PLAYFORD, 1840, April 23.
On Wednesday (yesterday) went with my uncle to the Eye Estate, to see the effects of the fire. The farming buildings of every kind are as completely cleared away as if they had been mown down: not a bit of anything but one or two short brick walls and the brick foundations of the barns and stacks. The aspect of the place is much changed, because in approaching the house you do not see it upon a back-ground of barns, &c., but standing alone. The house is in particularly neat and good order. I did not think it at all worth while to make troublesome enquiries of the people who reside there, but took Mr Case's account. There seems no doubt that the fire was caused by the maid-servant throwing cinders into a sort of muck-place into which they had been commonly thrown. I suppose there was after all this dry weather straw or muck drier than usual, and the cinders were hotter than usual. The whole was on fire in an exceedingly short time; and everything was down in less than an hour. Two engines came from Eye, and all the population of the town (as the fire began shortly after two o'clock in the afternoon). It is entirely owing to these that my house, and the farm (Sewell's) on the opposite side of the road, were not burned down. At the beginning of the fire the wind was N.E. which blew directly towards the opposite farm (Sewell's): although the nearest part of it (tiled dwelling house) was 100 yards off or near it, and the great barn (thatched roof) considerably further, yet both were set on fire several times. All this while, the tail of my house was growing very hot: and shortly after the buildings fell in burning ruins, the wind changed to N.W., blowing directly to my house. If this change had happened while the buildings were standing and burning, there would have been no possibility of saving the house. As it was, the solder is melted from the window next the farm-yard, and the roof was set on fire in three or four places. One engine was kept working on my house and one on the opposite farm. A large pond was pretty nearly emptied. Mr Case's horses and bullocks were got out, not without great difficulty, as the progress of the fire was fearfully rapid. A sow and nine pigs were burnt, and a large hog ran out burnt so much that the people killed it immediately.
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GEORGE INN, WINCHESTER, 1840, June 21.
At Winchester we established ourselves at the George and then without delay proceeded to St Cross. I did not know before the nature of its hospital establishment, but I find that it is a veritable set of alms-houses. The church is a most curious specimen of the latest Norman. I never saw one so well marked before—Norman ornaments on pointed arches, pilasters detached with cushion capitals, and various signs: and it is clearly an instance of that state of the style when people had been forced by the difficulties and inelegancies of the round arch in groining to adopt pointed arches for groining but had not learnt to use them for windows…….This morning after breakfast went to the Cathedral (looking by the way at a curious old cross in the street). I thought that its inside was wholly Norman, and was most agreeably surprised by finding the whole inside groined in every part with excellent late decorated or perpendicular work. Yet there are several signs about it which lead me to think that the whole inside has been Norman, and even that the pilasters now worked up into the perpendicular are Norman. The transepts are most massive old Norman, with side-aisles running round their ends (which I never saw before). The groining of the side aisles of the nave very effective from the strength of the cross ribs. The clerestory windows of the quire very large. The organ is on one side. But the best thing about the quire is the wooden stall-work, of early decorated, very beautiful. A superb Lady Chapel, of early English.
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PORTSMOUTH, 1840, June 23.
We left Winchester by evening train to the Dolphin, Southampton, and slept there. At nine in the morning we went by steamboat down the river to Ryde in the Isle of Wight: our steamer was going on to Portsmouth, but we thought it better to land at Ryde and take a boat for ourselves. We then sailed out (rather a blowing day) to the vessel attending Col. Pasley's operations, and after a good deal of going from one boat to another (the sea being so rough that our boat could not be got up to the ships) and a good deal of waiting, we got on board the barge or lump in which Col. Pasley was. Here we had the satisfaction of seeing the barrel of gunpowder lowered (there was more than a ton of gunpowder), and seeing the divers go down to fix it, dressed in their diving helmets and supplied with air from the great air-pump above. When all was ready and the divers had ascended again, the barge in which we were was warped away, and by a galvanic battery in another barge (which we had seen carried there, and whose connection with the barrel we had seen), upon signal given by sound of trumpet, the gunpowder was fired. The effect was most wonderful. The firing followed the signal instantaneously. We were at between 100 and 200 yards from the place (as I judge), and the effects were as follows. As soon as the signal was given, there was a report, louder than a musket but not so loud as a small cannon, and a severe shock was felt at our feet, just as if our barge had struck on a rock. Almost immediately, a very slight swell was perceived over the place of the explosion, and the water looked rather foamy: then in about a second it began to rise, and there was the most enormous outbreak of spray that you can conceive. It rose in one column of 60 or 70 feet high, and broad at the base, resembling a stumpy sheaf with jagged masses of spray spreading out at the sides, and seemed to grow outwards till I almost feared that it was coming to us. It sunk, I suppose, in separate parts, for it did not make any grand squash down, and then there were seen logs of wood rising, and a dense mass of black mud, which spread gradually round till it occupied a very large space. Fish were stunned by it: our boatmen picked up some. It was said by all present that this was the best explosion which had been seen: it was truly wonderful. Then we sailed to Portsmouth…….The explosion was a thing worth going many miles to see. There were many yachts and sailing boats out to see it (I counted 26 before they were at the fullest), so that the scene was very gay.
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Here are some notes on York Cathedral after the fire: