CHAPTER FOUR 



THE DINING ROOM 



I entered the door, and started at first with my old astonishment with which 

 I had woke up, so strange and beautiful did this interior seem to me, though it 

 was but a pothouse parlour. 



A quaintly carved sideboard held an array of bright pewter pots and dishes 

 and wooden and earthen bowls ; a stout oak table went up and down the room, 

 and a carved oak chair stood by the chimney-corner, now filled by a very old man 

 dim-eyed and white-bearded. That, except the rough stools and benches on 

 which the company sat, was all the furniture. The walls were panelled roughly 

 enough with oak boards to about six feet from the floor, and about three feet of 

 plaster above that was wrought in a pattern of a rose stem running all round the 

 room, freely and roughly done, but with (as it seemed to my unused eyes) 

 wonderful skill and spirit. On the hood of the great chimney a huge rose was 

 wrought in the plaster and brightly painted in its proper colours. 



" A Dream of John Ball." WILLIAM MORRIS. 



F we assume the case of a family who meet in the evenings in 

 one large room with its comfortable fireside, and adjourn to a 

 separate room for dinner, high tea, or supper, or whatever 

 form the evening meal may assume, where a certain degree of 



economy in labour and fuel is necessary, it becomes undesirable 



to light a fire in the dining-room, which is only used for a short period. 

 In many cases the difficulty is met by using the dining-room as a sitting-room 

 in the evening, and for this purpose it is not always adapted. The dining- 

 table is usually unnecessarily large, and the available floor space is reduced 

 to a narrow strip round this table, and this, again, is further restricted by 

 the sideboard and the chairs. And so a chain of circumstances may have 

 driven the unfortunate owner of the suburban house to spend his evenings 

 inexorably wedged between the dining-table and the fire. In the whole 

 space covered by the roof and enclosed by the walls of his house there is 

 room enough, if thoughtfully disposed, to afford him a more spacious 

 setting for life than this. The thoughtless application of an obsolescent 

 tradition has, in fact, ended in his being pushed into a corner by 

 insistent and triumphant furniture ; and there for the present we may 

 leave him. 



In the smaller types of house it may be, first of all, considered how far it 

 is desirable to use the central hall as a dining-room, or, in other words, to 

 make the dining-room large enough to serve as a hall or houseplace as well. 

 This enlargement of the room will reduce considerably the main objection to 

 such a scheme, and the lingering odours of the food will not be so much in 

 evidence as in a small room. 



By following an ancient usage, the table may be of the trestle or gate type, 

 and may then be removed when not required and placed against the wall. But 

 the arrangement which seems to meet the case most satisfactorily is the intro- 

 duction as an appendage to the hall of a dining recess, of which several 

 examples are given in the plans illustrated. 

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