55 chapters
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55 chapters
PREFACE.
PREFACE.
Pictures of the Domestic Manners of our forefathers, at some of the most attractive periods of English History, form the staple of the present volume. These Pictures are supplemented by Sketches of subordinate Scenes and Incidents which illustrate great changes in Society, and tend to show, in different degrees, the Past as the guide for the Present and the Future. The value and interest of Archæological studies in bringing home to our very doors the information required of special localities, a
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I. Early English Life.
I. Early English Life.
Aboriginal Britons—British Caves—Bosphrennis Bee-hive Hut and Picts' House—On the Brigantes of Yorkshire; by Prof. Phillips Lappenberg's Picture of South Britain—War Chariots—Druidism, its Rites and Customs—Arch-Druid and Mistletoe—Legend of Stonehenge—Charles II. at Stonehenge—Fire Worship—Druidical Serpents' Eggs—Druids' Medicines—Druid Schools and Priests—Trade of the Phœnicians—Tin-trade of Cornwall—Ornamental Art—British War-chiefs—Britain and New Zealand compared Civilization of Ancient Br
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II. Castle Life.
II. Castle Life.
Castles of England—Roman Castles—Pevensey—Maiden Castle and Poundbury—Introduction of Bricks—Norman Castles—Conisborough and Ivanhoe —Tonbridge Castle—Bedford Castle Siege—Raby Castle, Durham—Kitchen of Raby—Durham Castle, Kitchen and Buttery—Legend of Mulgrave Castle—Corfe Castle, and King Edward the Martyr—Lady Bankes's Defence of Corfe—Castles temp. Edward III.—Windsor Castle, its History and Description—St. George's Chapel—Round Tower and Round Table—William of Wykeham and Chaucer, Clerks of
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III. Household Antiquities.
III. Household Antiquities.
The Old English House—Norman Houses—The Manor-house—The Hall—City Companies' Halls—Embattled Mansions—Wingfield and Cowdray—Mary Queen of Scots at Wingfield—Thornbury Castle and its History—Longleat, Wilts—John Thorpe, the Elizabethan Architect—Holland House, Kensington—Burghley, Northamptonshire—Hatfield House, Herts—Campden, Gloucestershire—Haddon Hall, Derbyshire—Lines on Haddon—The Great Hall—Hall at Hampton Court—Hall Windows—Hall Fires—College and Inns of Court Halls—Hall in Aubrey's Time—
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IV. Peasant Life.
IV. Peasant Life.
"A bold Peasantry, their Country's Pride"—Serfdom—Were and Wergild—Operative Tenants—Rent paid in Labour—Monday-men—Villeins—Stocks for Vagrants and unruly Servants—Services of Tillage—Ploughing Boon—Harrowing and Bed-weeding—Threshing, Thatching, Delving, &c.—Inclosures—Malting for the Lord—Malt-silver—Ancient Harvest—Reaping Boon—Hayward—Love-boons or Law-days—Autumnal Precations, temp. Edward II.—Ram Feast—Beltane Superstition—Hayfield cut and cleared—Mutton Rewards—Hock-day Court and
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V. Customs and Ceremonies.
V. Customs and Ceremonies.
May-day Carol on Magdalen College Tower, Oxford—Flower Customs at Oxford—May-day Song at Saffron Walden—May-poles still extant—Raine's Charity—Picture of Oxford Banbury Cakes abolished by the Puritans—Banbury Cross—Banbury zeal and veal —Old Fuller on Banbury—High Church Banburians—Congleton Triangular Cakes and Gingerbread—Sale of Banbury Cakes—Banbury Cheese—Banbury Cross restored—Sack Brewage at Congleton—Shrewsbury Cakes—Islington and Holloway Cheesecakes Horselydown—Curious Picture at Hatfi
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VI. Historic Sketches.
VI. Historic Sketches.
Woodstock Bower, and Rosamund's Well—The Nunnery at Godstow, near Oxford—Rosamund born—Known to Henry II.—Maze at Woodstock—The Silken Clue—The Poison Cup—Rosamund's Tomb at Godstow—Legend from the French Chronicle Fall of Wolsey—Retires to Esher—His Servants and Retainers—Henry VIII. demands a cession of York House—The "comfortable Message"—Death of Wolsey at Leicester—The Abbey—Esher Place embellished by Kent—Dr. Johnson's Portrait of Wolsey—At Cawood—Weighing his Plate—Wolsey and Christchurch
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APPENDIX.
APPENDIX.
Ancient British Dwellings—The Saxon Hall—Abury and Stonehenge...
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DWELLING-PLACES OF THE EARLY BRITONS.
DWELLING-PLACES OF THE EARLY BRITONS.
t has been well observed that the structure of a house reveals much of the mode of life adopted by its inhabitants. The representations of the dwellings of the people of the less cultivated parts of Europe, contrasted with those of the more cultivated countries, should afford us the means of comparing their different degrees of civilization. In the same manner we may measure the growth of improvement in any one country by an attentive consideration of the structure and arrangement of the homes o
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BRITAIN BEFORE THE ROMAN COLONIZATION.
BRITAIN BEFORE THE ROMAN COLONIZATION.
itherto we have but glanced at the dwelling-places of our ancestors, chiefly from existing evidences. Of the general condition of the people before the Roman Conquest, we find this picturesque account in Lappenberg's able work on the Anglo-Saxon Kings. The earliest inhabitants of Britain, as far as we know, were probably of that great family, the main branches of which, distinguished by the designation of Celts, spread themselves so widely over middle and western Europe. They crossed over from t
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THE ROMANS IN ENGLAND.
THE ROMANS IN ENGLAND.
"The Romans in England they once did sway." Old Song . rchæological information obtained of late years shows that at the time of the Roman invasion, there was a larger amount of civilization in Ancient Britain than had been generally supposed: that in addition to the knowledge of the old inhabitants in agriculture, in the training and rearing of horses, cows, and other domestic animals, they were able to work in mines, had skill in the construction of war-chariots and other carriages, and in the
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DOMESTIC LIFE OF THE SAXONS.
DOMESTIC LIFE OF THE SAXONS.
he infant state of our Saxon ancestors when the Romans first observed them, exhibited nothing from which human sagacity could have predicted greatness. A territory on the neck of the Cimbric Chersonesus, and three small islands, contained those whose descendants occupy the circle of Westphalia, the Electorate of Saxony, the British Islands, the United States of North America, and the British Colonies in the two Indies. Such is the course of Providence, that empires, the most extended and the mos
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MEALS—BRITISH, ANGLO-ROMAN, AND SAXON.
MEALS—BRITISH, ANGLO-ROMAN, AND SAXON.
he Britons, we learn, made their table on the ground, on which they spread the skins of wolves and dogs. The guests sat round, the food was placed before them, and each took his part. They were waited upon by the youth of both sexes. They who had not skins were contented with a little hay, which was laid under them; they ate very little bread, but much meat, boiled, or broiled upon coals, or roasted upon spits, before fires kindled as gipsies do in these days. The best living appears to have bee
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ENGLISH CASTLE-BUILDING.
ENGLISH CASTLE-BUILDING.
he history of building of Castles in England and Wales may be divided into periods of transition, changing with the exigencies and requirements of the age, and its character of civilization. The Castles of England consist of those erected by the Romans; of British and Saxon castles erected previous to, and Norman castles erected after, the Norman Conquest; also of the more modern stone and brick castles, erected from about the reign of Edward I. to the time of Henry VII. The Roman castles in thi
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THE OLD ENGLISH HOUSE.
THE OLD ENGLISH HOUSE.
itherto we have but glanced at the earlier periods of what may be termed Domestic Life in England. We have attempted to trace our British ancestors in their "woods and caves, and painted skins;" in their rude state, before the Roman colonization; in their advancement under that enlightened sway; and their decadence after their conquerors had left them. To these periods have succeeded the ages of Castle-building, when edifices were built for purposes of defence. In lawless times, might lorded it
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THE ENGLISHMAN'S FIRESIDE.
THE ENGLISHMAN'S FIRESIDE.
ealthful Warmth and Ventilation are to this day problems to be worked out; and few practical subjects have so extensively enlisted ingenious minds in their service. Yet, much remains to be done. Dr. Arnott, the worthy successor of Count Rumford [41] in heat philosophy , when seeking to shame us out of using ill-contrived fireplaces and scientific bunglings, tells us that the savages of North America place fire in the middle of the floor of their huts, and sit around in the smoke, for which there
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PRIVATE LIFE OF A QUEEN OF ENGLAND.
PRIVATE LIFE OF A QUEEN OF ENGLAND.
ne of the most interesting records of the domestic life of our ancestors that we remember to have read, is a series of "Notices of the Last Days of Isabella, Queen of Edward II. drawn from an Account of the Expenses of her Household," and communicated to the Society of Antiquaries, by Mr. E. A. Bond, of the British Museum. Nothing can exceed the minuteness of this memorial of the domestic manners of the middle of the fourteenth century— the private life of five hundred years since . No court cir
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THE ENGLISH HOUSEWIFE.
THE ENGLISH HOUSEWIFE.
early two centuries and a half ago, Gervase Markham wrote a very useful and entertaining tract, entitled "The English Housewife, containing the inward and outward virtues which ought to be in a compleate woman. As her skill in physick, surgery, cookery, extraction of oyles, banquetting stuffe, ordering of great feasts, preserving of all sorts of wines, conceited secrets, distillations, perfumes, ordering of wooll, hempe, flax, making cloth, and dyeing; the knowledge of dayries, office of malting
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A HEREFORDSHIRE LADY IN THE TIME OF THE CIVIL WAR.
A HEREFORDSHIRE LADY IN THE TIME OF THE CIVIL WAR.
bout two centuries ago, there lived in the good old city of Hereford, one Mrs. Joyce Jefferies, of whose singular establishment, during nine years, a minute record has been preserved. In a cathedral town, olden features of English life may be traced more considerably than in other towns of less antiquity and extent. Hereford is thought to be derived from the British Hêre-fford, signifying the "old road." It has its Mayor's Court, view of Frankpledge, and court of Pie Pondre; though it has lost i
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HOUSE-FURNISHING IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
HOUSE-FURNISHING IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
n accomplished illustrator of our Domestic History in describing the mode of furnishing houses in the Middle Ages, tells us that there were tables of Cyprus and other rare woods, carved cabinets, desks, chess-boards, and, above all, the Bed—the most important piece of furniture in the house, and of which Ralph Lord Basset said, "Whoever shall bear my surname and arms, according to my will, shall have my great bed for life." There was the "standing bed," and the "truckle bed;" on the former lay t
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DRESS.—PERSONAL ORNAMENTS.
DRESS.—PERSONAL ORNAMENTS.
rom the old accounts of the Laundry we gather some idea of mediæval clothing and personal cleanliness. Four shirts was a large allowance for a nobleman in the fifteenth century; and youths of noble rank were sent to college without a change of linen. It is upon record that Bishop Swinfield, for himself and his whole household, in the thirteenth century, only spent forty-three shillings and twopence for washing; and the Duke of Northumberland's establishment, in the time of Henry VIII. consisting
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PINS AND PIN-MONEY.
PINS AND PIN-MONEY.
etal pins are said to have been introduced into this country from France in the fifteenth century: as an article of commerce they are not mentioned in our statutes until the year 1483. Before this date, we are told that ladies were accustomed to fasten their dresses by means of skewers of boxwood, ivory, or bone; this statement has been doubted, but we are assured that, to this day, the Welsh use as a pin the thorn from the hedge. Stow assigns the first manufacture of metal pins in England to th
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PROVISIONS:
PROVISIONS:
nder the designation of Panis , Mr. Hudson Turner thinks that grain and flour, as well as bread, were included. It would appear that bread of different degrees of fineness was used. Thus, in the Household Expenses of Eleanor, Countess of Leicester, third daughter of King John, and wife of the celebrated Simon de Montfort, 1265, "the earliest known memorial of the domestic expenditure of an English subject," we find that there was "bread purchased for the Countess," and "bread for the kitchen." L
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DESSERT FRUITS.
DESSERT FRUITS.
The only kinds of fruits named in the Countess of Leicester's Expenses, are apples and pears: three hundred of the latter were purchased at Canterbury; probably from the gardens of the monks. It is believed, however, that few other sorts were generally grown in England before the latter end of the fifteenth century; although Matthew Paris, describing the bad season of 1257, observes that "apples were scarce, and pears scarcer, while quinces, vegetables, cherries, plums, and all shell-fruits, wer
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ORNAMENTAL FRUIT TRENCHERS.
ORNAMENTAL FRUIT TRENCHERS.
The usages of social life amongst our ancestors present us with several interesting instances of their ingenuity in keeping before them the rule of life by monitory inscriptions, or texts, placed over doorways, upon walls, and upon articles in daily domestic use, thus making it "plain upon the tables, that he may run that readeth it." We find this good advice upon the curiously-ornamented Fruit-trenchers in fashion during the sixteenth century. The only set of tablets, or trenchers, of this desc
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VEGETABLES.
VEGETABLES.
Very few esculent plants are mentioned in the Accounts of the Middle Ages. Dried peas and beans, parsley, fennel, onions, green peas, and new beans, are the only species named. Pot-herbs, of which the names are not specified, but which served eleven days, cost 6 d . There is much uncertainty upon the subject of the cultivation of vegetables, in this country, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Cresses, endive, lettuces, beets, parsnips, carrots, cabbages, leeks, radishes, and cardoon
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ANTIQUITY OF CHEESE.
ANTIQUITY OF CHEESE.
Cheese and curdling of milk are mentioned in the Book of Job. David was sent by his father, Jesse, to carry ten cheeses to the camp, and to see how his brethren fared. "Cheese of kine" formed part of the supplies of David's army at Mahanaim during the rebellion of Absalom. Homer makes cheese form part of the ample stores found by Ulysses in the cave of the Cyclop Polyphemus. Euripides, Theocritus, and other early poets, mention cheese. Ludolphus says that excellent cheese and butter were made by
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ALE AND BEER.
ALE AND BEER.
The virtues of Saxon ale have already been commemorated, at pp. 66-68 . We return to the subject, at a later period. "It may be remarked," says Mr. Hudson Turner, "that in the thirteenth century the English had no certain principle as to the grain best suited for brewing. A roll of household expenses of the Countess of Leicester shows that Beer was made indiscriminately of barley, wheat, and oats, and sometimes of a mixture of all. As the Hop was not used we may conjecture that the produce of th
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OPERATIVE TENANTS.
OPERATIVE TENANTS.
Villenage and operative tenancy were almost extinct at the time of the Reformation. The few villeins, or operative tenants, then remaining, were in the occupation of small plots of land, or were, in fact, agricultural labourers, working for wages, rather than tenants paying their rent in labour . They were scarcely to be found except upon Church-lands, or upon lands which had lately belonged to the Church. An operative tenant of five acres usually worked once a week for the lord. We learn from D
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SERVICES OF TILLAGE.
SERVICES OF TILLAGE.
We now proceed to the several services. Grass-erth , or the service of Tillage, was in return for the privilege of feeding cattle in the lord's open pastures. The Saxon boor ploughed two acres, and might be allowed to plough more if he required more pasture. At Sturminster Newton in Dorsetshire, certain tenants came upon the lord's grass-land on the morrow of St. Martin's Day with as many teams of oxen as they could bring, and they ploughed four acres of the land with each team; they brought see
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OLDEN HARVEST.
OLDEN HARVEST.
A bedrip , reaping boon , or autumnal precation , was a more pompous festival than an arable precation . In old times, as in our own, the Harvest was made a season of merriment, if not of thanksgiving: "In tyme of harvest mery it is ynough; The hayward bloweth mery his horn, In eueryche felde ripe is corn." Romance of King Alexander. In the illustrations of an old Saxon Calendar, in the Cotton Library, the hayward is shown standing on a hillock, cheering the reapers with his horn. Slumbering rea
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HOCK-DAY.
HOCK-DAY.
The second Tuesday after Easter, was another very important day in bygone times. At Chingford, the ward-staff was presented in court on Hock-day. John Ross, of Warwick, records that, on the death of Hardicanute, England was delivered from Danish servitude; and to commemorate this deliverance, on the day commonly called Hock Tuesday, the people of the villages are accustomed to pull in parties at each end of a rope, and to indulge in other jokes. The Hock-tide sports were kept up at Hexton, in He
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SHEEP-SHEARING.
SHEEP-SHEARING.
This was another service imposed upon the tenantry. Though hard and heavy work to wash and shear sheep, in the thirteenth century it was done by women, who are called "shepsters" in the Vision of Piers Plowman. The sheep were washed in the mill-pond. Shearers were usually entitled to the wambelocks, or loose locks of wool under the belly of the sheep; or at Weston, in Oxfordshire, a penny instead of the locks. The finest part of the fleece is the wool about the sheep's throat, called in Scotland
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CONVEYANCE SERVICE.
CONVEYANCE SERVICE.
The most irksome tasks were the transport services, called in Scotland the duties of arriage and carriage . The load of a sumpter-horse was usually eight bushels—the weight of a sack of wool, or a quarter of corn. A wain-load was apparently nine seams. The goods carried were chiefly provisions—grain, pulse, malt, honey, bacon, suet, salt, and wood. A castle or monastery was farmed —that is, supplied with food—by the nearest manors belonging to the lord. The farming was done according to a regula
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WATCH AND WARD.—THE BEADLE.
WATCH AND WARD.—THE BEADLE.
The wardmen of ancient times were a kind of rural police, whose duty of ward-keeping was connected with their tenure. They were, probably, maintained on the north side of London until the institution of a general system of police in the time of Edward the First. By the statute of Winton, it was ordered that a watch should be kept by six men at each gate of a city, by twelve men in every borough, and by six men or four men in each rural township, every night, from the Feast of the Ascension of ou
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OLDEN HOUSE-MARKS.
OLDEN HOUSE-MARKS.
he means by which property has been identified, and denoted by some distinctive mark, at various periods, present us with some curious customs. In England, individual marks were in use from the fourteenth to the middle of the seventeenth centuries, probably much earlier; and when a yeoman affixed his mark to a deed, he drew a signum , well known to his neighbours, by which his land, his cattle, and sheep, his agricultural implements, and even his ducks, were identified. In the 25th year of Queen
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MAY-DAY CAROL ON MAGDALEN COLLEGE TOWER.
MAY-DAY CAROL ON MAGDALEN COLLEGE TOWER.
ay customs are nothing more than a gratulation of the spring, to testify universal joy at the revival of vegetation. Hence the universality of the practice; and its festivities being inspired by the gay face of Nature, they are as old as any we have on record. There is at Oxford a May-day ceremony which has a special claim upon our respect and veneration, for nearly four centuries. Upon the majestic Perpendicular tower of Magdalen College we have many time and oft looked with reverential feeling
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BANBURY CAKES.—CONGLETON CAKES, etc.
BANBURY CAKES.—CONGLETON CAKES, etc.
hat the ancient town of Banbury, lying on the northern verge of the county of Oxford, should have been famed, from time immemorial, for its rich cakes, should not excite our special wonder, seeing that the district has some of the richest pasture land in the kingdom; a single cow being here known to produce 200 pounds of butter in a year! Butter, we need scarcely add, is the prime ingredient of the Banbury cake, giving it the richness and lightness of the finest puff-paste; and, to the paper in
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HORSELYDOWN FAIR, IN THE REIGN OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.
HORSELYDOWN FAIR, IN THE REIGN OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.
orselydown is situate near the bank of the river Thames, about half a mile eastward of London Bridge. "It is difficult," says Mr. Corner, the Southwark antiquary, "to imagine that a neighbourhood now so crowded with wharves and warehouses, granaries and factories, mills, breweries, and places of business of all kinds, and where the busy hum of men at work, like bees in a hive, is incessant, can have been, not many centuries since, a region of pleasant fields and meadows, pastures for sheep and c
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WAKE FESTIVALS IN THE BLACK COUNTRY.
WAKE FESTIVALS IN THE BLACK COUNTRY.
akes were originally established to commemorate the erection of the church in the parish where they were held. They were then celebrated on the Sunday, and the parson did not deem it "unworthy his high vocation" to enjoy a gambol on the village-green after the morning service. In the larger towns, most of the churches had weekly fairs or markets attached to them, these also being held on the Sabbath. As late as the commencement of the fourteenth century, Wolverhampton had a market every Sunday m
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KEEPING BIRDS IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
KEEPING BIRDS IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
lexander Neckam, from whose Treatise the following curious things are derived, was a learned man of the twelfth century: his work, which is written in Latin, has been translated by Mr. Thomas Wright, and published under the direction of the Master of the Polls. Of Neckam's birth we learn the date from a chronicle formerly existing among the MSS. of the Earl of Arundel, which inform us that "in the month of September, 1157, there was born to the King at Windsor a son named Richard; and the same n
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THE STORY OF FAIR ROSAMUND.
THE STORY OF FAIR ROSAMUND.
n the noble Park of Blenheim they show you two sycamore-trees on the spot where the ancient Palace of Woodstock was built; and near the Bridge is a spring called Rosamund's Well. Hard by was the celebrated Bower, erected by Henry II., and the scene of Addison's poetical opera of Rosamund , in excellent verse, which, wedded to the music of Dr. Arne, proved very successful. Several passages long retained their popularity, and were daily sung, during the latter part of George the Second's reign, at
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CARDINAL WOLSEY AT ESHER PLACE.
CARDINAL WOLSEY AT ESHER PLACE.
n one of the loveliest and most picturesque vales of the county of Surrey, there exists, to this day, a fragment of Esher, or, as it is termed in old records, Asher Place, the last place of retreat where Wolsey fell,— "Like a bright exhalation in the evening." Here,— "In the lovely vale Of Esher, where the Mole glides lingering; loth To leave such scenes of sweet simplicity,"— was anciently a palace of the prelates of Winchester, built by William Wayneflete, who held the see from 1447 to 1486. I
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TRADITIONS OF BATTLE-FIELDS.
TRADITIONS OF BATTLE-FIELDS.
t has been frequently remarked that the general decay of local traditions, or the difficulty of obtaining particulars of events, or the sites of the most remembered passages of history, is, year by year, becoming more evident. It might be expected that in the vicinity of great transactions, among a rude and ignorant peasantry, we should find more frequent vestiges of the one memorable action which made their locality famous; yet, it is astonishing to find how often these are completely obliterat
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CURIOSITIES OF HATFIELD.
CURIOSITIES OF HATFIELD.
his noble seat has been incidentally noticed in the preceding pages. [77] Although the Princess Elizabeth was kept a prisoner at Hatfield, she occasionally went to London to pay her court to Queen Mary; and in 1556 she was invited to court, and proceeded thither with great parade. Elizabeth, however, preferred the quiet and pleasant scenery of Hatfield. The hall of the old palace now accommodates about thirty horses. The combination of old trees, the rich-coloured brickwork, and the curiously-wr
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THE GRAND REMONSTRANCE.
THE GRAND REMONSTRANCE.
he most memorable sitting in Parliament, in the fourth year of King Charles the First, was that of the House of Commons, on March 2d, 1629, which was pronounced by Sir Simonds D'Ewes as " the most gloomy, sad, and dismal day for England that had happened for five hundred years ." The incidents of this day will be recollected by every one. Sir John Eliot is said, according to all accounts, to have made an indignant attack upon Lord Weston, the new Treasurer, and to have concluded by moving the ad
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CAVALIERS AND ROUNDHEADS.
CAVALIERS AND ROUNDHEADS.
he word Cavalier was not at first necessarily a term of reproach. Shakspeare does not so employ it when he speaks of the gay and gallant English eager for French invasion— "For who is he ... that will not follow These cull'd and choice-drawn Cavaliers to France?" But it was most unquestionably used in a reproachful sense on the occasion of the tumult in the reign of Charles I., probably to connect its French origin with the un-English character of the defenders of the Queen and her French papist
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THE EVELYNS AT WOTTON.
THE EVELYNS AT WOTTON.
t has been well observed of the Evelyn family, that "rarely do we read of people who so admirably combined a love of rural life with literature." Studious retirement, not isolation, was what John Evelyn sought; and nowhere did he so delightfully enjoy his tastes as at Wotton House or Place in Surrey. This "great Virtuoso," as Aubrey called him, has left us the following account of his family, and of their first settlement at Wotton:—"We have not been at Wotton (purchased of one Owen, a great ric
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LORD BOLINGBROKE AT BATTERSEA.
LORD BOLINGBROKE AT BATTERSEA.
his parish and manor, three miles south-west of London, on the Surrey bank of the Thames, appertained, from a very early period, to the Abbey of St. Peter at Westminster; and is conjectured, by Lysons, to have been therefrom named, in the Conqueror's Survey, Patricsey, which, in the Saxon, is Peter's water, or river; since written Battrichsey, Battersey, and Battersea. It passed to the Crown, at the dissolution of religious houses: in 1627 it was granted to the St. John family, in whose possessi
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THE LAST OF EPPING FOREST.
THE LAST OF EPPING FOREST.
n the twelfth edition of The Ambulator , edited nearly half a century ago by that trustworthy topographer, Mr. E. W. Brayley, under "Epping Forest," we read "a plan for the inclosure of the Forest has been recently projected." And this plan has been slowly but surely put into execution; the inclosures having been so numerous that little remains of this charming forest district, with its verdant glades, secluded dells, thickets, majestic oaks, and sinking vistas of enchanting wilderness and cheer
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ANCIENT BRITISH DWELLINGS.
ANCIENT BRITISH DWELLINGS.
( Pages 1-7 .) e have, says Sir Richard Colt Hoare, in his Ancient Wiltshire , "undoubted proof from history, and from existing remains, that the earliest habitations were pits, or slight excavations in the ground, covered and protected from the inclemency of the weather by boughs of trees or sods of turf." These dwellings usually formed villages, conveniently situated near streams or rivers, the habitations of the lords of the soil before the Roman occupation. Amongst the moorlands and wilds of
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THE SAXON HALL.
THE SAXON HALL.
( Page 48 .) The Saxon Hall for feeding retainers was mostly built of wood and thatched with reeds, or roofed with wooden shingles. The fire was kindled in the centre, and the lord and "hearth-men" sat by while the meal was cooked....
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ABURY AND STONEHENGE.
ABURY AND STONEHENGE.
( Page 14 .) The late Mr. Rickman, the antiquary, was of opinion that Abury and Stonehenge cannot reasonably be carried back to a period antecedent to the Christian era. In an Essay communicated by him to the Society of Antiquaries in 1839, after tracing the Roman road from Dover and Canterbury, through Noviomagus and London, to the West of England, Mr. Rickman notices that Silbury is situated immediately upon that road; and that the avenues of Abury extend up to it, whilst their course is refer
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OF THE
OF THE
A Book of Curious Contributions to Natural History . With Illustrations by Zwecker . Post 8vo. 6s. cloth. "Amongst all the books of the season that will be studied with pleasure as well as profit, by girls as well as boys, there is not one more meritorious in aim, or more successful in execution, than Strange Stories of the Animal World . In his Preface to this useful compilation, the author of Things not generally Known says that he has endeavoured 'to present wonders free from that love of exa
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GRIFFITH AND FARRAN, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD.
GRIFFITH AND FARRAN, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD.
[1] Annals of England , vol. i. 1855. [2] Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal , N. S. No. 1, 1858. [3] The Rivers, Mountains, and Sea-Coasts of Yorkshire , 2d edit. 1855. [4] It must have been a proud day for John Aubrey, the Wiltshire antiquary, when he attended Charles II. and the Duke of York on their visit to Abury, which the King was told at a meeting of the Royal Society, in 1663 (soon after its formation), as much excelled Stonehenge as a cathedral does a parish church. In leaving Abury,
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