, and peradventure some
great personages [parsonages]), but each one made his fire against a
reredosse in the halle, where he dined and dressed his meate," This
want of chimneys is noticeable in many pictures of, and previous to,
the time of Henry VIII. A timber farm-house yet remains (or did until
recently) near Folkestone, which shows no vestige of either chimney or
hearth.

Most of our great houses and manor-houses sprang up in the great
Elizabethan building epoch, when the untold wealth of the monasteries
which fell into the hands of the courtiers and favourites of the King,
the plunder of gold-laden Spanish galleons, and the unprecedented
prosperity in trade gave such an impulse to the erection of fine
houses that the England of that period has been described as "one
great stonemason's yard." The great noblemen and gentlemen of the
Court were filled with the desire for extravagant display, and built
such clumsy piles as Wollaton and Burghley House, importing French and
German artisans to load them with bastard Italian Renaissance detail.
Some of these vast structures are not very admirable with their
distorted gables, their chaotic proportions, and their crazy
imitations of classic orders. But the typical Elizabethan mansion,
whose builder's means or good taste would not permit of such a
profusion of these architectural luxuries, is unequalled in its
combination of stateliness with homeliness, in its expression of the
manner of life of the class for which it was built. And in the humbler
manors and farm-houses the latter idea is even more perfectly
expressed, for houses were affected by the new fashions in
architecture generally in proportion to their size.

[Illustration: The Moat, Crowhurst Place, Surrey]

Holinshed tells of the increased use of stone or brick in his age in
the district wherein he lived. In other parts of England, where the
forests supplied good timber, the builders stuck to their
half-timbered houses and brought the "black and white" style to
perfection. Plaster was extensively used in this and subsequent ages,
and often the whole surface of the house was covered with rough-cast,
such as the quaint old house called Broughton Hall, near Market
Drayton. Avebury Manor, Wiltshire, is an attractive example of the
plastered house. The irregular roof-line, the gables, and the
white-barred windows, and the contrast of the white walls with the
rich green of the vines and surrounding trees combine to