old residences, of cottages and humble shops of all ages, and old broken-backed taverns where the Essex labourer gathers night by night and discusses the prospect of the carraway crop and the likelihood of the entire agricultural interest presently, going en masse to the "work'us." After which, with the courage of despair, and to drown his troubles, he will call for "another pot o' thrup'ny, missus," and, when closing time comes, slouch home through the mud and mist until the following evening, when the same programme is repeated. It is the agricultural labourer who supports the little wayside "publics" whose existence in such numbers puzzles the mid-day stranger, who, seeing them empty and apparently lifeless, wonders how they can possibly live. Business practically only begins when work in the fields is done, and the rent is not so high but that a few pots of beer a night represent a sufficient profit.
It must not be supposed that Kelvedon has not its exquisite architectural relics of a bygone time, or that its inns are all of the rural beer-house type. Not at all. Chief among the inns of Kelvedon is the "Angel," which indeed is a house not only of considerable size and outstanding character, but of historic interest, as having been the favourite resting-place of William the Third on his journeys along this road. Its projecting porch is the first thing the traveller sees on entering the town from the direction of London, where the road swerves violently to the left, and again as violently to the right, forming a very awkward corner. "Angel Corner," said Alexander, of the "Retaliator" coach, "is the very devil of a corner." This remark was drawn from him on the occasion of his nearly driving into the porch, when trying conclusions with a rival charioteer.
Almost opposite the still-existing "Angel" stood the equally extensive "Red Lion," long since retired from business and remodelled as a row of cottages. The histories of both houses, and of many another fine old inn, which might once have been written from the recollections of those who knew the old days of the road, are now in great part lost, and the world so much the poorer. Had scribblers then abounded, and the "personal" note of the modern journalist been sounded in those days, we should have known how King William came to and set out from his inn; how he looked, what he ate and drank, how many long clay pipes he smoked, and what comparisons he drew in conversation with Bentinck between the flat lands on the way from Kelvedon to Harwich and the still flatter lands of his native Holland. And besides such records of the great, we should then have been better furnished with the early history of coaching, which, if not indeed a sealed book, is at least a very short and fragmentary one.
THE "ANGEL," KELVEDON.