to the person appointed, of a yard of cloth to make him a hood, of the colour of those worn by members of the Gilde. Upon an examination of the records of this Gilde, of the time of Henry the Sixth, I observed in several of the grants and leases, a stipulation that, in addition to a reserved rent, the tenants should deliver, upon the feast of the nativity of St. John the Baptist, one red rose, and in some of the instruments it was stipulated that this rose should be delivered before nine o'clock in the morning. It may be gratifying to your antiquarian readers to be informed, that Mr. URBAN, the series of the muniments of this ancient fraternity, from the reign of Edward the First to that of Henry the Eighth, amounting to 609 original documents, have been chronologically arranged, and carefully bound up in six folio volumes; exclusive of the Gilde ledger, which makes a seventh volume. The Corporation of Stratford, at whose particular request this arrangement of their records took place, will no doubt bestow on them the requisite care, in order to render them available as sources of information to the future historian and topographer. Yours, &c. THOS. FISHER. ANCIENT HOUSE AT IGHTHAM, KENT. THE subject of the accompanying engraving, from a drawing by John Buckler, Esq. F.S.A. is derived from a very ancient house standing on the north side of the highway which passes through the retired village of Ightham in Kent, leading from Wrotham to Sevenoaks. The western portion of this building, the piers of the chimney stacks, it will be observed, are of stone, neatly coigned. The chimney stacks of brick, placed diagonally with the line of the walls. The tops of the chimneys are crenellated or embattled, a circumstance to be observed in English houses, and even cottages, erected at an early period. The remainder, and larger part of the edifice, is composed of a framing of oak timber, filled up with lath and plaster, a style very prevalent in our ancient country-houses, not by any means confined to those of the meaner sort; in illustration of which circum. stance, I shall offer something more in the sequel. The pointed gables of the roof are beautifully relieved by weather facings of carved oak. The upper frame-work of the large bay window, and of the others eastward of the porch, is crenellated, and over one of the windows drops the Tudor labelmoulding, which induces me to consider this house as erected about the latter end of the fifteenth century. The windows are divided by numerous mullions, closely arranged. The extent of the front is about 55 feet.* The whole is a most pleasing example of the domestic architecture of the period, and might be very usefully applied as a model and authority for the old-English villas and lodges of our rural gentry, which (in highly improved taste, because assimilating closely with the original ancient style) are now everywhere presenting themselves throughout the country. No form of building breaks the lines of our English landscape scenery more agreeably than the long roofs and pointed gables of our ancient houses; whether by the mountain's side, or peeping from the bosom of the dark embowering elms, the effect is picturesque and pleasing-far beyond that produced by any of the straight lines of the Palladian school. Nor is this observation to be confined to the country alone. Our Prouts and Hardings, and other great masters of the pencil, will own how abundantly picturesque one of our old English towns is with its * The low parapet wall introduced by the artist in front of the building, does not exist. Its present owner is Mr. Selby, of London, solicitor, not related to the Selbies of the Moat. Of its early proprietary history nothing has been ascertained, but an eminent Kentish antiquary conjectures it is the same which he has found mentioned in old deeds under the name of Thrupp's tenement. Query, was it not the ancient village inn? ornamented gables, bay windows, and chimney stacks, adorned with numerous mouldings, compared with the eternal long files of the brick façades of London, with their straight parapets and formal square apertures for light, so that a man walking through many of our modern streets, may indeed imagine he is passing through as many avenues composed of cribbage boards from Brobdignag, placed edgewise to the eye. Again, the pitched roof is more adapted to our aqueous atmosphere, to the throwing off the floods and snows, and stormy assaults of an English winter, than any other form. Our ancestors were aware of this; but as years rolled on, and labour and materials became more expensive, they were induced to depart from the principle. Therefore it is no bad rule, in a general way, in judging of the period of particular objects of ancient English architecture, that the more acute the pitch of the roof, the older the building.* Perhaps the angle at which roofs were constructed, lessened in some degree accordant with the elevation of the pointed arch, which we know declined by degrees till it attained the lowest possible scale of depression, in which it might be distinguished as an arch. The principal apartment in the interior of the house at Ightham, was of course that for general domestic assembly at meals, which from the cottage to the palace was denominated the Hall. Thus Chaucer, describing the old dame's residence in his tale of the Cock and the Fox, says, "Full sooty was her bowre, and eke her hale, In which she ete many a singell mele." This has its huge chimney constructed for a wood fire on the hearth, and here the smoke of the fire had often to contend with the elements, for, sitting within the chimney in his elbow chair, the occupier of that enviable corner in a winter's night, looking directly up, might fairly see the moon and azure sky, through the aperture of the chimney. In an apartment adjoining the hall of this ancient dwelling, I observed a chimney front of stone, in the depressed style of pointed arch. A doorway of the same form, on the left of the hall, leads to the cellar. In the sleeping apartments above, 1 believe there were no fire places, and one peculiarity I noticed, which gave great height and air to the bedchambers, namely, that there was no loft over them, but that the ceiling was placed against the rafters of the roof. The massive beams, the dark thick oaken planks of the floors, all denoted a period when great stability and duration were desired; when a man built a house as he bespoke his gown of baudekyn, damask, or dornix, for succeeding generations, so that not only his "cote armure," but his coat apparel, were heir-looms in his family. Holinshed, in his "Historie of England," gives some valuable and amusing information relating to our domestic architecture, furniture, and mode of living at the time in which he wrote. He says, that in the cities and towns throughout England, the houses of noblemen and others were constructed chiefly of timber, except in the west country towns, where they were of stone; that in the woody soils the dwellings were strong and well timbered, so that in many places there were above four, six, or nine inches between stud and stud;" he speaks of the upright frame work of the walls; "Certes," adds the venerable chronicler, "this rude kind of building made the Spaniards, in Queene Marie's daies, to wonder, but chieflie when they saw what large diet was used in many of these so homelie cottages, in so much that one of no small reputation among them said, after this maner, 'These English,' quoth he,' have their houses * Among the most acute roofs which we have observed in the county of Kent, was that of an old moated house seated in the meadows, near the course of the Ravensbourne at Bromley, called Simson's, one of the inhabitants of which is said to have been Henry the Eighth's barber. It is now dropping down piecemeal. Its fine lofty chimney-stacks still, however, maintain their perpendicularity and importance, amid the falling walls and timbers. Vol. I. p. 187.-Edit. 1587. made of sticks and dirt, but they fare commonlie so well as the king.' Whereby it appeareth that he liked better of our good fare in such coarse cabins, than of their own thin diet in their princely habitations and palaces."The internal walls of our houses, he says, were either hanged with tapestry or painted cloths, or lined with native oak or wainscot brought from the East Country, meaning Norway and the shores of the Baltic. In country-houses in the olden time, he says, instead of glass they used lattice work either of wicker or fine rifts of oak, disposed checkerwise; to this enumeration might be added horn; thus in an old account among the MSS. preserved at Loseley House in Surrey, of the time of Henry VIII. we have the entry for two hundred of horn " occupyed at Cobham Park, in reparynge of wyndowes at the settynge up of the Kyngs Majesties howses ther, at 3s. 10d. the hundred, 78. 8d."* Another item is for a thousand of lantern horns for the windows of timber houses;† another for gilding the lead or lattice work of the horn windows. These notices prove that horn was a material much employed for the transmission of light through the windows of our ancient houses. Holinshed says, that horn, in his own time, was disused, because glass had become every where so plentiful. The specular stone or selenite, he adds, he has obscurely heard was once used in England instead of glass. He states Kempe's Loseley MSS. p. 103. positively that the windows of princes and great noblemen were glazed with chrystal, and those of Studley Castle, then to be seen, of beryl; both assertions probably very vaguely deducted, and perhaps arising from the colour and quality of the ancient glass. Other things are noticed by this venerable authority worthy of the attention of the domestic antiquary, as the multitude of chimneys which had been erected in his time, whereas in his earlier days they were very rare, and with exception of some mansions, manor-houses, abbeys, &c. each man made his fire against a rere-dosset in the common hall, where he cooked and ate his meat." Holinshed notices also the introduction of feather-beds and counterpanes in exchange for the common homely furniture for repose; § of plate or pewter for the table, instead of wooden platters, spoons, and bowls. These few authentic notes, drawn from an authority if not precisely contemporary with the erection of the old house at Ightham, yet of the age immediately succeeding, I have thought might fairly be introduced in describing its peculiarities. Among other remarkable objects in the same parish, I cursorily mention the extensive Roman entrenchment, on the bold eminence, Old-borough or Old-bury hill; the monument of Sir Thomas Cawne, a fine and perfect example of the military costume of the fourteenth century; the tombs of the These timber houses were temporary edifices in the field, prepared under the direction of Sir Thomas Cawarden, Master of the King's Revels, Tents, Hales (Halls), and Toyles. Ibid. p. 15. The word 'rere-dosse,' here used, seems entitled to some little explanation. It could not be the iron back of a chimney, because there was none in the apartment; it meant therefore an iron for rearing or elevating the logs for fuel, such indeed as to this day is to be seen placed on a hearth in the middle of the old hall at Penshurst in Kent. § I cannot refrain from transcribing the passage relating to this head in his own words: "Our Fathers, yea we ourselves also, have lien full oft upon straw pallets, on rough mats covered onelie with a sheet, under coverlets made of dagswain or hopharlots (qy. sacks?) and a good round log under their heads for a pillow. If it were so that our fathers, or the good man of the house, had within seven years after his marriage purchased a mattress or flock bed, and thereto a sacke of chaffe to rest his head upon, he thought himself to be as well lodged as the lord of the towne, that peradventure lay seldom in a bed of downe or whole feathers..... Pillowes were thought meet onelie for women in child-bed. As for servants, if they had anie sheet above them it was well, for seldom had they anie under their bodies, to keep them from the pricking straws which ran through the canvas of the pallet, and rased (scratched) their hardened hides." |