THE COTTAGES OF ECCLESTON. 123 



have described as common at Chester, covered with thick thatch- 

 ed roofs, with frequent and different-sized dormers, often with 

 bow-windows, porches, well-houses, etc., of unpainted oak or of 

 rustic work (boughs of trees with the bark on), broad latticed 

 windows opening on hinges, a profusion of creeping vines on trel- 

 lises, and often covering all the walls and hanging down over the 

 windows, little flower-gardens full of roses, and wallflowers, and 

 violets, and mignonette, enclosed in front by a closely trimmed 

 hedge of yew, holly, or hawthorn, sometimes of both the latter 

 together, and a nicely-sloped bank of turf between it and the 

 road. I made a sketch of one of them. An intelligent laboring 

 man talked with me while I was drawing it, and said it was the 

 residence of the schoolmaster, and the village school was kept 

 in it. The main part (which was covered with our Virginia 

 creeper) was over three hundred years old ; a part of the wing 

 was modern. 



This laborer had been digging drains in the vicinity. He said 

 the practice was to make them from 18 to 36 inches deep, and 

 from 5 to 7 yards apart, or "in the old buts" "The buts?" 

 " Ay, the buts." He meant what we sometimes call the " 'bouts" 

 (turnabouts) or furrows between the lands in plowing, which here 

 are often kept unaltered for generations for surface drainage, and, 

 oddly enough, considering the many manifest inconveniences of 

 retaining them, as we were often told, on account of the conven- 

 ience of measuring or dividing fields by them, (as our farmers 

 are often guided in their sowing by the lands, and estimate areas 

 by counting the panels of fence.) Tiles, such as are being now 

 introduced with us, an inch or an inch and a half in diameter 

 (without collars), were laid in the drains to conduct the water. 

 The usual crop of potatoes in the vicinity he thought about 

 three measures to a rood, or 225 bushels to an acre ; of wheat, 

 30 bushels. 



