Sometimes, alas! the old house has to vanish entirely through old age. It cannot maintain its struggle any longer. The rain pours through the roof and down the insides of the walls. And the family is as decayed as their mansion, and has no money wherewith to defray the cost of reparation.
The Wardrobe House. The Close. Salisbury. Evening.
Our artist, Mr. Fred Roe, in his search for the picturesque, had one sad and deplorable experience, which he shall describe in his own words:—
"One of the most weird and, I may add, chilling experiences in connection with the decline of county families which it was my lot to experience, occurred a year or two ago in a remote corner of the eastern counties. I had received, through a friend, an invitation to visit an old mansion before the inmates (descendants of the owners in Elizabethan times) left and the contents were dispersed. On a comfortless January morning, while rain and sleet descended in torrents to the accompaniment of a biting wind, I detrained at a small out-of-the-way station in ——folk. A weather-beaten old man in a patched great-coat, with the oldest and shaggiest of ponies and the smallest of governess-traps, awaited my arrival. I, having wedged myself with the Jehu into this miniature vehicle, was driven through some miles of muddy ruts, until turning through a belt of wooded land the broken outlines of an extensive dilapidated building broke into view. This was —— Hall.
"I never in my life saw anything so weirdly picturesque and suggestive of the phrase 'In Chancery' as this semi-ruinous mansion. Of many dates and styles of architecture, from Henry VIII to George III, the whole seemed to breathe an atmosphere of neglect and decay. The waves of affluence and successive rise of various members of the family could be distinctly traced in the enlargements and excrescences which contributed to the casual plan and irregular contour of the building. At one part an addition seemed to denote that the owner had acquired wealth about the time of the first James, and promptly directed it to the enlargement of his residence. In another a huge hall with classic brick frontage, dating from the commencement of the eighteenth century, spoke of an increase of affluence—probably due to agricultural prosperity—followed by the dignity of a peerage. The latest alterations appear to have been made during the Strawberry Hill epoch, when most of the mullioned windows had been transformed to suit the prevailing taste. Some of the building—a little of it—seemed habitable, but in the greater part the gables were tottering, the stucco frontage peeling and falling, and the windows broken and shuttered. In front of this wreck of a building stretched the overgrown remains of what once had been a terrace, bounded by large stone globes, now moss-grown and half hidden under long grass. It was the very picture of desolation and proud poverty.
"We drove up to what had once been the entrance to the servants' hall, for the principal doorway had long been disused, and descending from the trap I was conducted to a small panelled apartment, where some freshly cut logs did their best to give out a certain amount of heat. Of the hospitality meted out to me that day I can only hint with mournful appreciation. I was made welcome with all the resources which the family had available. But the place was a veritable vault, and cold and damp as such. I think that this state of things had been endured so long and with such haughty silence by the inmates that it had passed into a sort of normal condition with them, and remained unnoticed except by new-comers. A few old domestics stuck by the family in its fallen fortunes, and of these one who had entered into their service some quarter of a century previous waited upon us at lunch with dignified ceremony. After lunch a tour of the house commenced. Into this I shall not enter into in detail; many of the rooms were so bare that little could be said of them, but the Great Hall, an apartment modelled somewhat on the lines of the more palatial Rainham, needs the pen of the author of Lammermoor to describe. It was a very large and lofty room in the pseudo-classic style, with a fine cornice, and hung round with family portraits so bleached with damp and neglect that they presented but dim and ghostly presentments of their originals. I do not think a fire could have been lit in this ghostly gallery for many years, and some of the portraits literally sagged in their frames with accumulations of rubbish which had dropped behind the canvases. Many of the pictures were of no value except for their associations, but I saw at least one Lely, a family group, the principal figure in which was a young lady displaying too little modesty and too much bosom. Another may have been a Vandyk, while one or two were early works representing gallants of Elizabeth's time in ruffs and feathered caps. The rest were for the most part but wooden ancestors displaying curled wigs, legs which lacked drawing, and high-heeled shoes. A few old cabinets remained, and a glorious suite of chairs of Queen Anne's time—these, however, were perishing, like the rest—from want of proper care and firing.
"The kitchens, a vast range of stone-flagged apartments, spoke of mighty hospitality in bygone times, containing fire-places fit to roast oxen at whole, huge spits and countless hooks, the last exhibiting but one dependent—the skin of the rabbit shot for lunch. The atmosphere was, if possible, a trifle more penetrating than that of the Great Hall, and the walls were discoloured with damp.
"Upstairs, besides the bedrooms, was a little chapel with some remains of Gothic carving, and a few interesting pictures of the fifteenth century; a cunningly contrived priest-hole, and a long gallery lined with dusty books, whither my lord used to repair on rainy days. Many of the windows were darkened by creepers, and over one was a flap of half-detached plaster work which hung like a shroud. But, oh, the stained glass! The eighteenth-century renovators had at least respected these, and quarterings and coats of arms from the fifteenth century downwards were to be seen by scores. What an opportunity for the genealogist with a history in view, but that opportunity I fear has passed for ever. The —— Hall estate was evidently mortgaged up to the hilt, and nothing intervened to prevent the dispersal of these treasures, which occurred some few months after my visit. Large though the building was, I learned that its size was once far greater, some two-thirds of the old building having been pulled down when the hall was constituted in its present form. Hard by on an adjoining estate a millionaire manufacturer (who owned several motor-cars) had set up an establishment, but I gathered that his tastes were the reverse of antiquarian, and that no effort would be made to restore the old hall to its former glories and preserve such treasures as yet remained intact—a golden opportunity to many people of taste with leanings towards a country life. But time fled, and the ragged retainer was once more at the door, so I left —— Hall in a blinding storm of rain, and took my last look at its gaunt façade, carrying with me the seeds of a cold which prevented me from visiting the Eastern Counties for some time to come."
Some historic houses of rare beauty have only just escaped destruction. Such an one is the ancestral house of the Comptons, Compton Wynyates, a vision of colour and architectural beauty—
A Tudor-chimneyed bulk
Of mellow brickwork on an isle of bowers.
Owing to his extravagance and the enormous expenses of a contested election in 1768, Spencer, the eighth Earl of Northampton, was reduced to cutting down the timber on the estate, selling his furniture at Castle Ashby and Compton, and spending the rest of his life in Switzerland. He actually ordered Compton Wynyates to be pulled down, as he could not afford to repair it; happily the faithful steward of the estate, John Berrill, did not obey the order. He did his best to keep out the weather and to preserve the house, asserting that he was sure the family would return there some day. Most of the windows were bricked up in order to save the window-tax, and the glorious old building within whose walls kings and queens had been entertained remained bare and desolate for many years, excepting a small portion used as a farm-house. All honour to the old man's memory, the faithful servant, who thus saved his master's noble house from destruction, the pride of the Midlands. Its latest historian, Miss Alice Dryden,[34] thus describes its appearance:—
"On approaching the building by the high road, the entrance front now bursts into view across a wide stretch of lawn, where formerly it was shielded by buildings forming an outer court. It is indeed a most glorious pile of exquisite colouring, built of small red bricks widely separated by mortar, with occasional chequers of blue bricks; the mouldings and facings of yellow local stone, the woodwork of the two gables carved and black with age, the stone slates covered with lichens and mellowed by the hand of time; the whole building has an indescribable charm. The architecture, too, is all irregular; towers here and there, gables of different heights, any straight line embattled, few windows placed exactly over others, and the whole fitly surmounted by the elaborate brick chimneys of different designs, some fluted, others zigzagged, others spiral, or combined spiral and fluted."