LOOSE STONE AND PEAT COTTAGE, SCOTLAND AND N. ENGLAND.
These stone cottages, with their heavy mullioned windows and low-pitched gables, continued to be built down nearly to the end of the last century. Of course, they must have been expensive; but their durability seems to prove that the extra outlay was, in the end, true economy. Artistically, they appear well suited to their bleak grey surroundings. These great, wild woodlands, interspersed with shapeless and fantastic rocks and strange-looking bowlders, swept by howling winds, so that no tree can lift its head save under shelter of the hillside, are not so unkindly as they seem.
STONE COTTAGES, GLOSSOP, DERBYSHIRE.
We once knew a beautiful and delicate girl who had to leave London and, with her parents, live in one of these wild-looking districts. After a short time she grew strong and still more beautiful. Later on she married, and went with her husband to live in a southern land under the influence of a more genial climate. But, alas, it proved less friendly to her than the rugged North, for within six months she died. Three days before this sad event she said to her husband—
“If I could only feel the wind over the great moor I think I could live.”
He would have given all he possessed to save her, but the doctors assured him that she would certainly die on the journey. Health is often to be found in these rugged stone houses of the North country, stern and sombre as they look when compared with the cheerful half-timber cottages of the South.
In some out-of-the-way districts of Northern England, Scotland, and Ireland, cottages are built of “loose stone”—i.e., stones fitted together without mortar, and are thatched with peat. Sometimes the angle-stones, window and door openings, have mortar joints, the rest being left open. In all stone counties of England walls constructed in this manner divide the fields instead of hedgerows, the top row of stones being fastened together with mortar when the wall is more than breast high. This is a very ancient method of building, and is found in almost every country of the world.
H. W. Brewer.