I 



By Sir Charles Hohhouse, Bart. 20$ 



bent on perpetuity, and his means, materials, and workmanship 

 were never of the best, so the buildings were not made to last. 



Then, if he occupied for his own life, ten to one but the cottage 

 passed to strangers on his death. Either he had no family, or too 

 large a family, to succeed him, and the object was not to inhabit as an 

 heirloom the cottage, but to let it to others. Then ensued a practise 

 of rack-renting on the one hand, and of no sufficient repair to the 

 tenement on the other, producing at once the two evils of high rents 

 and bad accommodation. There were no means or no inclination to 

 pay for fresh lives or prolonged tenures, and so at last the tenement 

 tumbled, in some cases literally, into the landlord's bands, a veritable 

 white elephant. 



It has been, I believe, by some such process as this that in our 

 .parish the number of life-renters, which, within the memory o£ 

 living man, was very considerable, is reduced to some three families 

 resident on what was " The Green," at Farleigh-Wick. Happily, 

 the materials for our buildings were o£ stone, and so many of our 

 life cottages have been preserved, but even so it has been in some cases 

 almost at the cost of re-building; and there are some yet standing 

 and inhabited which should properl}^ speaking be pulled down and 

 replaced. The late Mr. Caldwell did very much in a very short 

 time to remedy this evil, and I hope we have not fallen off since his 

 time. 



There is one other cottage which is deserving o£ mention, as 

 preserving the memory of another system, also gone by. The house 

 and shop now occupied by our baker was the parish poor-house. It 

 is remarkable outwardly for its stone doorway with its pointed arch. 

 Here old Sally Mizen, a veteran of the parish, was brought up, 

 and here her father, mother, and five or six children, and often as 

 many as thi*ee families besides, lived all together — no distinctions 

 made as to age or sex. " Figure to yourself," says Hannah Moore 

 (aith October, 1794) "from ten to thirty, forty, or fifty or more 

 ignorant creatures of both sexes and all ages crammed under one 

 roof — that roof so ragged as to admit the rain on such poor wretches 

 as were confined to their beds. Six or eight persons in one room 

 without regard to age or sex. Parents and children of all ages 



p 2 



