62 LITTLE HUCKLOW : ITS CUSTOMS AND OLD HOUSES. 



Nevertheless, this stair, though rather dangerous, is not 

 altogether inconvenient, for there is room enough to carry up 

 furniture, such as beds and chests of drawers. The cutting 

 and fitting of these steps, from the rounded ends of which 

 the newel is formed, must have been costly, and the builder 

 has shown great ingenuity in adapting the stair to the two 

 upper rooms, so that the one could be entered without going 

 through the other. It is in such work that the character of 

 the house appears. The owner of .such an appendage to a 

 house would naturally regard it with some pride, for a mere 

 ladder was a sign of poverty and rusticity, as when the men 

 of Totley, in this county, taunted their neighbours of Dore 

 by saying : 



Up a ladder .ind down a wall, 

 A penny loaf will serve you all. 



The doorway of the east chamber, here called the kitchen 

 chamber, is 5 ft. high. The height of this chamber, measured 

 to the place where the rafters spring from the walls, is 

 7 ft. 9 in. ; to the ridge-piece it is 12 ft. 2 in. It is lighted 

 by a beautiful window in massive stonework of three lights, 

 the central light being exactly a foot higher than the others. 

 The recess of the window is 2 ft. 11 in. from the floor. There 

 is no fireplace in this room, and it can only be ventilated by 

 opening the window and door. As both the upper rooms 

 were insufficiently lighted by the old windows, I have had two 

 " glass slates " put in the roof of the east room, and three in 

 that of the west room. These take the place of ordinary 

 slates, and are fixed between the rafters. Hence they do not 

 disfigure the building, and make the interior brighter, drier, 

 and healthier. The practice may be recommended to all 

 occupants of old houses with small windows and open roofs. 

 The flue of the fireplace in the hall projects 2 ft. from the 

 wall of the room above, and tapers on all sides upwards. 

 It is of stone, and not of wood, as some old flues of this period 

 are, but so thin and porous that the smoke of the fire below 

 colours it like a meerschaum pipe. You may whitewash it as 

 often as you like, it still turns brown. The height of the west 



