1833.]

Mr. URBAN, New Kent-road, Nov.9, IN a communication descriptive of some ancient Paintings on wainscot, inserted in your hundredth volume, part ii. p. 497, I offered some remarks on the custom of decorating the walls of apartments at a very early period with pictorial representations.

It was observed that about the reign of Elizabeth, a mode of hanging rooms with drapery was introduced, which partook both of the nature of tapestry and of the custom of painting on the walls, viz. painted cloths. That passage of Shakspeare's Henry IV. was quoted in illustration, in which Falstaff says his newly-raised recruits are as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth;" and another was referred to, in which, in order to induce his hostess Dame Quickly to part with her furniture, that she might be enabled to make him a loan, he persuades her that "a German hunting in water-work is worth a thousand of those fly-bitten tapestries."

I was disposed to confound these German paintings in fresco with the painted cloths, until chance threw a further light on the subject, by presenting on the walls of an ancient mansion a series of paintings of Shakspeare's period, in fresco, all the details of which are decidedly German.

The house above mentioned, which is represented in the Plate, stood on the open common at Woodford in Essex, and was demolished as recently

as the autumn of 1832.* It was situated at some distance from the north side of the London road, at the corner of Snake's-lane; was called Grovehouse; and was traditionally said to have been a hunting seat of the Earl of Essex,-of Robert Devereux, I suppose, the favourite of Queen Elizabeth. A portion of the north wall of this mansion still, I am informed, remaining, bears a shield, sculptured in stone, and charged with the inscrip

L

tion I. B. 1580. These initials, together with the arms of the Companies of Merchant-Adventurers and Grocers,

* A view of the other side of the house has been prettily etched by Mr. George Cooke.

The same tradition was attached to Hereford house, afterwards the poorhouse, at Woodford; engraved in our vol. LXV. p. 609.

GENT. MAG. November, 1833.

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which will be subsequently noticed, seem to show it was rather built for the country villa of a wealthy citizen.

This venerable rural lodge, like all our larger houses of the olden time, was distinguished by the number of its gables aligning with its front. It had, among several others, three apartments, one distinguished by the traditional or perhaps fanciful appellation of the ball-room; another by that of the banqueting-room; a third, from its wainscoted walls, the oaken chamber. The ball-room was a long gallery, the style of which assimilated with naval architecture, as may be seen in the engraving. On that part of the walls of this room, which united at an angle with the ceiling, were, in twelve compartments, as many subjects of rural life painted in fresco. Six of these paintings remained tolerably perfect; while the others exhibited only a few traces of their former existence, or were obliterated by a coat of whitewash, with which the whole in modern days had been covered, owing to the following remarkable circumstances. The old mansion had been occupied as a school, and the master had made this spacious gallery the dormitory of his scholars. When the children went to bed by twilight in the long summer evenings, these figures on the walls so disturbed their infant imagi nations, that they could not settle themselves to repose. The pedagogue was no antiquary, and the phantoms were exorcised by the plasterer's brush. In the course of subsequent years the crazy mansion was left empty and abandoned, the whitewash peeled from the walls, and the shadows in German fresco again made their appearance. What remained perfect of these limnings, has been preserved by a young lady of taste, by whose permission I contribute one of them for the graphic illustration of these notes, regretting that your page cannot find room for the whole of the subjects which she has preserved. The first of these is a hay-making, the mowers busily em

This young lady was the pupil of Mr. Henry Stothard, teacher of drawing and modelling, himself a pupil of the late Mr. Flaxman. To him I am indebted for various local particulars relative to Grovehouse, which I had not the opportunity of obtaining in person previously to its demolition.

ployed, others regaling themselves with the contents of a flask. The second, a farm-yard, with sheep-shearing. The third, the reaping of a field of wheat, and making it up into sheaves. The fourth, gathering apples in an orchard. In the back-ground of this subject appears one of the strongly fortified towns of Germany, its bastions, ravelins, curtains, and covered ways, a fine cathedral church (which might perhaps be identified by a continental traveller) rises above the lines, and completes the picture. The subject of the fifth division is the felling trees in the winter season. The last compartment of these paintings is that represented in the engraving; it exhibits a sort of conversazione campestre, in the front, as we may suppose, of the stately mansion of the lord of the domain where the rural occupations before detailed have taken place in their respective seasons. gentleman of the company plays on the violin, a lady sings from a musicbook, another cavalier touches the guitar, a third is chaunting like the lady from written notes; another female strikes the harp; a domestic attends with refreshments. The picture bears the initials D. M. C. and date 1617. The D and C are placed monogrammatically over the first and last limb of the M. Was this the mark of any known artist of the time? We proceed to the apartment styled the banqueting-room.

A

Over the fire-place were carved in stone the arms of Queen Elizabeth, supported by the lion and Tudor dragon, surrounded by the garter and its motto; at the bottom, the royal motto "Dieu et mon droit;" on either side, E. R. with a rose and fleur-de-lis. On the compartments of the fretted cieling were banded wreaths of laurel encircling the royal arms, crown, and garter; also an escutcheon with angles terminating in scrolls bearing Wavy, on a chief quarterly, four roses and two lions passant, the arms of the Company of Merchant Adventurers. In the oaken chamber over the doorways were shields bearing a cross ermine charged with a crescent, between four goats; also, a chevron be. tween nine cloves, the arms of the Grocers' Company.

On the pediments with which the balusters of the staircase were connected, stood two representations of those giant green men or hombres

salvagios, which either in pasteboard or wood were the marshalmen of every pageant, the protectors, on occasions of grand state, of every mansion in a time so affectedly romantic. Such a savage of the woods, "with an oaken plant plucked up by the roots in his hand, himself all foregrown in moss and ivy," "welcomed the maiden Queen on her return to the towers of Killingworth from the chase. Such were the guardians of London's civic hall, Gog and Magog; though really most powerless Cyclops, for we read in an old record cited by Strutt,† that the Mayor and Aldermen were obliged occasionally to dispense for their service some pennyworths of poisoned paste, to prevent their being eaten by the rats! The maces of the mimic giants of Grove-house were of formidable proportion compared with the figures, and furnished with gnarled knobs; when similar forms were animated in pageants by concealed living actors, their maces, we learn, were sometimes stuffed with fireworks, which exploding at intervals during their processional march, the weapons of these mighty whifflers kept the admiring crowd at a respectful distance.

The giants at Grove-house were not of such edible materials, being carved out of solid oak; they were, however, giants in miniature, being but two feet six inches high. So much were they respected, that in all leases of the mansion, it was provided they should never be removed. Time, however, and innovation have dislodged these ancient sentinels from their guard; and this brief sketch may serve to rescue them and a relic of our domestic antiquities from utter oblivion; both which appear to me to have well deserved a better fate.

• Vide Laneham's Letter.

Introd. to Sports and Pastimes. Whiffler, an officer who leads the way in processions.

"Which like a mighty whiffler 'fore the King,

Seems to prepare his way."-Shakspeare's Henry V.

"Whifflers and staffiers on foot."-Butler's Hudibras.

The term, in its strict and original sense, signified a piper, from the Saxon Pærlep. A single fife leads the way in that most ancient of all pageants, the coronation procession.

1833.]

Mr. URBAN,

TIME was, I thought, as I descended the abrupt and pathless declivity of the hill whose summit is crowned with the little lone Church of the distant and scattered village of Hadsor, -time was, when this hallowed building, beautiful in its present state of ruin, found protection for the sake of the service which caused it to be reared, and for the honour of which it was adorned with the utmost elegance and taste possessed by the architects at the commencement of the 14th century. Methought, as I proceeded on my way, that Religion now-a-days was not honoured by temples worthy of her beauty and sublimity. We are indebted to her for the most magnificent monuments of architecture we have ever possessed; but architecture is no longer obliged to devotion for encouragement and protection.

There must be some truth in these reflections, or the science which was exercised on the design of Hadsor Church, could never have arrived at so high a point of perfection as is observed in that elegant little fabric, nor would one of its choicest productions have exhibited ruin, neglect, and degradation.

History has failed to preserve the name either of the patron or the architect. The building suggests the idea that some munificent individual possessed of a generous spirit, of piety, and of wealth, caused it to be erected by the hand of an architect who could have had no superior in correct taste or practical science. If I were to hazard a conjecture in a case of so much uncertainty, I should bestow the honour of this edifice upon William Fitzwaren, who held the property at the latter end of the reign of Edward I.

It is just such a structure as we should suppose the owner of the soil, attached perhaps by birth, or from local circumstances to the spot, and probably regarded in his day for his liberal encouragement of architecture, and it may be for his scientific attain

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ments, would delight to rear up as a model of the then newly adopted style of Pointed architecture. He suited, we may fairly suppose, the dimensions of his building to the wants of the neigbouring population, allowing perhaps some space for future exigencies; at the same time, that all was done within the compass of the means which would enable him to adorn his favourite church with the best proportions and ornaments known to skill and good taste. Nothing, we are sure, was wanting to the completion of its design. One limit only was fixed to the architect, namely, extent; this determined, the relative proportions of the building, its breadth, its height, its subdivision; the number, position, and size of the windows; the uniformity of the whole, as to essential features, and variety, where it was strictly allowable, in the subordinate features and ornaments, were considered, arranged, and executed with scrupulous attention and consummate ability.

The

The quality of the material was a subject of too much importance to be overlooked. Many a building of great cost and admirable design, exhibits finely wrought masonry on the angles, and in the windows, doors, and buttresses, with walls of rubble; but the exterior of Hadsor Church is wholly faced with masonry. stone of the immediate neighbourhood was found to be coarse, of a heavy red colour, and ill calculated for the execution or preservation of the more delicate ornaments of architecture. A superior material, therefore, was sought from a distant quarry; and whatever might have been the cost and labour of its procurement, stone of excellent quality was obtained, that nothing should be wanting to perfect the beauty and merit of this jewel of architecture. Thus, with a generous patron, an able architect, assisted by the most skilful practitioners of the chisel, and materials of the soundest description, the diminutive Church of Hadsor was commenced and completed; and, save its altar, retained the integrity of its design unimpaired, from the commencement of the fourteenth till towards the close of the eighteenth century.

Five centuries have accumulated the earth nearly as many feet around the walls of the Church, and buried

the triple slopes of its base,-thus the height of the building is robbed of its fair proportions; but it is injured in a more extensive degree by the moisture which saturates the walls, and keeps the interior humid and unwhole

some.

Inattention to the precaution of removing the soil from the exterior of churches to the level of the floor, has been the occasion of evils which have ended in the destruction of the buildings. The doors are at last encroached upon, and it becomes necessary to descend into the church by means of steps, so that it may be truly said that the moderns have brought their congregations to church several feet in their graves!

It is time that I describe more particularly the subject of the foregoing remarks. The architect of Hadsor Church has shown how much he was able to accomplish with four walls and a roof, inclosing an area of less than three hundred and fifty square yards. The Church is sixty feet long from east to west. He allotted threefifths of this dimension to the body, and took two-fifths for its breadth: thus the length of the chancel is equal to the width of the body, and its breadth to half of the length of the body. These exact proportions were not the result of accident, but of careful and scientific calculation, of sound judgment in the application of the resources of science, employed not for the sake of crowding a certain number of persons into a given space, or for determining the least possible quantity of room that could be allow ed for the altar; but to promote the beauty and elegant character of the building, and as the surest means of improving the science which the architects of antiquity so ably practised. The symmetry of the elevation, or upright of the wall, as it originally appeared, was no less complete than that of the block-plan, from whose foundations it rose; and the windows are fashioned with matchless grace. The order here spoken of extends throughout the design. There is no space for variety; and splendour has not been attempted. The windows and ornaments of a Cathedral have not been compressed into a tiny parish Church, but they occupy, in an uniform series, the full altitude of the wall between the two extreme cornices. There are two windows on

the north, and two on the south side of the chancel, and the same number in the body, all proportioned alike, and fully occupying the space allotted for their height between the cornice raised two feet nine inches above the base, and that which terminates the wall at its parapet. The recess of the windows is unusually deep on the outside, and the mouldings which enrich their arches and jambs, present a singular novelty in their combination; thus the detail of the architecture is no less interesting to the Antiquary, than in the general pictorial effect of the design, the bold and powerful shadows descending upon the tracery, must be admired by the Artist. The tracery thus enshrined in mouldings, and still further protected by labels terminating with finials which spread their foliage in the hollow, and upon the mouldings of the cornice immediately below the parapet; as if the architect himself considered it as too delicate and beautiful to be exposed to the injuries of weather and accident, without a canopy prominent enough to guard it against the resistless casualties of time,-exhibit a variety of patterns, a mode of augmenting the beauty and interest of the building in which the architects of the period delighted to prove their taste and invention. The side-windows are distinguished by three patterns, all springing from single mullions. One on the south side of the chancel, and one on the same side of the body, contain the three compartments of their tracery within circles, as emblems of the Trinity; another in the body is composed of triple compartments, bearing the same allusion, without an inclosing circle; this is repeated on the opposite side of the church; and there are four windows each with tracery composed of a single quatrefoil.

The eastern and western windows were in due proportion to the breadth of the gables they occupied, and the ramifications of their tracery sprung from two slender mullions. The crosses of sculptured stone were thrown down when the roof was altered, and have never been restored to their places; and the handsome niches which occupied the spaces between their pedes. tals and the arches of the windows, were despoiled of all their ornaments, and their recesses filled up. Double buttresses on the extreme angles of