, a charming region for the study of
cottage-building. There you can see some charming ingle-nooks in the
interior of the dwellings, and some grand farm-houses. Attached to the
ingle-nook is the oven, wherein bread is baked in the old-fashioned
way, and the chimneys are large and carried up above the floor of the
first storey, so as to form space for curing bacon.

[Illustration: Farm-house, Horsmonden, Kent]

Horsmonden, Kent, near Lamberhurst, is beautifully situated among
well-wooded scenery, and the farm-house shown in the illustration is a
good example of the pleasant dwellings to be found therein.

East Anglia has no good building-stone, and brick and flint are the
principal materials used in that region. The houses built of the
dark, dull, thin old bricks, not of the great staring modern
varieties, are very charming, especially when they are seen against a
background of wooded hills. We give an illustration of some cottages
at Stow Langtoft, Suffolk.

[Illustration: Seventeenth-century Cottages, Stow Langtoft, Suffolk]

The old town of Banbury, celebrated for its cakes, its Cross, and its
fine lady who rode on a white horse accompanied by the sound of bells,
has some excellent "black and white" houses with pointed gables and
enriched barge-boards pierced in every variety of patterns, their
finials and pendants, and pargeted fronts, which give an air of
picturesqueness contrasting strangely with the stiffness of the
modern brick buildings. In one of these is established the old Banbury
Cake Shop. In the High Street there is a very perfect example of these
Elizabethan houses, erected about the year 1600. It has a fine oak
staircase, the newels beautifully carved and enriched with pierced
finials and pendants. The market-place has two good specimens of the
same date, one of which is probably the front of the Unicorn Inn, and
had a fine pair of wooden gates bearing the date 1684, but I am not
sure whether they are still there. The Reindeer Inn is one of the
chief architectural attractions of the town. We see the dates 1624 and
1637 inscribed on different parts of the building, but its chief glory
is the Globe Room, with a large window, rich plaster ceiling, good
panelling, elaborately decorated doorways and chimney-piece. The
courtyard is a fine specimen of sixteenth-century architecture. A
curious feature is the mounting-block near the large oriel window. It
must have been designed not for mounting horses, unle