, and close to the house widened into a pool
which was still further enlarged by means of a dam, forming a small lake
of the clearest water. This lake fed a mill-race lower down. The
farmyard and rick-barton were a little way up the narrow valley, on one
side of which there was a rookery. The house itself was built in the
pure Elizabethan style; with mullioned windows, and innumerable gables
roofed with tiles. Nor was it wanting in the traditions of the olden
time. This fine old place was the homestead of a large farm comprising
some of the best land of the district, both down and meadow. Another
farmhouse, still used for that purpose, stands upon the wildest part of
the down, and is built of flint and concrete. It was erected nearly
three hundred years ago, and is of unusual size. The woodwork is all
solid black oak, good enough for an earl's mansion.

These are specimens of the highest class of farmhouse. Immediately
beneath them come the houses built in the early part of the present
century. They vary in almost every architectural detail, and the
materials differ in each county; but the general arrangement is the
same. They consist as it were of two distinct houses under one roof. The
front is the dwelling-house proper, usually containing a kitchen,
sitting-room, and parlour. The back contains the wood-house (coal-house
now), the brewhouse--where the beer was brewed, which frequently also
had an oven--and, most important of all, the dairy. All this part of the
place is paved with stone flags, and the dairy is usually furnished with
lattice-work in front of the windows, so that they can be left open to
admit the cool air and not thieves. Coolness is the great requisite in a
dairy, and some gentlemen who make farming a science go to the length of
having a fountain of water constantly playing in it. These houses,
however, were built before scientific agriculture was thought of. The
wood-house contained the wood used for cooking and domestic purposes;
for at that date wood was universally used in the country, and coal
rarely seen. The wood was of course grown on the farm, for which purpose
those wide double mound hedges, now rapidly disappearing, were made. It
was considered a good arrangement to devote half-an-acre in some
outlying portion of the farm entirely to wood, not only for the fire,
but for poles, to make posts and rails, gates, ladders, &c. The coal
could not in those days be conveyed so cheaply as it now is by