gad §, No 17., Aprit 26, 56.) ” 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
333 
“back hair,” —that feaze, which is always “coming 
down,” even when left to itself. And, by the by, 
there have been as many changes in the dressing 
of that natural ornament as in any other fashion ; 
for which changes we are indebted of late years 
to Her Majesty, the Empress Eugénie, and Jenny 
Lind, and I doubt not other illustrious person- 
ages are answerable for the anterior-dating va- 
garies. ; . 
Again, passing from the ladies to the “ lords of 
the creation,’ I should like to hear something 
about pigtails, pantaloons, and perriwigs; and, 
above all, to know who first induced the genus 
homo to wear that everlasting chimney-pot he does 
on his head. Of course, in such minor matters as 
Wellington boots, Albert ties, Joinvilles, &c., 
there never will be much doubt as to what par- 
ticular epochs to refer them, or whence they de- 
rived, at least, their names. But in cases where 
such unmistakeable indices are not given to their 
origin, and as comfgrt and convenience are un- 
fortunately answerable for very few of fashion’s 
vagaries, it becomes a matter worth noting to 
whom or to what circumstances we are indebted 
for the curious, and sometimes absurd, changes 
which take place from time to time in our 
manners, customs, and personal adornments. 
R. W. Hacxwoop. 
THE UNKNOWN ARCHITECT OF NOTTINGHAM 
CASTLE AND WOLLATON HALL, NEAR NOTTING- 
HAM. 
In the Rambles round Nottingham, now pub- 
lishing, the author arrives at the conclusion, 
founded on architectural and ornamental details 
of a remarkable character (such as the ornamenta- 
tion with busts of kings, queens, emperors, im- 
peratrices, lords, ladies, &c.), or alternation of the 
sexes, that both these places were built from de- 
signs, not of the parties to whom they are usually 
attributed, but of one Smithson, who flourished 
about the period of their erection. The castle 
referred to, the last Castle of Nottingham, dates, 
with respect to its building, about 1674—80; it 
is the same which was destroyed in the Reform 
Riots, 1832. The date on Wollaton Hall is, how- 
ever, 1588. The story goes that the castle was 
built by a Lincolnshire man named March, and 
decorated by a sculptor named Wilson, whom a 
Lady Putsey fell in love with, and had dubbed 
Sir William to raise him to the rank of her lady- 
ship: whilst as respects Wollaton Hall it has 
always been attributed to the designs of the 
founder, Sir Francis Willoughby. The author of 
the Rambles round Nottingham, however, main- 
tains that the first was reproduced from a model 
left by Smithson, and that Sir Francis Willoughby 
adopted the designs of that architect, then living. 
It may be remarked that Smithson’s monument in 
Wollaton Church, which I think has never before 
been copied, appears to bear out the latter proba- 
bility : 
“Here lyeth ye body of Mr. Robert Smithson, Gent., 
Architecter and Surveyer unto the most worthy House of 
Wollaton, with diverse others of great account. He lived 
in ye faith of Christ 79 years, and then departed this life 
ye xv‘ of October, Anno Dmi. 1614,” 
In case any of your correspondents may be unac- 
quainted with the life and works of Smithson, I 
subjoin the extracts from the Rambles : 
“ The hackneyed story that the architect of this castle 
was ‘ March, a Lincolnshire man,’ a great unknown whose 
name there now remains nothing else to celebrate, has 
always appeared to us a gross absurdity. March may 
have been the bui/der. Be it so; the man is now as mute 
as his bricks and mortar. In that age, however, which 
has seen Vanbrugh emulating the earlier flights of Inigo 
Jones and Sir Christopher Wren, England possessed ar- 
chitects whose works she would not willingly let die; 
and amongst the foremost of them the incomparable artist 
Smithson, whose fluent Gothic castle of Wollaton will yet 
be owned to be the ze plus ultra of British manorial ar- 
chitecture — as it has already been transcribed by Baron 
Rothschild (at Mentmore) as the most illustrious ex- 
ample of the kind which money could enable him to 
follow in all this wealthy and aristocratic isle. We call 
it the English Feudal Flamboyant, and could swear that 
the same unknown architect who designed Wollaton for 
the Willoughbys devised the extraordinary facade of 
Nottingham Castle. Ifso, it was Smithson. Denny has 
preserved a copy of a plan of Nottingham Castle by Smith- 
son, taken in 1617, from which it has been alleged that 
the present building was completed in 1678-83, a long 
period, and the architect did not live to see one half of its 
accomplishment; but then the inscription on the castle, 
preserved by a servant, bears out the fact of the work 
having been constructed from a model.” — Rambles round 
Nottingham, part i, p. 37. 
“In a former chapter we assigned some reasons for as- 
cribing to the architect Smithson— from whose model 
the somewhat analogous structure of Nottingham Castle 
was framed — the suggestion, if not the production, also 
of Wollaton Hall. We are perfectly aware that other 
traditions have been preserved, and that Sir Francis Wil- 
loughby, the founder, who seems undoubtedly to have 
been a man of taste and spirit, receives the credit of 
having designed the structure. Now when we are told 
that Myr. Ruskin, the great authority on modern Gothic 
architecture, is to build a house, we are told at the same 
time that he is to be assisted by an architect; and it ig 
our belief that if such a man existed as we have already 
ventured to describe, there can be no question that Sir 
Francis Willoughby, the Mecenas of his day and district, 
would certainly consult him.” — Zbid, part iii. p. 100. 
Smithson, who was born in 1535, would have 
been fifty-three at the date of Wollaton Hall ; his 
monument proves that he died in the service of 
the family twenty-six years afterwards. §. M.D. 
DEFOE’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 
Some time back my attention was drawn to 
a little book entitled An Abstract of the Re- 
