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The district is a singular one, suggestive of some sleepy little dead-alive seaport town rather than of London. Quaint water-ways, crossed by foot-bridges, burrow in between small low cottages and warehouses. Some of these have overhanging upper stories to them, are half-timbered or yellow-washed. Some are built wholly of wood. There is an all-pervading odour of tar and hempen rope.
There was a charming island of old houses near the cattle-market, which have all disappeared. They were most picturesque and interesting buildings, and we regret to have to record that new half-timbered structures have been erected in their place with sham beams, and boards nailed on to the walls to represent beams, one of the monstrosities of modern architectural art.
And close at hand came the village: the small church, with its red-tiled roof, looking humble even among the faded half-timbered houses; the old green gravestones with nettles round them; nothing fresh and bright but the children, opening round eyes at the swift post-chaise; nothing noisy and busy but the gaping curs of mysterious pedigree. What a much prettier village Hayslope was!
The quaintest of old-time York streets is The Shambles, a narrow lane paved with cobblestones and only wide enough to permit the passing of one vehicle at a time. It is lined on either side with queer, half-timbered houses, and in one or two places these have sagged to such an extent that their tops are not more than two or three feet apart.
In the town there is a much-modernized town hall, and near it the old-fashioned Booth Hall, a half-timbered building, now used as shops and cottages, where formerly courts were held, including the court of pie-powder, the usual accompaniment of every fair. Bridge Street is one of the most attractive streets in the borough, with its quaint old house, and the famous inn, "The Crown."
This was a fine old half-timbered building of Elizabethan days, and here, all through the Penal times, Mass had been kept up, a priest to say it being always in hiding somewhere in the district. The priest in charge of Lydiate at the time I was there told me he was collecting for a regular church or chapel, and hoped soon to make a commencement of the building.
When darkness fell over highway and byway, fires were lit down the middle of the narrow streets, and they sent up wide flakes of light that brightened the fronts of the half-timbered houses on either side, and shot a red glow into the sky, where the square walls of the Dungeon Tower stood out against dark rolling clouds.
There were fine, shield-bearing doorways of the Renaissance to be seen, Gothic windows in greasy walls, and here and there at a street corner a huddle of half-timbered houses in a high contrast of invading sunlight and retreating shade. From the cathedral parapet, there was a view of the distant forts, and a horizontal sweep of the unharvested, buff-brown moorlands.
Wymondham, once famous for its abbey, is noted for its "Green Dragon," a beautiful half-timbered house with projecting storeys, and in our wanderings we must not forget to see along the Brighton road the picturesque "Star" at Alfriston with its three oriel windows, one of the oldest in Sussex. It was once a sanctuary within the jurisdiction of the Abbot of Battle for persons flying from justice.
Troy Wilkins lamented the passing of the solid and expensive stone residences of the nineties, but he kept "up to date," and he had added ideals about half-timbered villas, doorway settles, garages, and sleeping-porches to his repertoire. He didn't, however, as he often said, "believe in bungalows any more than he believed in these labor unions." §
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