Vanishing England

by P. H. Ditchfield

As we are at Norwich it would be well to visit another old house, which though not a municipal building, is a unique specimen of the domestic architecture of a Norwich citizen in days when, as Dr. Jessop remarks, "there was no coal to burn in the grate, no gas to enlighten the darkness of the night, no potatoes to eat, no tea to drink, and when men believed that the sun moved round the earth once in 365 days, and would have been ready to burn the culprit who should dare to maintain the contrary." It is called Strangers' Hall, a most interesting medieval mansion which had never ceased to be an inhabited house for at least 500 years, till it was purchased in 1899 by Mr. Leonard Bolingbroke, who rescued it from decay, and permits the public to inspect its beauties. The crypt and cellars, and possibly the kitchen and buttery, were portions of the original house owned in 1358 by Robert Herdegrey, Burgess in Parliament and Bailiff of the City, and the present hall, with its groined porch and oriel window, was erected later over the original fourteenth-century cellars. It was inhabited by a succession of merchants and chief men of Norwich, and at the beginning of the sixteenth century passed into the family of Sotherton. The merchant's mark of Nicholas Sotherton is painted on the roof of the hall. You can see this fine hall with its screen and gallery and beautifully-carved woodwork. The present Jacobean staircase and gallery, big oak window, and doorways leading into the garden are later additions made by Francis Cook, grocer of Norwich, who was mayor of the city in 1627. The house probably took its name from the family of Le Strange, who settled in Norwich in the sixteenth century. In 1610 the Sothertons conveyed the property to Sir le Strange Mordant, who sold it to the above-mentioned Francis Cook. Sir Joseph Paine came into possession just before the Restoration, and we see his initials, with those of his wife Emma, and the date 1659, in the spandrels of the fire-places in some of the rooms. This beautiful memorial of the merchant princes of Norwich, like many other old houses, fell into decay. It is most pleasant to find that it has now fallen into such tender hands, that its old timbers have been saved and preserved by the generous care of its present owner, who has thus earned the gratitude of all who love antiquity.

Sometimes buildings erected for quite different purposes have been used as guild halls. There was one at Reading, a guild hall near the holy brook in which the women washed their clothes, and made so much noise by "beating their battledores" (the usual style of washing in those days) that the mayor and his worthy brethren were often disturbed in their deliberations, so they petitioned the King to grant them the use of the deserted church of the Greyfriars' Monastery lately dissolved in the town. This request was granted, and in the place where the friars sang their services and preached, the mayor and burgesses "drank their guild" and held their banquets. When they got tired of that building they filched part of the old grammar school from the boys, making an upper storey, wherein they held their council meetings. The old church then was turned into a prison, but now happily it is a church again. At last the corporation had a town hall of their own, which they decorated with the initials S.P.Q.R., Romanus and Readingensis conveniently beginning with the same letter. Now they have a grand new town hall, which provides every accommodation for this growing town.

The Greenland Fishery House, King's Lynn. An old Guild House of the time of James I

The Newbury town hall, a Georgian structure, has just been demolished. It was erected in 1740-1742, taking the place of an ancient and interesting guild hall built in 1611 in the centre of the market-place. The councillors were startled one day by the collapse of the ceiling of the hall, and when we last saw the chamber tons of heavy plaster were lying on the floor. The roof was unsound; the adjoining street too narrow for the hundred motors that raced past the dangerous corners in twenty minutes on the day of the Newbury races; so there was no help for the old building; its fate was sealed, and it was bound to come down. But the town possesses a very charming Cloth Hall, which tells of the palmy days of the Newbury cloth-makers, or clothiers, as they were called; of Jack of Newbury, the famous John Winchcombe, or Smallwoode, whose story is told in Deloney's humorous old black-letter pamphlet, entitled The Most Pleasant and Delectable Historie of John Winchcombe, otherwise called Jacke of Newberie, published in 1596. He is said to have furnished one hundred men fully equipped for the King's service at Flodden Field, and mightily pleased Queen Catherine, who gave him a "riche chain of gold," and wished that God would give the King many such clothiers. You can see part of the house of this worthy, who died in 1519. Fuller stated in the seventeenth century that this brick and timber residence had been converted into sixteen clothiers' houses. It is now partly occupied by the Jack of Newbury Inn. A fifteenth-century gable with an oriel window and carved barge-board still remains, and you can see a massive stone chimney-piece in one of the original chambers where Jack used to sit and receive his friends. Some carvings also have been discovered in an old house showing what is thought to be a carved portrait of the clothier. It bears the initials J.W., and another panel has a raised shield suspended by strap and buckle with a monogram I.S., presumably John Smallwoode. He was married twice, and the portrait busts on each side are supposed to represent his two wives. Another carving represents the Blessed Trinity under the figure of a single head with three faces within a wreath of oak-leaves with floriated spandrels.[⁴⁴] We should like to pursue the subject of these Newbury clothiers and see Thomas Dolman's house, which is so fine and large and cost so much money that his workpeople used to sing a doggerel ditty:—

Lord have mercy upon us miserable sinners,
Thomas Dolman has built a new house and turned away all his spinners.

The old Cloth Hall which has led to this digression has been recently restored, and is now a museum.

The ancient town of Wallingford, famous for its castle, had a guild hall with selds under it, the earliest mention of which dates back to the reign of Edward II, and occurs constantly as the place wherein the burghmotes were held. The present town hall was erected in 1670—a picturesque building on stone pillars. This open space beneath the town hall was formerly used as a corn-market, and so continued until the present corn-exchange was erected half a century ago. The slated roof is gracefully curved, is crowned by a good vane, and a neat dormer window juts out on the side facing the market-place. Below this is a large Renaissance window opening on to a balcony whence orators can address the crowds assembled in the market-place at election times. The walls of the hall are hung with portraits of the worthies and benefactors of the town, including one of Archbishop Laud. A mayor's feast was, before the passing of the Municipal Corporations Act, a great occasion in most of our boroughs, the expenses of which were defrayed by the rates. The upper chamber in the Wallingford town hall was formerly a kitchen, with a huge fire-place, where mighty joints and fat capons were roasted for the banquet. Outside you can see a ring of light-coloured stones, called the bull-ring, where bulls, provided at the cost of the Corporation, were baited. Until 1840 our Berkshire town of Wokingham was famous for its annual bull-baiting on St. Thomas's Day. A good man, one George Staverton, was once gored by a bull; so he vented his rage upon the whole bovine race, and left a charity for the providing of bulls to be baited on the festival of this saint, the meat afterwards to be given to the poor of the town. The meat is still distributed, but the bulls are no longer baited. Here at Wokingham there was a picturesque old town hall with an open undercroft, supported on pillars; but the townsfolk must needs pull it down and erect an unsightly brick building in its stead. It contains some interesting portraits of royal and distinguished folk dating from the time of Charles I, but how the town became possessed of these paintings no man knoweth.

Another of our Berkshire towns can boast of a fine town hall that has not been pulled down like so many of its fellows. It is not so old as some, but is in itself a memorial of some vandalism, as it occupies the site of the old Market Cross, a thing of rare beauty, beautifully carved and erected in Mary's reign, but ruthlessly destroyed by Waller and his troopers during the Civil War period. Upon the ground on which it stood thirty-four years later—in 1677—the Abingdon folk reared their fine town hall; its style resembles that of Inigo Jones, and it has an open undercroft—a kindly shelter from the weather for market women. Tall and graceful it dominates the market-place, and it is crowned with a pretty cupola and a fine vane. You can find a still more interesting hall in the town, part of the old abbey, the gateway with its adjoining rooms, now used as the County Hall, and there you will see as fine a collection of plate and as choice an array of royal portraits as ever fell to the lot of a provincial county town. One of these is a Gainsborough. One of the reasons why Abingdon has such a good store of silver plate is that according to their charter the Corporation has to pay a small sum yearly to their High Stewards, and these gentlemen—the Bowyers of Radley and the Earls of Abingdon—have been accustomed to restore their fees to the town in the shape of a gift of plate.