Over Fen and Wold

by James John Hissey

A SUDDEN CONTRAST

of Girtford. This began well with pretty cottages roofed with homely thatch; then passing a wayside public-house with the uncommon title of “The Easy Chair” (a sign that we do not remember to have met with before), the village ended badly, in a picturesque point of view, with a row of uninteresting cottages of the modern, square-box type, shelters for man rather than habitations—commonplace, alas! and unsightly. The sudden contrast from the old to the new was an object-lesson in ancient beauty and modern ugliness.

The progressive nineteenth century, by the mean and hideous structures it has erected over all the pleasant land, has done much towards the spoliation of English scenery. It has done great things, truly. It has created railways, it has raised palaces, mansions, huge hotels, monster warehouses, tall towers, and gigantic wheels of iron; but it has forgotten the way of rearing so simple and pleasing a thing as a home-like farmstead; it cannot even build a cottage grandly. Yet how well our ancestors knew how to do these. Still, the wanderer across country now and then sees signs of better things, a promise of a return to more picturesque conditions, and this sometimes in the most out-of-the-way and unexpected quarters. Thus, during our drive, have we chanced upon a quaint and freshly-painted inn sign done in a rough but true artistic spirit, supported by wrought-iron work of recent date, worthy of the medieval craftsman; and in quiet market-towns and remote villages have our eyes occasionally been delighted by bits of thoughtful architecture, the outcome of to-day, with their gable fronts, mullioned windows, and pleasant porches, in reverent imitation of what is best in the old. Besides these, sundry restorations of ancient buildings backwards, not forwards, point to a striving again for beauty.

An excellent and most delightful example of the revival of picturesque village architecture we discovered the other year when driving through Leigh, near Tunbridge, where the modern cottages are all pictures, charming to look upon with their half-timber framework, thatched roofs of the true Devon type, many gables, big chimneys, and quaint porches—all modern, but imbued with the spirit and poetry of the past. It is as though a medieval architect had been at work on them. The simple cottages are nobly designed; there is no starving of material in the attempt to make the utmost of everything; they are all humble abodes, yet dignified; a millionaire might live in one and not be ashamed; and withal they are essentially English. If they have a failing, it is perhaps that they look a trifle artificial—too suggestive of the model village or of stage scenery; but this I take it arises mainly because we are not accustomed in these commonplace days to find poetry out of books and paintings, so that the coming suddenly upon it realised in bricks and mortar strikes one for the moment as strange and unreal.

After another stretch of wide, open country, flushed with air and suffused with sunshine, the hamlet of Tempsford was reached. By the roadside

A WAYSIDE INN.

AN ANCIENT CHEST

here stood the ancient fane, gray and dusky with years. Its door was unfastened, so we stepped inside. Our hoary churches are stories in stone, to those who can read them; though not always is the reading easy, or the story complete. The first thing on entering that attracted our attention was an unusually fine medieval muniment chest, its age uncertain, but without doubt centuries old. It had evidently been cut out of the solid trunk of a tree (presumably of an oak). The chest is now much worm-eaten, and is bound round with many broad iron bands, and further secured by five locks. They had great faith in big locks in those days—locks with twisted keyholes, though to the modern mind they look easy enough to pick. The problem that presented itself to us was, seeing that about two-thirds of the wood was interlaced with these metal bands, why was not the chest at the start made wholly of iron? In this case the bands promise to outlast the worm-eaten and decaying wood they enclose, though in some old chests of a similar nature the iron has rusted more than the wood has perished, possibly owing to atmospheric conditions, for dampness would probably destroy the iron quicker than the wood, and dryness would reverse these conditions.