The builders and masons of our country cottages were cunning men, and adapted their designs to their materials. You will have noticed that the pitch of the Horsham-slated roof is unusually flat. They observed that when the sides of the roof were deeply sloping, as in the case of thatched roofs, the heavy stone slates strained and dragged at the pegs and laths and fell and injured the roof. Hence they determined to make the slope less steep. Unfortunately the rain did not then easily run off, and in order to prevent the water penetrating into the house they were obliged to adopt additional precautions. Therefore they cemented their roofs and stopped them with mortar.
Cottage at Capel, Surrey
Very lovely are these South Country cottages, peaceful, picturesque, pleasant, with their graceful gables and jutting eaves, altogether delightful. Well sang a loyal Sussex poet:—
If I ever become a rich man,
Or if ever I grow to be old, I will build a house with deep thatch[14]
To shelter me from the cold; And there shall the Sussex songs be sung
And the story of Sussex told.
We give some good examples of Surrey cottages at the village of Capel in the neighbourhood of Dorking, a charming region for the study of cottage-building. There you can see some charming ingle-nooks in the interior of the dwellings, and some grand farm-houses. Attached to the ingle-nook is the oven, wherein bread is baked in the old-fashioned way, and the chimneys are large and carried up above the floor of the first storey, so as to form space for curing bacon.
Farm-house, Horsmonden, Kent