CHAPTER XLIV. 

 IMPROVEMENT IN DWELLINGS. 



THE wave of improvement that surely, if slowly, moving, 

 since the public awakening of 1872, to the condition of 

 our peasantry had, as we have seen, affected their 

 rates of wages, had not left their habitations untouched. 

 Again taking the West of England as illustrative, to a 

 certain extent, of changes elsewhere, we will give the 

 result, as briefly as possible, of our own careful inves- 

 tigations in 1880. Whilst cottages were then as in 

 many examples we could supply far from what they 

 ought to have been, and the two-roomed hovel was 

 lingering and dying hard, so to speak, there were many 

 pleasant indications of an appreciable change for the 

 better ; and signs too that the improvement had, to 

 use a somewhat trite phrase, come to stay. 



Taking the four important West Country counties 

 seriatim, we will indicate the improvements merely 

 remarking that to quote the too numerous examples we 

 encountered of the old and disreputable order of things 

 would only confirm the " types " we have already 

 given. At Fyfield in Wiltshire we came upon some 

 excellent recently-erected cottages, about three miles 

 from Marlborough, on a hill slope. We found them well 

 and solidly built, of stone with five rooms each 

 two " sitting " or " living " rooms and three bedrooms. 

 There was plenty of space for decency and comfort ; 

 and sesthetic considerations had not been neglected 

 for " creepers " and roses had been planted to trail 

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