, if one did not object to the lack of air in the narrow street
and the absence of sunlight. But we find these same projecting storeys
in the depth of the country, where there could have been no
restriction as to the ground to be occupied by the house. Possibly the
fashion was first established of necessity in towns, and the
traditional mode of building was continued in the country. Some say
that by this means our ancestors tried to protect the lower part of
the house, the foundations, from the influence of the weather; others
with some ingenuity suggest that these projecting storeys were
intended to form a covered walk for passengers in the streets, and to
protect them from the showers of slops which the careless housewife of
Elizabethan times cast recklessly from the upstairs windows.
Architects tell us that it was purely a matter of construction. Our
forefathers used to place four strong corner-posts, framed from the
trunks of oak trees, firmly sunk into the ground with their roots left
on and placed upward, the roots curving outwards so as to form
supports for the upper storeys. These curved parts, and often the
posts also, were often elaborately carved and ornamented, as in the
example which our artist gives us of a corner-post of a house in
Ipswich.

In _The Charm of the English Village_ I have tried to describe the
methods of the construction of these timber-framed houses,[11] and it
is perhaps unnecessary for me to repeat what is there recorded. In
fact, there were three types of these dwelling-places, to which have
been given the names Post and Pan, Transom Framed, and Intertie Work.
In judging of the age of a house it will be remembered that the nearer
together the upright posts are placed the older the house is. The
builders as time went on obtained greater confidence, set their posts
wider apart, and held them together by transoms.

[11] _The Charm of the English Village_, pp. 50-7.

[Illustration: Gothic Corner-post. The Half Moon Inn, Ipswich]

Surrey is a county of good cottages and farm-houses, and these have
had their chroniclers in Miss Gertrude Jekyll's delightful _Old West
Surrey_ and in the more technical work of Mr. Ralph Nevill, F.S.A. The
numerous works on cottage and farm-house building published by Mr.
Batsford illustrate the variety of styles that prevailed in different
counties, and which are mainly attributable to the variety in the
local materials in the counties. Thus in the Cotswold